Not bad for phone photos, huh? I shot these right after the sun went down this evening, the last night of the 2009 South Carolina State Fair.
It was quite beautiful…
A beautiful ending to the fair
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Category Archives: Personal
Top Five books that should have been made into movies by now
My birthday was three weeks ago (and thanks again to the many of you who wished me a happy on Facebook), and I had a good day. My wife and one of my daughters and I participated in the Walk for Life (where we ran into Mayor Bob), and the weather was perfect for it, then my wife — who had several gift certificates she had never used — took me to Barnes & Noble for coffee (as you know, my favorite leisuretime activity) and to let me pick out a couple of books. Then that night we had dinner over at my parents’ house.
The actual party was the next day, and as usual it was a joint one with my son, whose birthday is three days later. The twins (who are 21 months now) kept wishing us “Happy Day.” Then after awhile the one sitting next to me started pushing her dinner away from her and saying “Happy DAY!” with an increasingly testy tone. I finally realized that “Happy Day” is their term for cake, and they felt like they’d been waiting for it long enough. It was sitting right there in front of them, after all.
Anyway… I got several books that had been on my wish list, such as the second Flashman book, and a new biography of Trotsky, and a really good one I’m currently reading about Nelson’s navy called The War for All the Oceans. But one that I picked out myself at B&N was one I had read several times before; I just wanted my own copy so I could read it again any time I wanted: High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby. It is wonderful. It is the best, funniest, truest book about differences between men and women (and guys don’t come out looking too good) that I’ve ever read. That just sounded like a chick book, but it’s not. It’s written from the guy perspective, but from a guy who knows how lame we can be.
If you haven’t read the book but saw the movie, you sort of have the idea. But the book was much better. Nick Hornby is a genius.
One of the ways in which the protagonists and his fellow guys express their creativity, their superficiality and their encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture is by challenging each other to construct esoteric Top Five lists — Top Five side one track ones, or Top Five pop songs about death — and then critiquing each others’ choices. (Derisively, in the case of Barry.)
Anyway, inspired by having just reread the book, and having run across something on the internet where someone was complaining about a certain book having never been made into a movie, I’ve decided to draft a Nick Hornby tribute, a list of the Top Five Books that Should Have Been Made Into Movies by Now:
- Stranger In A Strange Land — This is the one I found the complaint about online (can’t find it now, though). Definitely number one. An entire generation would buy tickets to see this, if it were any good at all. The sex stuff toward the end might have been a barrier in the 60s, but not now. I remember once in the early 70s hearing that it was being made into a movie starring David Bowie, but that turned out to be something else. Since nobody else seems interested, I’ve thought about trying to write the screenplay myself, but only if Hollywood would let me be in it. I would have been a natural for Ben Caxton when I was younger, but now I’d probably have to audition to be Jubal Harshaw. Of course, the soundtrack would have to include the Leon Russell song of the same name.
- SS-GB — Not Len Deighton’s best book (that distinction belongs to The Ipcress File, which was made into a creditable, although not very faithful, movie), but easily the most cinematic alternative-history books ever. The images it invokes — of the Scotland Yard homicide detective working for the SS after the Germans invaded England and won World War II — are just made for the big screen. Another book that I didn’t like as much but which seemed to me a cross between this and Gorky Park (the plot involved a German investigator living in 1964 in a Third Reich that had survived the war and was now engaged in a Cold War with the U.S., rather than the Soviet Union) was made into a movie. It was Fatherland, and the made-for-TV film starred Rutger Hauer. SS-GB would be much better.
- Guns of the South — OK, Barry in High Fidelity would probably take away points for my listing two alternative history novels, but this one would ALSO work great on the screen. I mean, come on, ragtag Confederate soldiers wielding AK-47s — could action get any better than that? But you know, I suspect there’s a reason Hollywood doesn’t often tackle this sort of plotline — people know so little about history, they’re afraid their audiences wouldn’t get the point.
- Rose — I mentioned Gorky Park, which was made into a really disappointing film (worst part, William Hurt as Arkady Renko; best part, Lee Marvin as the villain). The author of that book is a master of recreating a world and putting the reader in it. And possibly his most readable novel ever is a mystery about an American mining engineer and African explorer in the 1870s who is sent to a dismal English coal-mining town to figure out what happened to a curate who disappeared. The imagery in it is compelling; it begs for cinematic treatment. I’d go see it — although only if the casting of the main character was right. No more William Hurts, please.
- The entire Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. Yes, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” was a very enjoyable film. I own it on DVD, and have watched it a number of times. But the Aubrey-Maturin series deserves a more extended treatment. The perfect format would be a high-quality series (with better casting this time, please) on HBO or the BBC — one two-hour episode for each of the 20 books. Maybe you wouldn’t watch them all, but I certainly would.
They’re begging me to run — BEGGING me, I tell you…
All right, so it was actually back in June that this ran on Wes Wolfe’s site (the good bit’s at the very end):
Word is, since Quinn is currently the chairman of the S.C. Policy Council, he will be running as an SCPC-style candidate, in the Sanford mold, which is a little outside his normal situation when he was in the House. His primary opposition thus far is Danny Frazier, a town councilman for Lexington and entrepreneur with Frazier-Taylor LLC, and Gary Taylor, who by our scouring of the series of tubes seems to be working with Mungo real estate firm Sovereign Homes (but, we could be very wrong — confirm or correct in the comments).
Some people, they have egos that are a little too big. Quinn’s is pushing him to get back into elective office. But, he didn’t seem to consider the sledgehammer of oppo that will be coming down on his campaign, from the get-go. It will be fun, though. And, it will be even better if (pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease) former The State editorial page editor Brad Warthen gets into the mix.
So maybe they’re not, technically, begging me at the moment. But they have in the recent past. Assuming Wes qualifies as “they.”
Anyway, this was just brought to my attention today, and it caused me to smile, so I thought I’d share it…
Go co-op, or remain a lone gunman?
Back on this post, remy enlarged upon the subject of participation on the blog with this perfectly good suggestion:
Perhaps you should broaden your blog to include entries from others (eg. some of your former colleagues…those who are employed, but would like having a forum without the hassle of creating their own blog (the blogsphere is already splintered enough) and those who are still looking for gainful employment).
It might expand the dialog, and perhaps bring even more readers (who will comment). More readers may lead to an interest from advertisers…
And then I answered him at such length that I decided to make it a separate post:
I’ve thought about it (having co-authors), but I always run into several objections, aside from my own inertia…
– First, my whole orientation toward blogging is toward the personal blog, both as a writer and as a reader. Those co-op blogs out there don’t do much for me. I like a consistent voice, a particular person whom I can picture (at least, in an abstract sort of way, not like actually picturing a face or something) when I read their thoughts. Otherwise, I have that sense of dislocation I’ve gotten in reading an op-ed proof when the person doing page design absent-mindedly put the wrong sig on the column, and I read three-fourths of it, the whole time thinking “this is really a departure for Thomas Friedman,” and sure enough it turns out to be George Will, and finally things fall into place — but I feel almost like I have to read it over again with that in mind.
– (This is actually a continuation of the first bullet, but I felt it was time for a bullet) Also, when I started the blog, it was sort of an alternative form of expression to the cooperative, consensus-based process of publishing an editorial page. Even in my columns, I was very aware of being the editorial page editor and needing to be somewhat consistent with what we said in editorials (not entirely, but somewhat), and part of blogging was to be liberated from that.
– It would be a lot of work, it seems like. Coordinating something with other people is always more complex and energy-consuming than just doing something yourself as the mood strikes you. And as it stands, I always feel like I don’t devote enough to the blog to make it as good as it should be (what with job-hunting, which really IS kind of like having a job, as the cliche has it, in terms of time and energy; and family obligations and such).
– Then there’s the problem of what do I do if I really don’t like what someone has written, at my request, to contribute. No, it’s not as bad as asking someone to write an op-ed and it’s substandard when it comes in, because you’re not dealing with finite space, but still, things are going to come in that I’d prefer not to have. Say, a conventional take on an issue from either a “liberal” or “conservative” viewpoint, when I’d prefer a little outside-the-spectrum detachment, since fostering that is sort of an aim of the blog. It’s not that I have a definite idea of what should go on the blog, but I think I’d react to something from someone else that I DIDN’T want on the blog, because it didn’t have the right feel, and then what do I do? Hurt the feelings of this person who was trying to help? Or let the blog gradually become something else…
– To varying degrees, the other out-of-work journalists who want to publish online are doing so. Robert Ariail’s got his site, and so does Jeffrey Day, to name two such friends. If I started trying to line them up to join MY blog (and I’ve thought of it for the very reason you cite, that it would make it a product more attractive to advertising), I’d feel sort of like the Dan Akroyd character in “Grosse Pointe Blank” — you know, the hit man who wanted to organize all the other hit men — when I’d rather be the John Cusack character (”Loner; lone gunman — get it? That’s the whole point. I like the lifestyle, the image. Look at the way I dress.”).Now, all of that said, I still might try to do it, but not yet — I hope to have an idea what sort of job I’ll be doing in the future pretty soon, and what I’ll be doing will have an impact on whether I blog at all, or if I do, what sort of blog it is in the future. So why get a lot of people started on something I would just have to drop?
I just listed those bullets to explain why I haven’t done it already…
… and still probably won’t. But the thought is worth airing.
Do you pick up pennies?
Do you pick up pennies? I do, and this morning I struck a bonanza (not the one with Hoss, though).
I was plugging the meter with quarters when I dropped one. As I bent to pick it up, I remember having read or heard someone saying that, with inflation, it’s not worth the trouble. Well, it is to me. For that matter, I still pick up pennies. I like to say to myself, as I straighten back up, “And all the day you’ll have good luck.” It’s just, I don’t know, a little gesture of faith in life, an optimistic way to look at things. Bright penny, bright outlook. It pleases me.
Well, today, not 10 seconds after I picked up my own quarter, over across the street I came upon another quarter on the sidewalk — a 2007 with Montana on the back (why does “Montana on the back” ring a bell? Oh, yeah — Montana Wildhack). So I picked it up and put it in my left pants pocket, where it couldn’t get mixed up with the ordinary coins for spending.
Twenty-five days good luck. This could not have come at a better time for me. I resolve to make the most of them.
It occurred to me that I’d have even better luck it I gave it away, but no panhandlers came up to me. When one does, I’ll give it to him or her. Of course, I’ll have to hope it’s not one of those picky panhandlers who turns his nose up at a dollar. Maybe if I explain that it’s a lucky quarter… ah, but I can see the look of withering contempt now…
No, no… it’s a positive vision of the future that we’re embracing here. Bright quarter. Bright immediate future. This is great…
What’s with this ubiquitous pseudo-Beatlemania?
Once again, I am puzzled by Beatlemania.
The first time, I was living in Guayaquil, Ecuador in early 1964. Communicating with the States — or Britain, for that matter — was a cumbersome affair, hardly speedier than in the Napoleonic era that I enjoy reading about in those books I’m always on about (just finished reading The Fortune of War for the fourth time). The only television we had was one local station that was only on the air from about 4 in the afternoon until 10 at night, and ran mostly American cartoons and TV shows dubbed into Spanish. Imagine being an Ecuadorean and trying to grok “The Beverly Hillbillies” with Granny and Jethro speaking Spanish out of sync with their lips, and you will begin to see the roots of whatever appreciation for the absurd that I today possess. For our part, we didn’t bother — we left our TV set gathering dust down in the bodega with the shelves of canned goods ordered from the Navy Exchange in Panama, for the entire two-and-a-half years we were there.
But we did occasionally see The Miami Herald, although generally a couple of weeks late. And it was on the front page of one of these old papers that I saw the shouting banner headline, “Beatles Hit Miami,” or something like that. I thought it referred to an insect infestation of Biblical proportions, given the huge play.
Eventually, I figured it out, and was entranced. My Beatles fanhood in those early days was probably intensified by the difficulty of keeping up with the Fab Four at a distance. I occasionally found a 45 for sale in a local tienda (I think my first was “Love Me Do”), and I still treasure the first album I ever owned, an Odeon release titled, “La Banda Original de la Pelicula ‘A Hard Days Night.”
Anyway, to bring you to the present day — I fear that I am fated to remain confused by the most recent manifestation of Beatlemania. Or perhaps I should say “alienated” rather than “confused,” because I sort of understand it, but am put off by it. This one is different.
This one doesn’t arise spontaneously, up from below. It’s not a cry of love from the fans. It seems a calculated effort to impose enthusiasm upon a new generation, imposed from above by the masters of the marketing universe.
Note the display I photographed moments ago in the Barnes & Noble from which I am blogging. Not that I’m criticizing Barnes & Noble; I love Barnes & Noble as Winston loved Big Brother. Drinking wonderful Starbucks coffee, listening to “Instant Karma” via Pandora, sitting near a foreign chap wearing a T-shirt that proclaims “FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR PALESTINE” who looked furtively about him as he sat, seemingly expecting someone to challenge or argue with him or something, and in another direction a cute schoolgirl bent low doing her homework with an ipod in her ears, who kindly watched my laptop while I ran to the head… WHOA! The caffeine seems to have taken hold… where was I?
Oh, yes… nothing against Barnes & Noble. And certainly nothing against Starbucks; my slavish affection for Starbucks is well-documented. But both are very much apart of this vast commercial conspiracy to market the Beatles like mad, all of a sudden.
Is it really all prompted by the release of a video game? That’s the way it appears. I know it’s not a plot by Michael Jackson, who sneakily snapped up the rights to the Beatles’ songs years ago, because I seem to have heard that he is no longer among the living. It got quite a bit of play, as I recall.
So what’s it all about, Alfie? And how should a true Beatles fan react?
Trying to explain Joe Wilson to France
This morning I had a very pleasant breakfast at the usual place with Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine. I forgot to take a picture of him, but I found the video above from 2008 (I think), in which I think he’s telling the folks back home that Obama was going to win the election. That’s what “Obama va gagner” means, right? Alas, I have no French, although I’ve always felt that I understand Segolene Royal perfectly. Fortunately, Philippe’s English is superb.
It was my first encounter with a French journalist since I shot this video of Cyprien d’Haese shooting video of me back in 2008, in a supremely Marshall McLuhan moment. If you’ll recall, I was interviewed by a lot of national and foreign journalists in the weeks and months leading up to the presidential primaries here. (You may also recall that a lot of them came to me because of my blog, not because I was editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Philippe, of course, also contacted me because of the blog, although he was aware of my former association, and expressed his kind concern for my joblessness.)
He had come to Columbia from New York, which has been his home for 14 years, to ask about “this summer uprising among the conservatives, peaking with the Joe Wilson incident,” as he had put it in his e-mail.
Well, to begin with, I disputed his premise. I don’t think there has been a resurgence of conservatives or of the Republican Party, which is still groping for its identity in the wake of last year’s election. What we’ve seen in the case of Joe Wilson — the outpouring of support, monetary and otherwise, after the moment in which he embarrassed the 2nd District — was merely the concentration of political elements that are always there, and are neither stronger nor weaker because of what Joe has said and done. Just as outrage over Joe’s outburst has expressed itself (unfortunately) in an outpouring (I’m trying to see how many words with the prefix “out-” I can use in this sentence) of material support for the unimpressive Rob Miller, the incident was a magnet for the forces of political polarization, in South Carolina and across the country.
What I tried to do is provide historical and sociological context for the fact that Joe Wilson is the natural representative for the 2nd District, and will probably be re-elected (unless someone a lot stronger than Rob Miller emerges and miraculously overcomes his huge warchest). It’s not about Obama (although resistance to the “expansion of government” that he represents is a factor) and it’s not about race (although the fact that districts are gerrymandered to make the 2nd unnaturally white, and the 6th unnaturally black, helps define the districts and their representatives).
In other words, I said a lot of stuff that I said back in this post.
We spoke about a number of other topics as well, some related, some not:
He asked about the reaction in South Carolina to Obama’s election. I told him that obviously, the Democratic minority — which had been energized to an unprecedented degree in the primary, having higher turnout than the Republicans for the first time in many years — was jubilant. The reaction among the Republican minority was more like resignation. Republicans had known that McCain would win South Carolina, but Obama would win the election. I explained that McCain’s win here did not express a rejection of Obama (as some Democrats have chosen to misinterpret), but simply political business as usual — it would have been shocking had the Republican, any Republican, not won against any national Democrat. I spoke, as I explained to him, from the unusual perspective of someone who liked both Obama and McCain very much, but voted for McCain. I think I drew the distinction fairly well between what I think and what various subsets of Republicans and Democrats in South Carolina think…
That got us on the topic of McCain-Bush in 2000, because as I explained to Philippe, I was destined to support McCain even over someone I liked as much as Obama, because I had waited eight years for the opportunity to make up for what happened here in 2000. Philippe agreed that the world would have been a better place had McCain been elected then, but I gather that he subscribes to the conventional wisdom (held by many of you here on the blog) that the McCain of 2008 was much diminished.
Philippe understood 2000, but as a Frenchman, he had trouble understanding how the country re-elected Bush in 2004 (And let me quickly say, for those of you who may be quick to bridle at the French, that Philippe was very gentlemanly about this, the very soul of politeness). So I explained to him how I came to write an endorsement of Bush again in 2004 — a very negative endorsement which indicted him for being wrong about many things, but in the end an endorsement. There was a long explanation of that, and a short one. Here’s the short one: John Kerry. And Philippe understood why a newspaper that generally reflects its state (close to three-fourths of those we endorsed during my tenure won their general election contests) would find it hard to endorse Kerry, once I put it that way. (As those of you who pay attention know, under my leadership The State endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans overall, but never broke its string of endorsing Republicans for the presidency, although we came close in 2008.)
Anyway, when we finished our long breakfast (I hadn’t eaten much because I was talking too much, drinking coffee all the while) I gave him a brief “tour” of the Midlands as seen from the 25th floor of Columbia’s tallest building, then gave him numbers for several other sources who might be helpful. He particularly was interested in folks from Joe’s Lexington County base, as well as some political science types, so I referred him to:
- Rep. Kenny Bingham, the S.C. House Majority Leader who recently held a “Welcome Home” event for Joe Wilson at his (Kenny’s) home.
- Rep. Nikki Haley, who until recently was the designated Mark Sanford candidate for governor, before she had occasion to distance herself.
- Sen. Nikki Setzler (I gave him all the Lexington County Nikkis I knew), who could describe the county’s politics from the perspective of the minority party.
- Blease Graham, the USC political science professor who recently retired but remained plugged in and knowledgeable. (Philippe remarked upon Blease’s unusual name, which started me on a tangent about his ancestor Cole Blease, Ben Tillman, N.G. Gonzales, etc.)
- Walter Edgar, the author of the definitive history of our state.
- Neal Thigpen, the longtime political scientist at Francis Marion University who tends to comment from a Republican perspective.
- Jack Bass, the ex-journalist and political commentator known for his biography of Strom Thurmond and for his liberal Democratic point of view.
I also suggested he stop in at the Gervais Street Starbucks for a downtown Columbia perspective, and the Sunset Restaurant in West Columbia.
I look forward to reading his article, although I might have to get some of y’all to help me with understanding it. With my background in Spanish and two years of Latin I can generally understand French better when written than spoken, but I still might need some help…
OK, I’m really, REALLY sorry about all the e-mails, people
Some of you (about 50 people, I’m guessing) have received the following message from me about 14 times:
If you’re receiving this, you probably also received one of about 65 messages that just went out from my computer and which may have seemed strangely off-topic.That’s because I first tried to send it to you days or even weeks ago, but somehow it got hung up in my Outbox until just a few minutes ago.Sorry about that.-Brad
I am so sorry. I mean, you have no idea how sorry, since I think some of the people I sent it to were prospective employers.
I’m actually quite good with technology, normally.
What happened here is that I finally managed (with a friend’s help) to dislodge a bunch of messages in my Outbox, some of which had been sitting there for weeks.
So, quite naturally, I felt the need to explain to all of those people why they had suddenly received an anachronistic message. So I sent the above message…
… and IT got stuck in my Outbox. So ever since yesterday, I was trying and trying to send it — changing settings, restarting Outlook, clicking send/receive over and over. And now, it seems it has send the message out again for each time I clicked on the button.
And I can’t seem to stop it. And I hesitate to send out ANOTHER apology to all those same people.
I finally managed to delete if from my Outbox, so maybe it will stop now. I hope I hope I hope…
See you at the Walk for Life (I hope)
We don’t have a formal team or anything (yet), but my wife and I will be at the Palmetto Health Foundation’s First Ladies’ Walk For Life at 9 a.m. Saturday morning — just over 12 hours from now.
Please come join us. I can’t think of a better cause, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. As some of you know, my wife is a cancer survivor, and we’ve been blessed with eight wonderful years, so we look forward to this event as a chance to help others overcome this horrific disease.
And maybe it’s not to late to pull together an impromptu blog team. If you’re on Twitter, send me a Tweet when you get there to let me know where you are and we’ll see if we can march together.
See you there, I hope…
Please forgive my e-mail troubles
Yesterday, I realized that all those folks who have told me in recent days that they never got my e-mails actually never got my e-mails. So I apologize for thinking y’all were technically incompetent or something when it was me all along.
In fact, I’m such a klutz that I haven’t figured out what’s wrong yet, and I’ve got 65 outgoing e-mails just hanging there in limbo in my Outbox in Outlook. Some of them were pretty important messages, too, like the resume I sent out Monday right after talking to someone about an exciting job opportunity. I had sent it out immediately to display my high interest, only to realize last night that it never went out. Like I need this on top of everything else.
I’ve got someone trying to talk me through a solution, and I hope to arrive at one soon. But then I’ll have a new worry — if they all suddenly go out, some of them are really going to confuse people because of subsequent conversations with those people that have rendered the original message superfluous. They’re going to think I’m nuts — Why is he sending me this now?
All I can do right now is post this generic apology to everyone with whom I correspond. Once the e-mail’s back up, I’ll try to follow up with specific explanations to all the affected people. Dang. What a headache. Maybe I should just stick to playing solitaire on computers; I at least understand that…
Valerie B. is back in town (all too briefly, though)
This morning I had the good fortune to run into Valerie Bauerlein, formerly of The State and now with The Wall Street Journal. She was having breakfast with Tim Rogers at the Cap City Club, working on a story that she hopes will make the “A-hed” position on page one — that’s the feature that is always such at good read at the center of the bottom of the page. (Fortunately for her, she wasn’t here to do yet another Sanford story.)
Valerie works in the Journal’s Atlanta bureau. While she spends close to half her time on regional general-assignment news reporting, her specific beat these days is the soft drink industry.
After Tim left, Valerie stopped off at my table and we had a chance to catch up. Her biggest news is that she’s expecting her second baby in November, so she has that glow about her — but then, Valerie always had that glow about her. She’s one of the nicest, most pleasant, kindest, most considerate people I ever worked with, to the extent that you wonder how she ended up in the trade. Not that news people are universally unpleasant or anything; it’s just that she was SO nice. And very good at her job, to boot.
Anyway, it was great to see her, and greater to see her doing so well. I thought I’d pass it on for those of you who remember her.
“Peter Boyle” and other experts agree: I need a job
Some of y’all will find this interesting. Remember how, last week, I put off all the folks wanting me to run for office by saying I won’t run unless somebody comes to me, the way Peter Boyle did to Robert Redford in “The Candidate” (note that I’m playing the Redford part — I’m just another victim of typecasting), and says, Look, we want you to run, and we’ll do everything — set up the campaign organization, raise the money, buy the media — and all you have to do is show up and be the candidate. Sort of a turnkey political operation.
I figured that was a good way to shut y’all up on the running-for-office thing (and if that didn’t work, my fallback was to say rude things like “shut y’all up” to people who like me enough to urge me to run for office).
But then, a real-life “Peter Boyle” approached me. Sort of. Basically, I got a message from a long-time political consultant (he first came to South Carolina to work in the Pug Ravenel campaign in 1974) who cited the Peter Boyle thing and said “let’s meet.” So we did, at the usual place, over breakfast last Friday.
And we talked about various offices and the need for someone (preferably, somebody with a little bit on the ball) to run for them. And then we talked about my situation. And I told my “Peter Boyle” that before I run for anything, I really need to get a job — not only a job, but one of those very rare jobs that allow a guy to run for office.
And you know what his considered opinion was? He agreed. I need to get a job, first and foremost.
So we’re back to Go, where I won’t collect $200 until I find employment…
Waiting for my UnParty Peter Boyle
Wow, I am really humbled by the nice things some of y’all said about me running for office back on this post (am I sounding like a candidate yet? they’re supposed to say stuff like that, about being humbled, etc.).
But again, what office? The context was that we were talking about Congress. But as Karen suggested, maybe I’m better suited for state office. State issues are the ones I’m most knowledgeable about and passionate about.
Not that I don’t know as much as (or more than) the other declared candidates for Congress about national and international issues. I’m pretty confident that I do — or at least that I can hold my own, and I can certainly approach those issues in a fresh way that would break the partisan, shouting-back-and-forth pattern that I, for one, am sick of.
But what if I were elected to Congress? I would just feel pretty weird going off to Washington and watching another lame governor take office back here. And you know what? My own mother called me up the other day and said I should run for governor. So that’s one vote I could count on, I guess. (Right, Mom?)
You know what I need at this point? I need Peter Boyle to come see me and make a pitch. You ever see “The Candidate?” Excellent movie. Peter Boyle plays a political consultant type who talks Robert Redford — son of a prominent politician — into running for the U.S. Senate. Redford is a nonprofit activist who is uninterested in the compromises one must make to run for office. Boyle promises him he can stand up for everything he believes in, and points out that this is a great opportunity to give those things he believes in greater exposure. Redford asks something like How does that work? or What’s the catch? and Boyle hands him a matchbook on which he has written two words: “You lose.” On that basis, Redford agrees to run.
But as the campaign proceeds, the itch to win — or at least not lose by an embarrassing margin — starts to get to him….
Anyway, to run for office what I need is a Peter Boyle moment — somebody to say, we’ll take care of the mechanics of the campaign, you just be the candidate. Because I’m an issues guy, not a mechanics guy. Renting an office and getting phone lines set up would be the overwhelming part for me. Seriously.
This, of course, is why most people run under the auspices of parties. Each of the parties has loads of people like Peter Boyle who can say, here’s your infrastructure, you just concentrate on running for office (and raising money).
What I need is an UnParty Peter Boyle. I guess that would be a party stalwart who has become disillusioned. Or who sees greater opportunity in breaking away from the two-party dichotomy.
It’s interesting to contemplate where such a person would come from. On an earlier post, I speculated that if I were to give in and run under the banner of one of the parties next year for pragmatic reasons (see the above discourse on Peter Boyle), especially for Congress, it would probably have to be the Democratic Party. Why? Well, not because I’m a Democrat, but because I don’t see a Republican having a good-enough shot against an incumbent of that party. Too much of an uphill climb.
But it occurs to me that if I run as an independent, my theoretical Peter Boyle would be more likely to come from the Republican Party. It’s the party in trouble. It’s the party that’s falling apart, rather pathetically clinging to tired slogans and petty resentments that have not served it well of late (whereas the Democrats have been doing OK, for the moment, with their tired slogans and petty resentments). It seems more likely that a smart Republican would calculate that an UnParty bid would be advisable than that a smart Democrat would do the same. Democrats are smelling opportunity now, and are unlikely to jump ship.
Then again, there could be a smart Democrat who would rather see me elected than Joe Wilson, and who also sees as I do that Rob Miller is not the best candidate to take advantage of this moment, and yet he’s the Democrat with the money, and has a leg up toward the nomination. Going with me might be the way to step around that problem. I don’t know. That’s the kind of hard-eyed political calculation that I’m depending on this Peter Boyle person to make — I’m the candidate, not the backroom strategist.
Anyway, now would be a good time for my Peter Boyle to step forward. I’ve got a job interview later this week, and possibly another soon after. This window won’t be open for long (I certainly hope.)
The kindness of friends is one thing, and I truly appreciate the supportive things y’all have said here. But at this point I need a nudge from a hard-eyed professional who truly believes this can be done. You might say I should go out and find that person. But I’m thinking that if I truly have a chance, that pragmatic person will see it and come to me. If I don’t — if it’s just me indulging myself and some friends egging me on — then there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Does that make sense? It does to me… Call it the first test of my viability…
They keep pushing me to run…
Today after Rotary, Kathryn F. buttonholed me and started egging me to run for office. Hey, it’s easy for her to say — I’m the one who would be making a fool of himself, not to mention having to go to all those chicken dinners.
Run for what, you’re thinking? Yeah, I know — it’s hard to remember what Brad isn’t running for today: Is it the S.C. House? Or governor? Or Congress?
In this case, it’s specifically Congress that I’m being coy about.
Kathryn’s not the only one, by the way. Nathan Ballentine asked me about it when I ran into him this morning. Of course, he said it with a smile.
Anyway, I gave Kathryn all the reasons why I can’t run, and she tried to knock them all down:
- Neither of the parties can stomach me, and I can’t stomach the parties. And so far, no member of the UnParty has been elected to Congress. There’s a reason for this: Anything as stretched out and gerrymandered as a congressional district in the former Confederacy is really tough to win by shoe leather and personal perseverance. A state House seat, maybe. But a district that stretches to Beaufort sort of needs the simple answers and mass media approach and organization that only a party can provide. And on some of the hot-button issues that separate the parties, I agree with one side, and on some of them with the other. And on some of those issues, I have no easily explained opinion, but explaining WHY I don’t have a position is the work of at least a newspaper column, and how do you get a majority of voters in a congressional district to pay attention to something with that kind of nuance?
- I don’t have a job, and I need to get one and get some money coming in soon. Kathryn says running for Congress would BE my job. But far as I know, you’re not allowed to pay your mortgage and personal phone and light bills with campaign contributions — assuming I can get campaign contributions (and who’s going to contribute to someone who’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican?). And when I get a job, the odds are that it will be one that wouldn’t allow me to run for Congress. Most jobs wouldn’t allow you to run for Congress. If I were independently wealthy, yeah, this would be a great time to run. But as things are…
- Who would vote for me? Based on the kinds of comments I get here, not even a majority of my putative base here on the blog would vote for me. I mean, if the overall electorate receives my ideas the way some of y’all do, I’ll be lucky not to be ridden out of the district on a rail. I’m way too candid with y’all about too many things to be a successful candidate for high office.
- Of the three offices I’m not running for, Congress would be my least favorite. Running for governor or state legislator, I would feel pretty confident that I would know the issues better than just about anyone who ran against me, and the issues aren’t nearly as bifurcated according to party. There’s more room for a Third Way kind of guy like me. With Congress, every conversation is a big political battle. Say I tell folks what I think about health care — well, that would automatically label me as being to the left of Barack Obama (that’s the area assigned to us single-payer types), which would endear me to the Democrats (some of them) and make me persona non grata to the Republicans. And there’d be no avoiding that issue. But suppose abortion comes up (no reason it should since we’re not talking about the Senate, but suppose it did)? On that one I’d be solid with the Republicans, and the Democrats would despise me. And people would accuse me of waffling, when it is my personal belief that I’m the coherent one, and “left” and “right” as they are currently defined don’t make sense. But could I sell that, with all the other messages out there being against me?
And lots and lots of other reasons. Y’all can probably think of more reasons than I can — after all, I would vote for myself.
At least, I think I would. The idea of sending myself up to Ground Zero of all the partisan madness I constantly decry… well, it’s not something I’d wish on a yaller dog. Or an elephant.
But at least Kathryn has given me a small taste of that phenomenon that causes candidates to piously claim that they’re only running because of the people urging them to do so…
Anyway, now that I’ve totally turned you off with my self-absorption — and made some of you laugh because it may sound like I’m actually considering this… Think about this: Almost any normal person who thinks about running for office goes through these same sorts of thoughts. And for almost any normal person, the answers to all these questions would add up to a big, resounding NO. In fact, you have to ask, given that there are all these natural objections to running for office, what it is that’s wrong with the people who actually DO? And you begin to understand why politics is as messed up as it is…
I’m sure U R 1, 2, dude!
Only once did I ever work in an office with another “Brad.” At the time, I joked that he would have to go, because it was too confusing, and eventually, he did. That was over 20 years ago.
I’ve never met a person named Warthen to whom I was not related. Oh, I’ll occasionally run into the name attached to a stranger in a phone book. And there was that ballplayer Dan Warthen, who used to get his name in the paper a lot when he played for the Memphis minor league team. And that town, Warthen, Ga. — apparently derived from a branch of the family, which originally came into this country through Maryland in the 1630s.
I was as sure as you could be of anything like that that among the 6 billion or so people on the planet, I was the only “Brad Warthen.”
But Facebook changes things. There are so many people there that your sense of uniqueness may have to undergo an adjustment. Some time recently I discovered that there was another Brad Warthen. I couldn’t find out anything about him; I just saw that he was a young guy with red hair. I left it at that.
Then tonight, I got an e-mail:
Brad Warthen sent you a message on Facebook…
Subject: dude
“dude we have the same name so i know ur a bad ass”
I wrote back to him, “Obviously.” I mean, what else could I say? I didn’t want to let him down.
You should definitely go see “The Producers” (now that there’s no chance of me messing it up)
Well, I did my little cameo appearance last night in the Workshop Theatre production of “The Producers.” It went fine. Although I’ve got to tell you that by the time my cue came early in the second act, I was much more anxious not to mess up than I had been before the curtain went up.
That’s because the show was so good. Everybody was turning in such an impressive, high-energy performance that if there had been ANYthing wrong with my part, short as it was, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. The stakes had been raised. I was sitting there thinking that I was out in right field. You know that feeling? It’s the one where you stand there and stand there and stand there, and the ball never comes to you, and you get used to the ball not coming to you, and you never get warmed up, and then when the ball finally does come to you, the stakes, the consequences of screwing up seem so huge and overwhelming that… well, you screw up. (For that reason, I always infinitely preferred playing pitcher or catcher, where you’re involved with every pitch, to playing the outfield.)
By the time my bit was approaching, everybody on stage was SO warmed up — Matt DeGuire, as Max Bialystock, had worked up a visible sweat before the second scene — that I felt like I’d never be able to come off the bench and jump into something moving at this pace. I felt like the whole show would trip over me or something. But I guess it went OK, because no one threw rotten tomatoes.
After that, I was able to enjoy the rest of the show without that feeling of dread hanging over me. And I really enjoyed it.
Which, I can admit now, surprised me.
Not that I didn’t think the folks at Workshop would do a good job. I assumed they would. My problem was with the show itself. I tried to watch the movie version with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and I got sick of it by the end of the first scene. I’m a huge Ferris Bueller fan (who isn’t?), but I found Broderick’s trying-too-hard impersonation of Gene Wilder really off-putting. And frankly, as I thought about that, I realized I hadn’t been crazy about the Wilder-Mostel version either.
For me, “Young Frankenstein” was Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, and “Blazing Saddles” had its amusing parts, but it trails off after that. And the movie versions of “The Producers” fell somewhere below “Spaceballs” in my estimation.
So I was startled to see that something that didn’t work for me on the movie screen was so entertaining in a live show. But it was. And it was more than the fact that “over-the-top” fits the live stage better than the wide screen, which prefers subtlety. It was the wonderful performances of these individual local actors — particularly DeGuire as Max, Kevin Bush as Leopold Bloom, Mandy Nix as Ulla, Kyle Collins as Franz and on and on (there are no weak performances) — and the chemistry of how it all came together.
This was the best thing I’ve seen on a stage in Columbia (except, of course, for the shows that my children were in…)
You should definitely go see it. Even though I won’t be in it anymore. Or perhaps, especially since I won’t be in it anymore…
Falling behind on my popular culture
You have to understand that to me, Elvis Costello is The Latest Thing. He came along late in my life — after I was married and had kids already — so it’s actually a testament to his considerable talent that I became a big fan of his. He was the last popular musician to enter the ranks of my favorites along with the Beatles and others from my youth.
So normally, I would not have gotten the joke when Stan Dubinsky over at USC sent this link with the message, “Kanye West insults the USC website.” I’m still not entirely sure I get it, but at least I know who Kanye West is — sort of. That’s because my 23-year-old daughter went to “The Producers” with me last night, and since I had gone early to check in with the stage manager, we had time to chat before the show, and we started talking about current events, and she mentioned this West guy.
All day long, I’d been seeing references to him on Twitter, but I didn’t know what it was about. My daughter explained it. OK, so now I see why some people were referring to him and Joe Wilson in the same breath. Then she said something about Serena Williams, and I knew who she was, but didn’t know what she had done to cause the world to buzz. I don’t follow sports, either. (FYI, I just learned that USC will have a home football game on Saturday, which means I will stay over on my side of the river all day to avoid the craziness. I appreciate the warning, and thought you might appreciate my passing it on.)
Good thing we had that chat, because now all this stuff has entered the print universe — some of it was the subject of a column in The Wall Street Journal this morning — and I’m glad I knew about it going in.
But I still can’t tell you of anything Kanye West has ever sung.
See me on stage tonight in “The Producers”
You may recall that, back here, I told you of my invitation to do a cameo role in Workshop Theatre’s production of “The Producers.”
I agreed. And my appearance will be tonight. Other local non-actors are playing the same part on different nights. Judge Joe Anderson is on tomorrow night, for instance. Sheriff Leon Lott will do it next Friday night (the 25th), followed by Sheriff Jimmy Metts the next night.
It’s a small part. A very, very small part, and very silly. And now that the night is upon me, I’m suffering from pre-performance jitters to the extent that I really sort of hope no one is there to see me — but, since the idea behind inviting me and the sheriffs and the others to do this was that we might have a certain following that might come out and buy tickets, well, I… I urge you to come on out, and watch me make a perfect ass of myself.
Here’s the part I’ll be doing, from the movie version. Not exactly like this — the director gave each of us the freedom to change the character as we chose, and my version, while still silly, is silly in a very different way from the guy in the movie. (No doubt I could make if sillier if I had a government grant to develop it.)
So come on out. But don’t blink when I step out onto the stage, because you might miss me. Fortunately, for the enjoyment of paying customers, my part is very short. But I said that already.
I tell you, the things we unemployed people will do to keep ourselves out there in the public eye…
Compromising photographs
You know how back in the day, people would say they didn’t smoke dope, but if a joint was going around they’d take a toke “to be polite?” Doonesbury once made fun of it, with Zonker speaking the punch line, “I’m VERY polite.”
Well, I’m sort of that way about getting my picture taken with the guest of honor at rubber chicken dinners, receptions, etc. When somebody (usually some enthusiastic lady who has worked hard to put on the event) tugs my elbow and says, “Come have your picture taken with …” whomever, I may grumble a bit, but then shrug and make the best of it.
That explains why there are photographs of me with a wide variety of people, from our latest political persona non grata Joe Wilson (see the new header on my home page) to people I actually feel a little intimidated and unworthy standing next to, such as Elie Wiesel (below). You can see the awkwardness in my face on that one.
But in the Wilson pic, I’m perfectly at ease. You can probably even see a bit of amusement. This was taken at a reception for Joe at the Republican National Convention in New York. This was the last time the newspaper ever paid for me to travel out of state to do journalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. At this point, I’m grinning both to be a good sport, and because all week, I had been watching Joe really, REALLY enjoying being at the convention. Joe just has to pinch himself all the time, he SO enjoys being in Congress, and being a Republican, and being around other Republicans, to the point that he just wants to be friends with everybody. He was definitely not saying “You lie!” to anyone that week.
I don’t get enthusiastic like that, and people who do make me smile. Different strokes.
The Obama picture is slightly more complicated. In this case, I was amused not by the candidate, but by the excitement among some of the other people in the room. This was immediately following our editorial endorsement meeting. And while there were no member of the editorial board asking to have their pictures taken with the candidate (Warren, Mike and Cindi are too cool and professional for that) this was one of those meetings that people from around the building who had nothing to do with our editorial decisions asked if they could sit in, and I always said yes to such requests, as long as there was room and no one was disruptive.
And some of them were lining up eagerly to have their pictures taken with Obama. If you’ll recall, this is the kind of excitement his candidacy engendered. The candidate was anxious to get downstairs and put on some longjohns in the men’s room before going to sit in the freezing cold at the MLK Day rally at the State House, but he was a good sport about it.
And after several of these pictures were taken, I said — with an ironic tone, making a joke of it — well, why don’t I get MY picture with the senator, too!? Of course, it wasn’t entirely a joke. On some level, I was thinking that someday my grandchildren will want proof that I met all these famous people, and for the most part I don’t have any photographic proof. Here was my chance to get some, as long as everybody was camera-happy. I was also thinking, it’s all very well to be cool and professional but isn’t it a fool who plays it cool by making the world a little colder? Or something. Anyway, I like to do things that other more staid professionals turn their noses up at. It’s why I started a blog, while my colleagues didn’t. It’s why I do http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/10/the-colbert-end.html”>silly stuff like this. You enjoy life more this way…
My regret that I have looking back is that I didn’t get my picture taken with John McCain, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Ted Sorensen, Benazhir Bhutto, Jesse Jackson, or hosts of others. Mainly because I was too cool at the time when I was around them (especially back in the days when I spent a lot of time with Al Gore — in my early career I would have been WAY too self-righteous to pose for any such thing). I never even got my picture taken with Strom Thurmond. You know what? Next time I see Fritz Hollings, I’m going to ask somebody to take our picture…
Am I cut out to be a Mad Man?
When Kathryn corrected me on the title of the TV show “Mad Men” (and she was right; it was two words), I went to the official site to check — and ran into a thing where you can build your own Mad Men avatar.
So, being unemployed, I did. Well, there’s more to it than that. Being unemployed, and having recently taken a couple of mild forays into consulting in the advertising field (in fact, I’m sitting in the offices of an ad agency as I type this), I thought I’d see how I looked in that milieu.
Not so great, as it turned out. But I did manage to get myself into a scene with Joan Holloway, if only in caricature…