First, I really should have mentioned this sooner, but I just remembered that I’m going to give blood at the Red Cross at 5 p.m. today, and the need is sufficiently great that they asked me to “bring a friend” if I could.
So far, the people I’ve mentioned it to in person have not stepped forward — which is par for the course, and besides, it was relatively short notice for them, too.
But in case any of y’all can drop everything and come join me, please do. You might not be able to do exactly what I plan to do (if my iron is high enough), which is give double red cells, but I’m pretty sure they’ll take whole blood from a walk-in.
And if you can’t make it today, how about tomorrow, or some other time soon? I’ll be glad to help you set it up, or you can call (803) 251-6000. The need is great, particularly now, according to a piece I saw last week in The Wall Street Journal:
A number of blood centers are reporting an unusual drop in collections because too many potential donors are sick with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. Some blood drives in high schools and corporate offices have had to be scaled back or canceled because of high levels of absenteeism.
Another problem: Some centers say a growing number of donors are calling a day or two after giving blood to say they’ve come down with flu-like symptoms, forcing the centers to dispose of the blood as part of government regulations. Researchers in a government-funded study are testing samples of these donors’ blood for viremia, the medical term for virus in the blood.
That’s nationally. Here in the Midlands, we always have a shortage, because, well, we don’t give as much as we should in this community. So come on out and help, if you can.
By the way, I should add to my Daniel Schorr diatribe that I love NPR. If I could only listen to one radio station, that would be my choice. That doesn’t mean I have to be crazy about everything I hear on it…
Which reminds me that I was talking radio with a friend today about favorite radio stations. The radio spectrum is so broad that I hesitate to try to create a Top Five list, since there could be a station I haven’t ever heard that would be my favorite if I did hear it. But what I can to is provide a list of the six buttons pre-programmed on FM1 in my truck. I’d be interested to hear what y’all like as well — maybe I’ll do some reprogramming:
S.C. ETV Radio, 88.1 — Or sometimes, 91.3, but the one out of Sumter has more news, which is mainly what I listen for. I like classical music, but NPR is just so well done. The material is better organized and presented than any almost print medium in this country, which is saying something for radio.
WUSC, 90.5 — One of my kids was once a DJ at the station, and I keep it programmed for when I want to hear something really unique.
Steve FM, 96.7 — Yeah, the station ID messages can be really grating — that tedious “we’re deliberately sounding unprofessional” tone — but the song selections are pretty good about 50 percent of the time.
WXRY, the Independent Alternative, 99.3 — The best of the largely contemporary formats locally, near as I can make out.
WWNQ, Flashback 94.3 — Oldies, pure and simple. (This station used to have a format that played Country classics, and for a C/W format was pretty listenable, but a year or so ago they went to mainstream oldies.)
WTCB 106.7 — Occasionally, when there’s no music on the other commercial stations, I switch to this one — and will sometimes stay for a song or two, if they’re playing 80s stuff. (Not my era, but I turn to different stations for different things.)
By the way, those are not actually in order of preference — those are the assigned buttons. You’ll note that No. 5 is out of order. That’s because it replaced a station that replaced another station that DID fit between 99.3 and 106.7.
Of course, about half the time I’m listening to a CD instead — often something I’ve burned from one of my old vinyl albums.
And while blogging, I often listen to Pandora. Two current favorite “stations:” My Erik Satie and Solomon Burke stations. (I threw that in so that the Barrys out there could not sneer at my mundane radio tastes.)
The pickin’ and grinnin’ downtown last night reminded me of one of my favorite parts of my trip up to suburban D.C. over the weekend. As you saw, I gave the usual sights a mere lick and a promise; I paid more attention to Montgomery County, Md. That’s where my Dad grew up.
On Friday night, we were taking our lives into our hands in the heavy traffic on Rockville Pike, looking for a place to eat, when Dad suddenly said, “Dietle’s!” Established in 1916, Hank Dietle’s tavern — Dad remembered it as “Pop Dietle’s” — really looked out of place amid the steel and glass and concrete towers and malls that crowd the once-sleepy town of Rockville. We didn’t stop there that night, but came back on Saturday morning, and it seemed almost like an archaeological find in that location.
Yet it remains very alive, very much a part of the community. As you see, on Saturday morning there was a group of musicians playing Celtic music over pitchers of dark beer, and we stopped to chat with them, which gave them a chance to recharge their glasses.
Dad remembers this as one of the places where my Grandad would stop and go in for a quick beer while Dad waited in the car. That may sound neglectful by modern standards, but my Dad remembers it fondly in the context of traveling around the county with his father. Now, of course, he’s old enough to go inside, and he sees that it’s a pretty cool place.
Hank Dietle’s white “Cold Beer” sign and front porch look more than a little out of place among the neon lights of Rockville Pike, but for people looking for a no-nonsense neighborhood bar, it’s a welcome spot.
Watching a Redskins game at Hank’s is like watching it in your friend’s living room. Snacks — free chips, dip in a crockpot and sandwiches — are provided on a card table in the small bar and patrons shout at the quarterback and the officials from their bar stool or booth. The regulars are mostly locals in their thirties and forties, although weekends can draw both a younger and less local crowd as well.
I find the existence of such places as this reassuring. We ended up eating Friday night at a Chili’s, which is more typical of what you find on that road. I wish we’d had more time to hang out at Dietle’s, which seemed a lot more real.
My dad and I are staying this weekend at the Navy Lodge at Bethesda Naval Hospital. You’re going to say that I have no right to be there, and you’re perfectly right; I’m very sensible of the fact. But my Dad, a retired captain and Vietnam combat veteran (river patrol boats) has every right to be there, and I’m his driver, so I’m staying with him.
Dad and I came up for his sister’s 90th birthday party, which is this afternoon. I mention that just because it really seems to bug bud whenever I, as an unemployed guy, take what he regards as a “vacation.” I’m just along to drive my Dad’s car — and to see relatives I haven’t seen in about 13 years. I’m looking forward to it, but it’s not like I’m being a spendthrift being here. Dad’s paying for the gas. (bud also thought I was engaging in riotous living when I drove my daughter to Pennsylvania and drove back the next day; then repeated the process to bring her back two weeks later. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t at Club Med; I was more like Dean Moriartydriving, maniacally driving through the ever-loving heart of America, you understand, ahem, yes…)
My Dad had wanted to spend even less and stay at the BOQ, but there was no room. And he fully understood why it can be hard to get a room there, and at the Lodge (where rates are more like a civilian motel) — because military families come here to visit their wounded loved ones back from the war. At least, we assume that’s the reason. Consequently, if one of those families needs the room we’re in, we’ll vacate it in a skinny minute.
The president visited wounded over at Walter Reed yesterday, as we were driving up here. As it happens, a new Walter Reed — or an extension, or something — is being built on the grounds of Bethesda Naval. I think this is because of the terrible conditions we heard so much about a year or two ago over at Reed. Good. There was a time when the main tower of Bethesda Naval was about all there was, and there was a 9-hole golf course on the grounds around it. But that was long, long ago, and a far more important use has been found for the space.
I’m in awe, and deeply grateful, to be so close to men and women who have given so much for their country. I thought the image I shot just after sunset, showing the main tower of the hospital, sort of captured that feeling.
Of course, Bethesda and Reed have long also been used for less awe-inspiring purposes, such as medical care for members of Congress. But that’s not what was on my mind when I took that picture.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea/And the hunter home from the hill. But not in the sense that Stevenson meant, thank God, but home and alive. May God speed them to recovery, and a full life back among their loved ones.
Hey, you think state employees in Columbia are eager to get away from work on a Friday afternoon? Try getting onto the Beltway around D.C. just before 4 p.m. on a Friday.
When we entered from I-95 coming up from S.C. it was fine, but as we approached the Potomac heading toward our destination in Maryland, it locked up. All six lanes. And we didn’t even get in the worst part. Half an hour later, and I think we would still have been there this morning.
Maybe my libertarian friends have a point. Maybe the federal gummint is too big. Just a tad, mind you…
Remember when I was interviewed last month by Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine? Well, I was. And a few days ago I wrote to Philippe asking if his piece had run. He wrote back to say yes, a couple of weeks ago, and to share the link.
Here, of course, is my favorite part:
Mais «je ne crois pas que Joe Wilson soit raciste, confie Brad Warthen, ancien éditorialiste du «State», le quotidien local. C’est plutôt une réaction très américaine contre le gouvernement, une tradition encore plus forte chez les Blancs de Caroline du Sud, cette idée que personne ne doit pouvoir nous dire ce que l’on doit faire». La diabolisation d’Obama, en somme, ne serait qu’une variante du vieux procès intenté aux démocrates : «Clinton était une fripouille, il ne s’intéressait qu’à lui, juge Rich Bolen, le républicain de Lexington. Obama, lui, est très idéologique, il est un socialiste de conviction. C’est bien plus dangereux.»
Now personally, I don’t recollect having said all that there Paris talk, but I reckon I did. Seriously, from what I can make out of it (and Philippe was right, although I can’t speak French at all, my background in Spanish and Latin enables me to make out, roughly, what is being said in written French — it’s the pronunciation that foxes me), Philippe quoted me correctly.
As for being an ancien éditorialiste — well yeah, I have a few gray hairs, but come on. It’s interesting the way the same word will come to us through Norman influences and come to mean something quite different. Idioms are cool, but confusing.
I don’t often get the urge to consume sweets. I drink my coffee black, and of course I’m allergic to most of the things that drive most sweet teeth (tooths?) — cake, cookies, ice cream and such.
But sometimes it hits me, and it happened today after Rotary. So I got this great idea — Halloween is over; why not bop into Food Lion and pick up some pumpkins at half price? And no, I’m not talking about the things you make jack-o’-lanterns from. I mean those wonderful little candy things, about 3/4 inch in diameter, into which sugar is packed with a density approaching that of a black hole. Specifically, Brach’s Mellowcreme Pumpkins.
I go all year without these — sort of like the way I don’t let myself have cotton candy except at the State Fair; it’s a personal rule that’s easy to follow because it would be extra work to break it — but during the season, I’ll eat them by the handful. Which kind of grosses out my wife, a big fan of chocolate (which I am not) and other sweets who nevertheless finds more than one pumpkin just a bit too intense.
I’m even kind of a pumpkin connoisseur. You may think they’re all alike, but they’re not. I don’t know if they’re made at different factories or what, but there’s a wide variation in quality from bag to bag. If the orange color is just a little too dark, move on — they’re not going to taste right. And then there’s consistency. The ones that are sort of crumbly and drier are far better than the chewy, moist ones that you sometimes get. The first almost melt in your mouth, the others go down hard and tend to lead to indigestion if you eat far too many of them (and if you’re not going to do that, what’s the point?).
The one in the illustration at right, by the way, is a good one. I can tell from the photograph. Nice shape (often the shorter, flatter ones you see aren’t nearly as good), not too dark, and without that oily-moist sheen that warns of a taffy-like consistency. There’s a little gloss to the finish, but not too much, which is important (using the term “important” loosely, of course).
I’m on my second bag of them this season, but the bag was at home, and I really wanted some pumpkins now.
So I went to Food Lion, as I said. And they were out. Oh, they had loads of Candy Corn left, and you may say it’s the same thing, but it isn’t. Pumpkins are round, and orange, and I like to bite off the little green stems before attacking the main body. It’s entirely different. As for those pumpkin-shaped Peeps — I am a man of principle, and one only eats Peeps at Easter. (And they should be yellow, and shaped like chicks, as if you didn’t know.) No wonder they had plenty of those left.
So maybe I waited a little too long. Maybe the last of them sold out Sunday, or even sooner. But I’d appreciate knowing if anybody has seen any today, because half that bag at home is gone, and it’s a long time before the Halloween displays go up again…
Back on this post, I made a gratuitous name-dropping reference to covering Lamar Alexander back during his gubernatorial campaign in 1978, and Kathryn replied with a suitably unimpressed, “Plaid shirt guy. Swell.”
Indeed, as name-dropping goes, “Lamar” isn’t the same as “Elvis.” So it was a forgettable reference.
I only return to it because, coincidentally, I was going through even MORE files from my newspaper career just hours later, and ran across these two shots from that week I followed Alexander in 1978. I practically lived with the guy that whole time. I flew on his campaign plane with him (with my paper paying a pro rata share of the cost), went where he went, ate where he ate… I’d get about five or six hours away from him at night, and spent a couple of hours of that in my hotel room writing. We used to do stuff like that in those days — actually cover political campaigns.
This was a pretty exciting experience for me, my first exposure to statewide politics as a reporter. The following week, I was following his opponent, Jake Butcher, just as closely. We sort of tag-teamed the candidates in the last weeks of the election.
Anyway, the photo above, with Lamar’s tasteful plaid shirt clashing with a really ugly plaid sofa (be grateful it’s not in color) in the back room of a political headquarters in Nashville, captures a tense moment for the candidate. He had just been interrupted during this Nashville leg of his celebrated walk across the state by a reporter from the Tennessean with legal papers in hand. The legal papers — affidavits, I believe — had something to do with a business deal Alexander had been involved in. I want to say it had to do with ownership of some Ruby Tuesday restaurant franchises.
Anyway, somebody was alleging there was something irregular about it, and the candidate was being confronted with it. Big drama. This was his first look at the document, and there he sits with a suitably furrowed brow while we stare at him and wait for a reaction. One of us (guess who) is actually taking pictures of this potentially bad moment for Lamar Alexander. We were all about the next political scandal in those days, and Lamar had served in the Nixon White House, so he knew to take such things seriously, and soberly, and not complain about the pesky press.
But I will confess now to a bit of feeling bad for the guy at that moment. We weren’t supposed to feel that way, but I did. Even as I was dutifully taking the picture (if this is the end of his candidacy, I captured the moment!), I was sort of thinking it would be kind of nice if the guy had a moment to read this in privacy and compose his thoughts — if only so we could get actual facts from him instead of a gut reaction. But we didn’t allow him that.
Anyway, to balance that, here’s a happier moment below. It was taken on his campaign plane, as it was preparing for takeoff, early on the morning of Oct. 18, 1978 (going by the newspaper). The Yanks, as you see, had just won the World Series again. Check out Jimmy Carter and Moshe Dayan. The day was going well so far — no scandals yet — and was filled with possibilities.
I like the way the light works in the picture. I was a pretty fair photographer, for a reporter.
Sorry if I’m boring y’all. Don’t know why I’m taking y’all down memory lane. Oh yes, I do: This is my way of getting y’all to think, Ol’ Brad has been covering this politics stuff up close and personal for a long, LONG time, so maybe sometimes his reflections are based in experience and not just gut reactions.
Is it working?
Anyway, it’s certainly been a long time. Burl and I graduated from Radford High just seven years before this…
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been rooting through the vast piles of stuff I brought home when I left The State, stuff I just didn’t have time to go through in those last couple of weeks, but just jammed into boxes and hauled down to the truck, night after night, right up until that last night when Robert and I went off for beers in 5 Points.
And I keep running across fun little things that I want to share, enough of them that I’ve decided to start a new feature on the blog: The Stuff I Kept.
Here’s a favorite comic strip I kept taped to the wall over my credenza.
This one doesn’t take much explanation. As one accustomed to being in a leadership position (I had been supervising other journalists since 1980), I just enjoyed this send-up of the leadership imperative of always appearing to know what to do. Not that I could get away with this dodge with the members of the editorial board; they were a good bit smarter than the pirates in Overboard. But there were times when I did say “All right, then, here’s what we’ll do…” just to make a decision and move things along. Someone had to. And it was good if the someone who had to didn’t take himself too seriously.
Or at least, it was important that he give the impression to his subordinates that he didn’t take himself too seriously, say, by putting little self-deprecating cartoons up on his wall. Oh, leadership is complex, and deep. Deep enough to need hip boots.
Stan Dubinsky shared this item about the first message to travel over the ARPANET, which would become the Internet — 40 years ago yesterday.
It was two letters: “lo.” It was supposed to “login,” but the system crashed after two letters. Oh, what a familiar feeling.
Do y’all realize that two weeks after this massive foul-up with Outlook, I still can’t send e-mail through that application? In fact, I can’t even call up my calendar or contacts on my laptop without being driven nuts by a dialogue box that pops up every few seconds asking me to log in to the server again.
This is very bad, because I depend on Outlook — particularly the interactivity between the e-mail and my contacts — to help me keep in contact with prospective employers and other nice people. I can send via Webmail, but by comparison that’s like trying to type from across the room with a 10-foot pole.
My usual technical adviser tried to help me but finally threw up his hands. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling Outlook several times. No dice; the bug is still there. And has been, ever since that ill-fated mass mailing I attempted.
So while we’ve come a long way in 40 years (and thank you, Al Gore, for inventing it), in some ways it feels like we’re right back where we sta….
Over the weekend, I was going through stacks and stacks of files I brought home when I left The State — mostly stuff I had squirreled away that most people would have thrown away as soon as it touched their desks. If you’ll allow me to mix animal metaphors, I am a notorious pack rat. This has sometimes made me useful to neater people, who will come to me and say, “Remember that memo about such-and-such back in the early 90s? You wouldn’t happen to…?” … and I’d put my hands on it within minutes.
Well, a lot of that stuff went into the trash over the last few days, but some of it I couldn’t part with. And some of it I couldn’t even bear to pack away in boxes. Such was the case with a Pendaflex folder labeled “Strip.”
No, not that kind of strip. A comic strip. The one that Robert Ariail and I brainstormed about at great length back in the mid-90s. It centered around a guy who was a sort of lobbyist-good-ol’-boy friend-of-all in a Southern state capital, a fairly harmless and ineffectual character who lived, improbably, in a boarding house. A small part of the strip centered around a fictional newspaper (and any resemblance to any newspaper, living or dead, is entirely coincidental) called The Status Quo. It was not a realistic newspaper, but a caricature composed of charming (to us) little idiosyncracies that were particularly Southern and fallible and human.
It was that newspaper for which I invented the slogan, “All the News that Gives You Fits,” which this blog now bears. You can see at right a detail from the piece of paper upon which I first jotted that idea, back in either 1994 or 95.
Anyway, for your enjoyment you will find an actual strip that Robert sketched up (characters and dialogue suggested by me) above, and a sheet on which Robert tried to get a feel for the protagonist and other characters, below. Finally, at the bottom, you’ll find some additional sketches, including “Sol” and “Edgar” the two mice who lived in the State House and secretly wrote every bill that ever actually passed (our hero’s friendship with the mice was the key to his success as a lobbyist, such as it was).
We had spent an inordinate amount of time discussing these characters. The two in the strip above were the crusty old editor and the young reporter who, as the editor notes, was “not from around here.” She lived in the same boarding house as our “hero,” and was to be the straight woman for a lot of the comedy. (This is beginning to sound like a Lou Grant/Mary Tyler Moore relationship, and I suppose it owed something to that.)
As I wrote before, Robert’s syndicate turned down the strip and we never revived it, although I continued to have hopes for it, even as newspaper comics pages dropped features right and left. I’d still like to come up with a way of doing it online, if I could talk Robert into it. At right you’ll see a memo Robert gave me to tell me about the syndicate’s thumbs-down. He drew it on a napkin: Our hero, with a tear running down his cheek, and a one-word message.
Weird, isn’t it — I have this little treasure trove of memorabilia about a comic strip that never was. A rare collection, indeed.
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, Brian Dennehy as his counterpart American detective). 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.
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…
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? 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…
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?
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…
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…
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.
Lion and pick up some pumpkins at half price? And no, I’m not talking about the things you make jack-o’-lanterns from. I mean 
