Category Archives: Personal

Why not baby tattoos?

That’s Baby B in the foreground. But I thought it was Baby A.

Perhaps I should say right off that this post employs irony, since this is not always readily apparent to all readers.

Remember my new twin granddaughters? Well, it turns out they are identical; we learned that a month or so ago.

Here I was, taking great pride in the fact that I could tell them apart, even when other family members had trouble. This gave me, I felt, a sort of moral advantage — look at what a great grandfather I am. But it also meant I was staving off something that terrified me: I was worried about how a child would feel if her own grandfather couldn’t tell her apart from her sister.

But when notifying us that they were identical, the doctor observed that they looked more different at that moment than they ever would again.

Unfortunately, this has proved to be prophetic. Earlier, they looked distinctly different. And it wasn’t a question of this one has a slightly different coloring from the other (which they did; one was ruddier than the other), or shape of the mouth or anything simple — their faces simply looked, in their totality, like different people’s. Baby B reminded me of some of my cousins; Baby A (while being perfectly beautiful in her own way) did not.

But over the last few weeks, Baby A has started looking more like Baby B. See that picture above, taken last Tuesday (March 4)? That’s Baby B in the foreground. But when I initially took it off my digital camera, I thought it was Baby A, and labeled the image that way. I’m not quite sure what to do.

My daughter, knowing how I obsess about the subject, sent me this piece from the NYT via e-mail:

It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles.
But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not. The discovery opens a new understanding of why two people who hail from the same embryo can differ in phenotype, as biologists refer to a person’s physical manifestation

That’s interesting, I said, but if you read on, it doesn’t sound like these genetic differences are going to be enough to tell them apart.

So I suggested that my daughter look into whether it’s actually illegal to put tattoos on babies. Something small, I’m thinking — something tasteful, and out of the way. Say, something only visible during diaper changing. A tiny heart with "Mommy" written across it on one of them, that’s all.

Yes, that last paragraph was the ironic part. But I’m serious about worrying about telling them apart.

The Midlands Subway System

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Taking off on the subject of this recent post, I thought I’d hark back to a column I wrote in 1998, way before this blog was ever thought of. In it, I set forth my vision of what it might be like if the Midlands had the mass transit amenities of New York or Washington or even Atlanta:

Imagine: Say it’s a few years from now, and you live in Lexington and work in Columbia. You drive the mile or so to the station and leave your car in a parking lot. You take your seat and ride the old Southern line that parallels Highway 1 into the city. Call it the A line.
Despite all the stops, you get downtown in less time than it takes to drive, while getting ahead on work or (better yet) reading the paper. You change trains at the Vista Center station near the new arena and conference center.
Say you work where I do, near Williams-Brice Stadium (and why wouldn’t you; this is my dream, after all). You take the C line down one of the very tracks that used to frustrate you in your driving days (if you can’t beat the trains, join them). You get off within a block of work.
A few hours later, when you have a lunch appointment in Five Points, you take a quick ride back up to Vista Center, then through the underground stretch beneath the State House complex and the USC campus on the eastern reach of the A line.
Need to shop after work? Take the C all the way out to Columbiana, or the D along Two-Notch to Columbia Mall. (Where does the B line go? Out toward Lake Murray, which means it runs between 378 and the Saluda River, right by my house.)

Now that there’s so much more growth out to the northeast I suppose we could extend the D farther out. The C would be longer, too. And the A might need a spur that would run out Garners Ferry. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, I was dreaming then and I’m dreaming now — like the guy in that movie "Singles," who kept talking about his mass transit dream (in Seattle, I think it was), and anyone he told it to would say, "Yeah, but I love my car."

But it’s a nice dream. Here’s the rest of that column, by the way — but I already gave you the relevant part.

Why can’t we ride trains?

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My question about the movie theme music was answered promptly, for which I am grateful. Now, let me ask another question that maybe some of y’all can answer: Why don’t we get the option of train travel in this country?

Yeah, I know there’s Amtrak (which I wrote about not long ago), and if I don’t mind going to the station in the wee hours of the morning, I will have the privilege of going one of a number of places along a corridor that runs along the Eastern seaboard. But I’d better want to go one of the few places the train goes, because outside of a few urban areas far to the north of us, there are no connecting locals to take us anywhere else.

In Europe, train travel is fast replacing airlines as the way to go. They even have supersleek, luxury bullet trains that go 200 miles per hour. Companies that provide service (remember when you got service from airlines) find they can make a competitive go of this, according to the piece in today’s Wall Street Journal headlined "Touring Europe at 200 Miles an Hour":

High-speed rail operators in Europe are ambitiously adding routes and cutting travel times, looking to snatch customers from the short-haul airline market. They are also adding perks, such as DVD and movie rentals and free newspapers. Plush high-speed trains are luring customers weary of the bare-bones service offered on the many discount airlines that have proliferated throughout Europe: Eurostar Group Ltd. trains (which run in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium) have 33 inches of leg room in coach, for example. Discount airline Ryanair has 30 inches of leg room — and the seats don’t recline.
Spain, which is at the forefront of the rail boom, got high-speed service connecting Madrid and Barcelona last month. The journey was slashed by two hours: Now it takes just two hours, 35 minutes. Switzerland in January saw the opening of a $3.5 billion, 22-mile tunnel that passes through the Alps, cutting travel time by 45 to 75 minutes within the country and between Switzerland and Italy.

I’m still wiped out from the trip I took over the weekend — driving all day Friday to central Pennsylvania in the rain, driving to northern New Jersey Saturday, driving back to central PA Sunday, driving back to Columbia on Monday. On Sunday, I did get to ride trains — from Isalen, NJ, on New Jersey Transit, then zipping around Manhattan on the subway. I dig that so much — just go down some steps, step on a train and find yourself in another world in minutes — that I go places I don’t have to go, just to ride the subway: We’ve got an hour! Let’s zip down to Little Italy and back! I’ll get you a cannoli!

Of course, the NJT and the subway are both ancient — I found myself at one point under New York looking at a off-painted girder and wondering just how long it had been holding up the skyscrapers above — and the scenery through the Newark area is even more grittily decayed looking in real life than it is in the opening credits of The Sopranos. But at least I get where I’m going without having to drive.

Several years ago, I would have flown this trip — the part to PA, at least. Nowadays, air travel can take more time, and more hassle, than driving. Literally.

If luxury train travel can be economically competitive over there, why not over here? Is it the regulatory environment, or what?

Moving too fast

Yeah, I took a weekend off; so sue me

Put-up or shut-up time for bud

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This started as a comment back on this post, but I’m elevating it to post status:

OK, bud, put up or shut up time: So which party is it? I’ve made it absolutely clear to you over and over that when I use the term "partisan," I don’t use it in the sense of "having an opinion about an issue" — which seems to be your favored sense. I’ve made it clear that I am speaking of slavish identification with a political party (or the attendant disease of unvarying devotion to the "left" or "right," which increasing means the same thing in this country).

"Partisan," as it is used on this blog and as it is used about 99 percent of the time in this country, refers to sticking up for your party — and we talking Democrats or Republicans here, since the Libertarians and others aren’t really a factor — at all times, and always denigrating people of the "opposite" party. It means surrendering your ability to think to party platforms. It means thinking it really MATTERS whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican.

So, bud — what’s my party? Democratic? Republican? What’s my ideology: Left? Right?

Either state it, and support it, and let the other readers judge your thinking on the matter, or drop this business of taking a relatively esoteric sense of the word and using it for no other purpose whatsoever than to insult me. You know that’s what you’re doing, and there’s no other possible reason to do it than to have that effect. You know that partisanship is loathsome to me, and unless you have a profound reading comprehension problem you know WHY. I’m pretty sure you’ve never met anyone who has explained his aversion to partisanship more than I have. This means what you are doing is saying, "What does Brad despise most?" and deciding to call me that, which is a form or argument on the intellectual level of "I know you are, but what am I?"

You know that ad hominem attacks are verboten on this blog. You know that in particular, I don’t allow it from anonymous commenters. I have bent way the hell over backward for you on both points, mainly because I am the object rather than someone out there.

But I’ve had enough of it. Either support your assertion of my oh-so-obvious hypocrisy — and that means showing that I am precisely the sort of partisan that I myself condemn, in the common sense in which I use the term — or cut it out. Now.

What I do almost every waking level of my life is tell the world exactly what I think and why I think it. I am not going to provide a free forum for someone to repeatedly say that I am a liar about one of my most strongly held positions. Not unless he can back it up. This is his chance. He either does so, or starts addressing the substance of what I say without the name-calling.

Stories that tell why we need single-payer

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We continue to concentrate on the wrong thing — getting the uninsured into the present system — when we talk about health care reform.

Increasingly, those of us who are privileged to be in the system find that we can’t afford health care, either. The whole system is rotten, wasteful, too expensive and too inefficient. We pay more money to be sicker than folks in any other advanced nation.

There are a lot of problems with our system, but the biggest is the basic premise — employer-based health care through for-profit (and we’re talking for HUGE profits) private insurance companies.

If private health care coverage weren’t so expensive for all of us, the 1 in 7 who remain uncovered would be in it. But it is, and will be, expensive by definition. A profit has to be made.

A single-payer system is the logical way to go. It’s time we got logical about this monster that is now consuming 16 percent of our national economy.

I wrote this column — "‘Health care reform?’ Hush! You’ll anger the Insurance Gods!" — back in November because it’s time that people like me — in the top income quintile — started pointing out how unaffordable this wasteful system is for us, which means it’s worse for millions of others who are also in the system. An excerpt from that column:

… I make more money than most people do here in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and I live paycheck to paycheck, in large part because of the cost of being an extremely allergic asthmatic, and needing to do what it takes to keep enough oxygen pumping to my brain to enable me to work so I can keep paying my premiums and copays. My premiums in the coming year — we’re going to a new plan — will be $274.42 on every biweekly check, not counting dental or vision care. And I’m lucky to have it. I know that, compared to most, I’ve got a sweet deal!
I’m in the top income quintile in the U.S. population, and we can’t afford cable TV, we’ve never taken a European vacation or done anything crazy like that, we haven’t bought a new car since 1986, and aside from the 401(k) I can’t touch until I retire (if I can ever afford to retire), we have no savings.
Yet I will pay my $274.42 gladly, and I will thank the one true God in whom I actually do believe that I have that insurance, and that I am in an upper-income bracket so that I can just barely pay those premiums, and that neither my wife (a cancer survivor) nor I nor either of the two children (out of five) the gods still let me cover is nearly as unhealthy as the people I see whenever I visit a hospital…

On Jan. 6, we ran an op-ed piece from B.J. Welborn that told another middle-class story. An excerpt:

But the picture is not always rosy. A recent experience made me realize that although I have a comfortable income and a good education, pay taxes and have an insurer pick up most of my health care costs, an overburdened and undermonitored health care system can leave me vulnerable and scared. Here’s my latest scare:
Last year, an out-of-state company bought my husband’s firm in Columbia. We were forced to change our insurance. This change required baffling paperwork to keep my Gleevec coming, and though we tried valiantly to figure out the process, different people at the insurance company told us different things. The process dragged out; the clock was ticking for me. Soon, three weeks passed without my lifesaving drug. I wondered if anybody cared.
I checked with my pharmacy and found it couldn’t order Gleevec from its supplier. I searched for Gleevec at other pharmacies. This drug, still in clinical trials, isn’t like a common antibiotic kept on drugstore shelves. I couldn’t find it. And even if I could find Gleevec, how would I pay for it? $3,000 this month, then $3,000 the next month?
My anxiety mounted. When I washed my face, small blemishes bled, as they do when your blood can’t do its job. I was slipping through the cracks, and I was cracking up…
The "what if" game is terrible. Millions play it, and one day, you or a
loved one could too. Anyone can get a chronic disease — diabetes, stroke,
mental illness, heart disease or cancer.
Let’s face it: You, too, could slip through the cracks of our health care
system. So, it is up to you to make our potential leaders aware of what’s
really going on. It’s not just the poor and uninsured who are hurting, it’s
also millions of hard-working, middle-class Americans who foot the bill for
others’ health care…

Then, on Friday, Feb. 1, we had this letter to the editor:

Health coverage could make writer sick
I am absolutely disgusted by the state of our nation’s health care.
I am a college-educated woman with a bachelor’s degree, an employee of a prestigious university, but most important, a wife and a mother of young children.
I live in fear that one of my family members will become seriously ill or simply require regular preventative care that my health insurance does not cover.
For example, last year, I discovered that the health insurance for S.C. state employees does not cover routine pelvic exams, and without health insurance, that type of procedure can cost almost $200. And other medical procedures aren’t covered until after I meet the $350-per-person deductible.
With one child in daycare and the costs of my children’s health care and regular childhood illnesses, I simply can’t afford to pay $200 or $350 or $550 for my own care. So I don’t go. And I hope that I don’t get sick.

MARTHA BROWN
Columbia

That letter prompted this one on today’s page:

Health insurance costs leave little for care
I read the letter “Health care coverage could make writer sick” by Martha Brown with interest.
While wholly sympathetic to her concerns, I feel, by comparison to many of us, she would be embarrassed by how good she has it.
As a provider for a healthy and active family of four, I am shackled with a monthly insurance bill in excess of $800. For this, we are provided with a policy that covers only 80 percent after a $1,000 deductible per person. It would appear that our policy was written to provide for the economic health of our insurance company, rather than that of my family.
Our provider enjoys strong local recognition, and I hope it is competitive with other carriers, but my bill has become a payment for asset protection rather than health care, and I’m not sure how well it provides for that.
“Health care is expensive” is the most common explanation received when I question our agent, doctors and others about our situation, but price is irrelevant when, after insurance payments, no money is left over for health care.
Surely, mine and Ms. Brown’s situation is not unique. We live in the greatest society that has yet existed, but our current profit-driven health care system is clearly in direct conflict with what is best for its citizens.

EDGAR PUTNAM
Columbia

More people should come forward with these stories. It’s embarrassing — neither of my two bosses, my employer or my wife, was particularly crazy about me going into such details — but this stuff needs to be available as we debate these issues. And we must debate them — the status quo is not sustainable.

Taking Mr. Retske’s ‘Conservatism’ test

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Yesterday, one of the first comments on my "Give me that old-time conservatism" column post was from Gene Retske, who proposed the following:

Brad, c’mon, do you really believe that you are a conservative? Do you think that Roe v Wade was improperly decided? Do you think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century? Do you think America is the model for the world, and is obligated to spread democracy? Do you think America is a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Would you leave your wife for Ann Coulter?

If you can’t answer "yes" to all these questions, you may not be a true conservative.

John McCain believes in Duty, Honor and Country, for sure. That these basic criteria are touted as presidential qualities shows how far down we have come. There are over 12 million current and former military who also have these qualities, and are thus more qualified than Hillary or Obama to be president.

Sorry, Brad, you can’t redefine conservatism to your standards, nor can John McCain.

Hey, I’m good at tests! So here we go:

Brad, c’mon, do you really believe that you are a conservative? No. I utterly reject both the "conservative" and "liberal" labels, because the popular, current definitions of those terms describe world views that each contain much that is repugnant to me. One of the main reasons I do this site is to have at least one place in the blogosphere that provides an alternative to the perpetual extreme-left vs. extreme-right argument that tends to predominate in this medium. Traditionally, however, there is much (or perhaps I should say, was much) in both conservatism and liberalism that I see as being of value. The last part of my column Sunday was an evocation of what I see as good in conservatism. As for liberalism — well, there used to be much good in that, too, but it really started to degenerate starting about 1968.
Do you think that Roe v Wade was improperly decided? Yes, absolutely. In fact, you don’t state it nearly strongly enough. It was disastrous, on many levels. First, there is the obvious — more abortions. But then it’s not the job of the Court to decide cases in terms of outcomes (a point on which the admirers of Roe would disagree). Therefore in answer to whether it was "improperly decided" I’ll say this: The ruling was based on a bogus proposition — that the Constitution guarantees a "right to privacy." It does no such thing. (I’ve always been struck by the way the presumption was said to arise from a "penumbra" — suggestive to me of the Shadow of Death.) Finally, I’ll say — and once again, this is irrelevant to whether it was properly decided, but I think it speaks to where you intended to go with this — that this disaster of a ruling is probably more to blame than any other one cause for the nasty polarization of our politics. This country would be a better place in many ways without Roe.
Do you think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century? Absolutely not. While I don’t dislike him today as much as I did at the time, I think he did much to ruin the sort of conservatism that I have always valued — in particular, he helped instill the imprudent notion that we can have all the blessings of good government (and folks, there’s no such thing as private property — to cite one such "blessing" — without a sound system affirming, protecting and supporting it) without paying for it. The grossly immature Gimme-Gimme wing exemplified by the likes of Grover Norquist is a product of the Reagan era. As for defeating communism — I give him credit for doing his part, as had every president of either party since Truman — and he had the honor to have the watch when it all came tumbling down. If he provided the final push needed to reach the tipping point — which seems to be the consensus, although I have no idea how to measure such things — hurrah for him. He certainly demonstrated resolve — such as the resolve to spend the Soviets under the table. To the extent that’s what did it, hoorah again. But was that "conservative?" Oh, and if you want to talk about "amnesty" for illegals (which I don’t, but a lot of folks who call themselves "conservatives" do) — Reagan went for it; McCain does not. (Let me point out that Sen. McCain, unlike Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney, has been opposed to abortion his entire career.)
Do you think America is the model for the world, and is obligated to spread democracy? Yep, in many ways (although obviously we’re a poor model on health care). That’s why I’m an unreconstructed interventionist — but then, so were liberals before 1968. In fact, as I’ve often said, the invasion of Iraq was the most liberal thing that George W. Bush ever did — which is probably why he botched the aftermath. Like most conservatives, he doesn’t believe in nation-building. Like liberals of the endangered JFK stripe, I do. I’m assuming you meant to go in that direction. Or perhaps you’re speaking of the "city on a hill" notion of American exceptionalism? I’m for that, too. But again, there’s nothing conservative about that. To the extent that we are a beacon for the world, it’s based on liberal principles — in the sense of advancing liberal democracy. But then, I’m using terminology that has little to do with the post-Reagan definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" in our domestic politics (although, I’m happy to say, the term is still current in an international context).
Do you think America is a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles? I believe it was founded by people whose culture was informed by Judeo-Christian principles, such "freethinkers" as Thomas Paine aside. If it helps you any, I’m much more an admirer of John Adams (he who wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.") than Thomas Jefferson, although Jefferson probably had a greater impact on the development of the country’s self-concept, which is a shame.
Would you leave your wife for Ann Coulter? Certainly not! Nor would I leave her for French Socialist leader Ségolène Royal, who is a LOT more attractive. I would cross a continent to avoid either Ann Coulter or Paul Krugman, either Rush Limbaugh or Frank Rich, or any of those who delight in tearing this country apart. My support for both John McCain and Barack Obama is based in the same principles that cause me to utterly reject the Coulters and Krugmans of the world.

I’ll have to leave it to Mr. Retske to score this. Since it was an essay test (my favorite kind, much better than multiple guess), and since he’s the "teacher" in this instance, I guess he’ll assign whatever values (in every sense) he chooses to each question.

But if I flunk, fine by me. See my answer to question 1.

Intense international media interest in SC

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Today I was favored with a visit from Zoe Rachel Usherwood, Foreign Affairs Producer for Sky News in the U.K. That’s her in the video above explaining her mission, which had been previously represented to me as follows in the initial request for a meeting:

… I work with The Palmetto Council for International Visitors (PCIV), a non-profit volunteer organization located in the World Affairs Council office in Columbia, SC. We are an affiliate of the Columbia Council for International Visitors, as well as a member of the National Council for International Visitors partnered with the U.S. Department of State. PCIV designs and implements professional programs for international leaders who have been selected by the State Department to visit South Carolina.
We currently have an upcoming visitor that has specifically requested to meet with local media members during her visit.
Ms. Zoe Rachel Usherwood is the Foreign Affairs Producer for Sky News in the United Kingdom. If possible she would welcome a meeting on Thursday, January 31st. or Friday, Feb. 1. Her biography is also attached for your consideration.
These State Department guest has specifically requested to meet with local media concerning the election process, so we hope to be able to arrange a meeting(s) with you. These meetings last around an hour and would generally include an informal discussion about your coverage and a question/answer session.

I pass this on as a way of bringing you up-to-date regarding a phenomenon I mentioned previously here — the intense national and international interest in South Carolina during the recent primaries, which resulted in a lot of folks wanting to interview me for a change, creating such situations as me shooting video of someone shooting video of me, etc. Weird stuff.

I think Ms. Usherwood is the last for awhile, but last week was fairly hectic. Some examples:
Several things didn’t work out, either because of my time, or missed communications — NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR’s "On Point." On two additional occasions, Michele Norris tried to get me on "All Things Considered," but it never worked out. CNN wanted me to run down to Charleston for an interview one evening, but I declined.
On Wednesday, I did another live thing on the phone at some ungodly hour of the morning about our Obama endorsement on C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal." I had done the same 10 days earlier, that time on a SUNDAY morning, about our McCain endorsement.
Friday, I phoned in an interview with the Here and Now program on public radio out of Boston. That night, when I went by to visit my new twin granddaughters, my son-in-law said his sister-in-law in Boston had mentioned hearing me. This was reassuring, because it was good to know somebody was listening to some of this stuff I was doing.
Later that morning I had a good time chatting with a soundman named Anthony Birchley and a reporter named Kevin, both of the BBC, when they came down to my office to tape a segment. Kevin is an Arsenal fan, and he and Anthony had trouble taking in the fact that Williams-Brice Stadium, which looms outside my window, is a mere college sports venue.
Friday was actually kind of a blur. I had turned down an interview with one Danish journalist, but ended up having someone else from that country call on the phone and we talked for a while. At least I’m in demand in Copenhagen. That night, when I was standing in line trying to get in to the Obama rally, I met a Swedish reporter who, when she learned who I was, pulled out the notebook.
On the Saturdays of both the Republican and Democratic primaries, I did an hour live from a tent on the State House grounds with Alhurra TV. Alhurra is a U.S. government-funded operation that broadcasts into the Mideast. It’s sort of like Voice of America in Arabic. This was the trickiest of all the interviews, as my host was speaking to me in Arabic, and he was a lot louder than the man who was translating into my earpiece. But I got through it. (In the picture at the bottom of this post you see a reporter for Alhurra doing a standup in the tent just after the show I did).
Before I could get away from the tent, Emile Baroody of Dubai TV approached me and asked if we could talk that night. I told him I was committed to S.C. ETV from 8 to 10, so he said how about after that? I said OK, we traded phone numbers, and he asked me where ETV was located. I told him it was near that stadium south of town that Arsenal might envy.
Driving away, I saw I’d missed a call, from Gal Beckerman with Columbia Journalism Review. I agreed to meet him at the Starbuck’s on Gervais, and we spoke for about an hour. The place was full of out-of-town (and country) media here for the Democratic Primary. Gal (pronounced "Gaul," it’s an Israeli name) wanted to talk to me about… get this… all the media that was in town wanting to talk to me. So I was interviewed by one medium wanting to know about other media interviewing a media guy. This, if anything, topped the irony of my French TV experience.
That night, I did my ETV gig; maybe you saw me. Anyway, as I was packing up my laptop to head home, whom should I find, right there in the studio, but Emile from Dubai? Based on my sketchy directions, he had come out to ETV, asked permission to use their studio, and here he was with his cameraman ready to take advantage of the lighting. That Emile is one enterprising guy.

What did we talk about? To a great extent, stuff that you could probably talk about as well as I could. Beyond that we talked about our endorsements of McCain and Obama — that was the easiest, and for me most relevant, topic.

Anyway, that completes my report on the reports. The bottom line is that I figure my experience was sort of a microcosm of what was happening to South Carolina the last couple of weeks. The eyes of the world were most assuredly upon us.

Alhurra_005

Living down our history

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
MY GRANDMOTHER used to tell a story about when she was a very little girl living in the Washington area.
Her family was from South Carolina. Her father was an attorney working for the federal government. One of their neighbors was a U.S. senator from South Carolina. When her parents learned that she had visited the senator in his garden, sitting on his lap and begging for a peek under his eye patch, they were shocked and appalled.
The senator was “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the state’s former governor, and a vehement advocate of lynching who had participated in the murders of black South Carolinians as a “Red Shirt” vigilante.
Grandma’s people were of a very different political persuasion, as were of the founders of this newspaper, which was established for the express purpose of fighting the Tillman machine. That’s a second personal connection for me, and one of which I’m proud: We still fight the things that race-baiter stood for.
Ben Tillman launched his rise to power with a fiery speech in Bennettsville, the town where I was born. But we’ve come a long way since then. Two very different politicians have spoken in Bennettsville in recent days.
In November, Sen. Hillary Clinton spoke there, outlining her plan “to cut the dropout rate among minority students in half and help a new generation of Americans pursue their dreams.”
John Edwards was there Wednesday. Tillman was a populist; John Edwards is a populist. But there the resemblance ends. Former Sen. Edwards’ advocacy for the poor helped endear him to black voters in South Carolina in 2004, propelling him to victory in that year’s primary here. His appearance in B’ville was in connection with his attempt to repeat that achievement.
So my hometown and my home state have come a long way in the past century or so, at least with regard to the intersection of race and politics.
Not far enough, of course. I don’t just say that because a statue honoring Tillman still stands on the State House grounds, a few yards from where the Confederate flag still flies.
On the day that this newspaper endorsed Barack Obama, our publisher’s assistant passed on a phone message from a reader who was livid because we are “supporting a black man for president of the United States.” He continued: “I am ashamed that we’ve got a newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, one of the best cities in America, and yet we’ve got a black operation supporting black candidates…. I am disappointed and upset that we’ve got a black newspaper right here in the city of Columbia.”
How many white South Carolinians still think that way? Too many, if there’s only one of them. But such people stand out and are worth mentioning because we have come so far, and increasingly, people who think the way that caller does are the exception, not the rule.
And truth be told, South Carolina is not the only part of these United States where you can still find folks whose minds are all twisted up over race.
As I noted, Mr. Edwards did very well among black voters in 2004, but not this time. Several months ago, Sen. Clinton seemed to be the heir to that support. The wife of the “first black president” had lined up a lot of African-American community leaders, which was a big part of why she commanded an overwhelming lead in S.C. polls.
But in the last few weeks, something happened. Sen. Obama won in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state, and black South Carolinians began to believe he had a chance, and that a vote for Obama would not be “wasted.” This week, according to pollster John Zogby, he’s had the backing of between 56 and 65 percent of black voters, while Sen. Clinton can only claim at most 18 percent of that demographic.
And as the days wear down to what is an almost-certain Obama victory in South Carolina, Sen. Clinton has gone on to spend most of her time campaigning elsewhere, leaving her husband behind to bloody Obama as much as he can.
So it is that I would expect the Clinton campaign to say, after Saturday, that she didn’t really try to win here. But there’s another narrative that could emerge: Sure, he won South Carolina, but so did Jesse Jackson — just because of the huge black vote there. To win in November, Democrats need a candidate with wider appeal, right?
Maybe that won’t happen. It would be outrageous if it did. But those with an outrageous way of looking at politics see it as a possibility. Dick Morris — the former Clinton ally (but now a relentless critic), the master of triangulation — wrote in The New York Post this week: “Obama’s South Carolina victory will be hailed as proof that he won the African-American vote. Such block voting will trigger the white backlash Sen. Clinton needs to win.”
As a South Carolinian who’s proud of how far my state has come, I want to say right now, well ahead of time: As Joe Biden got himself in trouble for saying, and as Iowa voters confirmed, Barack Obama is no Jesse Jackson. Nor is he Bill Clinton, or John Edwards, or anybody else. He’s just Barack Obama, and Barack Obama is the best-qualified Democrat seeking the presidency of the United States.
And no one should dismiss South Carolinians for being wise enough to see that.

Evidently, I talk with my hands

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Just finished a taped interview with Michele Norris of "All Things Considered." Listen for it this afternoon — maybe. At last word Michele says today’s broadcast isn’t set yet. I’m betting I don’t make it if they have anything else that’s decent at all. I’m not exactly at the top of my game today.

To give you a taste of it, here is a clip that undoubtedly represents the worst video I have ever shot. I learned two things this morning:

It’s very easy to forget you’re holding a camera, and that it’s turned on, when you are the interviewee rather than the interviewer.
Obviously, I talk with my hands.

Anyway, that was my third radio thing this morning — I did Andy Gobeil’s show over at ETV studios and a phone thing with a station out of Little Rock, Ark. The Arkansas station wanted to hear about Mike Huckabee. I told them they should be telling me.

I’m back at my normal job now, for the rest of the day. I’ll blog as I can. Getting a little tired, though. I’ve got a lousy cold. Here we are with this historic opportunity — with South Carolina in position to make a major difference in both parties’ nominations — and today I’m sort of wishing this were the 27th.

Oh, one last thing — Michele mentioned reading my blog when she first contacted me. So did her sound woman, Andrea Hsu, when I met her today. Once again, I’m struck by the fact that, in spite of the much-lower readership numbers (a fraction of a fraction), the blog is cited more and more by people who contact me. So maybe this thing does have an impact, and isn’t just a useless symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Small world — or a small state, anyway

We Got Babies!

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I have no idea how to make money; the surest way to make a stock drop through the floor is to get me to buy a share of it.

But I am a tycoon, a regular Warren Buffet, when it comes to the grandfathering line. Why in one stroke today (Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008), I tripled my assets, going from one granddaughter to three.

Here are my latest acquisitions. That’s "Baby B" (as we knew her for the past seven or eight months; I’m withholding her real name until she signs a release form, which she has thus far been strangely reluctant to do) on the left, in my wife’s arms, and "The Baby formerly known as ‘A’" held by yours truly.

Forgive this digression from politics to the personal, but a blog should reflect the news, and this is the biggest, and the best, news I’ve had in a while to share.

Mother and twins are doing fine.

Twins_169

A crankier Army

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You may have seen this e-mail make the rounds already; I’m pretty sure I have. Samuel passed it to me (and many others, I’m sure) this morning:

DRAFTING GUYS OVER 60
New Direction for the war on terrorists. Send Prior Service Vets over 60!

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down Terrorists. (You can’t be older than 42 to join the military.)

They’ve got the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 35.
For starters:

Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. "My back hurts! I can’t sleep, I’m tired and hungry!" We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.

An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, "I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at and we like soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however. I’ve been in combat and didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. I can hear the Drill Sgt. now, "Get down and give me … er .. one."

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy. I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way.

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten cowards who attacked us on September 11. The last thing an enemy would want to see right now is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.

If nothing else, put us on the border and we will have it secured the first night.

Share this with your senior friends.
It’s purposely in big type so you can read it.

All Samuel had to say about it was "I am ready!" Me too, as I’ve said before.

Good news! I’m not quitting to join the pro tour

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Played golf today, out at Hidden Valley. Second time in the past year (first time was Friday). Just nine holes, which is good, because I would not have wanted to put any more strokes on that poor abused scorecard. Started off with a snowman on a par 4, but I did get better after that, just not by much.

Let’s look at the bright side:

I hit a really nice tee shot with my favorite club — an old persimmon 4 wood — on a long (about 200 yards) par 3, reaching the green. Unfortunately, I was on the front of the green, and the pin was on the back. I three-putted, which was disappointing because I had…
… shot a par on the par 4 before that, one-putting after an excellent chip from the fringe with my A wedge.

OK, that’s all the good news, except that I enjoyed the company (my Dad and my middle daughter) and the weather. (Speaking of daughters, my youngest is on the road up to Pennsylvania, so my heart is in my throat, while my oldest is still waiting for those twins to be born. If they don’t come on their own this week, they’ll induce. My sons I haven’t heard from or seen today; I’d best check on them.)

And that’s my full report; I’m not going to tell you about the bad shots. Looking to the new year, I think it best to stress the good ones, to cling to their memory so we have the hope to get out there again.

May all your shots be good ones in the coming year.

The newspaper business

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You may have noticed that I’m taking a bit of a break. Well, it is Christmas, you know. It started yesterday. All that stuff that went on the several weeks before, with all the hubbub? That was Advent, not that you would be able to tell, going by the dictionary definition.

Yesterday, driving home from my parents’ house with the wife and a couple of our kids, the radio started telling me about the presidential election, noting that while most folks were taking a holiday, the campaigns were not, that in fact… at which point I changed the station. Like I wanted to hear about that. I wondered who they thought did want to hear the same rehash of an ongoing story at that moment.

Anyway, I will be somewhat disengaged for several more days. Next week, however, I expect to be going at double or triple speed, so if you go away, be sure to come back for the home stretch of the aforementioned story in which I am currently uninterested. I think it will be worth your while.

It’s not just the holidays that will be occupying me between now and then. My oldest daughter is expecting twins, and the medicos have decreed that they are to be born tomorrow — the 27th. I doubt that I will be thinking about the blog with such excitement as that going on.

Anyway, I wish an excellent time between now and the New Year to you and yours.

Oh, yes — the reason I started this post was to share something with you. I noticed that Gordon and Karen were discussing the newspaper business back on this post. As it happens, The Wall Street Journal had as its most prominent front-page headline this morning (not technically its lead story, although a layman might be forgiven for mistaking it for that) a story about the company that owns my newspaper. Here’s a link, and here’s an excerpt:

Despite Woes, McClatchy
Banks on Newspapers
Family-Controlled Chain
Faces Internet Challenge;
Mr. Pruitt Keeps Faith
By STEVE STECKLOW
December 26, 2007; Page A1

SACRAMENTO — In the beleaguered newspaper industry, one chief executive has long stood out as the golden boy: Gary Pruitt. He skillfully managed the McClatchy Co. chain and last year engineered the $4.6 billion takeover of Knight Ridder Inc., one of the largest in the history of the business.
But since the beginning of 2006, Mr. Pruitt’s company has lost $1.46 billion and seen its stock price plunge 78%, exceeding the carnage at most newspaper companies. Still, when members of the board and the controlling family privately discussed Mr. Pruitt’s future last month, they unanimously supported the man who brought McClatchy to this juncture.
"We have the best person in place to get us through some of these turbulent times," says Kevin McClatchy, a descendant of the company’s founder. Board member Larry Jinks says the entire board expects Mr. Pruitt "to be the CEO into the future."…
Mr. Pruitt is one of the last true believers in the financial power of the press. He says he expects McClatchy to recover from its slump, with the help of a new deal with Yahoo Inc. aimed at driving visitors and ads to his newspapers’ Web sites. He plans to sell off some nonnewspaper operations and to continue a cost-control strategy that has so far spared reporters’ jobs, a McClatchy hallmark….

There were no surprises in the story for me, of course, except one. I did not realize that Larry Jinks — the guy I sent my resume to when I first went to work for a Knight Ridder paper back in 1985 — was now on the board of McClatchy. Shows how little I pay attention to what goes on at corporate. Well, now I know.

Expert witness

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Yesterday, I had to make several unaccustomed trips down to the newsroom to get page proofs as I was cranking out the pages in Mike’s absence. (We don’t have a printer that big on our floor.)

Anyway, on one of the trips, Adam Beam stopped me as I passed his desk to pass on a message. First, he told me about this story he was working on:

S.C. won’t charge 2 for racy e-mails
By ADAM BEAM

Two former managers at the Department of Corrections will not face criminal charges for using state computers to send e-mails of naked women, state Attorney General Henry McMaster said Friday.
While using state computers to view the images violated Corrections Department policy, it is not a crime.
The announcement comes seven months after state Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, initiated the investigation in May with a letter to McMaster’s office that alleged “very graphic pornography” was being exchanged “among high-level employees on state computers.”…

Adam said he had asked Henry to be specific about why he did not regard the pictures as being obscene. What was difference to Henry, he asked, between mere pictures of nekkid women and "very graphic pornography."

Henry begged off on that. He said if Adam somebody to give him an expert opinion on whether pictures were obscene or not, "Ask Brad Warthen."

Having not even attended law school, I suppose I should be flattered that our esteemed attorney general would cite me as a greater authority on any aspect of the law.

Of course, if the attorney general trusts me with such a solemn responsibility, I can’t be careless or flippant about it. So I told Adam I couldn’t give him a definition of the terms just off the top of my head, without evidence of any sort. I’d have to see the pictures first.

Made ya look, didn’t I?

Hey, Gordon… tell this guy about me

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Just got an e-mail from a puzzled reader, as follows:

Brad,
We get the concept that editorials are
supposed to be opinionated and stir comment, but just what media are you a
part?
Three weeks ago you excoriated ‘the media’ while conveniently
ignoring the reality that you’re kinda the media, too.
Today (Wednesday
12/19/2007) you assail ‘TV "news" channels’ and denigrate reporting on John
McCain as ‘a conspiracy on the part of major media and poll respondents.’ ‘A
conspiracy’?? Good grief, is it that easy to dismiss the possibility that
voters could actually be concerned about McCain’s age, health, and core
commitment to his party’s concerns?
I’ve seen the gamut on blaming the
media, but can’t remember it ever being from someone whose name is on the
masthead of a statewide paper.

James Hill
Columbia

James, I’m a contrarian who is just barely tolerated by his colleagues on account of … well, I don’t know why. Ask Gordon — he used to be my boss, in a previous life.

Anyway, you should congratulate me. Not many paranoids can concoct a conspiracy that involves everyone who responds to polls. You gotta hand it to me — that’s inspired.

I’m not as arrogant as I look

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Folks, it takes a certain amount of conceit to express opinions day in and day out, but it is not an unlimited commodity. I would even go so far as to say what Twain’s Hank Morgan said:

Now what a happy idea that was! — and so simple; yet it would never have occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots.

Well, this is one of my spots: I do not draft highly technical policy proposals. I’m a pretty fair hand at deciding what works and what doesn’t in somebody else’s policy proposals, and suggesting improvements. But I lack the confidence to take a blank sheet of paper and sketch out a full-blown projet, as the French would call it.

bud and Doug, our regular correspondents, probably have their own humble spots. This isn’t one of them. Both of them have recently sketched out a number of smart ideas about how to improve health care in this country. I admire their ability to pull something like that from thin air. I particularly admire the tiered approach that bud came up with (no offense, Doug; yours was good too).

The two of them are constantly hitting me up for projets of my own, but my brain just doesn’t roll that way — and if it did, the kind of time I would have to spend on something like that to feel confidence in it would demand that I publish it first in the actual newspaper. Dismiss me for lack of seriousness if you will, call me the critic who never creates, just criticizes. But hey, I can praise, too. That’s something.

Part of it is the aforementioned humility; part of it is my attention deficit problem. I am endlessly fascinated by everything, and I am dependent on other people to call my attention to a particular thing in order for me to focus on it effectively. Once I’m staring at it, I can get creative and sometimes even clever. But I’ve got to have that focal point.

Anyway, back on this post bud challenged me again to come up with my own original plan, and this is all I can say in reply (I tried to post it as a comment, but my browser collapsed, and I decided then that this was worth a separate post on what this blog is and what it isn’t):

bud, if reform is dependent on me coming up with the details, we’re
sunk.

Maybe if I quit my job (thereby
losing my expensive benefits) and spent a year immersing myself and
sweating over it, I could come up with something that would satisfy you, but I’m not sure I would succeed even then. But it’s a moot point. My job, and my life, demand that I address many different things a day, every day.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. That’s one of my weaknesses. I drown in unlimited possibilities.

I can react to your details because they are finite. If I try to
come up with my own, I would never be satisfied that THESE were the
right, proper and inclusive things to consider. To give but one
example, I would NEVER have confidence in my ability to compute the
costs of a plan. A lot of people tell me they would be intimidated at having to write
a column for the newspaper. I am not. Different
strokes.

Anyway, the subject is so complex that it’s taken me a lot of years
to get to the point that I can say with confidence that what we have is
fundamentally flawed (that it’s not just case of a few uninsured; it’s
a bad deal across the board), and that the biggest thing that is wrong
is that we expect private employers to help us purchase insurance from
for-profit providers, and do so from the relatively weak position of
having purchasing pools no larger than the companies’ respective
rosters of employees.

That leads me to single-payer (and if you want to see that spelled out as a specific proposal, see HR676),
and the way I approach that — knowing how complex this is — is by
asking my readers to help me find flaws in it that maybe I’m missing.
After we go through that for a while, and I’ve heard lots of pros and
cons. I might gain the confidence to say that yes, I endorse that
bill.The bottom line is, I’m not as arrogant as I look. So if you’re
waiting for detailed plans to come from me like Minerva springing from
the brow of Zeus, you should go to another blog.

Sure, I’ve come up with "proposals" in the past. But when you see me set out something like my suggested platform for the Energy Party or the UnParty, what I’m doing is selecting from among ideas that are already out there, and which I’ve had plenty of time to mull over. I didn’t invent the gas-tax increase idea; I was persuaded to it by a lot of people whom I regard as smarter about it than I am.

I wouldn’t attempt a health care plan from scratch without a team of experts from various disciplines helping me.

Stuff I learned about long division — today

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As I write this, my wife is drilling my granddaughter on division, with flash cards. Being a being a benevolent sort of patriarch, I tried to change the subject by mentioning to my wife two things that I learned today about long division — two things that they didn’t teach us back when I had it in school, in the last century.

First, there’s that symbol itself — you know, the vertical line attached to the longer horizontal line overhead, which together form a sort of capital L that has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise. That is, I always thought it was a vertical line — a plain, straight line. That’s the way my teachers drew it, and that’s the way I always drew it, and they never marked me wrong.

Now, it turns out it’s really a close-parenthesis mark attached to a horizontal line. It’s curved. It’s more like a sideways cursive L than a Roman one. It’s that way on the flash cards, and it was that way on the Web when I looked it up, earlier today. It occurred to me that this was an innovation that adapted something we once did longhand to the keyboard, or something. But my wife says that’s the way they taught it in HER school. I remain doubtful.

But that’s not the main thing I learned today. The main thing I learned is that the thingie I just described has a name. Really. And it’s a really weird, counterintuitive name. It’s called a "tableau." I swear the thing did not have a name when I was in school. They taught us all those other names that I have never had any sort of use for, such as dividend, divisor and quotient. (I’ve always thought of math as something you do, not something you describe; such names still seem to me useless to anyone but a math teacher.) Anyway, the thingie has a name, and it’s one I would never have guessed in a million years. I couldn’t even remember it from this afternoon, and had to go Google it to tell my wife. To me, a "tableau" is what you call the thing I was a part of when Mrs. Sarah Kinney, the Latin teacher in Bennettsville, made us dress up like the Roman gods and pose together on a stage. I was Mercury. (Back then, it was a "tableau." Young people today would call it "way gay.") We were so good at this that — I am not making this up — we won a prize for it at a state convention in Rock Hill.

My wife asked me how in the world such a thing would come up in the course of a working day. That’s where it got complicated. I explained that it was in a New Yorker article about N.Y Gov. Eliot Spitzer that I read today — someone had sent me an e-mail at work with the link, urging me to read it, and the article endeavored to explain the shape formed on a may by the more populated parts of the state, and said it was like "a mirror image of a long-division tableau." "And you just had to read that," my wife asked. "At work?"

I recognized this right away as a trick question. It was, of course, a sly reference to my attention deficit problems, and my notorious habit of pursuing any distraction that is waved in front of me. "Yes, I did," I said, fighting my corner. "Because… I blog. Because he’s been in the news…" finally, I got my stride, explaining that Spitzer has been very controversial lately because of his effort to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, which put him at the center of just about the hottest issue out there, and one which got Hillary Clinton in hot water, and…

Before I got all that out, she allowed as how she had heard something about that, and I quickly left the room before she asked any more questions, and she went back to drilling my poor granddaughter with those flash cards.

But why should I be defensive about this? This is how you learn stuff — by being intellectually curious. How else do you explain that I got a really high score on my math SAT? And I did it without knowing, until today, that that thingie is called a "tableau."

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Personal

Why not baby tattoos?

The Midlands Subway System

Why can’t we ride trains?

Moving too fast

Yeah, I took a weekend off; so sue me

Put-up or shut-up time for bud

Stories that tell why we need single-payer

Taking Mr. Retske’s ‘Conservatism’ test

Intense international media interest in SC

Living down our history

Evidently, I talk with my hands

Small world — or a small state, anyway

We Got Babies!

A crankier Army

Good news! I’m not quitting to join the pro tour

The newspaper business

Expert witness

Hey, Gordon… tell this guy about me

I’m not as arrogant as I look

Stuff I learned about long division — today