Category Archives: Personal

I am NOT a liberal

I am not a conservative, either. But I haven’t been accused of that in writing — today. Just watch, though; I’ll be maligned for that momentarily, I’m sure. Doubt it not. Speaking of which, where IS Mary Rosh?

This latest response is prompted by the libelous rantings of fellow blogger Bob McAlister.

I responded to him thusly:

I looked like that because I knew that from that day forward, I’d have to get up and shave
every morning.
In truth, I smiled a LOT more back when I had a beard than I do now.

See the proof here.

If I’m a liberal, Richard Nixon was a liberal. Which he wasn’t. He was a crook, though.

I have to envy this

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Rebcar_1
McConnell Demands to Know: Who Put Wheels on Hunley?

I took this shot behind a Lizard’s Thicket in my home county of Lexington. Now before anybody says anything disparaging, I must say that at least this guy (and I’m assuming, from the empty snuff cans encasing the antenna, that this is a guy) has a car. I’m in the condition of Ferris Bueller, who after calling Cameron’s car a "piece of ____" — causing Cameron to protest — had to explain:

It is a piece of ____. Don’t worry about it. I don’t even have a piece a ___. I have to envy yours.

My truck recently developed a terminal condition. Basically, it caught fire while I was driving it on the Interstate. I’ll tell the story once I’ve sorted out the situation in my mind. It’s been almost two weeks, and I’ve been avoiding the issue because I’ve been driving my Dad’s car while he and my Mom were out of town (which I guess is more of "Risky Business" sort of situation than a Ferris Bueller). Anyway, my folks came back today, so I’d better start thinking fast about how I’m going to get to work and stuff seeing as how we don’t have the light rail system I’ve always wanted.

By the way, that’s my poor truck sitting at the far end of the lot at the mechanic’s, next to the dumpster. I guess they put it there so none of the other vehicles would catch what it has.

As Ferris would say,

I asked for a car, I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?

Truckalone

I hate getting makeup in my eyes

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… Don’t you?

I usually try to wave off the stuff, but I had been sweating all day (good, healthy, manly sweat, mind you), and I had a good Nixonian shine going when I entered the ETV building. So this time I didn’t resist when I was steered to the makeup room.

Greg Ryberg was in front of me, and he really needed the help. He Endorses had seriously gouged himself shaving, and had this big, honking scab just below his lower lip. The makeup lady managed to cover it well enough for TV purposes, so he didn’t look like he had a communicable disease or something.

Thomas Ravenel was behind me, settling in the chair when I got up, and he immediately went into the regular-guy "I-don’t-think-I-need-this-stuff" routine, and the makeup lady responded by saying he didn’t have to have it if he didn’t want it. I don’t know whether he stayed and had his face done or not, but I didn’t notice him walking out with me.

The whole TV experience has an air of unreality that makes it hard to be natural, which is why hardly anybody is. You’ve got this weird goop on your face (at the end, Rick Quinn asked — a little too late — whether it would harden like concrete), and you can see every move you’re making on monitors. Do I really look like that? I hope not. Why is my head leaning over like that? And you try to straighten it up, but you lean it over more, looking like your spine’s having a convulsion or something, because it’s not a mirror. It’s like a mirror of a mirror, and just really discombobulating to the nervous system.

At that moment, the host signals that it’s your turn to ask a question, and all you can think of for a second is, "How come my neck looks like it’s broken, and when did my hair get so mangy?"

It’s all so distracting, I forgot to wave. Sorry.

This is why I prefer radio — or better yet, the written word. You can think about the conversation, instead of whether you’re sitting up straight.

‘Invisible hand’ nowhere to be seen

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Here’s another one for you absolute believers in the wonders of the marketplace to ponder. In a very peeved mood, I sent this e-mail tonight to the makers of Tofutti non-dairy "ice cream" and related products:

This is extremely frustrating.
I live in West Columbia, SC — zip code 29169. I have been deathly allergic to milk my whole life. The last time I was skin-tested for it, the allergist called his staff in to see the reaction — it was that extreme.
I love your product.
I find it almost impossible to get it.
Over the last few years, local supermarkets — most notably Food Lion and Publix — have stocked it off and on. Each will have it a few months, it will go away, and then come back maybe a month later.
The nearest Publix ran out several months ago. I keep asking about it, and am told it must be a problem getting it from the distributor.
Fine. My local Food Lion was at least stocking your vanilla (that, and the Vanilla Almond Bark, are my favorites). I make a point of buying out what they have so they will be motivated to keep it stocked; because of me, they never keep a pint of it more than a week. If market forces work as they should, I should never run out, right?
I dropped by there tonight. I saw they had it on sale. Only one pint was left. As I picked it up, I noticed that the sign said "close-out price."
So it’s going out of stock there, too.
What is the problem? Why can’t your company keep the product in these stores?
One place is left within 10 miles of me that I know of, and I’m worried now it will run out there. A distributor problem is a distributor problem, right? The store in question is 14 Carrot, between here and Lexington. It’s really out of my way, but I intend to go there tomorrow and buy whatever they have.
By the way, the other 14 Carrot that your store locator cites (it was the one closer to me) closed several months ago.
And the Rosewood Market you refer to only carries your "cheesecake" products, which I find to be a little too heavy and rich.
I want to buy what you have to sell. Can you help me out here?

— Brad Warthen

You may say, "Hey, they can’t keep stocking it for one customer." Well, I wasn’t the only customer. I monitored the stock at Food Lion closely enough to be sure of that. And besides, how can a product — particularly a specialty product such as this — do better than to sell out within a few days each time it is restocked (I made sure of that, too)?

This is a case in which I keep counting on the market to work. And it keeps letting me down.

Why don’t we just surrender, Sarge?

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The subject of personal ownership of guns came up during the discussion on a recent post, and one respondent wrote, "Never had a gun, don’t want one, lotsa people get shot with their own gun…."

Well, as I was reminded over the weekend, you don’t actually have to shoot yourself to get hurt firing a gun. Or — forgive me — I should say, a rifle.

Somehow, I had gotten to my current ripe old age without ever having fired a high-powered rifle. I had experience with pistol (can’t hit a durn’ thing with ’em), rifle (which I’m not bad at, for a civilian), and shotgun (which you don’t have to be all that good with to hit something).

But when I say "rifle," I mean .22s. Anybody can hit a tin can with a .22, I suppose.

But Saturday, I was visiting kin up in Marlboro County, and my cousin had a new .30-06 rifle he wanted to try out. So we went out to some land belonging to a friend of my uncle’s, where there was an open field with about a 10-foot embankment of earth piled up at one end of it. That’s where we put the paper target.

My cousin shot first, it being his rifle. It was a short, carbine-like weapon with a sort of built-in clip arrangement on the bottom. You swing out the clip thing, load in three rounds in staggered formation, and swing it back up until it snaps into place under the bolt-action breech.

Now, I had been thinking ".30 caliber — that’s not all that much more than a .22." Maybe, if you’re talking about an M-16 kind of .223 round. See, I had reckoned without the enormous shell behind the modest slug — one of those things about three inches long, with most of its length looking to be about twice the diameter of the slug. That’s a lot of powder. That’s a big bullet.

When the first shot was fired, I went straight to my car, opened my briefcase (which is filled with junk for all sorts of contingencies), and pulled out some foam earplugs. Wow.

I had to hurry to get back to Columbia, so I asked to go next, after my cousin had fired a couple of clips. He handed it over, showed me how the first cartridge went in, and I managed to insert the other two of those artillery shells without embarrassing myself. I asked where the safety was, and fumbled with it a bit.

My cousin had noted what a light weapon it was, and he was right. A little too light, I believe. I assumed what I hoped was a good standing position, my feet forming a line about 30 degrees from the direction of fire. I drew it up firmly to my shoulder, aimed the best I could (it was a kind of sight I’d never seen before, and pulled the trigger.

BLAM! The thing slammed into my bony shoulder like somebody hitting me with a baseball bat, while the barrel jerked way up and a little off to the right.

It hurt like an SOB. My immediate thought was, "I do NOT want to do this again." But rather than wimp out, I brought the barrel back down and got ready to fire again. I really tensed up for the second shot, making sure it was tight against my shoulder, and gripping firmly with my left hand to keep the muzzle pointed downrange. It didn’t work. It still kicked like a donkey, and ended up pointed at the sky.

I only have to get through one more round. This time I forced myself to relax, to hold it a little more lightly, and to remember to squeeze the trigger with even pressure throughout my hand, rather than jerk it. I missed the target by about a foot.

My second had missed, too. But miracle of miracles, my first shot — before I knew what I was in for — had actually grazed the black center of the target. And — ahem — mine was the first one to do so.

But I got to thinking later: The M1 Garand fired more or less the same ammunition, from a clip of eight, I believe. And the M-1 Carbine was pretty light (although I think it also fired lighter ammo; somebody tell me if I’m wrong). The average WWII Army recruit, according to Stephen Ambrose, was:

… five feet eight inches tall, weighed 144 pounds, had a thirty-three-and-a-half-inch chest, and a thirty-one-inch waist.

How on Earth did a little guy like that (a thirty-three-and-a-half-inch chest!!!) fire clip after clip of that ammunition and still have use of his right arm? Sure, they were half my age (an average of 26), and they probably knew some trick that I don’t know about the proper way to seat the butt against the shoulder, and the Garand was heavier than the carbine, but still. It makes me respect those guys — all of whom have been my heroes my whole life — even more.

Maybe I wasn’t holding it right; I don’t know. But if it hurt like that, after a day of fighting through the hedgerows, when the time came that the sergeant told us to dig in for the night, I think I might have said, "Sarge, why don’t we just let the Germans have France?"

Of course, knowing the way soldiers gripe, I’m sure a lot of guys did say that. But they still dug in, and got up and fought again the next day.

Bad blood

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So apparently it wasn’t bad enough that the military never wanted me on account of my stupid asthma. I had to experience further rejection in my middle years.

Yesterday I went to the Red Cross to give blood. This is a fairly routine occurrence for me, these days, but it didn’t start out that way. I was almost 50 before I gave for the first time, and there was a good reason for it — it terrified me, probably more than anything else I could conceive of. I would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane, despite my fear of heights. I would much rather go to Iraq and get shot at. You know that thing Winston was so scared of in 1984, the deal with the rats? Piece of cake compared to this.

Even after doing it a bunch of times now, I still can’t think of anything that scares me more — on a personal-safety level — than the idea of lying down passively on a table or recliner and letting some nice nurse stick a needle in my vein and take my life’s blood.

But I keep doing it. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been in combat. Maybe it’s a way of proving something to myself while doing something of real service to others. I don’t know.

Any, here’s the point:

I went there yesterday, and they wouldn’t take my blood!

They said I didn’t have enough iron. I always had enough in the past, but not this time. (I suspect it was because I showed off by jumping into the Shrinkdown in the last two weeks and still managing to lose 13.3 pounds. The last weigh-in was Friday, and my body probably hasn’t recovered yet.)

Basically, your blood has to score a 38. Thirty-eight what? I don’t remember. It’s written on a piece of paper at home. In any case, my blood was at 36, as determined by the finger-prick test.

That same piece of paper said not to worry if you fall short of 38. It doesn’t mean you’re anemic, it just means you’re not iron-rich enough to give up a pint safely. It went on to say that while most men are above 38 all the time, many women fall short of that.

That made me feel so much better. That’s almost as good for my self-image as being 4-F.

(Actually, I was never officially 4-F. Since my number never came up, I was never asked to report for a physical when I was draft age, so I never had to suffer the humiliation of being officially judged unfit. When I looked into joining the Navy in my late 20s, I again never got to the physical stage after being told about the regulation against asthmatics. I did have the satisfaction of doing well on the written test, though. No, I never had the experience of being rejected, to my face, as somehow physically inadequate until yesterday.)

I went straight home last night and had a thick steak for dinner. And if I start hitting the Geritol to excess, don’t blame me.

Distraction

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Well, here I stand, in the same spot where I stood when I wrote this, and in complementary circumstances. Consider this one a bookend to the other.

The last one was written two or three weeks after I started the blog. It reflects energy and excitement at playing with my new medium. It also reflects the fact that I was just beginning my caffeine fixation at the time, and a single grande cup of Starbucks House Blend could set my brain into creative (or at least, fanciful) overdrive. Also, that earlier flight of fancy was an attempt to distract my mind from the fact that I was here because this is where my mother-in-law lived, and she had just a few days before fallen and hit her head and gone into a coma.

As I write this one, I am weary. I’m still pretty much devoted to the blog, but without that initial excitement. Caffeine has become a thing I need to function, rather than a rare treat. I just finished my second grande of the day, and there is no creative rush. The problem with my shoulders (perhaps intensified by the caffeine) has become a more-or-less constant pain, which becomes worse when I lie down, making a full night’s sleep nigh impossible. I just took a muscle relaxer, which I washed down with coffee, but I still remain self-deceptive enough to hope it works. And yesterday, we buried my mother-in-law, whom I loved very much.

But I’m not here to write about that. I’ll continue the Hemingway thing to that extent. (As Jake said to Lady Brett near the end — and I just went to the bookstore’s shelves to check the quote — "You’ll lose it if you talk about it," to which she responded, "I just talk around it.") Since I was not alive to be there on June 6, I have to say that yesterday was my Longest Day. It will take some time for me to digest the years of profound experience packed into those few hours. The digesting, and the unpacking of the memories, will be something for me and my closest loved ones, not for a public blog.

No, I’m here to distract myself. So I went skimming the New York Times site, and ran across this. Which brings up the question, was or was not David Lynch’s "Dune" the worst film in history? I mentioned this point in passing in a previous post — this seems to be a self-referential day for this blog — but the topic didn’t really take off that time.)

I’m quite sure it was, but I’m open to any interesting — and distracting — arguments to the contrary. If it was NOT, in your mistaken opinion, the worst film ever, tell which one you think was, and give me the reasons why. (And I’ll be glad to elaborate later as to why Lynch holds the title.)

Better yet, to return to an earlier, abortive attempt to start a new and fun category, give me your Top Five Worst Movies Ever, with short explanations on each. After you’ve jogged my memory a bit, I’ll come back with my own list. And yes, you may include "Plan 9 From Outer Space," if you insist. But don’t you think that one’s a bit obvious?

Sure, this is silly, but work with me here. If you want substance, go back to this one. Cindi’s doing substance for me today. I’m doing trivia.

I want his name

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Who was the genius who decreed, a generation or so ago, that thenceforth, all offices would be in buildings with windows that can’t be opened?

I want his name. And his address. I want to go see him. I’d like to rearrange his face for him. Call it an extreme makeover.

I just walked out of the office — oh, around 9 p.m. — and it was gorgeous outside. About 60 degrees, and as pleasant an evening as you could ask for.

And where had I been since early this morning? In an oven.

It was about noon when the temp in my office hit 80. Then, it kept climbing. It finally hit a high of 84, before dropping to about, oh, 83 by the time I left. Not a whisper of a breeze, of course. It was worse in other people’s offices. One guy went to work from home when his hit 85. Nice if you can do that. I had to stay at my computer, because the system I was using is not accessible remotely. Security, you know. My hand was sweating on the mouse to the point that I started to wonder whether I could get electrocuted that way — or, worse, cause a short and lose the column I was working on.

It all has something to do with maintenance they’ve been doing all week. The "chillers," or some such, had to be down while the work was under way. They say they’ll be back up tomorrow afternoon.

They’d better be. If not, I have a brick on my windowsill. And two of the four walls of my office are made of glass.

Drawn breath

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What barren D?

Sorry. Mike Cakora just distracted me (in commenting on a recent post) by saying the letters in my name could be rearranged to say either "when drab art" or "brawn hatred."

He signed off, "I make a rock."

Har-de-har.

I had never explored those possibilities. I am more than aware, however, of the various ways Microsoft Word wants to spell "Warthen." There’s "War then," which is actually how it’s pronounced. Then we have:
Wart hen
Earthen (which has a reassuring solidity to it)
Wathena
Warden
Writhen
And the ever-popular "Wart hog."

The last may be my favorite, as I’ve always thought the A-10 was a fine aircraft. The Air Force hates it, but it provides fearsome ground support, and they’re almost impossible to shoot down.

The spell-checker on Netscape e-mail adds "Wrath" to the list. That’s pretty cool.

Unimaginatively, Outlook adds "War" and "Wart" (like young Arthur in The Once and Future King).

Typepad, the fanciful and perpetually irritating software I’m using at the moment, comes up with:
Warren
Marthena
Within
Weather
Athena
Athene
Heathen
Wrathing
Then
Warn
Waylen
Wharton (very popular with humans who misspell it)
Worth
Withe
Withing
Waken
Whether
Worthier
Farthing
Northern
Worthies
Warner
Worthy
Wither
Wooten
Worden
Whiten
Withed
Withes
Worsen
Whither

"Northern!" Prepare to defend yourself, suh!

And why Waylen, but not Waylon?

And what’s a Wathena?

Meanwhile, for "Cakora" we have:
Capra (love your movies, man!)
Cara
Cora
Kora ("Kora Kora Kora")
Caria
Clara
Camera
Caro
Kara
Okra (my favorite vegetable)
Kira
Korea
Cake
Cobra (That’s bad, Mike. As in "good." Like "phat.")
Cairo
Accra
CARE
Care
Cari
Carr
Cori
Cork (faith and begorra)
Cory
Kore
Kori
Kory
Coca (so that‘s where he gets the energy to write like that)
Core
Corr
Cookery

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll go over and take a look at the view from our…

Okra Ike Cam.

Hey! Leave those kids alone

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The job of editorial page editor — the way I choose to do it, anyway — involves a curious mix of leadership and collaboration.

As I frequently tell readers, our editorial board makes decisions by consensus, meaning that even if not everyone in the room buys into the position completely, it has been shaped to the point that each member can live with having the editorial appear beneath his or her name (which, while editorials are by definition not signed — only columns have bylines — is always up there on the masthead with the rest of our names for all the world to see. For an illustration, zoom in on the upper left-hand corner of this page.)

My colleagues occasionally say I’m not being entirely candid when I say that because we don’t always reach consensus, and sometimes we take a certain position only because I insist , despite the lingering objections of one or more members. True, there are times when I consider it necessary to take a position, and a consensus proves impossible — on some political endorsements, for instance. Unlike other issues, an endorsement picks one candidate or another, yes or no — leaving no room for the compromises that make consensus possible. And I firmly believe that failing to endorse — when one of these people will be elected — is a copout.

My response to this gentle remonstration is that just as often (if not more so), I give in and go along with the consensus. An example is today’s lead editorial. Personally, I’d like to see summer vacation start at Memorial Day and end after Labor Day. I sympathize with those who want their kids to enjoy the same sort of three-month idylls that I remember
from my own youth. And while I’m a big advocate of standards in the schools, I personally fail to understand what is magical about 180 days of instruction. I seem to recall many thousands of hours that I spent in school as being superfluous. I believe what I learned between kindergarten and 12th grade could have been taught in half the time.

But my colleagues pretty much unanimously insist that I’m completely WRONG on this, and since I have to confess that to some extent my position is based in sentimentality rather than evidence and logic (and I tend to treat positions based in "feelings" rather than thought with contempt), I’ve gone along with them.

But I only go along so far, and the copy has to get by me to get on the page. An example — a paragraph in today’s editorial originally read like this:

On a practical level, the bill approved Wednesday by the House Education Committee isn’t quite as bad as some previous attempts to set local school calendars: It allows schools to start back as early as the third Monday of August, rather than holding them to the agrarian, post-Labor Day schedule that the businesses on the beach seem to think will benefit them. But then, if you want to talk practicalities, the whole notion that starting school in August somehow shortens the summer vacation is nutty: An early start means kids get out of school by the end of May instead of mid-June. The actual length of summer vacation is the same no matter when it starts and stops.

I was willing to go along with all but one word of that. I paused in the editing process to send an instant message to the writer:

A couple of points re this…
1. Summer vacation IS shorter than it used to be. Kids didn’t get off in mid-June; they got off around Memorial Day.
2. August is more summery than June. It’s hotter. In June, the ocean water is sometimes still cold. Most of June occurs in the spring. All of August (and most of September) occur during the summer.
I guess what I’m saying here is, I object to "nutty." "Unconvincing," perhaps — at least, to a consensus of our board.

So, being the editor, I changed the word, and the writer did not protest. But she still thinks it’s nutty.

This thing’s gone far enough

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OK, I should probably admit to you where I was going when I drove by the girl who was talking on the phone while jogging. I mean, if I don’t face up to my problem, how am I ever going to get better?

I was on my way to … well, to this place again. What’s so bad, or noteworthy about that? Well, this was the first time ever that I left work and drove halfway across town and back for no other purpose than to fetch myself a cup of coffee. In the past, it’s always been, "Hey, I think I’ll go book-browsing," or, "I have an errand to run in Five Points," or, "I need to go to a hotspot to do some blogging" — and pretty much always on a weekend.

(Oh, and for those of you keeping score on my time management: Except for that 20 minutes, which substituted for a lunch hour, I was very productive the rest of the day. Especially after that last coffee. So judge not, lest ye also become a blogger.)

This time, I didn’t even pretend there was an excuse. I had been thinking about my next cup of coffee ever since I had my last one, at breakfast (unless you count that half a cup I got at mid-morning, after begging the guy in the downstairs canteen to open back up just for me to get a refill, and then draining what little was left in the insulated carafe thingie). So first chance I got between meetings and such, I put on my coat, muttered something about "an errand or two to run," and drove straight there.

Here I am acting all bemused at the idiosyncracies of youth (my last post) one minute, then the next I’m standing in a long line of them waiting for a caffeine fix. I listen to them rattle off elaborate, absurdly complex orders that sound like litanies chanted in a foreign tongue — with repetitive responses intoned by the help behind the counter — and edge forward, waiting for when I can order my "plain coffee." The lad in front of me actually asks, "What do you have?" The reply is, "Depends on whether you want hot or cold." Everyone — except me — is hugely entertained when he asks for something in-between, and is informed that’s one thing they don’t have.

By the time he removes his inconvenient self and I belly up, I’ve scrapped plans for "just a small one," and order the "grande." The counterman overfills it — no objections from me there — and I ruin a perfectly good dress shirt and pair of gray pants trying to drive back. Ah, but it’s worth it. It tastes lovely. I even find myself tearing away the insulating wrap to savor the inanity of "The Way I See It No. 49." I am utterly lacking in discrimination at this point.

This is madness. I managed to quit Vicodin when I had taken it day and night for weeks after I broke my ribs kickboxing several years back. (And believe me, I felt its pull. No wonder it’s the favorite addiction of TV writers, from "House" to "The Book of Daniel.") So what’s with this? Why does this dark brew charm me to greater foolishness each day?

Well, I’m going to summon what shreds of self-respect I have left. Tomorrow, one coffee with breakfast. A big one. But that’s it. Or maybe another small one, if they’re just going to dump it out anyway. But no more mad, mid-day quests.

Today I hit rock-bottom. There’s only one way to go now.

In the interest of fairness

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OK, now that I’ve filed a post criticizing the governor’s rhetorical style (but not his substance, please note, Lee‘s non sequitur about my reviewing his speech in advance notwithstanding), let’s detail some of my own gaffes in the course of this day preceding the State of the State. (I’d go ahead and tell you something of the substance of the speech, but it’s embargoed.)

How many ways can one man screw up in one day? Let us count them. Or some of them — I’ll let myself off the hook on a few things:

— I was late for the annual pre-speech briefing for editorial page editors. Not my fault, but then you have enough such incidents that "aren’t your fault" and you develop a certain kind of reputation anyway. I have one of those reputations. In fact, my boss, the publisher, has mandated that I have a weekly session with our VP for human resources, one of the most organized people I have ever met, in an effort to straighten myself out. At our last meeting, my coach said my assignment for the next meeting would be to think about what I want to get out of these meetings. This caused me to make a note to myself not to spend the next meeting free-associating.

— Anyway, I comforted myself with the thoughts that the luncheon was set for 11:30, and no one would actually start eating that early, and in the past these things have featured 20 or so minutes of standing about with drinks (generally soft in recent years, despite the guest list) before getting down to business. Also, I recalled that at the first such meeting after his election, lunch had been buffet-style, which gave me a little more wiggle-room. I was wrong, as you’ll see in a moment.

— An aside: I should count myself lucky that the guard outside let me pull my disreputable ’89 Ranger through the gates at all. I’ve come to appreciate the mere fact of actually getting into the governor’s mansion ever since one evening in 2002, just before the election. I was at the time a member of the Columbia Urban League board. It was the night of the CUL’s biggest event of the year, and as a minor part of the festivities I was to be honored with the organization’s John H. Whiteman Award for "outstanding leadership" as a board member (sort of a nice going-away present, really, since I was about to cycle off the board). Gov. Hodges had agreed to hold a reception at his place before the banquet out at Seawell’s. The guards looked at my invitation, heard my name, and said I wasn’t on the list, so I couldn’t come in. I remonstrated, and they made a phone call, and told me I definitely was not to be let in, and that I could take it up with the governor’s office in the morning, if I were so inclined. Worse, they wouldn’t let Warren Bolton in, either, apparently because he was with me. Well, I was cool and mature about it. I decided we should stand just outside the gate, and give a straight answer to any arriving or departing guests who asked us why we were standing there. They all shook their heads in apparent disbelief. It didn’t stop them from going in, though, as I recall.

— Anyway, after I pulled into the grounds, another guy in a Smokey the Bear hat waved me into a space. I hopped out and headed in. He said, "Your license plate is expired." I said, "What?… Oh… yeah… I think that sticker’s at the house somewhere." He told me he didn’t mean anything bad by telling me: "I’m just trying to save you fifty bucks." OK, uh, thanks, I said as I kept going toward the front door, but then I slowed down as it occurred to me that it was an ethical violation on my part to accept such a discretionary reprieve when I was a guest of the governor. I was about to turn around when I remembered: These governor’s Protective Detail guys dress like Highway Patrolmen, but they’re not actually troopers, and don’t have powers to enforce highway laws anyway. That is, I don’t think they do. I went in. I was late enough.

— And even though I couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes late, I’m sure, they were
already well into the salad course — everyone seated at the formal
dining table — and in mid-conversation regarding the governor’s
agenda. The only good thing was that I slipped in quietly enough that
the governor didn’t notice me until I had asked my first question, well
into the main course.

— Of course, my question turned into one of those mini-debates with the governor, which went on an embarrassingly long time before I could make myself stop arguing with his answers. Meanwhile, everyone else sat quietly waiting to ask their questions, and probably thinking about what an ass I was making of myself at their expense. I don’t know why I do that, but I do it everywhere I go. I can’t just make like a reporter, write down the answer, and shut up. But I should. Sometimes I should.

— I almost left the digital recorder I had turned on and slid down the table, but the governor called out, "Somebody leave a recorder out here?" Mine. Thanks. At a previous such lunch during the Hodges administration (before I was barred from the grounds), I had left my recorder. I never saw it again. This one was its replacement.

— To make up for my performance inside, I decided to make friends with the governor’s dogs on the way out. One consented to be petted; the other stood off and regarded me with healthy suspicion. Warren and Cindi Scoppe, who had come in a separate car in order to be on time, waited for me. I finally realized they were waiting because we needed to have a quick huddle to decide what, if anything, we wanted to say about the speech for the next day (to avoid interfering with the production of the news pages, our pages need to be done well before time for the speech), and they knew I was planning to go to Harry Lightsey’s funeral at 2:30. I told them I had time to meet them back at the office and discuss it there before heading for Trinity Cathedral. Then I stepped over to my truck, and realized I didn’t have my keys.

— Warren and Cindi waited while I barged back into the mansion without knocking (the faux pas just keep piling up, don’t they?) and searched around under the dining room table while the staff was clearing it. They said they hadn’t found anything. I guessed the answer to the mystery on my way back to the truck. Yep, my keys were in the ignition. Don’t even ask why I had thought it necessary to lock my truck
inside these well guarded grounds, because I don’t have an answer.

— Fortunately, Warren and Cindi were still waiting — they know me well — and we had the opportunity to fully discuss the next day’s editorial while I rode in Warren’s back seat back to the office. I had explained the situation to the guard at the gate, and he said it would be OK to get the truck later. I knew there was an extra set of keys in my desk.

— What I also knew, but forgot until we got all the way back to the office, was that I also carry yet another spare key to the truck’s doors in my wallet, for just such emergencies. Sure enough, as I found standing stupidly back in my office and rummaging around through credit cards, there it was. In my pocket all the time. Great. No one would have ever had to know, if I had just remembered that.

— So I had to ask my boss, the publisher,…

Oops, just realized that if I don’t run home NOW, I’m going to miss the State of the State itself. I have to watch to make sure he actually delivers the speech we’re commenting on tomorrow. Have to finish this tale of serial humiliation later…

Who put the ‘sip’ in ‘insipid?’

34 Replies

Two confessions:

I’m hooked on Starbucks, although only moderately so. I hold my consumption of their House Blend to once a week, most of the time. (While in Memphis the week after Christmas, I’ll admit I drank it daily because an outlet was nearby; it nearly ruined my appreciation of the Ritazza joe they sell in the canteen down in the basement here at work, which normally I love.) It would be so much nicer if I gave my custom to some nice, local coffee house, but I leave that to my kids. They’re into that "Friends" kind of scene. To me, coffee’s not a social thing. I duck in, get it and go — unless I’m at a bookstore, in which case I quietly browse while drinking it. For this reason, I think it’s great that Starbucks is moving toward drive-thru. I can hardly wait for them to do that here — preferably on MY side of the river.
I find those little philosophical musings they print on the side of their cups, under the heading "The Way I See It," irritatingly trite and inane. Fortunately, they’re usually covered by the brown insulating sleeve. But I sometimes peel that off (I put a lot of sugar in it, which makes anything that spills over the side quite sticky) and read the musings anyway. I don’t know why. Morbid curiosity, perhaps. Or maybe sneering at these banal observations makes me feel better about drinking the coffee. I don’t know.

Here’s an example, dubbed "The Way I See It #61:"

Imagine we are all the same. Imagine we agree about politics, religion and morality. Imagine we like the same types of music, art, food and coffee. Imagine we all look alike. Sound boring? Differences need not divide us. Embrace diversity. Dignity is everyone’s human right.

This is the considered opinion of one Bill Brummel (Beau‘s great-great-great grandson, perhaps?), identified thusly: "Documentary filmmaker. His programs focus on human rights issues."

Is there anything wrong with anything he said? No. But does it provoke thought? No. In fact, by the time he got to the bumper-sticker sentiment, "Embrace diversity," my brain had nearly shut down, grande coffee notwithstanding. Talk about boring.

Variety is the spice of life, and so on. We all agree on that. But when I see something this mind-numbingly obvious represented as profundity worthy of mass reproduction, I find I want to argue with it. I want to say something like, "You know, it would be great if we’d go ahead and all agree on morality. If there were fewer people out there disagreeing with the consensus on morality, we’d have lot a less rape, murder and child molesting going on. There would still be some of those things, of course, because it is tragically human to do things we know is wrong. What’s really unbearably outrageous is people doing things that we all pretty much know are wrong and defending them as being OK, and condemning those who would censure them as narrow-minded. Such people’s battle cry is "WHOSE morality?,’ as though there were no absolutes, when there are. Seriously, can’t you think of ANYTHING that is just plain wrong, no matter who says it’s right? What do you have to say about that, Mr. ‘Imagine there’s no heaven?’ How about the crimes I mentioned above? Couldn’t you draw the line at child abuse? And if you could, wouldn’t you have to admit that there IS legitimacy to drawing lines, meaning that diversity of thought and attitudes is NOT always good? Huh?"

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t fit on the cup. But I think it would be more worth the ink.

The column that wasn’t

29 Replies

I had this great idea for a column that would have illustrated some of the economic and technological challenges to the newspaper business that play into the market perceptions that have led to the current situation in which the company that owns my newspaper finds itself.

Basically, I was going to write about the dilemmas that face even me, a loyal newspaper guy, as I face Christmas shopping with little time and money, and the convenience of e-commerce right at my fingertips.

I would have included several examples from this past weekend of shopping — first at the fine establishments of our local retailers (that is to say, our advertisers), then on the Web (sometimes the Web sites of those very same retail companies that have stores here, sometimes not). I was inspired when, after caving in and buying a couple of things on-line — one of them something completely unavailable locally, the other something that just wasn’t in stock at the stores I had visited in search of it — I said to my wife, "Well, we just took food out of our own mouths by failing to do business with local merchants."

She said, "But those things weren’t available locally." I said that if it had not been for the Internet, we would have waited while a local merchant back-ordered the second item, and on the first — the specially item never available locally — we would have come up with some other gift idea.

Anyway, I was pitching this column idea this morning to my crew, and getting enthusiastic about the possibilities, when it suddenly hit me: I can’t do this column now; it would mean telling the world what I’m getting certain people for Christmas. Sure, I could be vague the way I’ve been in this post, but not being specific about the gifts, right down to brand and model number, would take the life out of the thing — and not answer some obvious questions, such as, "What was it you couldn’t get here, and why?"

It would be sort of like a Tom Clancy novel without detailed descriptions of the weapon systems — what’s the point?

Oh, by the way, I should note that the best bargain I got all weekend was bought from a local merchant, and was specifically advertised in The State. So there.

Knight Ridder column

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What will happen to this newspaper?
I don’t know. Nobody does
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
ONLY ONCE in my life have I bought stock all by myself, on purpose, with perfectly good money that was sitting safely in my bank account.
I bought 20 shares of Knight Ridder — the company that owns the newspaper I work for — at the impossibly low price of $62.65. It had been as high as $80 a share just a year before, and was bound to head that way again, right?
In October, it fell to $52.42.
I wasn’t the only one who was, um, disappointed. A man named Bruce S. Sherman, whose Private Capital Management company owns 19 percent of Knight Ridder’s stock (even more than I do) wrote a letter telling the corporate brass to put the company up for sale, or else. Last week, the company took a step in that direction. But while the stock has jumped up close to the price at which I bought it, nobody has rushed to scoop us up yet.
The irony is that people I meet have actually been asking me, as a member of The State’s executive team, what all of this means, and what’s likely to happen next. And I’m the one to whom other senior staffers have to speak very slowly and distinctly when explaining something financial.
Here’s the bigger irony: What I have to say on the subject is as valuable as what almost anybody else says, because nobody knows what’s going to happen (unless it’s already happened and they haven’t told me).
I’ve read what the analysts and the smart business writers at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and other publications have had to say. I’ve read memos from corporate. I’ve discussed it with my colleagues. And I’m about where I started.
Will the company be sold? I don’t know. If so, to whom? I don’t know. Will it be sold intact, or will the pieces be sold off to different buyers? I don’t know. What will it all mean to The State, and the community it serves? I don’t know. What will it mean to me?
I don’t know. There’s a lot of speculation, most of which will be shown to be nonsense when the whole thing shakes out.
While such companies as Tribune (as in Chicago), McClatchy and The New York Times are mentioned, Gannett — the only newspaper chain with larger circulation than ours — is seen by some as the only entity with the motivation and resources to swallow us whole. Then again, we could be bought by Yahoo! or eBay.
The experts say that what has driven this stockholder dissatisfaction is a set of dire portents for the entire industry. The retailers whose advertising is so critical to newspapers are consolidating. Readers are turning to the Internet and other free sources of news. Or they’re just not reading as much as earlier generations.
Experts also say newspapers are still a good buy, and that Knight Ridder is undervalued. The Journal said a “reasonable valuation range” for KR stock is from $70 to $100. It also said it was doubtful anyone would pay that. So much for experts.
I actually think that price range is reasonable (and am prepared to sell you a few shares in that range). I also think many of the evil portents are baloney. Readers can turn to the Internet all they want, and they’ll find newspapers already there, providing news content and selling advertising. Eventually, under current or future management, they’ll find a way to make as much money there as they once did peddling dead trees.
Ultimately, however the news is delivered, it will have to be paid for, either by subscription (a word that freaks out Web-surfers) or advertising. You see, it actually costs something to gather news. If newspapers, with their expensive armies of reporters, all of a sudden went away, you’d find the pickings of actual news on the ’Net to be pretty slim.
But hey, don’t listen to me. I don’t even know for whom I’ll be working in the new year. But I do know this: I’ve been here before.
I worked the first 10 years of my career for The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, which was owned by The Des Moines Register Co. Some top shareholders in that privately held company tried to sell us to Dow Jones, which owns the Journal. That caused another major stockholder to try to sell the Des Moines paper to The Washington Post, and our little daily to The New York Times (or so the scuttlebutt had it). All those masters of our little universe were shown up in the end, when Gannett waltzed in and bought it all for $200 million. What this experience taught me is that once a company is in play, even those who think they’re driving the process have no idea how it will come out.
I’ve heard stories about what happened after Gannett took over, but I don’t know the truth of it, because I had left to go to work for Knight Ridder in Wichita — not because of Gannett, but because I didn’t get along with a new publisher Des Moines had sent us just before all the craziness started. (As it happens, I’m about to get a new publisher here, just as the uncertainty of a potential sale hangs over us all. Again. Interesting, huh?)
I was miserable in Kansas, and almost immediately after the company bought The State, I came here. As I said, I had gone to Wichita not because I want
ed to be there, but to work for Knight Ridder. Purely a career move. But I learned my lesson, and when I came here I came to work for The State — the largest newspaper serving the people of my native state. I pay little attention to what goes on at corporate (something I can do because Knight Ridder doesn’t believe in meddling in editorial policy). In my first interview for a job at The State, I said my ultimate goal was to be editorial page editor, which was where I thought I could be most useful. And 18 years later, here I am.
So what’s going to happen next? Well, for my part — and that of the team I work with — we’ll keep on doing our best to make the editorial pages a place where South Carolinians can come together to have constructive conversations about the critical issues that face us all, locally and statewide. We will still be motivated by the dream of a South Carolina that is no longer last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last.
And we’ll do all that as long as whoever owns the paper lets us.

It’s even gotten to ME

4 Replies

How exciting is tomorrow’s matchup between the Gamecocks and the Tigers? This exciting: Even I am caught up in it. Kinda. Sorta.

I am just about the last person you would ever call a football fan. Baseball, yes. Sometimes even basketball. But mostly, my interest in sports extends only to those that I can play, such as golf and tennis. And I have little interest in watching other people play those. If I watch a tennis match on television for five minutes, I want to turn off the tube and get out there myself. (Meaning that I’m either more of a doer than a watcher — which is doubtful, given my love for reading and watching movies — or I’m just a self-centered cuss.)

Anyway, I’ve been sufficiently caught up in the contact high of excitement about the Gamecocks — something that started about the time of the win over Tennessee, I believe — that I actually watched Spurrier part of last week’s game on the tube. And enjoyed it.

More than that, I actually read one of the advance stories about tomorrow’s big game in the paper this past week. Not a people feature or anything like that, but this story about a real football-geek facet of the game, built around stats. I started reading just out of curiosity, wondering what a "red zone" was (and unlike many such stories, geared only to the cognoscenti, it actually told me, once I got to the jump page), and then got caught up in the fact that it seemed Steve Spurrier’s approach to football was much like my approach to life (or what I like to think is my approach to life): Never give up, and never settle. He doesn’t go for the field goal when there’s a chance for a touchdown. Neither would I. Of course, I would never punt, either — but then, I tend to take things to obsessive extremes.

So, having done the required reading and whipped myself into an appropriate state of anticipation, I’m all set for the big game. And if I had ESPN2 on my TV at home, I’d watch it. I really would.

But lacking that, I’ll have to settle for the radio. If it’s on the radio. I assume it will be.

Anyway: Go, ‘Cocks.

Just in time for Halloween

3 Replies

A black cat crossed my path this morning.

Which wasn’t fair at all. I mean, I had done everything right. Got up early, dropped off some shirts at the cleaners well before the cutoff for getting them back today, ran a couple of other quick errands while I was at it, and headed home for my morning run and then breakfast.

So I didn’t really need this omen. Not that it matters, of course. I have this happen every once in a while, and I’ve never noted any correlation between black cats and bad things happening. And I’m the neurotic sort who analyzes everything to death, including trivial apparent connections, so I would have noticed.

Still. It sort of ticked me off. The cat seemed to do it deliberately.

Anyway, I was wondering. I came across this cat suddenly, as I was rounding a bend coming into my neighborhood. It was sort of fluffy, and at first I thought it was a small dog. It was standing indecisively near the curb, and then started briskly out it front of me as I rolled toward it. It saw me, and stopped, just as I was braking. It looked for an instant as though it would turn back, but then looked away from me (in that arrogant way cats have) and proceeded on across.

What I was wondering was this … or rather, two things:

If the cat had turned back, would that have been a good omen? Or at least neutral?
If I hadn’t braked in time, and had run over it, would that have negated any theoretical bad luck? Or would it have been worse, like breaking a mirror or something? I know it would have made me feel worse. I think. (And no, Cindi, I wouldn’t have done it on purpose.)

As I said, I analyze everything to death. Anyway, any experts out there on this? Resources on the Web are confusing. This one says that in some countries, a black cat crossing your path is a good omen. Should I move to one of those countries?

I don’t know. I’m not planning on dressing up or anything, so this is as close as I get to getting in the spirit of the holiday. Have a happy and safe All Hallows’ Eve, and a blessed All Saints Day.

Got Pull?

2 Replies

Hah! And you thought I was paranoid when I said the reason so many food products contain unnecessary ingredients that are deadly to me is because "This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry."

Well, the proof is in the policy. Look at what happened in Washington just yesterday.

Finally, Congress has started trying to inject a little sanity into runaway spending, and one of the Cow1_1 targets is our swollen agricultural giveaways. So they vote to save $3 billion by cutting farm commodity payments over the next five years.

Good enough so far. But one subsidy is left intact. Which one? You’ve got it! Milk.

The excuse is that small dairy operators have to have it. That’s kind of like the famous "Big Bird" defense, whereby S.C. ETV staved off budget cuts years ago by claiming the network would have to cut "Sesame Street:" Big Cheese’s lobbyists plead on behalf of their most sympathetic clients. The big ranchers out West don’t even want it.

Missed opportunity

This column contains no allergens

6 Replies

‘Disinterested observer’
corrupted by a can of soup
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BIG BROTHER is about to step in and make my life — and the lives of a tiny handful of others — better by imposing broad regulations that will probably cost the food industry billions without benefiting the overwhelming majority of Americans one whit.
And I’m fine with that. But the fact that I’m fine with it does make me a tad uncomfortable.
I’ve never wanted to be part of an interest group. That’s why I throw away those membership solicitations from AARP (even though I sometimes feel a wee bit envious of the discounts my wife, who lacks such scruples, enjoys).
For one thing, it’s a liability in my business. Even though I write opinion these days rather than “objective” news, I value detachment. Like the human computers called “mentats” in Frank Herbert’s novels, I prefer my judgments to be generally untainted by “feelings” or self-interest.
I can be passionate about issues, but they tend to be fairly abstract (say, government accountability) or involve groups to which I don’t belong — such as poor, black, rural children who get the short end of the stick on educational opportunity.
I cling to the great self-delusion of the Average White Guy, which is that I don’t belong to a group. If there’s a group trait among us white guys, it’s that we don’t see ourselves as having group traits, or interests in common. I look at a rich white guy and don’t celebrate his success (he’s not sharing it with me). And when he goes to the slammer for insider trading or whatever, I’m as likely to feel Schadenfreude as a member of any other ethnic group.
You can’t even characterize me as a WASP. I’m a half-Celtic mutt, and I’m Catholic. But I refuse to feel aggrieved when secularists (vicious, slanderous dogs that they are) attack the Church. I tend to snort at whiny releases I get from the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights (“Yahoo! Displays Bias Against Catholics”), and sneer at politicians’ ham-handed efforts to corral the “Catholic vote.”
Not that bias against Catholics doesn’t exist. It’s just that I refuse to join the pity party.
But there are limits to my detachment. I’m no mentat, but a three-dimensional human being, and to fail to recognize that is to fail to see the world accurately (as any mentat would tell you).
I think it would be great if somebody really did do something about the trains that keep me and others who work on Shop Road from getting downtown and back in a timely fashion. And as an asthmatic, I welcome all the restrictions recently placed on smoking in public places.
But I can rationalize those. Eliminating train delays would also benefit football fans (a group to which I definitely don’t belong), fairgoers, Farmers Market shoppers, folks trying to get to I-77, and the residents of Arthurtown, Taylors and Little Camden. And everyone is harmed by cigarette smoke; those of us who suffer more immediately are merely the canaries in the coal mine.
But this latest thing I just can’t rationalize away. On Thursday, I finally became corrupted by the unoriginal sin of narrow interest. That was the day I read in an article (it wouldn’t let me link directly; search for "Zhang" and "allergens") from The Wall Street Journal that a new federal food-labeling law taking effect Jan. 1 will not only cause packagers to highlight the presence of milk, eggs and wheat (to which I am allergic, in the first two instances to a life-threatening degree) and other major allergens, but it will go to the next level — letting the less-savvy know that “whey” and “casein” mean milk just as surely as do butter and cheese. (I was an adult before I realized why I was getting sick from consuming “non-dairy” products containing traces of sodium caseinate.)
Best of all — and this is the really sweet part — some manufacturers are going so far as to simply eliminate the allergens from their recipes, when they are not key ingredients. You may ask yourself why the allergens were even in there if they were not essential. If so, congratulations! You have finally thought to ask a question that has driven me nuts my whole life. I have to remove my bifocals and press labels against my nose to read the fine print on every packaged product I consider consuming. And more often than not, I find that some innocuous-sounding product such as beef-vegetable soup, or an oat-based cereal, has been inexplicably poisoned with whey or another form of dairy. It doesn’t look creamy, and you can’t taste it, but it’s there.
And there’s no acceptable explanation for it; the soup or cereal would taste fine without it. As often as not, a competing brand right next to it is made without the offending materials, and with no damage to quality.
So how to explain it? Why would a food processor go to the expense of buying mass quantities of an irrelevant ingredient, arrange to have it delivered, and put it in the product? Other interest groups have their paranoid conspiracy theories, and here’s mine: This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry. Don’t try to “reason” with me on this; no other explanation satisfies.
Yet the iron grip of Big Cheese must be loosening. How else could the FDA be getting ready to enforce these new regulations? How else could Campbell Soup Co. — an outfit that produces a gazillion products, of which I can safely consume about four — be on the verge of purging its products of unnecessary allergens?
In any case, it’s wonderful news. To me. Suddenly, grocery store aisles are going to seem a lot less like minefields. To me.
And there’s the rub. I just can’t get around the fact that in this case, I am a member of a hyper-narrow interest group. Sure, millions have “allergies,” in the sense that they get seasonal hay fever, or suffer a little rash when they eat strawberries. But not that many of us have real allergies, in the sense of a clear and present danger of going into deadly
anaphylactic shock from exposure to a common food. Oh, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has “this bizarre thing about peanuts,” but that’s about it. The Journal article says about 150 people die from food allergies a year. So in one sense, the entire food industry is going to be retooled to save about one in every two million people.
And I think that’s great.
So I’m human. Sue me. But don’t try sneaking any of your spoiled bovine secretions into my tucker. If you do, Big Brother’s gonna getcha.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Personal

I am NOT a liberal

I have to envy this

I hate getting makeup in my eyes

‘Invisible hand’ nowhere to be seen

Why don’t we just surrender, Sarge?

Bad blood

Distraction

I want his name

Drawn breath

Hey! Leave those kids alone

This thing’s gone far enough

In the interest of fairness

Who put the ‘sip’ in ‘insipid?’

The column that wasn’t

Knight Ridder column

It’s even gotten to ME

Just in time for Halloween

Got Pull?

Missed opportunity

This column contains no allergens