Category Archives: Seeking advice

Are you having trouble loading my blog?

The last few days, my browser has been freezing up whenever I go to my main page — which, unfortunately, I have to do a lot.

When it happens, at long last I get a dialog box that says:

    A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

I always click "stop script," and go on with my business. I don’t even know what it means.

I had sort of thought it was a problem with my laptop, but then the desktop started doing the same thing.

All I can guess is that there’s just too much stuff on that main page. Maybe I need to reduce the number of posts that appear there. (I think it’s set to show a month’s worth, but that’s way over 100 posts now, and maybe that’s just too much.)

Before I take the time to tinker around with guesses, though, I’m curious: Are y’all having the same trouble? That would increase the urgency to try to do something.

Anybody getting nasty calls about Hillary?

We were all on alert last week for nasty stuff in the GOP primary, on account of the history of what happened to John McCain in 2000.

Now, I’m getting whiffs of something on the Democratic side, as we shoot through the home stretch to Saturday. Three people — one at work, one a caller to the office, the other a relative — have told me of getting recordings that just unloaded a garbage truck full of stuff on Hillary Clinton. Tales of screaming fits in the White House, a bunch of junk everybody’s heard before about Vince Foster, and on and on. Highly offensive.

Thing about it is, at least one of the people who reported this voted in the Republican primary, so it’s a little strange that they would get these calls this week. If they’ve already voted, what’s the point? If it’s pitched toward the general election, why not wait a while, and see if she’s the nominee?

Or better yet, why not just not stoop to stuff like this at all?

What did Hillary say that was so wrong?

Democrats_debate_wart

So Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have put their spat over race behind them. That’s good, but it still leaves me with a question that I guess only a Clueless White Guy could ask: What was that all about?

Maybe it’s that when it was all brewing I was too busy with the GOP primary to take notice. It seemed to happen late last week, when I was trying to get our endorsement of John McCain decided, written, elaborated upon, discussed in multimedia, and put on the Sunday page.

That’s got to be it. There’s got to be something I just missed entirely. That’s why I find myself still asking, What did Hillary Clinton say that was so wrong? (And note that I’m not even getting into Bill Clinton saying Sen. Obama
was peddling "fairy tales." Supposedly, that was taken by some as
racially insensitive also. But Mr. Clinton say
anything about anybody’s race? He did say "fairy," but it
seems that would offend a whole other demographic group, and then only
if it was really, really willing to stretch to be offended.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did this controversy not erupt when the senator from New York said:

    "Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done."

And did it not only deepen when she said:

    “Sen. Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. to criticize me. Basically compared himself to two of
our greatest heroes. He basically said that President Kennedy and Dr.
King had made great speeches and that speeches were important. Well, no
one denies that. But if all there is (is) a speech, then it doesn’t
change anything.”

This was deemed offensive by some, and the nature of the offense was racial, apparently because Dr. Martin Luther King was mentioned. Or maybe because Sen. Obama is black, or not, depending on who’s keeping score.

Where did the offense lie? Haven’t all great, inspirational leaders been followed by more prosaic types who did much to make the dream a reality? Did Moses not have his Joshua? Did Jesus — whose sudden execution essentially left his movement, at first, in shambles — not have his St. Paul? And do any of us think that, because he essentially invented the idea of a "church" as something Gentiles could join, that St. Paul was greater than Jesus? I would hope not.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t MLK, in the most famous passage of one of his most inspirational speeches, compare himself to Moses? And was that comparison not specifically with regard to the fact that, while he had led the movement right up to the border, someone else might have to lead it into the Promised Land? ("I may not get there with you.")

Or did I miss something? It’s highly possible that I did, which is why I’m asking. I’ve looked at several stories on this subject, but it’s certain that I haven’t read them all.

But if I didn’t miss something, then I think Sen. Clinton caught a lot of grief she didn’t deserve. She might be called all sorts of things, by those who are inclined to criticize her — overbearing, perhaps. Condescending, maybe. But racist? I don’t think so.

By the way, that was what I didn’t like about the Ariail cartoon that I showed you in sketch form yesterday: I thought it was way unfair to Mrs. Clinton. Of course, it is in the essential nature of caricature to exaggerate, and even to offend. But I thought the Ariail cartoon we actually used made the same point (with which I disagree, but what Robert wants to say is Robert’s business), and since it left out the emotional hand grenade of the lawn jockey, it did so in a way more likely to be clearly understood. But it’s hard to be sure about such things, which is why I asked y’all about it.

Democrats_debate_wart2

Would you run this cartoon?

Aria08sketch8

Here’s one of the many cartoon ideas Robert Ariail had today, in sketch form. We went for something else in the actual paper for tomorrow, but this was one of the sketches Robert gave thestate.com for use in this package.

I made sure senior editors down in the newsroom were aware of the cartoon (thestate.com is part of the newsroom, and therefore separate from my department), so they could make a conscious decision about it before it appeared.

The question I had raised about the cartoon earlier with Robert was … well, never mind the concern I raised. I’d rather not prejudice your response. After y’all have a chance to say what you think, I’ll tell you what I think. (I’ll only tell you that if you’re one of those simple souls who don’t know me at all and think all newspaper editors are about political correctness, you’ll probably guess wrong as to what my concern was.)

So … whaddya think?

Is McCain getting smeared in SC AGAIN?

One of the most shameful moments in recent South Carolina history was the anonymous smear campaign against John McCain conducted via phone "push polls" in 2000. It was particularly malicious, low and vile, spreading racist lies about an innocent child. Read this account to remind you:

    In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was
popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if
McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With
few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was
bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

    It
didn’t take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about
the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named
Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa’s orphanage in
Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and
the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

    Anonymous
opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain’s Bangladeshi born
daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a
voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which
candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster"
determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements
designed to create doubt about the senator.
    Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or
less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an
illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious
South, that’s not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone
calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and
anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

That account was written in 2004 as a warning not to let it happen again. This morning, right after I got up to do a phone interview with C-SPAN about our endorsement of Sen. McCain, I saw this overnight e-mail from the McCain campaign:

    Tonight,
volunteers making telephone calls for the McCain campaign report that
some voters recently received negative information about Senator
McCain. While we do not yet have conclusive proof, we are concerned
that this may be the beginning of a smear campaign.

    If
you receive any malicious messages, letters, phone calls, e-mails,
fliers or any other form of "negative" information about John McCain,
please contact our McCain Truth Hotline directly at 803.477.6987 or email us at southcarolina@johnmccain.com
as quickly as possible. (Note: If the attack is made over the
telephone, either by a caller or by a recorded message, please save the
recording and take note of the CALLER ID phone number for use as evidence of these unethical and possibly illegal campaign tactics.)

    Thank
you for helping protect Senator McCain from false attacks during these
last days leading up to our January 19 Republican Primary.

I certainly hope that this is a case of the McCain folks overreacting out of their perfectly understandable sensitivity — which is base in bitter experience. What happened in 2000 wasn’t just a painful experience for one man and his family — it’s widely believed to have given the S.C. primary to Bush (which, if it did, is in itself a dark stain on the honor of S.C. voters). If that analysis is correct, those vicious whispers had a profound effect on U.S. history.

If it’s starting to happen again, decent people all over our state should rise up to confront the lies, and repudiate the liars in the strongest terms. But is it starting to happen again? Have you received calls that fit this description.

What do you want this blog to be for the next three weeks?

You’ll notice that today’s column — which I mistakenly backdated to yesterday morning rather than this morning, but have now corrected — was an elaboration on a blog post. Watch for more of that; over the next three weeks — between now and the Jan. 26 Democratic primary here — I plan to write more columns than usual, and as often as not, the blog will be the place where the column ideas first take shape.

I also plan to post more than usual. I’m shoving as many of my other duties aside as possible to concentrate on covering (in my own way, which will differ from what you see in news) and writing about the primaries, both for the blog and the paper. (You would have seen more last night and this morning here, but my personal life has been rather full — and joyful — the last 26 hours or so.) I will not, of course, be as free as a reporter would — I’ve got to jam in time for as many as five candidate interviews in preparation for endorsements on the 13th (Republican) and 20th (Democratic). But those interviews should produce a lot of fodder for this venue as well.

I want to make the most of all this effort, and make what I’m doing as useful as possible. I won’t just be doing this to be busy; I’ve got granddaughters to rock, you know. So I’d like y’all’s suggestions as to what you would like to see here. More video? More accessible format? More links to news and other opinions? More pictures of grandchildren (sorry, that just slipped out)? Think particularly in terms of what the editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper might contribute that you wouldn’t get elsewhere; there’s little use in my duplicating stuff you can get already.

One thing I want to get done this weekend is replace the Stephen Colbert video that’s at the top of my main page (that guy’s campaign just went nowhere) with some sort of quick-start daily briefing. Maybe links to latest news, latest posts of interest, latest issue-oriented posts, or something like that. Something that you would find useful and that’s doable without my dropping everything else to spend my days coding.

Anyway, I’m looking for ideas, so please pitch them my way.

Am I the only one who remembers the time BEFORE Kenny’s?

Today, we have a couple of letters, and our newsroom had a section-front story, that discuss what is to happen with the former Kenny’s Auto Supply site in Five Points, behind Yesterday’s.

And I find myself thinking, as I often do — am I the only one who thinks of that property as where the Winn-Dixie used to be? I still think of Kenny’s as the new thing. I’m like, way disoriented, as the young folks might say.

Or — and this would be worse — am I dreaming this? Did I never go there to buy my groceries, then walk with them all the back uphill on Blossom to the Honeycombs, which, come to think of it, also don’t exist any more?

And if not, where was I really back in the fall of 1971? Somebody give me a reality check here…

John1

Spam magnets

Here’s an interesting phenomenon to ponder — and perhaps some of you who understand the Web better than I do can explain why it happens.

One of the few good things about the fact that I now have my blog programmed to hold comments for my approval (I’d rather leave the spigot open, but I’ve been taught over and over that blog hooligans always take advantage of that) is that I can stop all the spam comments before they appear.

These things come in waves. For instance, I’ll get six or seven in a row that all have "hotel" in the fake e-mail address, and ostensibly advertise deals for holidays at hotels in Zurich, London, Hong Kong, etc. The text will more often than not contain a generic-sounding message such as "Great site! I’ll be back," or "Not doing much today; just sitting around." Like I’m interested.

But here’s the thing that puzzles me: These messages keep getting posted on the same old posts, over and over. This one, headlined "Another try," is a real spam magnet — even though, when I went to find a link to it, I had trouble finding it. Google didn’t want to go directly to it, which suggests to me that it hasn’t been accessed much by spammers or anyone else. So how come spam messages keep appearing on it? You’ll note there are a bunch of spam messages on it from before I went to the current policy of approving them before they appear. (I’ll go clean those later.) Is that it? Does the presence of spam attract other spam?

Note that the post is from September 2006, and yet I got a new piece of spam on it today. That’s part of the modus operandi of spammers; I guess glomming onto on long-forgotten posts is a way of flying under the radar.

Here’s another example: "Jim DeMint meeting," from August 2005. This one, old as it is, also received a slice of spam today, and also has a bunch of old spam clinging to its bottom like so many barnacles. Posts right next to it don’t have this problem; the spam goes straight for this one.

Also, once again, Google would not take me straight to this one. But it took me to something interesting: This site, which seems to form a sort of nexus for spam and this particular post. Can anybody tell me what this is, and better yet, how to stop this whole problem from recurring?

Anyway, the whole thing is like something from science-fiction/fantasy. It’s as thought these posts are interdimensional portals of the sort that Heinlein wrote about in this one, or the open ends of wormholes or something. Altogether weird.

Ultimate S.C. Blogroll (a work in progress)

UPDATE: Here is the current version of the spreadsheet mentioned below…

Determined to inject some sense and organization to my sorta, kinda list of S.C. blogs in the rail at right, which I have long labeled "Fun with links" because it was nice and vague, I put together the attached spreadsheets.

Basically, I was trying to separate wheat from chaff, and provide a true list of S.C. blogs, along with some kind of hierarchy of timeliness. So I went through my list of links to see who had posted most recently (only seven out of 33 had posted today), then — to add some depth to that metric — how many times they had posted in the past week. (Among true S.C. blogs, The Palmetto Scoop and The Shot/The Chaser ran away from the pack.)

What I was seeking to do was to put my links in some sort of order, and it seemed that the most useful order for my readers would be one that honored timeliness. That would put TPS and The Chaser at the top, and "I Don’t Believe The State" at the very bottom (no posts since June 21; I had already purged all blogs less fresh than that).

But wait: Those stats don’t stack up to Andrew Sullivan‘s or Dave Barry‘s. But they lose points because they’re not S.C. blogs, which is the point. Then, there are links to things that aren’t blogs at all, but which I wanted to keep, such as to SC Hotline and Peggy Noonan‘s columns. (Earlier, I had created a new category called "Resources," and maybe SC Hotline belongs there. While I’m at it, I might create a list of links to recent work of top columnists, with a separate heading, as a home for Peggy.)

Finally, I decided I would afford extra points in my hierarchy to blogs that are written by a single person (as opposed to South Carolina ’08) and are not anonymous (which would downgrade "not very bright," despites its timeliness).

Anyway, do me a favor, if you’ve got the time — go over the spreadsheet, and give me feedback to improve it. The kind of feedback I’m looking for would include:

  • Names of blogs that should make the list, but aren’t here (plus all the relevant info you can provide). I’m guessing some might wish to advocate for FITS News, and others I’m just not thinking of. Speaking of Will, perhaps I should add a "taste" scale to my spreadsheet.)
  • Identities of authors where I’ve got them wrong, or have wrongly judged them to be anonymous or pseudonymous. For instance, there might be someone who doesn’t give his name, but wouldn’t mind if asked. I am NOT seeking to expose private citizens who wish to be unknown, despite what some think.
  • Whether you think a given site qualifies as a South Carolina blog. On the sheet I put together, I just said Y or N on that, but it occurs to me that I should have a scale on that score. There are some blogs based in SC that have nothing to say that you can’t find on any other blog in the nation — that is to say, they just watch cable TV news and parrot their particular sides party line on the subject. Such blogs are worth next to nothing. In fact, I’m going to go in and assign a 1-10 scale as to S.C. relevance, and save a separate version of the spreadsheet, here. Tell me if you agree/disagree with the ratings.
  • Finally, is it a blog at all? Some, such as John Wrisley‘s, I’m not at all sure fit the category.
  • Any other points I’m forgetting.

Your help will be appreciated.

Can you believe it?

Someone at Campaigns & Elections magazine interviewed me awhile back about my blog. You can see the result of that here.

Anything about that page jump out at you? What jumped out at me was Will’s claim that FITS News gets an average of 5,000 to 7,000 page views a day. Either that, or his preferred estimate of "eleventy kabillion."

What do y’all think? Maybe it’s possible, since he does a pretty fair job of keeping it current, and works hard at breaking news — which I have a newspaper to do for me, relieving me of that burden. I think of my blog as supplemental, not the main course.

But I’m sort of thinking that Will didn’t do what I did, which was to err on the conservative side. I said 1,000 a day. But I just went and checked, and for the last six months, it’s been more than 1,200 a day average. That is, if I did the spreadsheet calculation right. I sort of think I didn’t; that seems high to me. I know some of y’all are better at Excel than I am, so here are my current stats from Typepad — you do the math.

I asked Theodora Blanchfield if she had any substantiation for Will’s numbers. She said:

As I said in the intro, we just asked all the bloggers for their hits and
qualified that, therefore, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Fortunately, I have low blood pressure, so I can use all the salt I want.

A racial Rorschach test

Help me with a little experiment. Go watch this video footage of the mayor of Memphis, Willie Herenton, giving his victory speech upon being elected to an unprecedented fifth term.

For added data, here’s an editorial about his speech in The Commercial Appeal, a newspaper he mentions. Here also is a story showing how the vote broke down along racial lines, and here’s an item about election night from an alternative paper.

What I’m wondering is: Based on this speech, what is your impression of the city of Memphis, and of its mayor?

My Sunday column is a sort of funky one, as it gropes around the problem of the dramatically different ways that black and white Americans see things around them. It’s a question I’ve been pondering anew ever since the Jena Six thing hit the headlines — I was struck by all the well-meaning black folks who were willing to suspend their lives to go march in behalf of some kids who, basically beat up another kid. Yeah, it looked like the justice system overreacted, but how could a person looking at it from afar see such moral clarity in a situation in which I saw no heroes.

This case from Memphis seems another illustration.

If you can, get someone who is not of the same skin color as you to look at the same stuff I’m asking you to look at. I’m guessing that would mean recruiting a black friend, since I have this image — which is in itself probably an unjustified racial assumption — of most of y’all as being way white. If I’m wrong about that, forgive me.

Anyway, please share your thoughts.

Let’s talk trucks

Truckme

Enough with the politics. Let’s talk about something important.

One of my pen-pals I quoted on this post said,

You seem like a nice man Brad– but you need an education in real people.  Put down your latte, your copy of the NYT, and park your Saab.  Now take a walk somewhere around real people, the real other side of America.

Well, I drink my coffee black, and I don’t drive a Saab. In fact, I need me a truck. I need a truck on account of what happened to me last year. See the above photo. My ’89 Ford Ranger was tooling along up I-77, just short of the Forest Drive exit, when all of a sudden it caught fire for no good reason.

This happened to me because I was doing a bad thing: I was on my way to play golf during the working day. I had never done this before. I have certainly never done it since. All of a sudden, a mile or so short of the exit mentioned before, I lost power — the truck just couldn’t mount the hill. Smoke starting billowing from under the hood.

I stupidly assumed the smoke was steam, and that it signaled a busted hose. But it was smoke. After I pulled over, I made a couple of phone calls to let folks know I would be late for the golf game (which in truth was in a good cause — a golf game with Executive Editor Mark Lett and me had been auctioned off for United Way, and surprise of surprises, a couple of people had actually paid for the experience), and to get a tow truck on the way.

Anyway, after I’d made the calls, I noticed the "steam" was still pouring from under the hood. So I got out, and opened it — there was a fire around one of my spark plugs, bigger than the flame from a candle, but smaller than a flaming breadbox.

Truckburn
So I did what anyone would do — I blew it out. And it worked. Then I poured a bottled water on it. That meant I would be quite thirsty as I waited for the next two hours. You can see in the photo at right where a portion of the actual engine block burned away around the plug. Ugly.

Anyway, I’ve been making do with a sedan that I’m about to turn over to my wife, and seeing as how we don’t have a subway system around here (which we should, but nobody listens to me on this), I need transportation, which means I need a nice, small, used pickup.

So I’m looking at two, and I’d like your advice. I think I’ve made up my mind, but I haven’t quite, so your advice might be helpful. I’m going to buy one of the following (both advertised in The State by their owners):

  • Photo_080407_002A 1999 Toyota Tacoma, single-owner, "lady-driven" (I loved that detail), 175,000 miles, but in beautiful
    condition — not so much as a speck of rust on the undercarriage. Being sold from a parking lot of a Food Lion; the owner’s ex-husband meets me there for tire-kicking and test-driving. No toolbox or hardcover over the bed, but a plastic bedliner $5,995
  • 2002ranger004
    A 2002 Ford Ranger, second-owner (current owner has a Carfax report from first owner), 74,000 miles. Owned by a state official (I didn’t figure out who he was until after my second test drive, which was embarrassing, because he has an important job). Beautiful paint job. Hard cover over the bed, which I don’t need, but could use or remove as I saw fit. $5899

I test-drove the Ranger first, and felt like I had a little trouble getting it into first and second gear smoothly. I didn’t know whether that was the truck or me, as my last truck (unfortunately) had automatic transmission, and it had been seven years since I had driven a stick regularly. (Both trucks are 4-cylinder manual, 5-speeds, which is what I’m looking for, seeking the best possible gas mileage.) Other than that, it seemed fine, although I’m used to an extended cab and bucket seats, and this had neither.

The Toyota seemed to shift more smoothly for me from the start, reinforcing my impression that the Japanese are better at trannies than Americans or Germans (my wife’s 1982 Mazda GLC shifted much better than the ’78 Rabbit I was driving at the same time). But I keep worrying about the mileage. Yeah, I know you can give a Toyota at least 100k over most American cars, but that’s still a lot of driving during which something that is thus far undetected could go wrong.

I went back and drove the Ranger again, and guess what? It shifted beautifully, so it was just me the first time (I think). Also — I took it on the highway, and it stayed smooth in fifth gear. The one place where the Toyota was NOT smooth was over 60 mph ("lady-driven," and the lady never went over 55, I’m told), when it developed a very noticeable shimmy — you can see the steering wheel shaking.

The Toyota’s passed the ultimate test — my mechanic looked at it a couple of days ago, and pronounced it good. I’m about to leave the office to go pick up the Ranger and take it to the mechanic. Assuming it passes, too, I think I’ve made up my mind.

But I want to know — what would you do?

Why do YOU like Fred?

Since I was on the subject, I thought I would write my Sunday column on an aspect of the Fred Thompson phenomenon. I talked to Larry Grooms, who was sort of the spokesman for the S.C.-pols-for-Thompson thing yesterday. I’m trying to get ahold of a couple of others to ask them the same question.

You may have seen the Grooms quote in news reports, regarding the GOP field:

"They’re all good guys, but there’s something lacking in every one of
them. I think
Fred Thompson is the type of candidate that many people in this state
are looking for."

What I asked him today was what it was what it was that Thompson had that was "lacking" in the other candidates.

Specifically, I asked what Thompson had that John McCain didn’t have, since Grooms supported McCain in 2000. He didn’t really want to talk about his problems with McCain, but he did talk about the Thompson mystique a little bit.

More on that in my column Sunday.

But in the meantime — the idea of a Thompson candidacy has met a fairly warm reception in this venue. So tell me: What do you think Thompson has that the others don’t?

My big mistake

Here’s a confessional memo I just sent to my associate editors here at the paper. While I await their responses (which could take a while, since one of them is out of the office), I seek your advice as well:

Folks, I need
your advice as to whether I need to do a correction and, if so, what in the
world it would say. Here’s what John McCain said last week during the debate, in
the context of general remarks on immigration, following an accusation from Tom
Tancredo that he (McCain) had favored "amnesty." (Note that he was not
responding to anyone else having said anything about the Fort Dix plot; he just
brought it up.):

My friend, the people that
came, that almost attacked us at Fort Dix — thank God they did not — these
people didn’t come here across our borders; they came with visas that were
expired. So, we’ve got to enforce our border, that’s our first and foremost
priority, but we also have to have a comprehensive solution and it has to be
bipartisan, and I believe we’re close to reaching that, and that’s what the
American people expect us to do. The status quo is unacceptable.

THIS is what I wrote in
my column Sunday:

    Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign
put out a statement purporting to address the proposal that was, to say the
least, oblique: “The recent Fort Dix plot is a stark reminder that the threat of
terrorism has made immigration an important matter of national security. We need
to know who is coming in and who is going out of this country if we are going to
deal with those who are here illegally.”
    As Sen. McCain had said during the debate, the
Fort Dix plotters didn’t sneak into the country illegally. The issues are
completely unrelated.
Essentially, I was
expressing my objection to Giuliani linking Fort Dix and immigration, and I just
dragged in a paraphrase from McCain in which I had thought that he was agreeing
with me. Of course, I still think what I think regardless of what McCain said.
But I was wrong that none of the plotters had entered illegally, and I later
changed the blog version of the column to say, "the Fort Dix plotters didn’t all sneak into
the country illegally."
 
That’s one thing that
would warrant a correction, if y’all think it’s worth it this late. But then, at
the start of the interview this morning, McCain said:

First of all and foremost it
is a national security issue. Since 9/11 the issue has gone from one of either
social or economic or humanitarian to one of national security. The six people
that were apprehended that were planning on attacking Fort Dix were in this
country illegally; three of them had crossed our border illegally, and the other
three had overstayed valid visas, which also describes the dimension of the
problem as well. Now we can’t have 12 million people in the United States of
America who we don’t know who they are or where they are and what they’re doing.
So it has become first and foremost a national security issue, ,and of course,
border security and enforcing our border should be and is in this legislation a
first priority.

Thinking uh-oh, I
screwed up, I said this when I had a chance to ask a
question:
I’m
a little embarrassed because I think I misheard you last week in the debate; I
had thought that you were making the point that what happened at Fort Dix was a
separate issue from this particular immigration issue, but what you’re saying is
the opposite, is that you believe that they’re very closely
connected…
And he
responded thusly:

As I mentioned, three of the people who wanted to
attack Fort Dix came across our Southern border. Every nation has the
requirement to secure its borders; if it doesn’t, it’s not carrying out its
obligations to its citizens.

… I don’t know what impression I gave you, but if we
have people who are able to cross our borders and come into our country without
us taking every step to prevent them from doing that and they do it in an
illegal fashion, then we’re not fulfilling our
obligation.

After all
this, I still think it’s a stretch to conclude that the Fort Dix plot teaches us
that the 12 million people in our country illegally, mostly Mexicans, are a
threat. And that’s what I meant. But I think McCain is right when he points out
(as he did a moment later in the interview, but I’ll spare you THAT quote) that
while most of the illegals are no threat, how will we separate out any who ARE a
threat — and it only takes a few — and protect our country from them, if all
these folks are invisible and underground?
 
So — what do
you think I should do, aside from posting all this on my blog, which I already
plan to do? And if I do a correction, how do I explain what I did wrong in less
than column length?
 
Folks, I
can’t remember when I’ve screwed one short paragraph in a column this
thoroughly. I’m sorry, and embarrassed.
 
—
Brad
 

Brad Warthen
VP/Editorial Page Editor
The State

Actually, I can’t remember when I’ve screwed anything up that thoroughly — particularly, I don’t remember ever having mischaracterized the thrust of what someone was saying to that extent. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to get that right, whatever my flaws. So yeah, ditch that one little paragraph and the column is fine; I stand behind what I said. But that doesn’t make me feel better about it.

 

‘Just dreadful’

Since I started shooting video clips of candidates early this year, the one who protested the most vociferously to being on camera was Karen Floyd, who is arguably the most telegenic candidate running for major office this year. I thought that sort of ironic. She finds being photographed at all — video or still — "just dreadful."

She has a point. The camera is intrusive, although I try to minimize that by using a very small camera sitting next to my notepad on the table. Some candidates don’t even notice it; others have trouble putting it out of their minds.

This makes me worry about polluting the process by making candidates too uncomfortable. But in some cases, I think the video clips can help readers understand a little better why we form some of the impressions we do in these interviews.

I remain torn about this, and my colleagues on the board remain leery of it. They sometimes find it distracting, too. At times in the past, I’ve talked about video-recording entire interviews — say, with gubernatorial and presidential candidates. But I’ve been talked out of it because those chats can be tense and difficult enough without people playing to a camera — we want the candidates’ undivided attention, and we want to give them ours.

It also makes going off the record — a far more useful tool to editorial writers than to reporters, since we don’t want quotes as much as we want to know what is really on people’s minds — rather awkward. When they are on camera, candidates are unlikely even to suggest going off the record, and we might never even know there was something else we could have learned.

Anyway, this is an experiment — sort of dipping our toe in the video waters — and we’re still evaluating its pros and cons. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.

What does a trackback DO for me?

You may recall that not long ago, I asked what trackbacks were. I did it because I had enabled my blog for trackbacks, but I hadn’t gotten any bites yet, and I was wondering what the point was.

Laurin was kind enough to give me a brief lesson in how they work, for which I am appreciative. And I notice Tim has set up a couple of trackbacks to his site (or would that be, from his site? Obviously, this still confuses me).

But the last 13 trackbacks I’ve gotten have been spam — links to sites that sell cheap watches, gambling, and various unmentionables. It’s like wandering through a bazaar in Juarez.

This came up because Phillip mentioned an interesting post on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and I went to it, and I noticed the trackback option, and I thought about trackbacking to it, but then I wondered: What on Earth does that accomplish that Phillip’s link didn’t accomplish? I can make links as prominent as I want — so can other people who want to link to stuff I’ve posted.

So what good is the trackback option — especially when it’s mostly being exploited by spammers? Laurin? Tim? Anyone?

Wait… it just dawned on me. Trackbacks enable me to go to Andrew’s site and place a link to mine there, right? And that depends on whether he has enabled the function, no matter what I’ve done on my site. Right? Well, I want to be generous, too, but should I be letting advertisers use my site for free promotion? I guess I’ll have to decide that.

What do y’all think? Should I keep it enabled, or what?

What happened to Bombay?

Many of y’all can no doubt answer this; I just probably haven’t asked the right people yet, so I’m still in the dark. (And yes, I’ve seen some explanations; I just don’t find them satisfactory.)

What happened to Bombay? Where did it go? Yeah, I know they call it Mumbai now (at least, sometimes), but why?

And how did Peking become Beijing? I mean, those are really different. Or Mao Tse-Tung become whatever they call him now?

I’m probably working on a wrong assumption here, but were the names we used to call these places and people supposed to be phonetic representations of the originals? So did they start pronouncing it differently, or did one dialect achieve hegemony over another and become the official version? Are there Indians who still say "Bombay" or Chinese who will always say "Peking," only they have lost some sort of battle among cultures?

Were the Western imperialists just that incompetent at rendering what they heard when they rolled into these places? Or was it the British insistence upon setting themselves apart from the natives by mispronouncing all foreign words?

Or are people who run these countries just messing with us?

And why do we write Sadr if it’s pronounced "Sodder?" Or is it actually pronounced in some way that the Western tongue can’t get around?

I have many stupid questions. Here’s hoping someone out there has some smart answers.

WHO doesn’t believe The State?

OK, OK, hold off with the jokes. I know I set myself up on that one.

I was just trying to remember: Who is it that does this site (which I have long linked to at left)? A couple of people have mentioned the author’s identity to me in the past, and I seem to recall that maybe it was one of our regular commenters. Or was it just that somebody put that as the link on his or her screen name?

I don’t know. I don’t remember. Does anyone? Does it matter?

Oh, and by the way, we don’t buy ink by the barrel. We’re no pikers. We get it by the train carload.

What IS this thing?

Critter_hires
Speaking of lizards — and we were speaking of "Lizards" in the comments on a previous post — does anybody know what this is?

It was found in a bathroom in my house recently. I wondered why one of my kids called me in the middle of a meeting to tell me about it — until I got home and saw it.

That plastic container it was in is about 10 or 12 inches square. This thing was somewhere between a gecko and an iguana. Note the coins in the picture. I had hoped to catch an image of him (or her) next to the coins for size perspective as soon as it climbed out of the container. But as you can see below, it was off and under the car 10 feet away before I could get off another shot.

The opinion has been expressed that it is a salamander. I have no idea. I do know that it appeared to have gills, which does suggest an amphibian rather than a reptile.

Who knows the answer?

Critter2