Category Archives: Southern Discomfort

SC went for Tillman rather than Hampton

3 Replies

Here’s an observation that occurred to me the weekend of the South Carolina presidential preference primary, but which, being busy, I never got around to writing. It occurred to me again this morning, so here it is…

Before the primary, I wrote that the usual pattern for SC Republicans would be to pick the candidate who seemed most like the boss, or the massa, if you will. That would be Romney. I said it within the context of the possibility of Gingrich overtaking him, but at the same time I thought, wrongly, that most white folk in our state would follow the most patrician candidate just as they followed such men into battle in 1860. That’s what had happened in the last few cycles. OK, there were other factors, such as going with the guy whose turn it was, but that also worked for Romney.

Nice theory. It got shot all to hell.

What South Carolinians did, explaining it in terms of our history, was what they did in the 1890s — they turned away from Wade Hampton, and went for Ben Tillman.

Gingrich, with his fulminations against the uber-rich Yankee Romney and the dirty, no-good press, stirred something deep in the race memory of these voters. He was the closest they could find in these tepid times to fellow populist “Pitchfork” Ben, who urged them to rise up against the hoity-toity ruling class. Of course, Newt is rather tepid by comparison. Newt made the crowd roar by scornfully dismissing that Negro who dared to challenge him on his “food-stamp president” line. But that’s thin stuff compared to when ol’ Ben said he would “willingly lead a mob in lynching a Negro who had committed an assault upon a white woman.” Black men, said Tillman, “must remain subordinate or be exterminated.”

And Newt’s put-down of the media in the next debate was downright wimpy compared to Ben’s nephew gunning down my predecessor, N. G. Gonzales, at noon on Main Street for having dared write critical editorials about him. (He was acquitted by the ancestors of some of those Gingrich voters, who decided, after the editorials were entered into evidence, that the editor had it coming.)

No, Gingrich is no Tillman. But I suppose angry white folks have to settle for what they can get these days.

You must, of course, consider me a biased source. The State newspaper, as you may know, was founded for the purpose of fighting Tillmanism. The newspaper was from the start opposed to lynching (those wild-eyed liberals!), and has since that one incident frowned on shooting editors as well. And some of my own ancestors were anti-Tillman. My great-grandparents were appalled when they found themselves living next to Sen. Tillman in Washington. (My great-grandfather Bradley was a lawyer for the Treasury Department, and later helped found the GAO.)

In conclusion, let me say this this analogy, too, is imperfect. It doesn’t explain why, for instance, all those rather patrician, or at least Establishment, Republicans went for Gingrich at the last minute. That’s rather more complicated, and in some cases had to do with rivalries and resentments that wouldn’t make much sense to folks who are not SC Republican insiders. Some of it, for instance, was about stopping Nikki Haley from seeming to have a win. There were other old scores being settled, some going back a number of years. Once I can get some of these folks to talk about it on the record, I’ll write more about that.

But I think my analogy has at least a ring of truth in it when applied to the great mass of voters out there who never ran a campaign or even met many of these movers and shakers. Or am I attaching to much importance to those visceral roars when Gingrich baited black, liberals and the media in those debates?

Discuss…

South Carolina is now an electoral outlier

35 Replies

On Monday, Bobby Harrell was talking about taking legislative steps to try to ensure South Carolina’s status as the first-in-the-South presidential primary (for both parties, not just the GOP).

But nine days earlier, SC GOP primary voters opted to undermine the best excuse for the Republican national committee, at least, to give South Carolina precedence. For the first time since 1980, they went out of their way to support a candidate who would NOT be the eventual nominee.

So why should anyone care what South Carolina thinks four years from now?

I, for one, will miss all the attention when it drifts away. I like it when the world is paying attention to us for something other than making jackasses of ourselves. I like the buzz. I like South Carolinians having a chance to affect grand events. And yes, I enjoy doing the national and international media interviews. Most importantly, who’s going to pay for me to take a mid-winter break in Key West when nobody cares any more what SC thinks?

I certainly wish my fellow SC voters had taken a moment to think about these things before they capriciously wasted their votes on Newt Gingrich on Jan. 21. But no, they were intent on throwing it all away.

For a moment there, it did look as though Floridians would accept the SC judgment as an early clue to the new direction, but then they woke up and said to themselves, “Wait a minute… this is Newt Gingrich! And we’re not South Carolina. We don’t go off on wild hairs, firing on Fort Sumter and voting for bombastic egoists…”

And they settled down and did what South Carolina usually settles down and does, but didn’t this time: Picked the safe choice, the obvious choice, the guy whose turn it is. They put Mitt Romney back on his inevitability path, and did so decisively.

And already out there, they’re forgetting South Carolina. I can feel it… The next time they pay attention to us, it will be Jon Stewart making fun of us again. And in the unlikely event that Mitt Romney is elected president, he’ll feel less grateful to South Carolina than Barack Obama does (the incumbent at least had an important primary victory here).

We’re drifting… drifting… into irrelevance…

Sigh…

Purple states smarter than reds and blues

5 Replies

At least, that’s the uncomfortable conclusion of blue-state writer who wanted to prove that such folk were smarter than red-staters:

To get to the bottom of things, I had my assistant Una dump McDaniel’s state IQ numbers into a spreadsheet, weight them by population, and then divide them into three groups: red for states consistently choosing Republicans in the last three presidential elections; blue for always voting Democratic; and purple for swing states.

Result: average IQ for red states vs. blue states was essentially the same (red 99, blue 99.5). Conclusions: Are liberals smarter than conservatives? Some social scientists sure think so. Are blue states smarter than red states? Sadly for us cyanophiles, no.

But here’s the most significant data point, I think: in the purple states — the ones that swung back and forth — the average IQ according to Una’s spreadsheet was 100.9, appreciably above that for either the blue states or red states. In other words — and this has the shock of truth — the people in the purple states weren’t rigidly liberal or conservative, but rather had enough on the ball to consider the choices before them and occasionally change their minds.

So, it comes down to what I’ve been telling y’all over and over: We swing voters are the people who actually think about our votes. It stands to reason that places where we predominate would be smarter.

I’ll bet his assistant, Una, is one of us. Bet she’s good-looking, too.

This inspires a possible tagline for the UnParty: “We’re way smarter than the rest of y’all.”

OK, so it could use some work. For instance, the word “y’all” might be over the heads of folks in blue states.

But it’s a start…

Note to WSJ: There’s no such state as ‘Carolina’

3 Replies

The Wall Street Journal thinks  there’s a vote today in someplace called “Carolina.” Good thing I know reporters have nothing to do with headlines. Because Valerie Bauerlein, who’s name is on this story, knows better.

As for the copy desk up there, lemme ‘splain: There’s no such place. Occasionally you’ll hear such a mythical land referred to, but only when you’re in that hermaphroditic city, Charlotte. It’s metropolitan area straddles two entirely different states, states that have little to do with each other politically — we’re no more alike that other state than we are Georgia, and no one accuses us of that.

So, rather than refer to both states, folks in that market say “Carolina.” But down here, it’s not a place we know.

Down here, we have a greater sense of place than that. We don’t want to be mistaken for North Carolina, and I’m quite confident they don’t want to be mistaken for us.

OK?

In the end, SC Republicans vote for the ‘boss’

11 Replies

Thought I should share with you this story by my friend and former colleague Aaron Sheinin, writing in the Atlanta paper. I think this is officially the umpteenth story about South Carolina to put “down and dirty” in the headline.

Here’s the good part:

Brad Warthen, who spent 22 years writing and editing political news at The State newspaper in Columbia, said South Carolina voters are typically “boring” when it comes to presidential contests.

“Even though we are the state that seceded first and would do it again and all that kind of stuff, there is this anti-establishment, anti-government, hyperindividualism thing, but when it comes right down to it, we kind of vote for the ‘boss,’” said Warthen, now a public relations executive who still writes about politics on his personal blog.

The 2012 cycle seemed different, though, until about mid-December, Warthen said. Perry leaped to the top of the polls after joining the race in August. Then it was Georgia’s Herman Cain who enjoyed front-runner status while Gingrich held that role from late November through mid-December.

“Finally, it’s like, ‘Oh, well, we know we’re going to nominate Romney, let’s just get on with it,’” Warthen said…

After I gave that “boss” quote to Aaron, I told him I had been about to say, “in the end we kind of vote for the massa,” playing a bit on our history. But I had decided against it, partly because people might have found the reference confusing. He said he thought that was a good call.

(Here’s what I was thinking when I thought of “massa.” I was thinking of all the poor whites who got suckered into fighting the Civil War by the massas back then. Nowadays, while those same whites’ descendants love to get excited about fringe candidates, particularly the ones who appeal to their sense of personal freedom — which was the same thing the slaveowners played on in 1860 — in the end they go with the candidate who looks most like the master of the plantation. See? People wouldn’t have gotten all that. They would have thought I was saying something about black voters, and gone, “Huh?”)

Jon Stewart enjoying SC, as always

4 Replies

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 – In the South of Madness
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Note that this time, he’s not even waiting for us to make fools of ourselves. He’s just riffing on our reputation.

I guess this is what you call pre-emptive mockery…

It’s all Jake’s fault, his own caucus keeps saying

12 Replies

I enjoyed this portion of the little heads-up from the Senate Republican caucus about the legislative session beginning today:

ON THE CALENDAR

Department of Administration: Set for special order

Charter Schools: Being blocked by Democrats

Governor / Lt Governor Joint Ticket: Being blocked by Senator Knotts and a couple Democrats

Appointment of Superintendent of Education: Being blocked by Democrats

PPP and Department of Corrections Restructuring: Being blocked by Senator Knotts and Democrats

That Jake! They just can’t seem to keep that ol’ boy in line.

Haley & Loftis agree on ONE thing: Romney

1 Reply

Maybe Mitt Romney is a uniter after all, if he can get Nikki Haley and Curtis Loftis on the same team:

Friends,

This week I was honored to speak before several grassroots organizations, including groups like the Greenville Tea Party and the Lexington County GOP.  These folks took time out of their evenings to gather because they care deeply about our state and nation.

Their gracious reception reminded me well of the hard work, tenacity, and assistance these good folk have given to me during my campaign and tenure in office as your State Treasurer. Being with these heartfelt conservatives fills me with renewed energy to represent them and makes me determined to work harder and longer on their behalf.

I am impressed at the respect and deference that my brothers and sisters in the conservative movement have shown me. As State Chairman of Mitt Romney’s campaign, I can tell you that there are six qualified candidates in this race and my friend Mitt will certainly not get every vote, but the ability of the most conservative members of the movement to listen and discuss Mitt Romney is impressive, and gives me hope that our nominee, when chosen, will unite us in our efforts.

The latest poll, released today, shows Governor Romney in the lead here in South Carolina. This reaffirms my heartfelt conviction that most voters believe that Mitt is the man to send Barack Obama back to Chicago.

Be Well,

Curtis M. Loftis, Jr.

Last seen at each other’s throats over… oh, I forget what it was about, but it was bitter — the gov and treas have come together over Mitt. Now if they can just get their aforementioned Tea Party friends to go along…

Is it possible that Perry has dumbed his message down even MORE, just for li’l ol’ SC?

13 Replies

OK, so Rick Perry, who was not just on the ropes, but collapsed in his corner — his corner man’s arm cocked back ready to chuck the towel into the ring — before deciding to make one last comeback in South Carolina, has come up with a TV ad just for us.

Everything’s riding on this, mind you…

And here it is, in its entirety:

“Values” Script:


Gov. Perry: “As the son of tenant farmers from the West Texas town of Paint Creek, I learned the values of hard work, faith and family.


“I took those values with me when I served our country as a pilot in the Air Force. I returned home to farm and ranch with my father and married my high school sweetheart. The values I learned served me well as Governor of Texas, and will continue to guide me as President.


“I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.”

Or, to be even briefer, Ah’m a regler feller, vote fer me.

Yep. The guy who has lowered trite saynothingism to the crudest of art forms, who has spent a fortune boring us in Iowa, has dumbed it down even more. Just for us.

Do you feel insulted? I feel insulted. I feel more insulted than I’ve felt since “Tinker, Tailor” didn’t come to Columbia as a mainstream commercial release (although I do hope to get to Nickelodeon this weekend).

Come, on Rick — show me there’s something there! Give me something to agree with, or disagree with. I mean, really — do you think South Carolinians are so dumb that they haven’t even absorbed the fact that you’re running as a good ol’ Southern boy?

Time’s a wastin’, boy. If you’ve got something to tell us, tell us. Otherwise, run along on home.

Man the barricades; run out the guns! Never mind: It’s just another hyperbolic rant from the SC GOP

28 Replies

For a brief moment there, when I saw the headline on the release, I had the light of battle in my eye and was calling for my sword… but then I realized it was just more hyperbolic, apocalyptic silliness from the South Carolina GOP:

South Carolina is Under Attack

Over the past few months we have endured the full effects of the federal government’s war against South Carolina. While we try to deal with problems on a state level, they federal government has tried to block our actions multiple times.

For example, the federal government has trampled over our right to hold fair and free elections by striking down Voter ID, taken away our ability to secure our state from illegal immigration while leaving Americas borders unsecured, and nearly derailed the ability of Boeing to create jobs in Charleston thanks to the NLRB.

As our state attempts to monitor our borders, recruit industry, and secure our elections, the federal government’s efforts cripple our ability to improve our state.

Ultimately, the federal government is putting our state’s future in jeopardy, and we have tried to limit ourselves on relying on Washington and the 16 trillion dollars of debt Congress has accrued.

And we will not give up the fight. The federal government will continue to suggest that we can’t secure our own future but the S.C. Senate Republican Caucus will continue the fight against this every step of the way.

-Wesley Donehue
[Senate Republican] Caucus Spokesman

Maybe the folks who make those excruciatingly boring ads — such as this one and this one — for the presidential candidates should get my Pub Politics friend Wesley to write some stuff for them, spice things up a bit. Maybe we’ll see some real fire in a Bachmann ad, since Wesley’s working with her…

I don’t blame Wesley for the nonsense in that message; I have little doubt that his assertions reflect well the views of many of the Republican state senators he works for. They believe this stuff.

The irony here is that, with the exception of the completely uncalled-for (and recently abandoned) outrage of the NLRB business, none of these are cases of the federal government getting aggressive with the state of South Carolina. Quite the opposite. Voter ID was a completely uncalled-for attempt to address a largely imaginary problem in a way that invited invocation of the Voting Rights Act. As for South Carolina’s attempt to completely usurp one of the few functions that is clearly federal, the control of the nation’s borders, well I should smile, as Mark Twain would have said.

And the NLRB thing didn’t turn out to be much of an “attack,” did it?

As satirists viewing us from afar well know, the only entity “crippling” South Carolina’s ability to improve itself is South Carolina. Most of our wounds are self-inflicted.

Newt answers flag question as I would

3 Replies

Our friend Michael Rodgers brings this to my attention:

Brad,

Have you seen this video with Newt in Charleston?

The reactions of the crowd are revolting.  Why would they cheer so
much?  After all, the people of South Carolina want the flag down.
Our will is being thwarted by our legislature.  That’s where we are
today.  This issue is just one example of far too many issues where
partisan politics and legislative dominance trample over what’s
clearly right.

BTW, the Republican presidential primary in SC is just a few days
after MLK day.  It’s Saturday the 21st, when MLK day is Monday the
16th.  Should be an interesting week.

Regards,

Mike

Well, I have to say first that Newt answered the question about the way I would — although perhaps for different reasons, since he’s running for the GOP nomination here. Of course what we South Carolinians fly on the State House grounds is our business and no one else’s. And if I were a presidential candidate passing through from elsewhere, if asked, I would say, “That’s your problem, not mine.”

If someone from elsewhere could somehow coerce South Carolina into removing the flag, nothing would be accomplished. The only way that anything is accomplished by furling the flag is if South Carolina grows up enough to decide, on its own, through our elected representatives, to take that step.

That step is long, long overdue. Every day that we leave it there is an insult to our ancestors as well as to ourselves and our neighbors today. We’re not hurting anyone in the world but South Carolina by flying it, and it’s incumbent on us to decide we’ve engaged in far more than enough nonsense, and put the thing away. A banner designed to be taken into battle in a war we lost 146 years ago should be under glass in a museum (and we have one for that purpose), or represented with a modest bronze plaque, not flying as though it and what it stands for is alive.

It’s no one else’s concern. Of course, it helps them decide what they think of us. But so far, we’ve been satisfied to let them think what they like. Which is fine, in a way. Because in the end, we need to get rid of the flag because we understand that it’s wrong, that it’s something we need to put behind us. If we did it simply because of what others thought, and still wanted, deep-down, to fly it, nothing would be accomplished. We would not have grown as a people.

Everything I’ve ever written about the flag has been aimed at persuading my fellow South Carolinians who are not yet convinced that we need to go ahead and take it down. It’s about us, the people of this state. Always has been.

A sober harrumph about Redneck TV

6 Replies

It is a comment upon the state of journalism, of the South, of popular culture, of the Zeitgeist, and all sorts of other things that bore me to mention that this morning, The State ran a well-promoted piece on the phenomenon of “Redneck TV.”

No, I’m not saying a South Carolina journalist took it upon himself or herself to comment on this trend. The paper ran a canned piece from The Los Angeles Times. And it didn’t say much, beyond placing “Ice Road Truckers” (which, to me, still ranks as the show least likely, of all shows in the history of television, to interest anyone on the planet Earth as a recurring series) within a certain context of genre.

At least NPR, also reporting on this phenomenon (there must have been a free feed for entertainment journos sometime in the last few days out on the Left Coast), bothered to say something about it. Didn’t say much, just a harrumph, but that’s better than nothing:

These shows give you a South with no people of color, and they weirdly lack contact with sophisticated southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas; I guess it’s tough to play the bumpkin card when you’re looking at skyscrapers and a booming technology corridor.

It helps to think of reality TV shows as situation comedies for a new generation. And every TV fan knows sitcoms depend on stereotypes to fuel their best jokes. On these shows, decades of stereotypes about the South have risen again, ready to make a new generation laugh at the expense of real understanding.

Despite reality TV’s tendency to stupefy everything it touches, perhaps it’s time for these programs to actually get real, and give us a vision of Southern culture that reaches beyond the fun loving redneck.

Yes, as commentary goes, that’s pretty formulaic and trite, grumbling about stereotypes. But at least NPR took time to disapprove of such goings-on. And I appreciate that.

How does this happen? I’ll tell ya…

12 Replies

This being a family blog, one doesn’t usually find this sort of thing here. But since I’m told that it actually appeared in a South Carolina newspaper — it was all the talk at the round table of regulars at the Capital City Club this morning — I suppose I should deal with it.

The above image is purportedly from The Greenville News, and The Village Voice wonders about it:

How does that even happen?

We’ve reached out to the Greenville News copy desk, who hopefully will be able to chime in on how the most hilarious copy editing mistake of the year came to be.

Jim Romenesko spoke to a reporter there who said that the paper was getting complaints already (from people who are apparently no fun) and apologizing to them.

Well, I’ll tell ya…

  • First, someone appears to have violated a cardinal rule — don’t put anything, in any way, shape or form, into copy, however temporarily or intended for internal consumption, that you wouldn’t want to see in the paper. Ever. It’s tempting to share sarcastic asides between reporters and editors, but get up and walk across the room to do it. Don’t ever put it in the copy, because the chance of this happening is too great. (When I supervised reporters, I told them not even to make the slugs — the internal names — of their stories — anything embarrassing. Because, back in the pre-pagination days, it was way too easy for that stray piece of type at the top to get stuck to the page after it was trimmed off in the composing room.)
  • Second, the page didn’t get proofed. At all. By anyone. There are a lot of ways this can happen in understaffed newsrooms, but here’s the most merciful scenario: The page was proofed, and “corrected” type was sent through, and somehow had this word in it (perhaps it was the initial response of a stressed editor who had thought that page was gone already), and no one looked at the page again after it was put on there.

But basically, there is no excuse that serves.

It’s easy to blame this, as Romenesko does, on the extreme practice at newspaper companies of having copyediting done off-site. But basically, with this sort of error, if it’s going to happen, it could happen anywhere. The reason having copyediting done off-site is phenomenally stupid is that it increases the chance of an error that no local person would make, and only a local person would notice. And if mid-size to small papers are not locally authoritative, they are nothing.

By the way, something like this happened at The Jackson (TN) Sun when I worked there back in the 70s. We were in that interim stage between linotype machines and front-end computer systems. Copy would be edited and then output onto a rolled-up strip of punchtape. The tape would be fed into a typesetting machine that would roll out the copy on photographic paper. Occasionally, the tape would hang up while being fed through the machine. The result would be a stutter, and a letter would be repeated over and over until the kink worked its way through.

The initial error would not be human. But it was up to humans to catch it and correct it before the page was let go.

One day, that failed. The punch tape on an obit — an obit, of all things, the holy of holies — snagged briefly while going through the machine. Instead of saying that services would be held at the funeral home, it came out, “services will be held at the fukkkkkkkkkk home.”

It was caught partly through the press run, but some papers had already gone out. Including the one that went to the bereaved family.

Our publisher — or was it the executive editor? — personally delivered a corrected copy to that family, along with the most abject of apologies.

The Ariail cartoon that plumb tickled them ol’ fancy-pants NLRB lawyers

5 Replies

Here’s the Robert Ariail cartoon that the smart-a__ Yankee NLRB attorneys were passing around and giggling about:

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for the federal labor agency fighting Boeing’s new factory in North Charleston, N.C., repeatedly joked among themselves about the dispute and exchanged a political cartoon portraying S.C. Sen. Glenn McConnell as a crass-speaking confederate soldier, according to internal documents released Wednesday.

They enjoyed it as much as they could, but we can take satisfaction from knowing that they couldn’t possibly have enjoyed it on the deeper, convoluted levels of meaning that are accessible to us, the cognoscenti.

See how easy that was? Just vote it down…

46 Replies

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This Rachel Maddow report out of Louisiana comes to our attention today.

Couple of things to point out as you watch…

  1. See how familiar that display in front of the courthouse looks?
  2. See how easy it was to remove that flag? A  public hearing, followed by an 11-1 vote to take it down.

Our Legislature could do the same. If it only wanted to.

Of course, now that I see that embed in place and see that headline, Rachel isn’t helping us much. Ixnay on the ictoryvay against the Onfederacykay, OK?

But ignore the headline, and ignore that it’s Rachel Maddow, and just pay attention to the good-sense story that is told… Look at it for what it is, not the attitudes of the messenger.

Even the rednecks pick on South Carolina now

1 Reply

This morning, I could not tolerate another second of the pledge drive on ETV Radio (even when I have money to give, and DO give, I can’t abide actually listening to the pledge drive; it’s all those repetitions of the phone number that get to me), and I didn’t like what was on Steve-FM, so I decided to get my first John Boy and Billy fix in a long while.

And that’s when I heard the Tim Wilson song you hear in the video above.

Partial lyrics:

You can go to war when you’re 18
But you can’t buy a beer
You can load missiles on a submarine
But you can’t buy a pistol here
You can breathe chemical weapon fumes
But they don’t want you to smoke
so when you’re shootin’ up a bar in Baghdad, don’t order a rum and coke

OK so far, typical redneck comic lament. But then you get to:

You can be a governor at 21
Or a president at 35
You can be the senator from South Carolina
If you can just stay alive…

This has gone too far. Jon Stewart picking on us is something you’d expect, but when the rednecks start giving us a hard time over our political predilections and idiosyncrasies, maybe we’d better start talking seriously about making some changes.

A morning ‘rant’ about a borderline word

5 Replies

Maybe that headline’s wrong. Maybe it’s not a borderline word. Maybe it’s clearly over the border. I don’t know. Y’all decide.

A friend had a bad start to her day this morning, and vented a bit.

I should explain that the friend is black, and she works for a large organization in the Midlands. That’s all I’ll say, since she asked me not to identify her. Here is her self-described “rant,” with all the installments run together:

I can’t even say Good Tuesday bc I’m starting with a rant.
Staff meeting today and co-worker refers to a church as the “colored” church. Really? How do u respond to that?
I know that’s how some of my coworkers think, but they have to verbalize it every so often. Lack of motivation is bad enough.
Ignorance is another story. That is all. Rant is complete.
I don’t even know if he’d get why I’m upset.

I’ll bet he wouldn’t.

In fact, as a Clueless White Guy myself, I really don’t know how my black friends would react if I used the word “colored.” Of course, this not being 1955, it would never occur to me. It’s so…

Well, the first word that strikes me is “anachronistic.” It makes me wonder, first, how old this guy is. I’m getting on up there, and while I remember the old folks using this word in my childhood, I don’t think I had occasion to use it myself. (No, wait! Maybe once… Oh, it’s too long ago to quantify… I was a tiny kid at the time.) For the old white folks, it was then the “polite” word they used to describe black folks.

By the time I was aware that there was a such a thing as demographic designations, the official, universally-approved word — if you had to refer to a person’s “race,” which I avoided and still avoid when possible (I was reluctant to do so in my second paragraph above, but it seemed essential to the story) — was “negro.” Then, it was “black.” Which I resisted. I preferred, if forced to refer to race, to use a word that sounded clinical, and technical, and less likely to divide people on an emotional level. “Black” sounded to me like, well, like we weren’t fellow human beings. Black and white are opposites, and have nothing in common. It seemed to me, as a teenager, a polarizing word.

But eventually I adopted it. My acceptance was eased by the fact that it was only one syllable. Force me to acknowledge race, and I’d get through it more quickly and move on. I liked that part of it. So I got used to it.

And I’ve stuck with it. I don’t think I’ll ever reconcile to the seven-syllable “African-American,” which is even longer than the “Afro-American” that was briefly popular in my youth. It seems to dwell WAY too long on something that I believe unnecessarily divides people. The only thing worse than that would be “European-American” — eight syllables — which thankfully has never caught on with anyone. (It’s so irrelevant. I never knew a single ancestor who even knew an ancestor who came from Europe. What would be the point?)

Yet, you’ll hear be use “African-American” in an extended discussion of race. Mainly because I get tired of saying “black” after awhile. (When you’re an editorial page editor in South Carolina, or a member of the Columbia Urban League board as I was for a decade, you end up having a LOT of extended discussions of race.)

But it has never occurred to me to say “colored.”

Did that guy think it was cool because he’d heard some of more politically conscious black people say “people of color?” Maybe. But you know, I’m not sure white people are licensed to say that. I’ve heard them try, and it sounds extremely stilted and phony — even more stilted than when black speakers say it. It’s like listening to people who learned a foreign language as adults. The pronunciation may be approximately correct, but the accent is all wrong.

“Colored” used to be a euphemism. Was it for this guy today? Did he use it just because my friend was present? What would he have said otherwise?

Maybe he went home today congratulating himself on his tact. Do you think?

Yep, they’re laughing at us in the UK, too…

1 Reply

Rick Noble shared this with me today at Rotary, from The Economist:

IT’S a great day in South Carolina, and if you don’t believe it, ask Governor Nikki Haley. On September 27th the governor ordered the 16 directors of cabinet agencies under her direct control to change the way their employees answer the telephone. So now when phoning, say, the Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services or the Department of Employment and Workforce, callers are supposed to hear this cheery greeting: “It’s a great day in South Carolina. How may I help you?”

Ms Haley says the new greeting will boost the morale of state workers and help her to sell the state. “It’s part of who I am,” she declares. “As hokey as some people may think it is, I’m selling South Carolina as this great, new, positive state that everybody needs to look at.”

The blogosphere has been inundated with people mocking the new salutation and proposing alternative greetings. One suggestion: “It’s still better here than Mississippi. How can I help you?” Another was more explicit: “Thank you for calling South Carolina where unemployment is high, morale is low and political leaders are very busy wasting your resources. How may I direct your call?”…

Man, I miss reading The Economist. I used to get it at the paper. But I’m already paying for too much other stuff that used to be covered by the paper, so that’s fallen by the wayside. (Man what DID I spend my salary on back when my club memberships and subscriptions were paid for?)

I used to know the South Carolina writer who wrote for The Economist. I sort of see (or imagine I see — “That blame media is SO bah-ussed!”) her political views in the particular facts chosen in this brief piece — and they are not views that are consistent with those of the editors of The Economist. But I’m not going to name her, because it might be somebody else by now, and then I’d look stupid. Or rather, stupidER.

Guess who topped this list of dumb governor tricks? Yep, ‘Gov. Sunshine’…

11 Replies

I’m beginning to suspect that when people go to compile such things as this piece on Salon, “Why are the governors of America saying such dumb things?,” they look at South Carolina first. The very first example given was:

According to the Associated Press, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that forthwith, state employees are to answer official phones with a cheery, “It’s a great day in South Carolina!”

Gee whiz, that should solve everything! As AP noted, “Never mind the state’s 11.1 percent jobless rate and the fact that one in five residents are on Medicaid.” Great day, indeed. Presumably, Gov. Sunshine plans to accompany the next set of her state’s unemployment figures with a chorus of “We’re in the Money.”

Which frankly isn’t even fair. It’s not even something Nikki said; it’s something she made everybody else say, which therefore goes into the category of dumb things governors do.

If they wanted something she said, they could have gone to the thing Cindi was writing about — the one about all the drug fiends applying to work at SRS. She apparently said that one over and over, which should have qualified for extra points.

But I’m really tired of national media, and comedians, looking first to South Carolina for material (as Jon Stewart keeps saying, “THANK YOU, South Carolina!”).

I’m even more tired with our politicians giving them reason to.

Well, the Onion nailed us that time

6 Replies

On an earlier post, Burl shared this link to The Onion:

Obama Visits South-Carolina-Ravaged South Carolina

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011 | ISSUE 47•38

COLUMBIA, SC—Calling the devastation “heartbreaking and appalling,” President Barack Obama toured South-Carolina-ravaged South Carolina Tuesday, vowing never to turn his back on the 4.6 million residents whose lives have been turned upside down by the horrors of South Carolina. “For decades, citizens from Columbia to Walterboro have suffered a kind of pain and anguish that most Americans could never fathom,” said Obama, who later led a silent prayer for the countless victims of the Southern state. “But I’m confident you will rebound. Maybe not in a month. Maybe not in a year. But South Carolina will one day emerge from the ashes of this South-Carolina-torn land.” Obama will reportedly be traveling to Charleston next, a city the president said has miraculously escaped the devastation of South Carolina.

Yeah, that’s pretty much us. I wish it weren’t. I wish it were some outsider view that unfairly stereotypes us as something we are not, but that’s us.

There was a time when we could have blamed “the Yankees” for keeping us down economically and otherwise. Laughably, some still do (see, “Tea Party,” demands that Congress quit “stepping on our rights,” move to ban U.S. currency, etc.).

But nowadays, we have ourselves to blame for the fact that we lag behind their neighbors. And inexplicably, we keep marching down the path that has brought us to where we are.