Will newspapers — or rather, institutions that once were “newspapers” — ever figure out the new business model? Or will their plunge toward extinction run its course, leaving it to others to chart the new course?

As near as I can tell, the full-service, general-circulation local daily is already dead. Dead to me, anyway. It’s certainly not what I signed on to work for all those years ago. I didn’t just lose a job in 2009, I had my horse shot out from under me. It would be bad enough to see someone else doing a job I loved; it’s something else altogether to see no one doing it. And I’m talking industrywide, not just my old paper. What’s sad is to see the poor creature writhing on the ground, with no one yet having put it out of its misery.

And I lost my horse because the horse lost that which sustained it — the advertising business model. It wasn’t about a transaction between journalist and reader. That relationship was always underwritten by a third party — the advertiser. That’s what went away. Over the last few years, publishing a newspaper ceased to be like having a license to print money. And the business-side folks who came up in those fat days have not figured out how to support newsrooms and editorial page editors (and, more importantly to readers, world-class editorial cartoonists).

Ironically, the market for news and commentary is as vibrant as ever. People are hungry for what we do. Trouble is, no one has figured out how to make it pay. Least of all the people who run newspapers.

There’s a piece in the NYT today that initially seems to say that this year, finally, newspapers are going to start paying for their content. Over the past few years, one sees a story like this every few months, but nothing happens. That’s because, after working themselves into a state over how foolish they’ve been giving away their content for the past decade and a half, newspapers buck each other up enough to say, “Dammit, we’re going to start charging for it!” But then, they all watch each other to see who’s going to step out first, and when no one does, they collapse like jelly, and resume quivering and moaning over their plight until the next time they almost get up the nerve to take the plunge.

Here’s the latest such story. As you’ll see, it starts out full of bluster:

Over more than a decade, consumers became accustomed to the sweet, steady flow of free news, pictures, videos and music on the Internet. Paying was for suckers and old fogeys. Content, like wild horses, wanted to be free.

Now, however, there are growing signs that this free ride is drawing to a close.

Newspapers, including this one, are weighing whether to ask online readers to pay for at least some of what they offer…

Before collapsing, jellylike:

So will future consumers look back on 2010 as the year they finally had to reach into their own pockets?

Industry experts have their doubts, saying that pay systems might work, but in limited ways and only for some sites. Publishers who sounded early this year as though they were raring to go have not yet taken the leap, and the executives who advocate change tend to range from vague to cautious in making any predictions about fundamentally changing the finances of their battered businesses.

Although is still maintains that A Line Has Been Crossed:

But one thing clearly has shifted already, in a year rife with magazine closures and newspaper bankruptcies: conventional wisdom among media companies has swung hard from the belief that pay walls would only curb traffic and stifle ad revenue, to the view that media businesses need to try something new, because the current path appears to lead to extinction.

Like you’re not extinct already.

By the way, I’m not saying newspapers have to charge for their content, although I suspect that in some way either they, or the entities that inherit their role of keeping the republic informed, will do so. The trick is how. And if I knew the answer, I’d be making millions as a consultant. Which I’m not.

So while I may scoff at the fecklessness of my former industry, I really don’t know more than they do. But maybe, being on the outside, I’m in a better position to figure it out, even though I can’t tell yet.

One thing I will say, though: I was wrong to say that no one is doing what I used to do. Actually, I’m still doing it. At least, I’m doing the blogging part, which for the last four years I was at the paper was the one thing I was doing that was forward-looking. Other people who once made newspapers what they were are still doing it in their ways. Jeffrey Day has gone beyond me and started selling ads on his blog (although not to the extent of the Shop Tart), and Robert Ariail is out there winning major international awards for what he is still doing.

So maybe those industry-watchers who are still watching the industry are looking in the wrong place…

Last week I experienced a different sort of Christmas party. And I had a great time.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been working on becoming a Mad Man, hanging out at a local advertising agency. It started with the president of the company letting me use an empty office to blog and work on my job search, and has gradually morphed into my helping out with some business development, consulting and PR work — and a little writing, as well — all while I keep up the job hunt.

Not to continue being coy, that company is ADCO, here on Pickens Street just off of Gervais. (And that’s my ADCO office you see in the background of such recent videos as this one and this one.) The president, Lanier Jones, is also president of my Rotary. If you don’t know Lanier, you may remember him from a column I wrote about going with him to give blood for the first time.

Anyway, Lanier and his partners Brian Murrell and Lora Prill and all the folks — including my son’s mother-in-law, Ginny Herring, with whom I now share a precious grandchild — have all been wonderfully welcoming, and we’ve had some good times together so far. Such as the Christmas party Friday.

It was an unusual party. We had it at Hobby Lobby, and, once the refreshments were cleared away, Brian handed out blank canvases and urged us to create some artwork for the walls of ADCO. He provided some guidance, fortunately — he wanted something in the style of Mark Rothko (he particularly held out the one at right as an example), and in colors that would work well in the office.

Unfortunately, I did my painting over in a corner without much reference to what everybody else was doing, and my painting came out a little … different. I did the rectangles of color, but then I couldn’t resist the urge to have something going on in each of my rectangles. And I ended up in a weird place. Anyway, I proudly took my painting home to show off, and I have the feeling that it would be OK with Brian if it stayed there. Nor, I notice, has my wife hung it on the refrigerator. Of course, it’s almost as big as the refrigerator…

If Brian decides it doesn’t pass muster and I get to keep it, it’s for sale — for, um, $100 … I mean,$10,000 (out of which I’ll happily reimburse Brian for the canvas and paints). Unless you think I should ask for more.

Actually, you’re probably thinking something else… in which case keep it to yourself. Sheesh. Everybody’s gotta be a critic… Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll have you know I’m a freakin’ ARTIST, man, and I will not be contained by your petit bourgeois standards…

A warning: Some of you will find this disturbing, or at least inappropriate for this forum. That was the reaction I got the last time I shared a dream — a long, rambling thing in which I ran for governor, back in 2006. Since then I’ve sort of held back on the workings of my unconscious, deciding that that goes just a little bit farther into my thinking than my readers want to go.

But I wrote out this one with the intention of posting it, and now, after about 90 days delay, I figure I might as well post it. I wrote it out on Sept. 21, and it refers to the dream having occurred “last week,” so that places it about mid-September. The good news is that the weird after-effects of the dream are long gone now, but it really bothered me there for a couple of days.

This being the season in which we celebrate dreams — from Joseph‘s to Scrooge‘s — I’ll go ahead and get it completely out of my system by posting it here.

Several things to note before you read it: First, the title is a bit of a misnomer. I wasn’t actually a “terrorist” in the dream. I had just gotten mixed up with armed revolutionaries. I say this not to excuse this imaginary cabal. The distinction I wish to draw is more semantic than moral. “Revolutionaries” is closer to the mark than “terrorists,” although the effect is often the same, and sometimes the tactics are indistinguishable. The odd thing is that I am no more a revolutionary than I am a terrorist, which underlines the weirdness of the dream. To fully understand just how uncomfortable, how alarmed, how disturbed to my very core I was in this dream situation, you have to understand that engaging in armed insurrection is pretty much unimaginable to me. I don’t even much like peaceful demonstrations in the street. Even a “good revolution” such as our own in 1775 leaves me uncomfortable. I don’t think I could have justified standing at Lexington and Concord and firing on those redcoats, long before the Declaration was signed. Once we had declared ourselves a separate nation, fine. But firing on the duly constituted authority without such a declaration… that bothers me. I have such a respect for the rule of law that it really, really bothers me. Yet I like to think of myself as a patriot, which is why I like reading about John Adams so much — he had so much respect for the rule of law that he defended the soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre (successfully), yet he took a backseat to no one in his zeal for independence. I’ve always been a John Adams guy, not a Sam Adams. John was my kind of revolutionary.

Yet in this dream I had fallen in with some Samuel Adams types. And the weirdest thing was that, while I wanted nothing to do with their violence, they had actually been inspired by something I had written.

And that seems to be the core of the dream, if you want to give it the Sigmund treatment. Over the years, I’ve taken a lot of strong stands on innumerable issues. At the time, people often praised me for my “courage” or excoriated me for my presumption, but I brushed all that off at the time, saying taking such stands — provoking thought and conversation about important issues — was my job, and I was just doing it as well as I could. But there may have been a strain of anxiety behind that insouciance, a suppressed worry that there could be consequences from taking these positions. And indeed, such consequences began to be apparent once I started job-hunting. From the prospective employers who speak of my “baggage” to the lucrative jobs I can’t even consider applying for (say, that $170,000 communications director job at the state lottery), consequences have been felt, although usually not overtly.

And that’s what I think this dream was about. Anyway, here it is:

Terrorist dream

This was an unusually vivid dream I had last week. It went on and on, and was very detailed and nuanced. It affected my mood the rest of the day. See if you can make any sense of it.

I was trapped in a very bad situation. At the earliest point in the dream that I can remember, I was about to take a fateful drive. For some reason, I associate the route I was about to take with one I took many times during the years when I lived in Jackson, TN – between Jackson and Memphis, roughly 80 miles. Not that it’s relevant where I was, but I think I was driving from Memphis to Jackson.

The problem was that I fully expected to be arrested at the other end of my trip. But for some reason I couldn’t just not go. I was definitely going to go, and I was definitely going to be arrested when I got there.

The charge? Near as I could make out, armed insurrection. Sound unlikely? Well, let’s hope so. But how I had gotten into this situation was neither here nor there. The problem was that I was in it, and it was really bad. I expected to be imprisoned for life.

All I could do about it was try to reduce the aggravating circumstances. For instance, it occurred to me that it would be a really good idea to ditch the weapons before being arrested. (What weapons? Apparently, a lot of weapons, including automatic ones, were involved.) Make sense? It did to me. Trouble was, when I suggested it to my co-conspirators, they really resisted it, and got very resentful and suspicious of me. Why was I backing out on them at THIS stage of the game, they wanted to know? Me, I was thinking that this was one dangerously crazy bunch of people I had somehow fallen in with.

The plan, as I understood it, was that we would make the drive in several vehicles, with several conspirators in each one. The idea was that we would be making our Big Move at the other end of the trip. The authorities knew that, and were planning their bust at that very moment. It was going to be quite a production, with lots of heavily armed cops coming down on us from all sides with those nylon jackets with their agency initials emblazoned on the back. I kept having premonitions of exactly what it would be like, and I was convinced that the very best thing would be if we looked entirely innocent when that happened.

Things started working out better than I expected, because when I started out on the drive, I was alone. Good. I was better off without those nut jobs. So all I needed to do was make sure there was nothing incriminating in the vehicle.

Trouble was, I couldn’t just stop and tear the car apart, because I was being followed. It was a discreet tail – the authorities didn’t want me to know I was being followed, but I knew; it wasn’t that hard to spot. Basically, they weren’t taking any chances. Although they knew where I was going, they were following to make sure I went there. So I took evasive action. I had to be cool about it so as not to make the tail aware that I knew he was following me. (Interestingly, the part of the tail was played by an acquaintance of mine here in Columbia – a very nice guy, a businessman with nothing menacing about him.) I had to ditch him without seeming to try.

So I went to a community breakfast – one of those fund-raiser type events with hundreds of people seated at tables in a banquet hall. In the middle of it, I rose from my seat and wove my way among the tables quickly toward an exit, as though I were headed to the men’s room. The tail was at first uncertain whether to make himself conspicuous by following me. But hesitantly, he rose and started after me, slowly at first, and then starting to trip over people in his hurry to catch up.

But I had gotten well ahead of him, and ducked out of the building by a back way, taking a couple of unlikely turns down alleys, across a parking lot, down a dead-end before hopping over a fence at a point where he couldn’t see me. By the time I was walking to my vehicle, he couldn’t possibly catch up without making it obvious to the world that he was chasing me. The best bet for him was to let me go and hope someone else along the route would pick me up, which I assumed would happen (this was a full, grand-slam Toby Esterhase type of surveillance operation).

But I had a few minutes. I had to keep driving, but while I did, I felt in the glove compartment and on and around the seats for anything incriminating. Thank goodness there were no weapons. I guess the others had taken them with them. And the car seemed pretty clean otherwise. I did pick up one worrisome document from the seat. I recognized it immediately as I glanced at it while driving. It was a copy of my original proposal that had led to all this madness. But on its face, it was innocent. It was a particularly legitimate, nonviolent political proposition – the kind of thing I write all the time. How it had gotten out of hand, I don’t know.

But I was thinking, rather than incriminating me, this could be helpful. If the only thing linking me to this plot was this document that did NOT propose violence or anything crazy, it would support a plea that my only connection was having made an innocent proposal, whatever others may have extrapolated from it later.

My only worry was that a college professor had written some comments on the document questioning whether the proposal didn’t go a bit too far. That worried me; a prosecutor could say, “Look, even this college professor – a person who should favor the free exchange of ideas – thinks this proposal was too radical.” But I could handle that, because I knew that what the professor meant was that my proposal that the university undertake the project I was proposing was simply beyond its purview. He was saying, it’s all very fine to discuss such things in the academy, but it’s not the academy’s job to act upon such ideas.

So I felt like I could defend myself, but I wasn’t sure. The professor’s comments might cast the document in a light that could do me in. Maybe it was better not to have the document at all. But there was nothing I could do about it now; I had to keep driving. I had no way of knowing whether the surveillance had picked me back up; perhaps I was being followed by someone better at it than the other guy. I just had to keep going, knowing I’d be arrested with whatever I had on me, on me.

I started visualizing the moment of the arrest, which would be dramatic. I’d be treated as armed and dangerous – pushed to the ground, a knee in the back, cuffed in the back before being dragged off.

And I really started to stress about it. I imagined the horror of knowing I was trapped, being locked up, helpless, knowing I’d likely never get out. I was anticipating the worst panic attack imaginable, without relief. It would go on and on.

It hadn’t happened yet. For the moment, I was free. But it was Going To Happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. This was my future, and I was just fully realizing what it meant….

Then I woke up. And for a few moments, I was really grateful that it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t this guy who was about to be thrown into prison for the rest of his life.

But then I remembered that I WAS this guy who was unemployed, and was quickly running out of money with which to pay the bills. And somehow, the anxiety from the dream attached to that. And even though it’s been several days since the dream, that feeling hasn’t gone away…

As I said above, it’s gone away now, which is a good thing. Actually, I was pretty much over it before I wrote the account. But I suppose the roots of the dream are still buried in there somewhere…

Now, having issued that challenge — based more on the play on words than anything else (I find the neuter “person” designation off-putting, and am therefore compelled to mock it; once you settle on a man and not a woman, TIME, why can’t you say “Man of the Year?” You saying he’s not a man?) — I’m not quite ready with mine. Mainly because I just started thinking about it a minute ago.

One thing’s for sure, though. I’ll not be going with Frank Rich’s pick, Tiger Woods, which was based in the kind of jaded smirkiness and contempt for the world that helps explain why I don’t read his stuff (this was brought to my attention by Kathryn):

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

As of Friday, the Tiger saga had appeared on 20 consecutive New York Post covers. For The Post, his calamity has become as big a story as 9/11. And the paper may well have it right. We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.

Being the conventional sort, I’d be more likely to go with the pick Rich scoffs at, Ben Bernanke.

More likely, but not quite. Although I like the way TIME is thinking, picking a South Carolinian. It’s interesting how many South Carolinians would make a national list of most embarrassing men (why “men?” because women have more sense than to make the list). Rich’s mention of The New York Post reminds me that that paper employed me for two days of the past year, which in turn reminds us of You Know Who. And once you start thinking along the lines of most embarrassing, you find several South Carolinians who coulda been contenders (as opposed to a bum, which is, let’s face it, what I am), such as:

• Our gov, who got the ball rolling with his adamant refusal to take stimulus funds for his state AFTER Congress had appropriated them, and then went on to… well, you know the rest, even if all you read is The New York Post.
• Joe Wilson, whose willingness to cash in on his “You lie!” outburst showed us to be the most nekulturny of states. Look it up, you non-Clancy readers.
• Jim DeMint, who set a new standard for partisan cynicism by seeing health care reform not as a chance to help America, but as an opportunity to bring the President to his “Waterloo.”
• Robert Ford — no, not the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard, but the state senator, who between advocating Confederate Memorial Day and calling for the return of video poker seemed determined to keep the Democratic Party in the game against all those embarrassing Republicans. If you check out the Jon Stewart video below, you’ll see he’s right up there — or down there — with the aforementioned GOPpers. And Michael Phelps, whom I had forgotten…
• My fellow Rotarian Rusty DePass, who perhaps should be disqualified for being the only one on this list to have apologized, repeatedly and consistently, for his behavior.

Then, if we turn away from South Carolinians, there are other possibilities — such as my old buddy Joe Lieberman, who seems to have pretty much killed health care reform all by himself (and folks, there’s really no point in passing what the Senate came up with instead of health care reform).

But actually, you know what? Inspired by an old gag of current U.S. Senator Al Franken, I may have a candidate in mind who tops them all. This candidate spent the last nine months without a job, which helps him personify the times. He has at one time or another endorsed Mark Sanford, Joe Wilson and Joe Lieberman, making him sorta kinda responsible for all of them. In fact, probably no one in the country has personally been let down more by Sen. Lieberman’s antics this year. And he’s really good-looking, so choosing him should please the ladies. Hmmm….

Mayor Bob sent this note over the weekend, inspired by Adam Beam’s story noting that the city has turned its finances around, saving its bond rating, and as a result will suspend its search for a city manager and stick with interim Steve Gantt for at least a year.

Here’s what Mayor Bob had to add to that:

I am attaching an article from The State about the City’s budget surplus. Steve
Gantt, staff and City Council have worked together to get the budget in line. Some
key points on the City’s General Fund:

1. The current budget is projected to have about a $6 million surplus-$4 million
currently.

2. Columbia’s accounting systems and books are in order. We have hired a new team in
Accounting and Treasury. Financial statements are current and are online. Our 2008
Audit is complete and the 2009 Audit will be on time.

3. As of 10-31-09 the City had $18 million in reserves and Bill Ellen expects $20-22
million by end of the budget year.

The City’s Water and Sewer Fund is in great shape. We will issue a total of nearly
$200 million in bonds for water and sewer projects.

We have taken steps to insure that the City’s books are never out of order again.
The City has hired an internal auditing firm and created an Audit Committee. The
City has adopted an Investment Policy.

Thanks!

Of course, it would be fine with me if they never hire another city manager. Columbia needs to ditch this form of government and hold the mayor accountable for the executive functions of city government. The fiscal ditch that the city’s been in for several years is attributable to the fact that there is no one voters can hold accountable now.

I find that this Advent I am becoming a way I thought I’d never be.

All my life, I’ve heard about how people gain weight during the holidays. I never did, partly because I’m not the kind who puts on weight easily (eat your hearts out), but also because I’m allergic to most of the things that fatten people up during the season. For instance, I can’t eat bakery goods — cake, pie, cookies, and the like. I’m slightly allergic — just enough to make it worthy avoiding — to wheat, and deathly so to the eggs and dairy products those things often contain.

But then I was unusually blessed with special baked goods I COULD eat on Thanksgiving. And my sister-in-law actually baked me a couple of extra loaves, which she froze, of the special banana and pumpkin breads she made for me, so I’m still eating those. Also, at about that same time I discovered a really good new way to make corn bread I could eat, and I’ve been baking and eating that pretty constantly. My wife would probably say it’s the beer, but I’m not drinking any more of that than usual. It’s the corn bread. I just had three pieces of it with my dinner.

The result? I’m not as svelte as usual.

And usually, I’m pretty fit, you know. In fact, ever since I learned on an episode of “24” that Jack Bauer is the same height and weight as I am normally (5’11”, 160 lbs.), I’ve summarized my genteel figger by saying I’m built just like Jack Bauer, only harder and tougher.

But now, I’ve put on a few pounds. How many? Well I can no longer wrestle Shute. If you’ve ever seen “Vision Quest,” you know what that means. I love that flick. I was a high school wrestler, so I really identify with the protagonist. He’s his school’s top wrestler at 190 lbs., with a chance of becoming state champion in that division. But he gets it into his head that he wants to take on the toughest wrestler in the state, a seemingly superhuman monster named Shute, and to do that he has to lose weight down to 168, which is quite a challenge. In fact, he threatens his health doing it.

I knew guys who did that in high school. My junior year, this kid named Jeter who was pretty scrawny to start with — 115 pounds — decided to wrestle at 98 pounds. So he starved and sweated to where the night of the match, he sat on the bench looking like a survivor (just barely) of the Bataan Death March. You wouldn’t have thought he could stand up, much less wrestle. He had a bag with several burgers from McDonald’s on the bench next to him. His time came, he went in and beat the little 98-lb. kid from the other team, came back and inhaled the burgers.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I weighed myself a couple of days back, and I was 171.6 lbs. So I’ve got to cut back, and work out some. Maybe I’ll get me one of those rubber suits like Loudon wore in the movie.

So if I make the weight, do you think Coach will let me wrestle Shute? Or have I missed my chance forever?

I forgot to mention why I liked what Steve Benjamin’s campaign manager said the other night. If you’ll recall, Joey Opperman was talking about how he had been thinking of striking out in search of new and exciting adventures, and Steve said to him:

You need to stay here and help these people that God has put you among.

There’s an excellent theological point there.

Many people, especially young people, are constantly thinking that their real life is somewhere else, and that they are TDY in their present location. That real life will start once they get to where they really should be, which isn’t where they are.

This has all sorts of manifestations, from the silly to the globally significant.

For instance, for many years as an editor I had to fight the desire of some of my brightest and most energetic reporters to go off to New York or Washington, an impulse that I always regarded as rather shallow and silly. And I would work on their consciences (usually with some success, but not always), telling them that yes, they were good at their jobs, and could probably “make it” in those other places. But — and this is a huge “but” — they are not needed in those places. They were needed where they were. Jackson, TN (which one former subordinate and good friend who is now with The New York Times complained about by saying, “It’s not the heat; it’s the stupidity”), or South Carolina had a far, far greater need for the blessings that their talents could bring than those other venues, where they would just be one in a multitude of talented people, patting themselves on the backs in empty congratulation that they were where they were.

And globally — well, the Palestinians would have been a whole lot better off if they had gone ahead and made new lives for themselves in exile (either on the West Bank or elsewhere in their own diaspora) rather than living for three or four generations in refugee camps nursing their resentment over not being where they want to be. I’m sure there are other examples, but that one just leaps to mind.

As for the theological point… remember that great Bible verse that Nathan Ballentine shared with me when I was laid off? I got a lot of comfort from it (and still do). It was Jeremiah 29:11:

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.

As wonderful as that message is, I also love the part that went just before it:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5
Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.
6
Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.
7
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
10
Thus says the LORD: Only after seventy years have elapsed for Babylon will I visit you and fulfill for you my promise to bring you back to this place.

Basically, God was telling the Israelites to stop mooning over Jerusalem and engage life fully where they were — not only that, but to be good communitarians and advance the interests of the place where they were, even though it was alien to them.

That, too, had a lot of meaning for me — meaning that I am just beginning to figure out. For nine months now, I’ve sort of been in limbo while I waited to find a job. (And I don’t mean “waited” as in passively. I’ve been actively looking. But you know, you apply, and you interview, and you wait…) My life would resume at that point, I thought. But now that I’m finally getting around to figuring out the world of freelancing and consulting work, I’m actually enjoying it, and seeing new possibilities. And I realize that if I had understood how to get into this from the beginning, and had embraced my jobless state as a new kind of existence that could actually be fun and interesting and challenging, I would have made a lot of money over the last few months, and my severance would have lasted a lot longer. (In fact, if I could figure out the problem of medical coverage — something Congress is essentially refusing to deal with — I could be happy and thrive in this state.)

Stand in the place where you are. It’s a great attitude toward life. It’s best for you, and for those around you. And I actually think it’s God’s will.

Consider that to be my little contribution to your Advent contemplations.

Now, it occurs to me that we could study some of these same phenomena in the light of a related lyric, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…”

I thought I’d share an e-mail exchange I had with Kathryn Fenner regarding her reaction to our speaker at Rotary Monday, S.C. Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers. I like Hugh and think he’s done a reasonably good job as our commissioner, which is why we went ahead and endorsed him over another guy I like a lot, Emile DeFelice. Hugh doesn’t have Emile’s flash, but he projects a certain quiet competence.

Kathryn is less impressed, and particularly didn’t like some of the asides with which Mr. Weathers salted his speech Monday. In particular, she didn’t like a crack he made about folks from elsewhere named “Joe” whose last names ended with an “i.” I remembered the remark (although I still don’t recall the context), but it didn’t bother me. Maybe because I was born here; I don’t know.

Anyway, here’s our exchange. Kathryn’s comments are in blue:

He would have been the most boring speaker if he hadn’t felt the need to pepper his remarks with xenophobic (people from outside the South) and other offensive remarks. People who weren’t born here in SC deserve equal respect from their elected officials, and people whose last names end in “i” are not usually very happy to be linked with the Mafia. Got laughs though!
Made me feel like bolting, except my (Buffalo, NY born and raised) mama  taught me better.
I wish Emil had won. “Agribusiness” may play well with Rotary, but I’d rather put the state on my plate. Maybe I don’t belong in Rotary anymore…..

Of course you belong. Your name doesn’t end in a vowel.
Just kidding. Don’t tell Tony Soprano I said that (don’t know if you ever watched the show, but he was always griping about being mistreated because “my name ends with a vowel”).

My nephew’s mother’s maiden name is Nunziato. Ask anyone who knows him if he’s an asset to our state since moving here from Massachusetts.
Actually either of my nephews, Ben or Dan. Their sister Addie isn’t half bad (immediate past dance teacher at Ashley Hall), and their sister Carolyn is still in college, but shows every sign of following in their footsteps.

DeFelice ends in a vowel, doesn’t it? sigh
What exactly was the point of having Hugh Weathers speak to us?

See now, you’re going to put me on the defensive because we endorsed him…

Yes, you all endorsed a lot of candidates who turned out not to be so hot, some even who many of us thought weren’t so hot to begin with…
Let’s hope you have learned from your time outside the bubble…
So again, what exactly was the reason, do you suppose, Robin felt Hugh Weathers just had to talk to us? I almost bagged it yesterday, except that so often I have been pleasantly surprised by the speakers. This time I was surprised at just how vapid, yet offensive,  someone can be and still get elected to public office.

You’ve led a sheltered life… I’ve talked to a lot of
people who have a lot less going for them than Hugh does.

You say I’ve endorsed a lot of folks who turned out not to be so hot. What
makes you think I thought they were so hot to start with? [I failed to come back to this point. I was going to say something about the fact that LOTS of people we endorsed weren’t so hot, but we endorsed them anyway, because they were at least better than their opponents. But that doesn’t really apply to this case, since I liked both Hugh and Emile. Maybe that’s why I didn’t complete the thought.]

Here’s the thing about Hugh: He was appointed by the governor to replace a
crook we elected. Our position is that the governor should appoint that
position, rather than having it elected. Therefore, until he did something
wrong, Weathers being in that position was a reflection of the way the
world should work.

I really liked Emile. But I knew that Emile appealed to a sort of
back-to-the-Earth, we should all eat whole foods and give up the internal
combustion engine, worldview that had been a part of my makeup since the
70s. In other words, he appealed to me, but would he appeal to the farmers
this office is supposed to deal with? Wouldn’t they be more likely to
trust and cooperate with a mainstream farmer type like Hugh Weathers?

Also, whenever we talked about “Put Your State On Your Plate” — Emile’s
strong suit — with Weathers, he praised it, and talked about his own
efforts to do the same thing, only sans the catchy slogan. And it seemed
to me that while your average SC farmer would sort of see Emile as a
hippy-dippy agricultural dilettante and maybe not work with him on those
grounds, they might want to get on board with Weathers in doing the same
thing. (And I don’t mean to criticize Emile with that characterization;
the thing is that he appeals to the vestigial hippy in me. Emile is a guy
who started “farming” in his backyard in Olympia, à la Oliver Wendell
Douglas on his Park Avenue terrace. And I just really thought SC farmers
would take him about as seriously as the farmers around Hootersville took
Mr. Douglas.)

In other words, Weathers wasn’t nearly as hip or as cool, but I thought he
just might be more effective at getting the same cool things done.

This is an example of the way that we endeavored to temper our gut
reactions with sober reflection, and endorse responsibly. And I think we
succeeded in doing that in this case.

Now that I’ve done all this typing, would you mind if we put this exchange
on the blog? We need to get a good discussion going about something, and
this seems likely — although I would understand if you didn’t want to
share all of this…

I suppose you might as well. I might bookend it with the actual words of Weathers, if you can get them….You’d think he’d realize that people of Italian descent do not appreciate the stereotypical link made between them and the Mafia. People who weren’t born here are still his constituents, even if they live in Beaufort.

As far as his locavore efforts, I wanted to ask him what he’s done to encourage the kind of truck farming that might give us a better chance at eating locally (and I would think those foods might actually put more money in the farmers’ pockets). I mean collards and peaches and boiled peanuts are nice, but it is rather hard to find locally grown produce outside the Rosewood Market, Emile’s All Local Market Saturday mornings and, believe it or not, Walmart….Publix had Georgia-grown broccoli this week. w00t!

Truck farming and “agribusiness” are generally not the same thing.

and I wonder if the farmers might be more inclined to listen to Emile if they realized how much money he nets on his hogs….

K-9

Back on a previous post bud said we should be talking about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame issue, and I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then I went and found this, and of course was shocked and appalled:

Abba, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, the Hollies and the Stooges will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year, the Hall of Fame Foundation has announced. But the biggest news might be who did not make the cut. Kiss, nominated for the first time this year after being snubbed for a decade, was left out of the honors, although if the experience of the Stooges is any guide, there might be better luck next time: the band was nominated and rejected seven times before being accepted. Also being honored this year, as nonperformers, are David Geffen and seven songwriters: Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Jesse Stone, Mort Shuman and Otis Blackwell. The 25th annual induction ceremony will be held on March 15 at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan.

ABBA? ABBA? The one good thing I’ll say about them is that they provided a decent soundtrack to that quirky cinema gem, “Muriel’s Wedding.”

But rock and roll? No freaking way. What’s next? John Philip Sousa?

By the way, I didn’t mind that Kiss got passed over. I think Kiss came along at a bad time in my life cycle — between being a kid, and having kids old enough to care — and their appeal always alluded me. (I was getting into Elvis Costello at about that time, I think.) So no loss there — especially since they’ll get in eventually.

But ABBA?

Doug Ross is mystified as to how he got the following message from Steve Morrison (and similar ones from Dwight Drake). As he said, “I don’t post anywhere but your blog. My facebook is under my work email. I donated to the Nikki Haley campaign but I would doubt they share the emails.”

Well, I don’t know. But apparently, Kathryn got it too, and so did I, even though I don’t live in Columbia — but there’s no real mystery in my case.

Anyway, here’s the message, which reminds me that I have to get with Steve and set up another meeting, and make absolutely sure I don’t oversleep this time:

To Fellow Columbians

I am running for Mayor of Columbia in next April’s city election. Because of your interest in city issues, I want you to understand why I have taken this step and to ask for your support.

Columbia has been my home since finishing law school here in 1975. I have spent years of my life contributing to our community, the way many people do who want their neighborhood and city to be a good, safe place to raise a family; enjoy life; and earn a living. Gail, Gregory and I have found a special home with you here in Columbia.

My service as board chairman of the Columbia Urban League, the Columbia Museum of Art, and the United Way Campaign;  the presidency of the Historic Columbia Foundation: as well as board service at Benedict College, Allen University, Edventure, Palmetto Health Foundation and the Central Carolina Community Foundation has enabled me to learn about the needs of citizens in all our neighborhoods. While I have not been involved in traditional politics at the local or state level, I have spent years in public service. I approach the opportunity to serve as Mayor of Columbia from the vantage point of public service over politics as usual.

Through this letter, I want to share more about myself, my love of Columbia, and my reasons for running. Read more about my reasons by clicking on the links below:

• Ready For Change
  
• My Three Priorities
  
• My Life and Values

I am not a “do it my way or else” person nor do I have an appetite for political office for its own sake. The challenge and joy of problem solving gives me energy and meaning. If elected as Mayor of Columbia, I will not use the office as a stepping stone to statewide office. As Mayor of my hometown, I will already have the best job there is.

In that spirit, I ask for your support as Columbia’s next Mayor.

Sincerely,

Steve Morrison

P.S. Please visit my campaign web site to learn more about me, this campaign and to make a contribution. Thank you!

Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la rosa blanca

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera…

What to do with the Guantanameros? Not the natives, but the foreigners whom we have made into Guantanameros? As the Obama administration runs out of time on it’s self-imposed (and unfortunately arbitrary) deadline for emptying the place, Sen. Lindsey Graham had this to say today:

“The issues involved in closing Guantanamo go way beyond where to put the prisoners.  I have been in discussions for months with the Obama Administration on a national security-centric approach to closing Guantanamo based on the law of war.  Unfortunately, I fear the Obama Administration is choosing to go down a different, and potentially more dangerous, path.

“From the unprecedented decision to try enemy combatants captured on the battlefield in civilian courts to the conflicting testimony of Administration officials on long term detention to the alarming number of detainees who have been determined eligible for release, I fear the Administration has lost its bearings in an effort to close Guantanamo as quickly as possible.  The Administration has sent a confusing message to our troops on the battlefield who no longer know when civilian law enforcement rules or the laws of war might apply.

“I continue to agree with our military leaders that closing Guantanamo is in our own national interests, if done correctly.  However, I increasingly find myself at odds with the Administration’s approach.

“I hope the Administration hits the pause button on closing Guantanamo and works with Congress to develop a comprehensive strategy to keep dangerous terrorists off the battlefield.”

I believe the administration wants to handle this right, but is hobbled by expectations among the base from the election — and by that deadline. Unfortunate. As you know, I was happy with putting them down the road in the Charleston brig, if that was the best place for them. But whether they go there or to Illinois or to the far side of the moon, the subject deserves careful consideration, so that it’s done right.

The thing about this issue is that it didn’t have to come down to a partisan disagreement. Whether Obama or McCain had been elected, we’d be closing Guantánamo (the prison part, that is). That makes this a test for whether Obama can run things along lines that build on our agreements rather than our differences. It’s a test for Graham and McCain as well as for Obama. They should neither be buffaloed into something they don’t feel right about because of their desire to have consensus, nor disagree merely to show they’re being tough-minded. (I think the president’s courageous — in the sense of standing up to the more emotional parts of his base — stand at Oslo, in which he so clearly put being president above being head of his party, calls for some equal statesmanship on the part of his loyal opposition.) Operating in a truly above-partisan manner is way more complicated than the simple-minded business of always agreeing with your “side” and always shouting insults at the other. But it’s an eminently worthwhile effort to make.

As for a translation of the verse above, here you go:

And for the cruel one
who would tear out this heart with which I live
I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles
I cultivate a white rose…

Not that I’m criticizing the Budget and Control Board (even though, as our governor is fond of saying, it’s an entity that shouldn’t exist). It doesn’t have any other option than to cut across-the-board, which of course is the worst way to cut the budget, since it makes no allowance for the fact that some functions are more essential than others, and some have been damaged by previous cuts more than others.

But only the Legislature can make those kinds of decisions — not that ours ever does, to the extent that it should. That’s another thing that the governor is right about — and something Vincent Sheheen would fix if he could: his vision of restructuring includes giving the legislative branch the tools it needs to be up to speed on what’s actually happening in the agencies it funds.

Anyway, Converse Chellis shifted the balance of power today by voting with the governor and Rich Eckstrom to cut the budget by another $238 million. The legislative members had wanted a smaller cut, but the treasurer thought it best to act more boldly now, since he anticipates a further drop in revenues.

I’ll have to ask Converse to elaborate on that next time I run into him at breakfast…

Barack Obama is not the only person I know who is accepting major international awards these days.

My fellow unemployed journalist Robert Ariail just became the first American to win the Ranan Lurie United Nations Political Cartoon Award in the award’s 10-year history. He won out over 1,500 applicants. For that he picks up a check for $10,000 (which is the important part of the news to us unemployed types), and will receive his prize from the U.N. secretary general.

One can find a lot of distinquished company in the unemployment line these days. Anyway, now that we have something to celebrate, I need to get Robert to join me in the Ariail/Warthen memorial booth at Yesterday’s for a beer. We keep meaning to do that, and this is a perfect excuse.

You ask whether I’m proud of Robert? Go read the column I did about him when we left the paper, and then ask that question. I couldn’t be prouder if I were his papa.

Just FYI, some of the other awards that sit in the cardboard box Robert used to keep under his drawing board at the paper (I helped him carry all that stuff out back in March, and I’m guessing it’s in his attic now): the Overseas Press Club of America’s 1997 Thomas Nast Award for cartoons on foreign affairs; the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award five times, in 1991, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007; the 1992 National Society of Professional Journalists Award and the 1990 National Headliner Award. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 and 2000.

The cartoon above — which I agree is one of his best from his last year at the paper — is the one that won it for him.

Well, I was certainly wrong.

As you’ll recall, I was a bit taken aback when it was announced that President Obama was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for perceived good intentions.

But after hearing and reading portions of his speech, I am wholeheartedly glad that he got the award. While I thought at first that someone should have to deliver more than speeches to receive the honor, I was reckoning without what a true statesman can do with a speech. He took advantage of the occasion to speak a little truth to the world, whether the world wanted to hear it or not. And that matters.

Rather than showing up and singing Kumbaya with the worldwide George W. Bush Haters Club — and face it, the Nobel committee obviously decided to give him the award for the virtue of Not Being George W. Bush — he said look, folks, sometimes the United States is going to go out and use force, and given our track record, you should be glad. After respectful nods to MLK and Gandhi, he said:

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions — not just treaties and declarations — that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

Wow. You know, Obama keeps doing this. Every time you think, OK, I know Obama’s an impressive guy, but I’m used to him, he comes up with another speech that just blows you away. He did that with his speech on race after the Rev. Wright blew up in his face. He did it with his awesome victory speech here in South Carolina.

And now, he’s done it in Oslo. He could easily have phoned it in (the way Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson did) or just shown up and been sheepish and humble, and kept the fireworks to a minimum. But no, he used it as an extraordinary teachable moment.

The world needs to hear the president of the United States say these things, humbly, plainly, but with no punches pulled. He told them the plain facts of what American power means to the world, as its one best guarantor of collective security and best hope for freedom and justice, without apology. Good for him. And because of this speech, it’s clear that not just some guy named Barack Obama received the prize. The POTUS did. And that’s a point in which all Americans can take pride.

This guy’s just amazing.

I meant to say something about this several days ago but I guess I didn’t care enough to do so. Now I see Gail Collins made a similar point, so now that I’m reminded, I’ll say it:

Tiger Woods’ scandal is not news. Not in any legitimate sense, anyway. Frankly, it’s none of your business.

Sure, you’re interested, and lots of people would define news as something that interests them. But I’m picky, and have a rather conservative definition that I tend to live by.

Here’s the thing: You have no reason to be interested in Tiger Woods private life. It affects you in no way whatsoever. You have no stake in it; it does not affect your life. You are in no way responsible for Tiger Woods, and he is in no way responsible to you. Unless you live in his neighborhood, you have no reason even to care about his crazy driving. He’s just not your problem.

Basically, you’re interested because you’re into gossip. That’s what this is: Gossip, not news.

Frankly, I’ve been really put off by how fascinated people — including some people I love and/or respect — are by the Woods revelations. And I wonder at it, in terms of wondering why people take such… delight in this man’s humiliation, and his family’s pain. And “delight” is the word. Delight, accompanied by a suspension of all sense of propriety. There seems to have been a national consensus agreed to whereby the lastest tidbits on Tiger are to be joked about and relished, ad nauseam. A couple of nights ago, I saw a couple of minutes on one of those 24/7 TV “news” channels in which a panel of people who I assume were professional comedians (I didn’t know any of them, but they had that “I’m a famous celebrity” B.S. aura about them) just batting Tiger back and forth, trying to outdo each other in the outrageousness of their sarcasm.  (At one point, a white guy said to a black woman something along the lines of, “All these women are white. Which I guess proves that Tiger actually IS black, after all.” Which caused my jaw to drop. Then the black woman said, “No, he’s not, because a black man knows how to keep his hos in line.” Really. I may not have the quotes exactly right because I wasn’t taking notes, but that’s essentially what they said.)

Let’s contrast this to, say, the Mark Sanford scandal. Up to a limited point (and frankly, I still haven’t decided whether I think my former newspaper’s publishing of the infamous e-mails goes beyond that point or not; it’s right on the cusp), South Carolina voters (and no one in the rest of the country, unless they were foolish enough to think he actually WAS a presidential contender before this) have a legitimate interest in knowing how sleazy the guy they were foolish enough to elect twice is. His notorious press conference should be required viewing for SC voters. The bizarre, cringe-making interviews with the AP in the following week further informed us that this is a man who is dangerously narcissistic and out of touch with basic propriety.

After that, our legitimate interest ends — way before we get to a Barbara Walters interview with Jenny Sanford as one of “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2009.” By the way, that list of most fascinating people is a dissertation on NON-newsmakers. A person with my old-school definition of news (I always think, “Does this story live up to what the Framers were thinking of when they drafted the First Amendment?”) would not choose this list of people for a top ten of the year. Michael Jackson’s kids? My fascination with them only extends as far as thinking, “HE had KIDS? Oh, the poor things…” The only one who even comes close to being a legitimate subject for such a list is Michele Obama, and that just serves to make me think, “Why on Earth did her husband not make the list?”

That went over the line. And I have to tell you, I applauded Mark Sanford when he was asked whether he would watch his soon-to-be ex-wife on the show, and he said, “You’ll never know.” (Sorry, I can’t find a link to that, but I know I read it somewhere.) I don’t ordinarily agree with libertarians on “privacy” issues, but on that, he was dead right.

All we need to know about Mark Sanford’s infidelities is enough to judge his character and decide whether he should have been trusted with high office (short answer: NO, he should not have been). Beyond that, we don’t have a dog in the fight. And we certainly don’t have one in the Tiger Woods fiasco.

Despite the temptation to be furious that Mark Sanford would presume to butt in and speak out against something as desperately needed as health care reform, I had to smile at the irony of the figure the governor cited in explaining his opposition:

Sanford talked about the need for the state’s congressional delegation to defeat federal health-care reform, saying it would cost the state almost $700 million. He also expressed hope the Obama administration would give the state another waiver on complying with federal rules on driver’s licenses.

But governor, remember? We just got a windfall of $700 million a few months ago. And remember, you said we didn’t need the money, so that means we’ve got $700 million just lying around to no good purpose. So we can easily afford this added expense you allege.

I just know you’ll be relieved to know that…

(And yeah, I know we’re talking different pots of money and so forth. I just thought it deliciously ironic that the governor went from desperately trying to block the federal government from giving us $700 million, to complaining that something the federal government might do in the future will cost us $700 million.)

By the way, I have confidence that the governor will not protest that his position was mischaracterized in that thestate.com story linked above, because the governor brought my attention to it himself, via Twitter.

A weird little footnote about that: I received that notice from the gov tucked in among Tweets from multiple other sources informing me that Jenny Sanford has announced her intention of divorcing Mark. Yes, I know the gov most likely does not personally Twitter, but it was weird, at a moment like that, to get a communication from him telling me that to him, everything is the same. He’s still out there practicing the politics of nihilism, trying to block government from doing anything good for people (lest people come to appreciate government), having learned nothing, having been utterly unchanged, by the last few months…

Earlier today, I was pondering the concept of limits as applied to the newspaper industry. You’ll remember limits from calculus, if you suffered that far in school, as I did. If you didn’t, I’ll try to explain the concept as my Algebra II teacher once did. I don’t know why it occurred to him to try to explain it, since we were a year or two away from that, but here’s how he did it.

He said, think of an equation that gets you closer and closer to something, repeatedly infinitely, without ever getting you there. He stood facing a classroom wall, about four feet away. He said, suppose I infinitely repeat an operation in which I cut the distance between me and the wall in half. He stepped closer to demonstrate halving it to two feet, then again to one, then to six inches, then to three, then to one-and-a-half, and invited us to imagine the rest. Eventually, he’d be so close to the wall that a casual observer might think he was touching it, but he wouldn’t be; he’d be a micrometer away. Then half a micrometer, etc.

Anyway, he explained, that’s limits. A disturbing concept. Oh, and if you’re wondering where you might run into limits, think of the way the two legs of a hyperbola approach the X and Y axes, but never touch them. (I think. I could be remembering it all wrong.)

Back to the newspaper industry. I was contemplating the news that a former fellow State editor shared with me earlier today from Editor and Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry. Ignore the fact that the item is written by Jennifer Saba, who if I remember correctly once interviewed me at an awesome press party in New York, and pay attention: The item had Gary Pruitt being upbeat about McClatchy’s future, and at the same time projecting further cuts of 20 percent in expenses in the coming year. And I thought, OK, so you’re saying you survive in this scenario, but survive to do what? Will it bear any resemblance whatsoever to the kind of public service that we all signed up to do in the last age, when newspapers actually had fully staffed newsrooms and editorial departments and so forth? I’m not talking here about my old paper or the company that owns it, but the entire industry. How many more years do you cut 20 percent, considering that you’ve already gone past cutting fat, muscle and bone and hacked off entire limbs, which any newspaper reader knows this industry has done? Sure, if you cut at that rate, 10 years from now you’ll still be a micrometer away from the wall, but what kind of room does that leave you in which to operate as a functional news operation?

I don’t know the answer; I’m just posing the question. I wish Mr. Pruitt all the luck in the world, and bright futures to my few friends left in the industry. But speaking of limits, there are also limits to optimism, and personally, I crashed through the wall awhile back. At this point, as the newspaper industry keeps hacking off limbs to survive, I have to wonder, again: Survive to what purpose? In order to accomplish what?

And just in case you think I’ve got a skewed view from my perspective (which of course I do; everyone does, and only fools tell themselves otherwise), I point to the e-mail I got a little later from the same colleague.

Here’s the second item to which he called my attention:

‘Editor & Publisher’ to Cease Publication After 125 Years

By Shawn Moynihan

Published: December 10, 2009 12:13 PM ET
NEW YORK Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.

An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down….

So let me ask you, as long as I’m being way existential, or Cartesian, or something, today: Is it possible for there to be such a thing as a newspaper industry, if there’s no E&P to chronicle it?

One conclusion to be drawn from my last two posts — the one about censuring Sanford and the one about the S.C. Senate’s slavish devotion to a bankrupt governing philosophy — is that our state is in desperate need of better leadership. Or just leadership, period, for a change.

The importance of this coming gubernatorial election cannot be overestimated. It is so pivotal for our state, such a chance to turn a page and start in a new direction. Of course, I’ve been preaching that for sometime. It’s why I started scrutinizing candidates closely before I left the paper, much earlier in the process than I normally would. It’s why I’m willing to do such things as rank the candidates intellectually — anything to get a smart conversation started.

We need a way of communicating that clearly, of raising awareness so that voters start really paying close attention and make a smart choice this time. As much as I eschew bumper stickers and other forms of oversimplification, I’m now in the hunt for a slogan to express what is needed. Something like:

• Let’s do it right this time.
• Beasley, Hodges, Sanford. That’s enough.
• Time to pick a new direction.
• Fecklessness has gotten us nowhere.
• Leadership is not a four-letter word.
• Vote smart. The alternative has gotten us nowhere.
• Get your act together, South Carolina.

I’m not happy with any of those. Suggestions?

Not sure what to make of this latest initiative by the S.C.  Senate leadership:

S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, and Majority Leader Harvey Peeler filed a bill today to create the Commission on Streamlining Government and Reduction of Waste that will work to streamline and pare down the size and growth of state government. The need of state government to be downsized has been long overdue. This major restructuring effort would be led by lawmakers and private sector business leaders.

Pondering that, I conclude that least one of the following is true:

• Lawmakers have spent so much time fighting with Mark Sanford that, without noticing it, they have become infected with his peculiar cognitive disorder. Only a person completely blinded by ultra-libertarian ideology could look at South Carolina — with its painfully underfunded basic services (from highway safety to infrastructure to prison security to mental health safety net to rural schools to higher education) — and conclude that what THIS state needs is streamlining, and less gummint. That’s a fine theory, if you live in Massachusetts. But it’s grotesquely inappropriate in a state that has NEVER bitten the bullet and provided the sort of government basics that most other states — you know, the states that are so far ahead of us in income and man-made amenities — take for granted.
• Political rhetoric is so dumbed-down and degraded in South Carolina that experience has taught them that you have to mumble these phrases no matter what you plan to do, to keep the yahoos calm. Maybe the senators actually plan to “streamline” government in rational ways — such as eliminating the long ballot or making executive agencies political accountable, and they’re just using the anti-gummint language to slip it past the forces of inertia. Unfortunately, there’s not a single word in this release to lead us to that conclusion. Also, this release is written by Glenn McConnell, the sworn enemy of restructuring.
• Someone has kidnapped our senators and replaced them with Pod People. This would explain why they have completely forgotten that about all they have been doing the past two years is cutting already underfunded services more and more deeply. Or why they seem to have forgotten their bitter fight with Sanford over the stimulus money that they knew our state desperately needed.
• Sen.  Leatherman et al. encourage Sen. McConnell to go on these dead-end tangents so they don’t have to hear more about the Hunley and his 17 historically accurate Civil War re-enactor costumes.

Whichever explanations are true, I know I’ve had enough of this utter nonsense. Perhaps most offensive (to common sense) of all is this statement from Sen. McConnell:

“Many state agencies were created in a time when our needs as a state were very different,” McConnell said. “We shouldn’t keep spending money on something that has long since outlived its usefulness.”

Which of course causes any rational person to respond, “Such as…” But there’s never a such as. No way are they going to start a backlash by naming any actual government programs as having “long since outlived it’s usefulness.”

Which is beyond bizarre. Think about it, people: How long has Glenn McConnell been in office? Since before Hector was a pup. And yet, in all those years in which downsizing has “been long overdue,” you would think he’d have a long list of governmental functions that are irrelevant and wasteful. But he doesn’t mention a single one.

That’s because, to the extent that these guys have a rational, clear goal, it is this: To lower taxes. That’s it. They don’t want government to be more efficient or relevant; far from it. They just want it to cost less, and less, and less, until you can drown it in a bathtub. Theirs is a nihilistic philosophy of social destruction. This is why they advocate such mindless mechanisms as caps on spending: They can’t come up with things that we can do away with, so they keep up the pressure to keep shrinking the whole pie, starving the essential services along with the superfluous (assuming there are any superfluous programs left, which you would think they could name if there were). This has the benefit — from their point of view — of making all government ineffective, thereby even less popular, so you can cut it even more.

I can always give you examples of things that have been cut too much (as I did above) because they are legion. If these guys are going to continue running our state in keeping with their nihilistic philosophy, then they need to start telling us what it is that needs to be cut. Just for starters. Why have they been allowed to get away with not doing that for so long? Simple. Because we let them.

Unfortunately, “ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame” seems a bit long for a band name — sort of like CSN when Neil Young joined — but it’s just right as a summation of what Mark Sanford has brought upon South Carolina.

Jim Harrison’s Judiciary subcommittee got it right. We don’t need to waste the coming legislative session fighting over impeachment. (We still might, of course, but that is much less likely now.) Even though his desertion of his post may be impeachable, its sufficiently petty to be faintly ridiculous. Even before we knew where he was and what he was up to, the whole disappearance was just weird, otherwordly, and very Sanford. Only in South Carolina could a governor disappear for several days, and have it go completely unnoticed until an obsessed political opponent brings it to our attention. The thing is, the governor of South Carolina is a sufficiently irrelevant figure — or can be, if he’s as disengaged and strange as Mark Sanford — that this thing that would be impossible elsewhere is ridiculously possible here.

Governor of South Carolina is such a quirky post that it attracts a quirky guy like Sanford. He is in fact a natural fit. Only in South Carolina could a guy like him last as long as he has.

Anyway, Jim’s panel did a good job. They passed on the Sturm und Drang of impeachment, but did not shrink from describing in clear terms just how this governor has shamed his state.

Postscript: While “ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame” is a bit prolix for a band name, I might want to consider going with Rep. Garry Smith’s even more concise description of our gov’s behavior: “Seriously Stupid.”

I know! “ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame” could be the title of our first album! And just like that, in lower case, a la e.e. cummings. As S.C. continues on her mad course, neither nation nor asylum,

the little
lame balloonman

whistles       far       and wee…