This aired last night in Iowa during “The Tonight Show.” The explanation, from the campaign:
“While the rest of GOP field is busy handling scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues, Gov. Perry’s appearance on Leno and his special Leno ad show he is confident enough to use the attention from last month’s Michigan debate to highlight his status as the true outsider conservative in the Republican field,” said Perry campaign communications director Ray Sullivan.
He’s walking a delicate line, between “I’m just plain folks” and “I’m dumber than a bag o’ hammers.”
Interesting that his campaign would regard going on Leno to make fun of himself as somehow more relevant and substantial than “scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues.”
One other point: He wants us to think of him a jus’ plain folks, but among the few words in his ad, he says, “a part-time Congress.” But think about that. That’s what one who would be emperor would do: Send the Congress home.
Perry’s rhetoric is redolent with such suggestions. As many times as we’ve seen the “oops” clip, how many have noticed that what he was saying was, “It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that’re gone…” As though it would simply happen once he was elected, as though he would bring it about by fiat.
Perhaps that should attract our attention more than Perry’s folksy flubs.
But Rick Perry has my sympathy on this one. I do this kind of thing all the time. Last night, I was talking with someone about city politics, and mentioned Belinda Gergel‘s successful bid for the District 3 seat, which set records for spending. And I not only drew a blank on the name of her opponent, Brian Boyer, but more to the point could not recall the name of his boss, brother-in-law and key supporter, Don Tomlin.
And if I’d done that on television, while running for city office, I suppose I’d be dismissed as a dope. But that would be unfair. Because I’m not an idiot… No, I’m not… Am NOT!… Cut it out, y’all!
And this brings us once again to the inadequacy of these “debates” as an instrument for choosing the most powerful person in the world.
The job is not about thinking on your feet on a stage with people throwing gotcha questions at you. It’s about what you do in the Oval Office, frequently when no one is watching (and no, I did not intend that as a Bill Clinton reference).
These “debates” would be a good way to pick a stand-up comedian or Shakespearean actor, if that’s what you were hiring. But it continues to disturb me that we attach so much importance to momentary memory lapses. They don’t mean much. The presidency is NOT reality TV.
What Perry did last night does not, in and of itself, establish that he is an idiot. It doesn’t indicate he’s a genius either, but I certainly hope readers make their decisions based on more substantial criteria than this.
Rachel Maddow touted this on Twitter, saying “This ad will live forever — every other candidate can just pop themselves in at the end once Huntman’s out…”
I guess she means, “every other candidate except Romney.”
Me, I’m the eternal optimist. I think, This is the kind of ad that should give Huntsman a chance — if enough people see it.
I continue to believe — and am glad to entertain y’all’s observations to the contrary — that Jon Huntsman offers the GOP its best chance to provide a credible alternative to President Obama that independents and UnPartisans can seriously consider.
I’d put Romney in that category, too, except for the problem that this ad so ably points out. A problem I was talking about four years ago as well.
(CNN) — A sweaty, wild-eyed man in a stained undershirt hunches over his computer in a shadowy basement. He’s broken into your Facebook account and is reading your posts as his dirty, cracked fingernails paw at the keyboard.
Rage (jealousy? hate?) builds as he flips through your photos and scrolls through your list of friends. He rocks back and forth, growing more agitated as the pages flash past. Then he consults a map of your city and heads to his car …
So why … oh, why … did you include so much personal information — and your address — in your profile?
If that all sounds like the stuff of a digital-era horror movie, you’re not far off.
“Take This Lollipop” is an interactive short video that’s been making its way around the Web as Halloween approaches. Visitors to the site are first presented with an image of a lollipop with a razor blade in it — don’t take candy from strangers, kids — and asked to grant access to their Facebook account.
Don’t worry: The application claims it uses your data only once, then deletes it. But the creepy results just might make you think twice about who else gets access to your online information.
The video uses the developer tool Facebook Connect and features actor Bill Oberst Jr. (whose credits range from “The Secret Life of Bees” to the inexplicably Oscarless “Nude Nuns With Big Guns”) as the aforementioned grungy nutjob…
I’m not going to tell you which is the real Cain thing and which is the spoof… OK, if you see them both, I guess you can tell. But if I just showed you the Cain video alone, and asked you whether it was real or a spoof, you’d have trouble getting it right.
In fact, I’m still having trouble with it. I’m still thinking Herman Cain might be sending us up. Look at that grin.
1. Why is Mark Block, Cain’s campaign manager, smoking a cigarette?
2. Why is Mark Block blowing cigarette smoke into the camera?
3. Why is Mark Block on camera?
4. Who is holding the camera?
5. Why did anyone think this was a good idea?
6. Why is Herman Cain smiling?
7. Are we being punked?
Anyway, enjoy. And don’t y’all be smoking anything, OK? It’s all bad for your lungs.
(The spoof, by the way, is the best-executed video yet from Tyler Jones, who posts on YouTube under the handle, SCForwardProgress. Or at least, I assume he’s the one doing them, since he’s the one who always calls them to my attention.)
In a column today in the WSJ (“Squatting on Wall Street“), Daniel Henninger scoffed a great deal at Occupy Wall Street (“Compared to this group, Mark Rudd and the Columbia University sit-ins of 1968 were Periclean Athens.”)
I have no huge problem with that, although I think his ultimate point of trying to tie the Obama re-election effort firmly to OWS seems to go a bit far.
And I had to hoot at one passage:
And so on Sunday, Mr. Obama found a way to yoke Martin Luther King Jr. to Occupy Wall Street: “If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has praised OWS for its “spontaneity.”
What came to be known as Occupy Wall Street began several blocks from Wall Street itself, in Zuccotti Park, in downtown Manhattan. I spent a morning in Zuccotti Park this week. Let’s put it this way: I’d make a contribution to the Democratic House re-election committee to see Mrs. Pelosi lead the austere Steny Hoyer and a delegation of her House colleagues through Zuccotti Park. Spontaneity? Most of the people living atop the park’s pavement are virtually catatonic.
CORRECTION: At some time during the above video — I haven’t gone back through it to find out where — I say that Kevin Fisher did not call me ahead of time to warn me he had written a column critical of me. THAT IS NOT TRUE. Kevin called me after seeing this to tell me that he DID call me. I didn’t hear the message, but I know Kevin wouldn’t tell me that if it weren’t true. Let me add that it wasn’t important for him to have called me. I don’t call people to warn them I’ve been critical of them in something coming out. If I did, I’d be on the phone all day. I had just noted that it seemed ironic that he HAD called to warn me when he had written something noncritical about me previously, but (I thought) had not done so this time.
It was my historic seventh appearance on the show. Nobody else comes close.
It’s like the Pub Politics guys are Jimmy Olson, and I’m Clark Kent, and they’ve got a signal watch. And it starts beeping (at a frequency only Kryptonians can here), and I’m like all, “Why can’t Jimmy just stay out of trouble,” but I head for a phone booth (or a reasonable facsimile, since those are getting really, really hard to find outside London, where they keep them because they’re picturesque), and then it’s up, up and away time.
Last night, Phil Bailey called me with five minutes to go and asked me to be a last-minute replacement for Joel Lourie on Pub Politics, so of course I said yes, and they held the show for a few minutes to give me time to get there.
That’s seven times now, people. No one else comes close. The Five-Timer Club long ago became passé for me. I’m the standard fill-in guest. The one sad thing is that I can never be a stand-in guest co-host, because you have to be a Democrat or Republican. That’s the format. Speaking of which, Wesley Donehue was out of town again (China was mentioned), and Joel Sawyer filled in for him. You know, the former press secretary to Mark Sanford, now state campaign director for Jon Huntsman. He did great.
One of our topics, as it happened, was Kevin Fisher’s column about my post about Boyd Brown’s inappropriate little witticism. (When I entered The Whig, I saw Corey Hutchins seated at a table, went over and stood over him, cocked a fist back and said, “Look out — I’m liable to attack you…”) Our discussion — during which both Phil took the position that Boyd’s comment was great, and Joel held that it was Corey’s journalistic obligation to report it — led me to an ironic observation: While one of them represented the left and the other the right, I was the only real conservative at the table. They would only agree that I was the grouchy old guy upholding outdated notions of civility and propriety. (Which is basically what conservatism is, properly understood.)
We also discussed other, more interesting stuff. I’ll post the show when it’s available.
But that’s not why I come to you today in this post. I wanted to share with you this op-ed from the aforementioned young Mr. Brown, in which he expresses his thoughts regarding the “F” the governor gave him in a far more mature and appropriate manner. An excerpt:
Recently, as you may have heard, Gov. Nikki Haley released her legislative report cards for 2011. I will not venture into the sheer pettiness of this nonsense, although it is just that – petty nonsense. Instead, I’ll explain why I got the grade I received, and why, for the first time in my life, I’ll ignore the “teacher’s” advice on how to improve my grade.
According to her standards, I was given an “F.” Not since my first year of Carolina have I been awarded an “F,” and now that I’m in law school, I hope it’s not a recurring theme. I was ashamed of the “F” I received on my first test in freshman philosophy, but I recovered and did well in the course. I can’t say the same for the “F” I was awarded by Nikki Haley; instead, I am proud of it.
Some would argue that since she is our governor, she knows what the people of South Carolina want. Those who are really drunk on her Kool-Aid would probably argue that point loudly and irrationally. Here is my argument:
The “F” I received stands for Fairfield, for your family. In last year’s election, Senator Vincent Sheheen won our county with overwhelming numbers. Nikki Haley and her platform (or lack thereof) were soundly rejected. She is clearly out of touch and out of step with our community – just look at the election returns.
It is offensive to me for her to think that her agenda for our state trumps the agenda of those who I represent. For her to think otherwise shows her skyrocketing level of arrogance, which only rises higher with every national news show she visits, and every out of state fundraiser she attends….
And so forth.
This is good. This is right. Far better that you express clearly why you are offended by her actions (and you have every reason to be offended by her presumption) that for you to be offensive yourself.
That’s it. That’s my fatherly, or at least avuncular, advice for today.
A reader Tweeted, as I was headed to a late lunch (1:46 p.m. EST), “Eager to read your thoughts on Spurrier v. Morris.” I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, but now I do. I’ve seen the video and everything. (Interestingly, I could not find anything about it on the mobile version of thestate.com, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the browser version at the time.)
Of course, by that time, the news that the coach, or Eric Hyman, or somebody, had thrown Stephen Garcia off the team — apparently for real, this time. Hyman explained, “For Stephen to return to and remain with the football squad this fall, we agreed on several established guidelines. Unfortunately, he has not been able to abide by those guidelines and has therefore forfeited his position on the roster.”
I don’t know what the guidelines were, as I don’t follow this stuff. But I did see the Auburn game, and a reasonable guess would be that one of his guidelines involved throwing the football straight. Yes, I’m joking. Sort of.
But Micah apparently wanted to know what I thought about the Ron Morris thing. Gee, I don’t know.
I’m not Ron’s editor; never was. If I were, right now I’d be saying, “What the hell, Ron?” Or perhaps I’d use some other, saltier, newsroom expression. And Ron would tell me what was going on as well as he could, from his perspective. Although, based on the performance I saw on the video, it might not be altogether clear to him what it’s all about (apart from the usual animus that, from what I’ve seen, Ron is accustomed to engendering). Anyway, assuming he had the information available, I would have Ron lay out for me his version of the story. Then, I would check it out as well as I could.
If Coach Spurrier had an ounce of professionalism in him, of course, he would already have communicated to me (as Ron’s theoretical editor) what his beef was. Let’s assume he does, and he did. In that case, I would already have had it out with Ron about it and, given the way Spurrier acted today, probably would have told him I’d decided to back Ron. Hence the public tantrum.
Of course, if the coach did NOT try the normal, civil route first, then his performance today was inexcusable. Perhaps understandable on some level given that his QB was just canned after letting him down, but still not excusable in a man paid $2.8 million a year by a public institution to represent that institution.
Speaking of which, if I were Eric Hyman or Harris Pastides, I’d right now be having a serious talk with the coach about his performance — a sort of mirror of the one I’d be having with Ron as his editor. We’d start by watching his game film. Some of the things I’d be asking him:
What’s this really about, Steve? And don’t give me that nonsense about some column last spring. That was last spring; you blew up today. What’s really going on? (Oh, wait: Maybe THIS is the column Spurrier is referring to, in which Morris wrote, “Spurrier poached Horn’s program.”)
What exactly do you mean when you say it’s “my right as a head coach” not to talk to Ron Morris? Is that some special right we don’t know about? Do assistant coaches, or ordinary mortals walking the streets, not have that right? Because one would think that they do; that any human being walking the planet would have the right not to talk to Ron Morris if they chose not to. (Unless, of course, they were working for us, and we were paying them $2.8 million a year, and we told them to talk to him…) So what’s this imperious “as a head coach” stuff? Have we really made you feel that important?
And so on. That would just be for starters. And I’d be doing that in between fielding phone calls from people over at the newspaper asking me, “What the heck?” Because they use language like that in talking to the public.
So, as I say, if I were charged with taking a position on this, I’d be in fact-finding mode now before making a decision. But if you held the proverbial gun to my head (and I’d much prefer that to a literal one), I’d have to choose Ron on this one. And I might get embarrassed doing so — I might later have to run a full retraction on the challenged column last spring or something if it turned out Ron was wrong. But if you forced me, I’d go with him on this, because I know him. Or at least, I know him better than I do Spurrier, whom I’ve never met.
That means I used to run into Ron in the hallway sometimes, and stop to chat. I never actually worked with him. I don’t think he was in the newsroom when I was (pre-1994), and even if he had been, we’d have had little occasion to deal with each other. But he has always struck me as a pretty thoughtful, careful guy.
I knew people hated him — people of the “Cocky is God” persuasion. And I used to wonder about that, but I’ve often had occasion to wonder about really serious football fans. Sometimes, when one of Ron’s columns caused a splash of some sort, I’d actually turn to the sports pages and read it. And it usually read OK to me — of course, I was judging it outside the context of having any particular knowledge of the subject matter.
Thought you might be interested in this, which Slate called “Perry’s awesome new ad,” and indeed the production values are good. Never mind that he’s looking right past his rivals at the ultimate target of the GOP. But I think he figures that’s what Republican voters want to see.
At first the ad looked sort of familiar — didn’t someone do one much like this in the past month? But then I heard and saw the very new quotes and headlines, and realized it is indeed brand-new.
Power Lines Fall on Crashed Vehicle, Driver Trapped: MyFoxPHOENIX.com
This morning, Jack Kuenzie of WIS brings my attention to this. This guy is being billed on The Daily What as the “Second Coming of Chris Farley,” and I can see that.
I also see a little of Hurley, the guy from “Lost,” even though this guy isn’t nearly as big as either of them. Know what I mean, dude?
The situation was extremely serious — as KSAZ in Phoenix described, “The driver of an SUV was trapped Thursday afternoon when he lost control of his vehicle and it rolled over and struck a utility pole.” But the entertainment value in this description is undeniable.
Ran across the above awesome video of a classic moment, and thought I’d share it with you. That was sort of Leon’s big moment in the limelight. I had the album, and that was my favorite part of it — even more so than Harrison and Clapton both playing lead on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Then, when I was getting into that, YouTube brought my attention to the item below, and others like it — which blew my mind to another place entirely.
I had heard about him being on Shindig, but I not seen video. Leon Russell’s moment had not yet arrived in 1964, but he was ready for it. Even though he hadn’t settled on The Look.
Anyway, I thought I’d share these with you as a sort of sorbet — something more in the UnParty taste, to cleanse the palate after those Republican and Democratic videos yesterday.
Now we see what Ron Paul’s doing with all of that money. Or some of it, anyway.
He certainly has been able to afford better production quality than what the Democrats are churning out. Here’s what Politico had to say about Rep. Paul’s attack on his fellow Texan:
EXCLUSIVE — NEW PAUL AD HANGS AL GORE ON PERRY — Ron Paul takes the fight to Rick Perry today, releasing a new 60-second TV ad hammering Perry for supporting the Democrat’s 1988 presidential campaign. From the script of the ad, backed by a six-figure buy, which Paul’s camp is trying to place during Wednesday’s debate: “The establishment called him extreme and unelectable, they said he was the wrong man for the job. It’s why a young Texan named Ron Paul was one of only four congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president…After Reagan, Senator Al Gore ran for president, pledging to raise taxes and increase spending, pushing his liberal values. And Al Gore found a cheerleader in Texas named Rick Perry.” See the ad: http://youtu.be/kUHlIPJTMIg
Apparently he couldn’t find actual video footage from Perry’s Gore days. Neither could I, at least on YouTube. Has anyone seen any?
Not that it matters to me. But it could certainly matter to those Tea Partiers.
Dick Harpootlian’s Democratic Party seems determined to pull us completely beyond the era of text-based press releases. At least it’s entertaining — sometimes. Above you have the state party’s most recent release. There was some text with it. Here you go:
Columbia, SC – This weekend, the Charleston Post & Courier exposed shocking information about Nikki Haley’s taxpayer-funded European vacation. Click here to read the article.
Nikki Haley spent more than $125,000 of your tax dollars on this trip and with nothing to show for it.
SCDP Chairman, Dick Harpootlian, appalled by Tricki Nikki’s latest hypocrisy, released this video and the following statement in response to the Post and Courier article:
Where in the world is Nikki Haley? We don’t where she is, but we know where she’s not. She is not fighting to improve education or to lower unemployment in South Carolina. She is nowhere near any effort to improve health care desperately needed by many in our state. The Post & Courier article shows once again that she only does what’s best for her and not the people of South Carolina.
I’d never seen this before, but I certainly saw it tonight. I was wandering through the men’s clothing section (did you know you can’t find plain white boxers at Walmart any more? this was the fourth one I’d tried), and I started hearing something that could only be live music. So I flipped on the video on my phone and kept approaching, and above is what I saw.
Perception That Retailer No Longer Has Best Prices Undercuts Sales Turnaround
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is losing its longstanding reputation for offering consumers the lowest prices, complicating its efforts to end a two-year sales slump in the U.S.
The Bentonville, Ark., retail colossus became the world’s largest store chain by avoiding sales gimmicks through “every day low prices” on everything from food to sporting goods under one roof.
But surveys by retail consultants, analysts and brand experts now find that Wal-Mart’s aura of price leadership has faded since the recession, because customers who searched for better deals sometimes found them at competitors such as Dollar General Corp., Aldi Inc. and Amazon.com Inc….
It certainly didn’t look troubled tonight. Based on my difficulty in finding a checkout line that was neither too long (the “express” lanes”) nor featuring people with more than one filled cart. (I wrote on Twitter while waiting, “Waiting in crazy lines at Walmart. Apparently, a lot of people are simultaneously planning polar expeditions…”)
Not that I’ll mourn if Walmart suffers a bit. Walmart is just one of a bunch of factors that killed the newspaper business. You’ll recall a time when grocery stores were a huge newspaper advertiser, along with department stores. Well, Walmart threatened and undercut them both with a strategy that did not require regular local advertising: With “Everyday Low Prices,” you don’t need to advertise any specials. You just have to let the word get around town, and you’re permanently set. And a lot of traditional newspaper advertisers were permanently shafted.
But the live music makes it all worthwhile, right?
I’ve had about enough of outdoor political events.
First, this time of year, it’s too hot. Then, it’s also too noisy.
But those are not the things that make this bad video. The main thing is that I couldn’t edit it. I shot it on my iPhone, which shoots awesome, HD (I think) video.
Trouble is, I can’t edit it. I can call it up in the PC editing software, just as I do with videos from my Canon. But there’s no sound. I tried ignoring that, and cutting it anyway down to the bits that looked and sounded best in Windows Media Player (which plays the format just fine), but the format that it saves to also lacks sound. So, pretty useless.
I have iMovie on the Mac laptop at work, which I think is supposed to edit video, but can’t figure out how to get the files from the phone to that application. Probably something really simple for people who think Mac, but hard for me.
So I just uploaded the whole thing. I said I would use the video to sub for one of the photos back on the previous post, but why take down a perfectly good jpg for a bad video? Make what you will of this.
A couple of weeks ago — just before he went on a European vacation — Wesley Donehue asked me to be his first guest on a new web show he was starting. (I had already been on Pub Politics, which he and Phil Bailey host, six times.) The topic, rather than politics, was social media.
Funny thing is, we spent the first half of the show, if not more, talking about OLD media. I sort of reminisced about what it was like in the MSM before Wesley was born, and then brought the tale right up to the moment I got canned by The State, along with an explanation of the forces that led us to that point.
So there wasn’t all that much time left for social media. I get get to plug the blog a little, and talk about how I have close to 200,000 page views each month, etc.
But you know what we didn’t get to? The role that the briefer forms of social media — especially Twitter, to a less extent Facebook — have played in the growth of my blog.
The biggest month I ever had on my old blog, when I was with the newspaper, was something over 80,000 page views. That was January 2008, the month of those two hotly contested presidential primaries in SC, which drew a lot of national and international attention. After that, the average month settled down to something like 45,000.
Then, after I left the paper, Tim Kelly talked me into using Twitter (and Facebook) to promote my blog. My biggest month ever was June 2010, with 254,545 page views — largely a result of the national attention paid to Nikki Haley and Alvin Greene. After that, I settled down to where the last few months have hovered between 180k and 220k.
I attribute a lot of that to social media. Now I just have to figure a way to get Twitter to pay me for going around saying that.
I wasn’t there when S.C. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham tore into Nikki Haley on June 29, claiming her office misled lawmakers on the budget. But I had heard it was really something. After all, it got Kenny a standing ovation, which sort of tells you where our governor stands in the estimation of that Republican-dominated body.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to me to look for the speech on YouTube until someone mentioned it this week. I urge you to watch it.
By the way, for a fuller explanation of what happened, read Cindi Scoppe’s column of July 3.
Pub Politics Episode 64: “Ugly Politics” from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo. The Pub Politics guys finally posted last week’s show — which was my sixth, not my fifth, the way it says… I don’t know when it posted; I didn’t think to look until I got the invitation to tonight’s show. Yvonne Wenger is the guest… which is great; I like Yvonne. Just as long as she’s not closing in on six episodes, because that would be unacceptable. Speaking of which — with Wesley Donehue in Europe, Todd Kincannon is filling in:
Guest host Todd Kincannon, Columbia, S.C. attorney of The Kincannon Firm and GOP activist, fills in for Wesley, who is on vacation in Europe. Kincannon has served as general counsel and executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party. He was recently listed as a member of the “Twitterati” – one of the top tweeters of Columbia, S.C. – in Columbia’sFree Times.
Hey, I too, am one of the Twitterati. I think that after you do sixth episodes, the next natural step would be guest-host. Don’t you?
