Category Archives: Women

Rep. Mia changes her name again

How we knew her before

In case you needed a program to keep up with the players in the ongoing Richland County election debacle saga, take note that one of the key players just changed her name:

What’s In A Name?

Everything. Our names are a reflection of who we are, the strength of our word and the depths of our character.  After losing my Mom years ago and my Dad just last year, I began to embark upon a more introspective phase of my journey…one that has not only revealed more to me about their legacies, but my own.

I’ve always believed that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others.  And as I rely on His strength and draw from the lessons I’ve learned from my Mom & Dad, I’m convinced now more than ever, that “to whom much is given, much is required.”

That’s why I take my responsibilities as your House District 79 Representative very seriously, and have since you first elected me in 2010.  Each of you has become a part of my extended family, and I will always put your interests first.

I’m grateful to have come from “good stock.”  My parents are never far from my thoughts and always with me in spirit.  I am who I am because of them, and I wouldn’t take anything for my journey.

Our family-owned business will celebrate 100 years of service in 2014, and I couldn’t be more proud of my family’s commitment to and love for our community.  So as I reflect upon who I am and upon whose shoulders I stand, I realize that I’m blessed to have a name that means so much.

That name is McLeod…and with it comes a rich history and proud legacy that truly reflects the boldness, the passion, the compassion and the strength that I draw from daily to fight for you.

McLeod is my maiden name and the most authentic depiction of who I am.    With my family’s blessing, I have decided to return to the name that truly represents me, so that I can continue to truly represent you.

Many of you already know and refer to me as “Mia.”  While my last name may be changing, I’m the same person you’ve gotten to know over the last two years.   And as we continue to work together, there’s no limit to how much we can accomplish in the next two.

As we prepare to bring 2012 to a close, I wish you and your family a safe, peaceful and joyous holiday season…

— Mia

… which has me confused. I initially knew her as Mia Butler. Her first announcement that she was running for the seat being vacated by Anton Gunn used that name, and that’s what I called her when I interviewed her for the late lamented “Brad Show.”

Then, she started calling herself “Mia Garrick.” Which made me think that “Butler” was her maiden name. Anyway, for a long time after that I referred to her as “Mia Butler Garrick.”

But now I’m corrected. I guess.

Interestingly, this release comes on a morning when she has just appeared prominently in a front-page story in The State, referred to five times as “Garrick.”

That story paints her as being on one side of a generational divide among black Democrats in the county, with Sen. Darrell Jackson standing as an emblem of the Old Guard.

Which is really ironic. It wasn’t very long ago (OK, it doesn’t  seem like long ago to ME, although I guess it’s been almost 20 years now) that Darrell Jackson was the Young Turk who was seen as too big for his britches by older black pols who felt he hadn’t paid enough dues to be heard. They were quite indignant about it. They seemed to believe that as a new senator he should be seen, but not heard from.

Now, he’s the Mustache Pete. I guess we’re all getting older…

The logo that was attached to today's release.

Did the ‘war on women’ meme even work?

Ralph Reed (answering the question, What ever happened to that guy?) had an op-ed piece in the WSJ today (“Round Up the Usual Social Conservative Suspects“) bemoaning — as you would expect him to — that once again, social conservatives are being blamed for a Republican defeat.

The main thrust of his piece is that the GOP would push the culture warriors away only at its peril.

Nothing new there. What interested me was this one paragraph in which he was speaking not about Republicans, but about Democrats:

Despite the Obama campaign’s accusation of a Republican “war on women,” Mr. Obama actually won women by a narrower margin than he did in 2008; he lost married women by seven points. Nor did single women—who went heavily Mr. Obama’s way—vote on reproductive issues. Forty-five percent of single women voters listed jobs and the economy as their most important issues, while only 8% said abortion.

That was welcome news to me, given my repeated complaints about the Dems overemphasizing Kulturkampf stuff this year. (I would like very much for the president’s victory to be because of other factors, and for both parties to know that, and in the future act accordingly, so that I don’t have to be quite so appalled at the tenor of campaigns to come. And on the immigration front of the Kulturkampf, there are actually some signs that some Republicans learned something.) Of course, considering the source, I immediately wondered how accurate his characterization was.

That led me to this interesting 2012 exit polls graphic at the NYT site (if you don’t get anything else from this post, go check that out). While the words on the graphic seem to contradict Reed, saying, “Mr. Obama maintained his 2008 support among women,” when you call up the actual numbers (just scroll your cursor over the blue and pink bubbles), you see a slight drop — although it’s only one percent, which is well within the 4 percent margin of error.

But in looking further at the numbers, I saw something that I had forgotten about, if I ever knew — that in 2008, President Obama edged out John McCain among men — the only time the Democratic nominee has done that in the last four presidential elections. Maybe, if they believe their “war on women” meme worked, Democrats should have claimed the Republicans were conducting a “war on men” as well.

I knew without looking that Reed was accurate in saying Obama won among single women and lost among married ones. As for what he said about single women caring far more about the economy than abortion — well, that makes sense (think about it — I would expect pretty much every broad demographic group to cite the economy as a bigger issue than abortion), but I haven’t found data that back it up. Has anyone seen that subset analyzed along those lines? I have not.

I have always believed that we don’t look hard enough at exit polls after elections. Yet in the polling world, that’s where the substance is. Ahead of the election, political junkies mainline polls in their desperate desire to know what might happen. Exit polls are the only kind that tell you what the actual voters who actually showed up were actually thinking on Election Day. Maybe you have to allow a bit for a Democratic bias (Republicans are more likely to refuse to participate in exit polls), but it’s still valuable stuff.

Pride and Prejudice and Scandal

The imprudent Lydia Bennet (actress Sirena Dib) hanging with some of the young officers from the regiment...

Having appeared so recently in the SC Shakespeare Company’s production of “Pride and Prejudice,” I particularly enjoyed the ending of Maureen Dowd’s column about the Petraeus scandal:

The military might want to have its future stars read Jane Austen as well as Grant and Rommel. “Pride and Prejudice” is full of warnings about the dangers of young ladies with exuberant, flirtatious, “unguarded and imprudent” manners visiting military regiments and preening in “all the glories of the camp.”

Such folly and vanity, the ever wise Elizabeth Bennet cautioned, can lead to censure and disgrace.

Ann Romney to critics: ‘Stop it. This is hard.’

And she’s saying that to the Republicans who are getting on her husband’s case, according to Slatest:

During an interview with Radio Iowa last night, Ann Romney had a message for the growing ranks of Republicans who have criticized her husband in recent days.

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

I find myself wondering whether that was spontaneous on her part — which it could well be — or whether someone in the campaign decided, Let’s have Ann say this. Being a woman and being the spouse and not the candidate, she can get away with it — whereas Mitt would be labeled a whiner.

I could see someone in the campaign thinking that, but I prefer to think it was spontaneous.

Beyond that, I have two reactions:

  1. Yes, indeed. One reason we don’t have more (and better) candidates for public office is that the audience is so cruel and unforgiving, and obsesses over the tiniest slip-up. It isn’t fair, and if you’re in the middle of it all, you do sort of wish the facile critics would have the guts to see what it’s like sometime to be in there trying your heart out.
  2. On the other hand, I’m cognizant of exactly why these GOP critics are getting on her husband’s case, and that makes me think, Yeah, you’re right: It IS hard. Especially for certain people, apparently…

‘She’s a drag, a well-known drag…’

GEORGE: Oh! You mean that posh bird who gets everything wrong?
SIMON: Excuse me?
GEORGE: Oh, yeah. The lads frequently sit around the telly and watch her for a giggle. One time, we actually sat down and wrote these letters saying how gear she was and all that rubbish.
SIMON: She’s a trendsetter. It’s her profession.
GEORGE: She’s a drag. A well known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things.

Many of the speakers at the two political conventions brought out the George Harrison in me. When they came on, I’d only be able to listen for a moment. Then I’d turn the sound down on them and say rude things.

Peggy Noonan apparently kept listening, and then when it was done, wrote down the rude things she was thinking. For my part, sometimes I only went so far as to turn the sound down. That was the case, near as I can recall, with Sandra Fluke. She came on, I listened a bit, then turned the sound down and went back to reading Wolf Hall. So next time I see her, I might confuse her with Anne or Mary Boleyn.

I learned later about what she had to say from reading Ms. Noonan, who characterized it thusly in her column this weekend:

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I’ve never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.

“Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception,” Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.

Unusually harsh language, coming from Peggy “Thousand Points of Light” Noonan.

I didn’t watch Ms. Fluke long enough to form the same impression Ms. Noonan did. But her description of why she found the young woman so off-putting is very familiar to me — it’s very like what I thought listening to non-headliner speakers at both conventions (sorry I’m not remembering any names; I wouldn’t have remembered this one had Ms. Noonan not made such a thing of her). So much of what they talked about just seemed… off-topic. Something they were going on about just to divide their partisans from the other partisans.

What’s interesting about this is that the parties apparently know this. They know the difference between these wedge issues and the central ones that should decide elections. The central issues, the ones that are not non sequiturs, are the ones the nominees themselves, and to some extent their running mates and other top surrogates talk about. There seemed to be a fairly strict line between the pre-10 p.m. speakers and topics, and the ones we heard from and about post-10 — the hour at which the parties got serious about trying to reach beyond their bases to try to win an election.

Comments about the first night of the DNC?

The First Lady tells about the "rusted-out" car in which Mr. Obama used to pick her up for dates.

I have to confess I did not watch the convention last night — during the portion of the evening I devoted to television, I watched the last episode of the “Breaking Bad” season from Sunday night — although I plan to catch Bill Clinton’s act this evening. Watch for my comments on Twitter in real time.

It’s probably just as well I missed it all, since I read that last night “was crafted to make a special appeal to women and Latino voters,” which by the logic of Identity Politics means that the Dems weren’t interested in speaking to me.  I used to be a member of the South Carolina Hispanic Leadership Council (really; I’m not making this up), but I ended up resigning on account of, you know, not being Hispanic. So I don’t think that qualifies me. And even if I were a woman, I doubt the way the Dems would speak to me would appeal. Speeches from NARAL are not the way to win points with me.

The highlight seems to have been Michelle Obama’s speech, which I’ve heard described in various ways, but I don’t feel that I have enough of a grasp on it to comment in any way. Well…  except to react to some nonsense I heard this morning on the radio on the subject. Someone was paraphrasing Alessandra Stanley at the NYT as saying, in essence, what a terrible thing it is that in this day and age, a First Lady or one who would be First Lady defines herself in 1950s terms, talking about how she met the candidate, etc.

Listen, folks: I care about what the person running for office has to say, and after that my interest drops off sharply. Were I to care what that person’s spouse thinks — whether that spouse is Michelle Obama, Ann Romney, Michael Haley, or Dennis Thatcher — the only conceivably useful information for me would be any light they could shed on the candidate himself or herself. Since the only reason for that spouse to be on the podium is his or her relationship with the candidate, why would I want to hear about anything else?

And truth be told, probably the only thing a political spouse could say to me that would affect my vote would be this: “Look, I know this guy. Nobody knows him better. Do NOT vote for this joker, not matter what you do.” But so far, I’ve never seen that happen. But it could. Which is why, if I were to run for office, I would not insist that my own better half make any campaign speeches…

But as I say, I didn’t even catch any of these speeches. As to those of you who did tune in last night — your thoughts?

Lots o’ skin: The State apparently trying to compete with Will Folks on HIS turf

Combined, the two galleries from this event include more than 250 images.

That’s all I can conclude from the fact that this photo gallery from the “Bikini Contest Finals at Jillian’s” has been prominently displayed page on thestate.com’s home page for the past two days (that I’ve noticed).

There are actually two galleries offered, totalling more than 250 images. Most are less salacious than this one, which to me invokes the Bada-Bing.

Make of this what you will.

Oh, and yes, the thing about Fitsnews is a joke. People say that Will gets his traffic from the cheesecake pictures. I defend him, saying that Will is read by so many because he works hard to break news. That said, I did think of his site when I saw this.

Today is the second day this has been featured on the home page.

“And we will now answer any questions you may have… psych!”

wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina |

On the last post, a reader called my attention to the video of the exchange, such as it was, between Nikki Haley and Gina Smith.

You really should watch it. It’s very short.

Our governor begins the Q and A by saying, “And we will now answer any questions you may have.”

The first question is from Gina. It’s rather involved. It takes about 13 seconds to ask it. The governor waits impassively until the end, and — almost, but not quite, before Gina gets her last word out, then says, “Gina, I’m not going to answer any of your questions. Anybody else?”

The first word that always pops into my head at these moments is “unprofessional.” But then it occurs to me that to folks who vote for people like Nikki Haley, “professional” is a bad thing. It smacks of being “a career politician,” and God forbid we should have people in positions of responsibility in government who know what they are doing! In choosing Nikki, they went deliberately for unprofessional, and that’s what they got.

So I fall back on “immature,” which works nearly as well.

Slate missed a good, timely angle on Darla Moore

Darla Moore announcing another multi-million-dollar gift to USC, shortly after Nikki Haley dumped her from the trustee board.

To us South Carolinians, Darla Moore was a logical choice to break the gender barrier at Augusta National. And then Condoleezza Rice was sort of a case of, well yeah, that makes sense, too.

But this wasn’t just a South Carolina story, and apparently folks elsewhere don’t all know Darla. Slate tried to address that with something headlined, “Mini-Explainer: Who Is Darla Moore, Augusta’s Other New Female Member?”

The item was long on “mini” and short on explaining:

We’re guessing you’ve got a rather good handle on exactly who Rice is. (Hint: She’s the former secretary of state.) However, you’re probably not as familiar with Moore, a South Carolina financier who is the vice president of Rainwater, Inc., a private investment firm founded by her husband, Richard Rainwater, an American investor worth about $2.3 billion by Forbes magazine’s latest count.

According to the University of South Carolina, where Moore graduated from and where the business school bears her name, she is also the founder and chair of the Palmetto Institute, which describes itself as a nonprofit think tank aimed at boosting the per capita income of South Carolina residents. She’s also served on the boards of USC and the New York University Medical School and Hospital and was named to Fortune‘s list of the top 50 “most powerful” American businesswomen.

Her husband is now mentally incapacitated, struggling with progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease that Forbes explains is often mistaken for Parkinson’s disease, and strikes just six in every 100,000 people. His family is now funding research into a cure for the disease. CNN Money has that story here.

I would have liked to have seen a mention of the last time Darla was in the news — when Nikki Haley dumped this woman for whom USC’s business school is named in favor of a white-guy campaign contributor no one had heard of.

It would have been a great opportunity to give the world just a little perspective on our “first woman” governor, on the eve of her big moment speaking at the GOP convention. And it would have presented such a relevant contrast between the sort of woman of achievement who gets invited to join a club like this, and the sort who doesn’t.

From ‘legitimate rape’ to the Country Club

Just a quick post to give y’all a chance to comment on today’s two main trending stories. First this:

Rep. Todd Akin said Monday that he will not give in to calls for him to end his Missouri Senate campaign after his controversial comments about “legitimate rape.”

“I’m not a quitter. My belief is we’re going to move this thing forward,” he said during an appearance Monday afternoon on Mike Huckabee’s radio show. “To quote my friend John Paul Jones, I’ve not yet begun to fight.”

Akin also said he still sees himself as the right candidate to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), even as many Republicans have begun to doubt it. He apologized for his remarks but said it doesn’t mean he should end his campaign.

“I feel just as strongly as ever that my background and ability will be an asset in replacing Claire McCaskill and restoring some sanity in government,” Akin said. “Just because someone makes a mistake doesn’t make them useless.”

Akin has found himself in hot water after saying in an interview airing Sunday that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy. Akin was explaining his no-exceptions policy on abortion…

And then this:

The Augusta National Golf Club, home of The Masters tournament, said Monday it had admitted female members for the first time, following years of criticism both public and private over its stubbornly-held policy of admitting only men as members.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina investment banker Darla Moore were both invited and accepted membership, golf’s most prominent club said in a statement. The club’s next season opens in October.

The step breaks with the 79-year-old private club’s practice of admitting only men, who make up a veritable who’s who of corporate America. The club has been under pressure from corporations, some members, a prominent women’s organization, and most recently President Barack Obama, who said through a spokesman before this year’s Masters tournament in April that he thought women should be invited to join….

I congratulate Darla and Ms. Rice, assuming of course that they wanted to join. If they invited me, of course, I’d have to refuse in light of the Marx rule (that would sound so much better than admitting I couldn’t afford the dues). I’m not sure whether this changes anything in the larger picture, unless they didn’t have ladies’ tees before. But as I said, I’m happy for the new members, especially since I know one of them.

I am not capable of thinking like a feminist or anyone else who is into Identity Politics, but I’m imagining that if I were a feminist, I’d be looking at today as sort of a mixed bag. You win some ground, you lose some ground.

No, scratch that. Given the general reaction to Akin, it looks more like a win-win.

One last thought — someone needs to break it to Nikki Haley that Darla got in and she didn’t…

More evidence in defense of John Rainey

As long as I’m mentioning Cindi and Warren today, I’ll go ahead and call your attention to something else I saw in The State this morning. It was a column by Kathleen Parker, in which she stuck up for John Rainey in light of our governor’s emotional attack on him.

Remember her oh-so-classy way of defending herself against the ethical questions Rainey had raised? She called him “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

I briefly touched on a couple of things that just leapt to mind about John Rainey that seemed at odds with that assessment. Since Kathleen is still paid to write columns, she dug a good bit deeper and came up with some other examples of things that make Rainey sound like anything but what Nikki Haley says he is:

Inarguably, the governor’s charges, made publicly and aimed at a citizen, albeit a powerful one, are far more damaging than whatever Rainey said during a private meeting. Judge as you may but consider the following facts before accepting Haley’s indictment of Rainey.

Rainey

For no personal gain, Rainey frequently has raised money and organized groups in common cause across party lines. He and his wife, Anne, marched in 2000 with 46,000 others to protest the Confederate flag, which then flew atop the state Capitol dome. He personally hosted several private meetings with NAACP and legislative leaders to find a compromise for the flag’s removal.

He served as executive producer and raised funds to finance Bud Ferillo’s documentary “Corridor of Shame,” about the dismal condition of public schools along the Interstate 95 corridor through South Carolina. Candidate Barack Obama visited one of those schools and cited the corridor in campaign speeches.

In 1999, Rainey chaired the fundraising committee for the African-American History Monument on Statehouse grounds. In 2002, while chairman of Brookgreen Gardens, he raised funds to erect a World War I doughboy statue in Columbia’s Memorial Park and sponsored a bust of a 54th Massachusetts Infantry African American soldier. He received the sixth annual I. DeQuincey Newman Humanitarian Award in 2004, named for the United Methodist minister and first African American elected to the state Senate following Reconstruction.

Latest to the roster is a sculpture that Rainey has commissioned, honoring two Camden natives, financier Bernard Baruch and baseball great Larry Doby. Baruch was a philanthropist, statesman and consultant to presidents (Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt). Doby was the first African American to play in the American League and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

The sculpture, which will be unveiled in April, is a monument not only to two local heroes but also to the sort of reconciliation Rainey represents. His record speaks louder than words.

No, ma’am: If OBAMA killed him, he’d be dead

Unfortunate choice of words by Ann Romney this morning:

(CBS News) On a mission to shatter the image of her husband as rigid and unrelatable, Ann Romney told CBS News she worries that President Obama’s entire campaign strategy is “kill Romney.”

“I feel like all he’s doing is saying, ‘Let’s kill this guy,” she said, seated next to her husband, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in an exclusive interview with CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford. “And I feel like that’s not really a very good campaign policy.

I say that because, well, Barack Obama just happens to be the only president in history who we know has an actual “kill list” that he personally maintains. And he doesn’t mean the word “kill” figuratively. You end up on Obama’s list, and you’re dead.

So, since Mitt Romney’s still kicking, that’s a really good argument that he never made the list.

Of course, I then read on to see that Mrs. Romney didn’t come up with the word herself; some idiot in the Democratic Party did:

In August, some Democratic strategists let leak to the press that Obama’s top aides were looking at a massive character takedown of Romney in light of a deterring economy; “kill Romney” was a phrase used by one. “That was their memo that came out from their campaign,” Ann Romney said. “And it’s like, ‘not when I’m next to him you better not.”

Still, I wouldn’t bandy that word about so carelessly. Not with this president.

Panel clears Haley, again, of corruption charges

This just in:

Gov. Nikki Haley did not use her office for personal gain while serving as a representative from Lexington County, the S.C. House Ethics Committee ruled Friday.

The committee weighed seven allegations against Haley that included illegally lobbying for her employers and using her office to pressure lobbyists and their clients for donations to a foundation where she worked.

All the charges were dismissed….

It’s good to know that Lexington Medical Center paid her $110,000 per annum, and Wilbur Smith paid her $48,000, because of sterling qualities of hers that had nothing, repeat nothing, to do with her influence as a legislator. Perhaps it was because she’s such an awesome accountant, or something like that.

Whew.

Of course, now we’re left with her as governor. We’re left with the woman who defended herself from these charges by getting all emotional and painting her accuser, John Rainey, as “a racist, sexist bigot.” From The State’s report:

Her voice shaking slightly, Gov. Nikki Haley told House members Thursday who are looking into whether she illegally used her office for personal gain that the GOP activist who filed the complaint against her is “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

Haley’s allegations of bias came after an executive testified that a Columbia engineering firm paid then-state Rep. Haley, a Lexington County Republican, $48,000 over almost two years as a “passive” consultant to scout out new business, but Haley turned up no new work…

Nothing like character assassination and innuendo for persuading people of the quality of your own character, eh?

I’m trying to think of the last time I spent any time with John Rainey. I think it years ago, the time he invited me to sit at his table at the annual NAACP banquet.

And the last time before that, years earlier, I had a lunch with him at the Capital City Club, in which he went on and on about his plans for the African-American Monument on the State House grounds. He left shortly before I did, and when I was heading back to the office, I saw him meandering about on the grounds, scouting out the place where the monument would eventually be placed. He was really passionate about getting that thing built…

But I digress.

The State roundly rejects Kara for the Senate

Yes, the endorsement of Ronnie Cromer today in The State discussed him and the other two people challenging him as well, but I take interest in what was said about Kara Gormley Meador in particular because I’ve written about her here.

Here’s what the editors said:

Kara Gormley Meador promises to shake up the status quo without the anger that often accompanies such pledges. Yet despite the fact that our state has some of the lowest taxes in the nation and our Legislature has a fixation on tax cuts, “tax reform” in her mind must include cutting taxes. Even after years of budget cuts, she’s convinced we need spending caps. And while she makes a point of saying she wants to strengthen the public schools, every time we asked her for specifics, she turned the conversation back to home schooling and private schools, and the need to excuse parents from paying their taxes if they take their kids out of public schools.

Dang, I really can’t argue with any of that. Right down the line, she advocates some really ill-considered ideas. And I was sort of vaguely aware of that when I wrote about her.

But it’s interesting to me to be reminded how differently I would have seen her if I had been talking with her for the purpose of deciding whether to endorse her — and the words in that editorial seem consistent with what I would have concluded, given the same evidence. But since I hadn’t been trying to judge Kara — since I was writing about her within the context of it just being interesting that this local personality had tried to vote in one district, then had to run in another — the picture didn’t gel in my mind. I even encouraged her to run.

Not that I was blind to her faults. Here’s part of what I wrote before:

Those of you who know me can see some significant disconnects with my own positions on issues. For instance, as an ardent believer in representative democracy, I would neither unduly limit the voters’ ability to elect whom they like (term limits) nor use a mathematical formula to supersede the representative’s powers to write a budget (“cap government growth”).

Further, I see inconsistencies in her vision. Today, she indicated that she believed enough waste could be found in state spending to both fully fund the essential functions of state government (which she correctly describes as currently underfunded) and return enough money to taxpayers to stimulate our economy.

In a state as tax-averse as this one, there’s just not enough money there to have your cake and eat it, too, barring a loaves-and-fishes miracle. (OK, enough with the clashing metaphors.)

But she’s smart, she’s energetic, and she seems to have no axes to grind. I think she’d quickly see that you can’t do it all, and make realistic assessments of what can and should be done. Her disgust with the pointless conflicts of modern politics, and the way they militate against a better future for South Carolina’s people.

Ohmygosh, do you see what I just said? “I think she’d quickly see that you can’t do it all, and make realistic assessments of what can and should be done.” And then later, I wrote, “My impression is that Kara has the character to be a positive force in politics, whatever her current notions of specific policy proposals.” Wow. Those are the same excuses I used to make about a certain other attractive young woman with a lot of energy and a nice smile. You know, the one who never really learned much of anything, and takes pride in the unchanging nature of her mind. The one who is now our governor, if you need me to get specific.

Once again, I’m reminded of the value of the endorsement process, properly done (and my regret that newspapers do so few of them now). Its value to the journalist, and to the reader. In that process, you get past vague impressions and force yourself to ask the questions that help you evaluate your initial impressions more systematically. Which The State did today.

I still like Kara personally, but that has little to do with whether she’d be a better senator than Ronnie Cromer.

I don’t go for these same-sex work partnerships

Having decided it was time, after 10 years, for me to leave The Jackson (TN) Sun, I started putting out feelers in the spring of 1985.

Just before I flew out to Wichita to interview for a job I would eventually take, I got a call from an editor at The Charlotte News, who wanted me to come there before making up my mind. By the end of the conversation, we had made travel arrangements for right after the Kansas trip. (But then days later, the editor called me back to cancel. The hiring freeze word had just gone out; the afternoon paper would close later that year.)

It was a fairly lengthy call. When I got off the phone, my wife asked who I’d been talking to.

“An editor in Charlotte who wants me to go there instead of Wichita.”

“Was it a woman?” she asked.

“Yeah… how could you tell?”

“You were enjoying yourself,” she said.

She knows me very well. Most of my career, my closest working relationships — certainly most of the really enjoyable ones — have been with women. (One of my best friends at the Jackson paper once referred to herself as one of “Brad’s women.” Some might have misunderstood that, but all within hearing knew what she meant.) I don’t know why. Nothing against guys. I’ve had a great working partnership with plenty of guys, such as Robert Ariail, as I described back here. But who’s to say? — maybe if we’d also had a cartoonist who was a woman, I might have an even closer partnership with her. Or not. I never set out to work more closely with women. It just keeps happening.

Earlier today I mentioned the Power Failure project. While I worked with people from across the newsroom off and on during that year, there was a core group of three women, from start to finish, without whom I couldn’t have gotten it done. One of them was assigned to the project mainly to keep me on track, to make sure that all my theories and plans and ideas were actually translated into articles and graphics and photos, on time. She was essential to the project becoming something that you could hold in your hand.

And anyone who had occasion to observe the portion of my career spent at The State knows how important was the partnership I had with Cindi Scoppe, from when I first supervised her as a 23-year-old reporter in the late ’80s through those last 12 years on the editorial board.

Anyway, I share all this to explain why I thought this piece in The Wall Street Journal today was such a crock:

Picking Someone for a Project? Chances Are, He’ll Look Like You

Here’s at least one instance of parity among the sexes: Men and women are equally biased when it comes to choosing work partners, a new study suggests.

When selecting colleagues to collaborate with on a daily basis, males and females are both significantly more likely to choose someone of their own gender, according to an analysis by Innovisor, a Copenhagen-based management consulting firm…

“We prefer to collaborate with people who look just like us,” says Jeppe Hansgaard, a managing partner at Innovisor. “That’s a management issue, because you want your employees to collaborate with the right people, not just people who look like them.”…

Maybe the piece set me off particularly because I’d just read (part of) this distressing report telling me that the Obama campaign plans to stress Identity Politics more in this election. But every time I read anything about  how people choose to associate with “people like them,” it ticks me off. I like to think people are broader than that.

Nikki to Mitt: Think “Indian-American.” Then think, “minority female.” Got that?

Did y’all see this story yesterday?

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney may not yet know who will be his vice presidential pick, but S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has some ideas for him.

“There are amazing candidates for VP and (I) believe whoever Gov. Romney chooses will be part of a dream team. My preference would be Bobby Jindal or Condi Rice,” Haley wrote Wednesday when asked her vice presidential favorites during a Facebook chat with South Carolinians.

I didn’t know Nikki was the subliminal-message type. I thought she was more direct than that.

It’s like she’s swinging a pocket watch in front of him, and saying Miiiiiitt… Miiiiitt… You’re getting sleepy… What do you want in a running mate?… You want an Indian-American… like Bobby Jindal… and you want a female minority… like Condi Rice… oh, nooooo… you can only pick onnnnne… how are you going to get everything you want in one personnnnnn?…

Are women fed up with Democratic pandering?

Tom Edsall makes some interesting observations in this piece in The New York Times from over the weekend. If you haven’t read it, you should.

His topic is the impact of Barack Obama’s rather overt bids for the renewed affections for key Democratic constituencies and interest groups defined by demographic identity. Unsurprisingly, Edsall finds that the voting public at large is suspicious of such moves. For instance, while the public is evenly split on the subject of gay “marriage,” there is widespread cynicism toward the president’s embrace of the notion:

Some evidence that Obama must walk a fine line as he seeks majority backing can be found in the May 15 CBS News/New York Times poll, which showed that 67 percent of respondents said Obama came out for same-sex marriage “mostly for political reasons,” while just 24 percent said he made the decision “mostly because he thinks it is right.”

But the really surprising thing he finds is the way, after all the gyrations Democrats have gone through in recent months, including the “war on women” and other absurd rhetoric, the president has lost ground among women:

In an equally troublesome finding for Obama, the Times poll recorded a dramatic drop in the level of support for Obama among women, with Romney actually pulling ahead, 46-44. Obama’s support among female voters has fallen from 49 to 44 percent over the past two months, while Romney’s rose three points.

Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager of the Obama campaign, has challenged the accuracy of the Times poll, arguing that the methodology – calling people who have been previously surveyed,  known as a “panel back” — resulted in “a biased sample.”

But even if the poll findings can be reasonably disputed, they still suggest that Obama’s aggressive bid to strengthen his support among women may be backfiring. Separate polling by Marquette Law School in Wisconsin shows Obama holding a strong, but declining advantage among women voters. In February, Obama had a 21 percentage point lead among women, 56-35; by mid-May, his margin among women had fallen to 9 points, 49-40….

Could it be that you just can’t go past a certain point in pandering to women without insulting their collective intelligence? It would appear so…

Thoughts on what’s been done to this poor kid?

A little motherhood controversy for Mother’s Day.

It would of course be startling enough to hear that a woman is nursing an almost 4-year-old. What’s shocking is the photograph, in which the kid looks big enough (compared to apparently petite mom) to be about 7.

But the worst thing, to me, are his eyes looking at the camera — looking out at America, in the photo that will dog him the rest of his life.

Am I saying that in high school, bullies will be pinning him down and cutting his hair against his will? I don’t know about that. I’m sort of worried about him surviving 1st grade.

A really cruel thing has been done to this boy, and at this point he has no idea. I feel bad for him.

Politico promises “The Draperization of Romney,” but totally dodges the subject

The Politico piece (which ran last month, but Nu Wexler just called my attention to) started out with an intriguing premise:

The Draperizing of Mitt Romney is under way.

He may not drink or cheat, and he lacks the fictional ad-maker’s charisma, but Democrats, despite the potential perils of such a strategy, remain determined to paint Romney as a throwback to the “Mad Men” era — a hopelessly retro figure who, on policy and in his personal life, is living in the past…

But it really sort of fell flat.

I thought it was going to go deeper. For instance, the central conflict regarding Don Draper (at least in the early seasons) is that he’s not who he says he is. Now that would be a pretty meaty thing to throw at the famously mutable Romney. You can easily see Don Draper donning any political mantle required to get his way with a client, or a woman, or anyone — because he just doesn’t care about that stuff. Ditto with Mitt. He just wants to be president; he doesn’t give a rat’s posterior about the stuff that the True Believers in his party get all cranked up about.

But the Politico piece completely dodged the subject, instead citing some tired chestnuts about how the 50s and early 60s were awful because moms stayed home with the kids. (Although I admit I’d rather hear that oldie than more of the tiresome “war on women” meme.)

And then… it goes into this interminable discussion of that stupid flap over what some Democrat said about Ann Romney several weeks ago. It goes on and on. I guess that was fresh when it was written, but what does that have to do with the advertised subject? Not much.

Hello!?!?! This is supposed to be about how Mitt Romney is like Don Draper! Neither of them is a woman! Can we stick to the subject? Don’t make me think you’re going to talk about guy stuff and then not even touch on that area… It’s enough to make a guy want to go off with those idiots who get together in sweat lodges and beat tom-toms and talk about how tough it is to be a guy. Almost. OK, not even close. But don’t bill something as being about guy stuff when it’s going to be yet another rehash of chick stuff.

As for Don… I’m worried about the guy. This week’s episode ended with him putting “Revolver” on the turntable (is it 1966 already?) at the behest of his young wife, who’s trying to clue him in on what the late ’60s will be about. He briefly listens alone (his wife is off taking acting lessons, leaving him behind in more ways than one) in his Hugh Hefner dream pad, and the contrast between him and “Tomorrow Never Knows” could not possibly be more stark.

The early 60s — say, round about 1962, which Gene Sculatti‘s brilliant Catalog of Cool termed “The Last Good Year” — was his time, the time he was created for, and which was created for him. He is going to be so lost going forward.

Were any of these “members” female?

Note how self-restrained I am. I held myself back from using as my headline, “I got your ‘member’ right here!” Even though that would have better expressed my exasperation.

Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo as Secret Service 'members' in 'In the Line of Fire.'

We used to have “servicemen” in our armed forces. Or, more broadly, military personnel. Now, we have this horrendous construction that drives me nuts every time I hear it: “military members.” That’s the best we seem to be able to come up with as a way of referring generically to soldiers, sailors, marines, and that least ideologically correct of all designations, airmen.

What are we saying? That the military is a club? Like belonging to Rotary, or the Elks? To me, it sounds vaguely insulting to those who serve us in uniform, to refer to them as “members.” Like fingers or toes, or perhaps some even less presentable member.

With the scandal over the weekend involving both Secret Service and military personnel, this linguistic absurdity has been taken to new depths.

To begin with, one assumes that all the agents sent home for consorting with prostitutes were male. And if you read non-American news sources such as Agence France-Presse or the Daily Mail, they go ahead and refer to them as male. That’s because in those countries, the fact that men tend to do certain things that women tend not to do (such as, bring hookers to their rooms) is confronted somewhat more directly, and not treated like a secret of which we must not speak. (Someone is inevitably going  to contradict me by pointing to U.S. sources that do mention gender. But the fact remains that, after having read U.S. sources that did not mention gender, the first ones I found that did were foreign. It’s a tendency thing, not an absolute rule.)

I haven’t yet found any stories that tell the gender of the five “military personnel” who were also implicated, but not sent home, supposedly because their skills were too much in demand in protecting the president (rooftop snipers, perhaps?). If anyone has seen such a reference, please share it, if only to satisfy my morbid curiosity.

But whether they are male or (against the odds) female, there are better ways to refer to them than as “military service members,” as the NYT does here in its own stilted fashion:

Five United States military service members who were working with the Secret Service and staying in the same hotel are also facing an investigation because they violated a curfew and may have participated in the misconduct.

The use of such a slightly off-sounding construction has a bad effect on journalists. They become jaded to awkwardness, and therefore their radar doesn’t go off when they inadvertently type something that is not just awkward, but downright nonsensical:

Mr. Obama’s comments came several hours after Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggested that more Secret Service personnel members may have been involved in the incident.

Did you catch that? “Secret Service personnel members”? Really? Not “Secret Service members,” which would sound awkward enough, or “Secret Service personnel,” which would have been fine, but the entirely redundant “Secret Service personnel members”!

Why not take it to another level, or two? Why not “Secret Service personnel members people employees,” while you’re at it?

Or… and excuse me for getting radical here… how about if the reporter covering this for you just went ahead and asked the question, “Are any of these people female?” Because if not, you don’t have to perform any of these acrobatics, and can just go ahead and refer to the “men.” And if they are, even an awkward construction like “servicemen and -women” would be less jarring than referring to them as “personnel members.”

Or how about just scraping your fingernails on a blackboard? That would probably get on my nerves less…