Category Archives: Words

Snowden spills his guts, again

My old roommate John peers out from our room in Snowden just before the Honeycombs were torn down.

My old roommate John peers out from our room in Snowden in 2006, just before the Honeycombs were torn down.

“Snowden” is one of those names that sticks with you. Or with me, anyway. It was technically the name of the particular one of the Honeycombs I lived in that one semester I went to USC in 1971 — although I seem to recall that a lot of people called it by a letter designation. Was it “J”? I don’t know. Maybe. “Snowden” sticks better.

That’s probably because I was so hugely into Catch-22 at the time. I had first read it the summer before my senior year of high school. Then, at the start of the senior year, our English teacher, Mrs. Burchard, let us pick several of the books we would read. I pushed, successfully, for Catch-22. (not just because I’d already read it — I looked forward to discussing it) We also read Cat’s Cradle and Stranger in a Strange Land, at the urging of some of my classmates. Mrs. Burchard did make us read several of Ibsen’s plays, which I enjoyed — especially “An Enemy of the People” (“A majority is always wrong” seemed so true to me at that early age.)

Snowden, of course, was the pivotal character in Heller’s novel. He only appeared in one scene, but that scene was repeated — or rather, portions of it were repeated — over and over in the novel. All he ever had to say was “I’m cold.” But that was enough.

The novel is structured around that incident, until the very end. The plotline keeps looping around back through time, flashback after flashback, and Yossarian’s memory keeps returning to the incident with Snowden. Each time, that memory is unfolded a little more completely, toward the final, full, horrible revelation that changes Yossarian permanently.

“I’m cold,” said Snowden.

“There, there,” said Yossarian, tending the wounded gunner back toward the rear of the plane. Even after Snowden had spilled his terrible secret, that’s all Yossarian could say.

Anyway, that’s what goes through my mind as I read the name of the guy who took it upon himself to reveal the NSA’s programs. He’s a guy who looks like he could be Yossarian’s Snowden. He certainly looks young enough, unformed enough. Yet he’s a guy who’s taken on a self-righteousness akin to Ibsen’s Thomas Stockman, someone who’s decided he knows better than everyone else, and is prepared to take the burden of revelation upon himself.

No, Obama isn’t Nixon, much less worse. It’s not even close

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It’s getting to where I find Peggy Noonan more and more tiresome, but keep reading, hoping for flashes of the grace and thoughtfulness I used to admire.

Her column over the weekend was a typical sad example. An excerpt:

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service. Elite opinion in the press and in Washington doesn’t fully understand this. Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.

Those who aren’t deeply distressed about the IRS suffer from a reluctance or inability to make distinctions, and a lack of civic imagination.

An inability to make distinctions: “It’s always been like this.” “Presidents are always siccing the IRS on their enemies.” There’s truth in that. We’ve all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, “Look into this guy,” Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment.

But this scandal is different and distinctive. The abuse was systemic—from the sheer number of targets and the extent of each targeting we know many workers had to be involved, many higher-ups, multiple offices. It was ideological and partisan—only those presumed to be of one political view were targeted. It has a single unifying pattern: The most vivid abuses took place in the years leading up to the president’s 2012 re-election effort. And in the end several were trying to cover it all up, including the head of the IRS, who lied to Congress about it, and the head of the tax-exempt unit, Lois Lerner, who managed to lie even in her public acknowledgment of impropriety.

It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a president losing his temper with some steel executives. There was no enemies list, unless you consider half the country to be your enemies.

Let’s just list a few of the things wrong with those few paragraphs:

“The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking…” I’m not yet persuaded that “Benghazi” actually is a scandal, despite the efforts of people I respect, such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, to portray it as such. Much less that it is widely accepted among others, outside of certain Republican circles. Much, much less that it is not only a scandal, but a shocking one. Yet she begins her column throwing it out there as something that doesn’t even need discussion, as an established fact on the way to what she really wants to talk about. It’s like she’s gotten into the habit of writing only for people on the right. She assumes all her readers think Benghazi is a shocking scandal, and she goes ahead and acknowledges that out of hand. It’s like there are no other kinds of readers out there looking at her column. And if she keeps writing like this, she’ll be right in that assumption.
“Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.” Really? Tell me again which ox was gored. “Gore” means to deliver a serious, perhaps fatal, wound. Did any of these “patriotic little groups,” a characterization we could debate all day, lose their ability to do what they do? Were they indeed “gored”?
Richard Nixon is mentioned, followed by “But this scandal is different and distinctive.” As in, she implies, worse.

What Richard Nixon did with regard to the IRS was indeed an article of impeachment. Because of the abuses of power that he, Richard Nixon, carried out.

Excuse me, but I have yet to see the evidence that indicates, even remotely, that Barack Obama was involved in this mess over at the IRS. (Please give me a link if I’ve missed it.)

And this particular scandal has been proceeding how long? A month or so? (Actually, the first press reports were in March 2012.) I seem to recall that the Watergate scandal connected directly to the White House on Day One. Reporter Bob Woodward, then a nobody, was assigned to go cover the arraignment of some guys caught breaking into Democratic headquarters, and that day found that one of them worked in the White House.

Yeah, pretty different, all right.

Oh, and by the way, I should probably say for the benefit of Steven Davis and others who labor under the delusion that I’m a Democrat or something: I don’t say “Barack Obama isn’t Nixon” because I think Obama is so awesome and Nixon was pure evil.

If I’d been old enough to vote in 1968, I’d have voted for Nixon, without hesitation. For that matter, I was solidly for him in 1960, although you may discount that because I was only 7 years old. I would have voted for him in 1972, the first time I ever voted, if not for Watergate. I pulled the lever for McGovern after standing and debating with myself in the booth for about 10 minutes. I firmly believed that Nixon was the better president — in fact, I was convinced that McGovern would be a disaster. But I was also convinced that the Democrat had zero chance, so this seemed like a safe way to register my concerns about Watergate.

(I did the same thing, only with the parties reversed, in 1996. I respected Bob Dole more as a man than I did Bill Clinton. But Dole had run such a horrendous campaign that I doubted his ability to be a good president. I actually thought Clinton better suited to the job. But I had a lot of problems with Clinton by this time and, knowing that Dole had no chance of winning, I pulled the lever for him as a protest.)

Nixon was in a number of important ways a pretty good president, on the big things. Probably better than Obama in a number of ways (although I haven’t thought deeply about that, and it’s difficult to compare, since the challenges facing them are so different). But his abuse of power on stupid, petty things did him in. And I’ve seen no evidence so far Barack Obama has done anything of that kind.

So no — Obama’s not as bad as Nixon in this regard, much less worse. It’s not even close.

Jeff Duncan gets it caught in a big, fat wringer

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One of our readers shared a link to the above in the comments thread of last night’s Virtual Front Page. I didn’t click on it until today, and lest you miss out entirely, here’s what she linked to.

(And yes, my headline is based on the famous John Mitchell quote about another powerful woman in Washington.)

You should follow the link yourself to check out the comments, some of which are pictured below:

‘Woof! Woof! (long pause while holding breath) Woooooof!’

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Sometimes I get releases that really seem to come out of left field, such as this:

Dying Pets Prescribed Marijuana

Guest Opportunity: Kim Baker, Animal Whisperer and Expert in Holistic Health for Animals

The debate over medical marijuana for pets is continuing to intensify as more veterinarians are speaking out about the pros and cons of the practice.

California vet, Dr. Doug Kramer, treated his own dog who was terminally ill from cancer.

Kramer said the marijuana regimen increased his dog’s “quality of life”. ..

Yeah, dude. I’ll bet it did.

Near as I can tell, this release did not intend to be humorous. And mind you, I’m not making fun of animals in pain. What cracks me up is the wording. This vet did NOT say the pet had less pain, or greater mobility, or improved appetite, or any other specific benefit. Just that its “quality of life” was increased.

I have to say I was completely unaware of this “issue” until now. TIME says they’re not making it up, though.

There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about Mark Sanford

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Just saw this fund-raising appeal from the Democrats:

ROLL CALL: Conservatives Buy Airtime for Mark Sanford

If you think Elizabeth Colbert Busch has a clear path to victory on Tuesday, think again.

She’s neck and neck with Mark Sanford — 46-46. And now, right-wing groups are throwing everything they’ve got at keeping this seat in Republican hands.

Brad — We can’t allow Elizabeth to be pummeled like this if we want to win on Tuesday.

There are only 4 days left. Will you dig deep for Elizabeth and Democrats in tough districts like hers?…

… and want to quibble with the wording.

Yeah, I get why the DCCC would want to say “right-wing.” Because it pushes their peeps’ buttons.

But Sanford isn’t “right-wing;” nor are those who tend to flock to his banner. He is libertarian, a classical liberal, which is why, even as his party establishment deserts him, he is backed by the likes of Ron and Rand Paul.

I looked up the group that Roll Call said was backing Sanford. It’s called “Independent Women Voice.” (Note that the Dems did NOT mention the name of the organization, because it might have provoked a positive response in their target audience, which of course is why the group calls itself that.) The organization describes itself this way:

IWV is dedicated to promoting limited government, free markets, and personal responsibility

Note that there’s no mention of traditional values, or a strong defense, or any of the other traits associated with conservatism, much less the “right wing” — only the libertarian values are mentioned.

James Smith gets way harsh on Nikki Haley

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From Rep. James Smith’s Facebook page:

If SC had seen genuine ethics reform previously and had an ethics committee with any teeth, Nikki Haley would likely have been forced out of the House and never would have made it to the Governor’s office. Her actions and the culture of corruption continue to bring shame on SC and the people of our state deserve better.

Coming from such a nice, easygoing, mild-talking guy as James Smith, that is way harsh. Especially that last sentence.

That’s the kind of stuff his neighbor Mia McLeod would say. We can see this, I suppose, as a heating-up of rhetoric as James’ friend Vincent Sheheen prepares to take on the governor. But I think it’s also a measure of the degree to which James, mild-mannered as he is, is fed up.

Anyway, for context, here’s this morning’s story in The State about the ethics bill.

‘Meanwhile, Sanford’s opponent spent the day campaigning elsewhere…’

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My headline should seem familiar.

It seems to me that there’s a line like that in most stories about the 1st Congressional District special election. For instance, this is the only mention of her in first 16 paragraphs of the Island Packet story I referred to in my last post:

Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent in the May 7 special election, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, campaigned across Beaufort and Charleston counties where most of the district’s voters live. She attended fundraisers and forums, declaring herself the victor in Monday night’s debate.

That, of course, was the story about Mark Sanford’s endorsements by Rand Paul, Larry Flynt and a website that promotes extramarital affairs.

The pattern for both national and state stories about this race is as follows:

The lede about the latest development or nondevelopment involving Sanford (his asking his ex-wife to manage his campaign, his goofy plywood signs, Jenny accusing him of trespassing, his soulmate popping up at his primary victory party, changing versions of the Super Bowl story, “debating” a picture of Nancy Pelosi, etc.).
A quick mention that his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, spent the day campaigning elsewhere in the district. Somewhere out of sight and hearing of the press, apparently.
An extensive elaboration on the latest Sanford development or nondevelopment, including a recitation of previous revelations.

You get the impression that if the Democrat weren’t the sister of a national celebrity, she’d hardly ever get a headline of her own.

This underlines, yet again, the point I made in the previous post — that the only way the three-ring circus goes away is if Sanford loses next week. If he wins, this is what we have to get used to.

Great story: the shootout in Boston, by Cullen of the Globe

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Earlier today, I heard Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe on the radio, giving a riveting, shot-by-shot description of the gun battle between Boston-area cops and the Tsarnaev brothers last Thursday night. It’s a great story, and Cullen tells it well in his column this morning. In fact, I don’t recall ever having read a more compelling story about cops in action in a newspaper. An excerpt:

Joe Reynolds is a young cop in Watertown, and last Friday he was driving, alone in his cruiser, when he saw them.

The bombing suspects.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar were in two cars, following each other closely.

Reynolds called it in.

Do not engage, the dispatcher told him. Not on your own.

The brothers pulled over. So did Reynolds. He didn’t know it, but he was about to interrupt the two as they tried, police believe, to transfer their crude, homemade explosives from one vehicle to another.

As Reynolds waited for backup, it felt like hours, but it was only minutes and that backup, in the form of Sergeant John MacLelland, was speeding up the street just as the Tsarnaevs turned and at least one of them opened up on Joe Reynolds. Reynolds threw his cruiser into reverse and sped backwards. He and MacLelland got out and began returning fire.

The suspects had to know they had only one chance if they were going to make their way to New York, perhaps to kill again. They had to shoot their way out. But the cavalry was on the way to ensure that would not happen. A bevy of Watertown, Boston, Transit, and State Police were rushing to help….

It’s not quite the same as hearing it in Cullen’s accent. But just pretend that when he writes “cops,” you’re hearing “cawps.” That will help…

Did it strike anyone else when Obama used the ‘E’ word?

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A discussion earlier today about what Democrats and Republicans like to call things (say, “criminal” vs. “enemy combatant,” for instance) reminded me of something I noticed last week but failed to mention.

Everybody went on and on about Obama initially not using the word “terror,” and later using it.

Me, I was more impressed by another word he used:

So if you want to know who we are, what America is, how we respond to evil, that’s it. Selflessly. Compassionately. Unafraid.

“Evil,” of course, being a word out of the George W. Bush lexicon. Allegedly, liberals don’t hold with that word, suggestive as it is of moral absolutes. But the president used the word — perfectly appropriately, of course. But I noted it with interest…

Pablo Neruda: ‘…y por las calles la sangre de los niños…’

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Here’s a grim coincidence.

When I heard that one of the three dead in Boston was an 8-year-old boy, I remembered what I had heard on the radio early in the afternoon, before the explosions.

Celeste Headlee was interviewing someone about the legacy of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the guest read the last part of Neruda’s poem “Explico Algunas Cosas.”

Here’s how it went:

Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo
y una mañana las hogueras
salían de la tierra
devorando seres,
y desde entonces fuego,
pólvora desde entonces,
y desde entonces sangre.
Bandidos con aviones y con moros,
bandidos con sortijas y duquesas,
bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo
venían por el cielo a matar niños,
y por las calles la sangre de los niños
corría simplemente, como sangre de niños.

Victim Martin Richard, 8.

Chacales que el chacal rechazaría,
piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo,
víboras que las víboras odiaran!

Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre
de España levantarse
para ahogaros en una sola ola
de orgullo y de cuchillos!

Generales
traidores:
mirad mi casa muerta,
mirad España rota:
pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo
en vez de flores,
pero de cada hueco de España
sale España,
pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos,
pero de cada crimen nacen balas
que os hallarán un día el sitio
del corazón.

Preguntaréis por qué su poesía
no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas,
de los grandes volcanes de su país natal?

Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver
la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver la sangre
por las calles!

And here it is in English:

And one morning it was all burning, and one morning bonfires sprang out of the earth, devouring humans. And from then on, fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandidos with planes and Moors, bandidos with rings and duchesses, bandidos with black friars signing the cross, coming down from sky to kill children. And in the streets, the blood of children ran simply like blood of children.

Jackals the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite and bit on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate. Facing you, I have seen the blood of Spain rise up to drown you in a single wave of pride and knives. Traitors, generals: look at my dead house, look at Spain broken: from every house, burning metal comes out instead of flowers, from every crater of Spain comes Spain, from every dead child comes a rifle with eyes, from every crime bullets are born that one day will find out in due the sight of the heart.

You will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak to us of dreams, of leaves, of the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets.

In Neruda’s day, the threat was fascist government. Today, in the West, it’s deluded individuals and small groups of lunatics.

The thoughtful hedonist: Russell Brand on Thatcher

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You probably don’t want to watch it with your mom, or with your children for that matter, but I have seen few things funnier in recent years than Russell Brand in “Get Him to the Greek.” From his first line, “I’m Aldous Snow, the rock star,” his embodiment of an out-of-control hedonist is so devastatingly spot on, you come away convinced that that is who he really is (of course, his personal biography isn’t that far distant from Snow’s).

But messed up as he may be, he’s a bright guy who can actually be fairly thoughtful (interestingly, there were flashes of that in the Aldous Snow character, tucked among the Jeffrey-induced outrages). He showed that in a piece he wrote for The Guardian a couple of days back. Excerpts:

One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It’s kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. “What’s going on there, mate?” John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. “Maggie Thatcher,” he said. “Comes here every week to water them flowers.” The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn’t until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon…

The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear”. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate…

Rough stuff. But then there are bits like this:

When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It’d be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. “I thought I’d be overjoyed, but really it’s just … another one bites the dust …” This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher’s ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies…

I found it interesting because it gave me insight into the attitudes of a young Brit growing up in the Thatcher era — someone whose life wasn’t politics. I think he probably speaks for a lot of people in his generation, those who aren’t inclined to engage in the execrable “Ding-Dong” celebrations, but aren’t at all interested in fitting her with a halo, either.

I was also intrigued by the bits of communitarianism that crept into the writing of this young man best known in this country for playing a narcissist, such as “If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t.”

I share it as something from an unexpected quarter that broadened my understanding a bit.

I particularly liked this Sheheen quote about Haley, Sanford

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I thought this was good in The State‘s story about Vincent Sheheen running against Nikki Haley again. It quotes him as saying:

“The current administration and previous distraction have presented the same ideas and done the same things. It’s not just (about) Republican control, it’s this ideology of self-promotion and extremism that both Sanford and Haley have brought to the table that has occupied South Carolina’s government for 12 years.”

How very true. What he’s doing there is tapping into what so many Republicans (that is to say, the ones who’ve dealt with them) don’t much like about Nikki or Mark Sanford, either. They didn’t like that everything Mark Sanford did (from “look at me” stunts like bringing the pigs into the State House to his appearing on national FoxNews 46 times while fighting against stimulus funding) was about Mark Sanford, not about South Carolina or its Republican Party. If anything, Nikki Haley has taken that me-me-me approach to new depths.

So that was a highly relevant thing to take note of. I also like the reference to the Sanford administration as the “previous distraction.” It has the same tone of genteel disdain that I hear when South Carolinians speak of the 1860-65 conflict as “the recent unpleasantness.”

I hope to see more such perspicacity from young Mr. Sheheen this time around…

The greatest commandments, reduced to a bumper sticker

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Saw this bumper sticker on the road, and was intrigued by the degree to which its creator reduced the two greatest commandments to the briefest possible expression. Here’s the previous record-holder for brevity:

³⁶Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

³⁷Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

³⁸This is the first and great commandment.

³⁹And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I’ve gotta say, I prefer Matthew. But I give the maker of the bumper sticker points for effort.

Bang, bang! Your hashtag shot me dead…

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At first, I was going to launch into a rant about the stupidity of the people, here in the celebrity-addled West, when I took an additional few seconds to ponder this:

What do you see when you read this Twitter hashtag?

#nowthatcherisdead

It’s supposed to be about Monday’s death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and looks to have been popularized by the website “IsThatcherDeadYet,” which was not upset to hear about the Iron Lady’s passing. “It’s fair to say that we are not fans,” site co-creator Jared Earle told The Guardian.

When Thatcher died, the website asked readers “how are you celebrating?” and suggested they use the #nowthatcherisdead hashtag.

Monday at 7:58 a.m. ET, just after the news broke of Thatcher’s death, the hashtag popped up on Twitter. The first tweet from someone who seemed to have read it wrong came four minutes later:

“So sad to hear that Cher is dead. #nowthatcherisdead.”

That then led to some confusion and amusement. Comedian Ricky Gervais as among those who tried to straighten things out:

“Some people are in a frenzy over the hashtag #nowthatchersdead. It’s ‘Now Thatcher’s dead’. Not, ‘Now that Cher’s dead’ JustSayin’ ”

Idiots! I thought, and then I looked at the hashtag as though I were seeing it without the setup, and realized the natural way to make it out was to read “now,” then “that,” then whatever else one could make of the letters that remained.

So the stupidity, I now think, was on the part of the Thatcher-haters who devised the hashtag. The Cher interpretation makes for a better-written statement. The mind sort of wants a “that” after “now.” I mean, really, the thing would have made more sense, been easier to make out, had it read, “#nowthatthatcherisdead.”

Anyway, so much for the “Cher is dead” rumor. Which turned out not to be nearly as much fun as the “Paul is dead” one. That one had all those clues to look for…

A very bad photo Cher posted on Twitter after rumors spread of her death. Come to think of it, she does have a sort of Elvira, Queen of the Dead thing going there. I don’t know who the kid is.

The amazing thing about newspapers, as interpreted by ‘George Costanza’

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Romenesko shared this, which he got from The Harvard Crimson. It’s from an interview with Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on “Seinfeld”:

The first time I really thought, “Oh my god, Jerry Seinfeld is brilliant” was when he did a joke about newspapers, and how relieved the editors of a newspaper must be when exactly the right amount of things happen everyday to make the paper come out perfectly, so that at six o’clock at their deadline, you don’t go, “Oh, one more thing happened,” and now you have a blank page with two paragraphs.

I’ve always loved that joke, too. Because while it is meant to be seen as ridiculous, it taps into a sense of wonder I had about newspaper from an early age.

When I was in second or third grade, I read a book of short stories aimed at people my age. It had a theme — each story opened a window on some different aspect of the big wide world, meant to show kids the possibilities for when they grew up. One story, the one I remember best, was about a kid who went to work for a newspaper as a copy boy (which would be my first newspaper job, at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, years later). The reader followed the boy as he learned about everything it took to publish a newspaper each day.

I was struck with awe at the enormity of such a task. I couldn’t believe any group of people, no matter how experienced or talented, could get all of those things done in a day, every day. And yet there was the proof, on my doorstep each morning.

Decades later, after I had mastered every aspect of the process, I used to wonder sometimes at the complaints we’d get from readers. Someone would be griping at me about some small thing that, in his or her opinion, wasn’t quite right in the paper, and I would remember that story and how it impressed me. And I’d think, Hasn’t this person ever thought about what a miracle it is that the paper comes out at all? Obviously not, or they’d have backed off a bit.

I’ve never thought a single actual error in any paper I worked for was excusable. And readers deserved to demand the same high standard from us. But occasionally, when they were going on and on about some tiny thing that had gone wrong (or that they saw as having gone wrong), I’d find myself wishing they’d pause, just a moment, to be impressed by everything that was right, against all odds…

Oh, wait, one other thing… Having spent a lot of years making the news fit the paper, ruthlessly wielding a light-blue felt pen (which humans could read, but the camera that shot the page when it was done could not pick up) in composing rooms, or trimming with marginally greater delicacy on a computer screen, I found myself puzzled that Yahoo paid a high-school kid tens of millions for an app that… well, here’s the description:

Yahoo was attracted to Summly’s core technology for automatically summarizing news articles. The technology, which included an algorithm for deriving the summaries, was created with help from SRI International, a Silicon Valley research-and development firm that has an artificial-intelligence lab and has an ownership stake in the startup….

In 2011, Mr. D’Aloisio founded his company, at the time called Trimit. He redesigned the app to automatically boil news articles down to 400-word summaries and re-launched it as Summly in late 2012 with help from SRI…

I thought, hey, I could have done that for Yahoo for half the money. And I wouldn’t have needed an app for it. It only takes seconds per story. I’ll admit, the slashing I used to do in composing rooms (and on computer screens) wasn’t always a work of art when I was in a hurry (which was most of the time) — but I kind of doubt this app is any more respectful of the writers’ precious words…

AP says there are no more ‘illegal immigrants’ in the U.S.

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But Doug and others who’ve been yearning for this day shouldn’t get overexcited. AP says we still have an “illegal immigration” problem.

It’s a matter of style.

Most news organizations in this country follow The Associated Press Stylebook quite religiously. Except for a few local exceptions here and there, so did every paper I ever worked at.

And AP style just changed. Those who follow the guide are no longer to call anyone an “illegal immigrant,” or refer to people as “illegals.”

Romenesko quotes from the statement today from AP explaining the change:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally…

The discussions on this topic have been wide-ranging and include many people from many walks of life. (Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as “undocumented,” despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)…

… we had in other areas been ridding the Stylebook of labels. The new section on mental health issues argues for using credibly sourced diagnoses instead of labels. Saying someone was “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of schizophrenic, for example.

And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to “illegal immigrant” again.

We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance.

So we have….

Here’s the way the entry in the Stylebook reads now:

illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.

Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

There’s a certain logic to this, but I think the AP is going about a step too far. I can see not describing humans as “illegals.” It’s lazy, and unless a person has been declared an outlaw in the full meaning of the term (is that even possible in today’s legal system), the person himself is not illegal.

But by doing away with “illegal immigrant,” AP is eliminating a perfectly clear and accurate way of describing one aspect of a person. I doubt the service would balk at “recent immigrant,” or any other accurate modifier used with the word “immigrant.” “Illegal immigrant” is a quick, accurate way to describe a characteristic of an individual that is important to the story (else it wouldn’t be mentioned at all). I see no reason to inconvenience thousands of writers and millions of readers by forcing them into less direct ways of communicating the same concept.

At the end of the day, Mark Sanford needs to read this list

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Enjoyed this piece about cliches from an editor at The Washington Post:

Pity the poor editor seeking to avoid cliches. It is a futile attempt that, for better or worse, only shines a spotlight on what has become the new normal.

Be that as it may, it is fun. Over the past couple of years, I have joined with colleagues throughout The Washington Post, especially the inimitable Anne Kornblut, to collect cliched words and phrases that journalists rely on too much — indeed, at their peril. It was a little-noticed collection that has suddenly become oft-cited, perhaps even going viral.

After Jim Romenesko posted the list on his blog, I expected pushback from the powers that be, who might want to double down on their use of such terms. Instead, we received support from a dizzying array of sources, in particular through a feeding frenzy ofretweets and e-mails. Clearly, this hot-button issue struck a nerve…

You catch his drift, I’m sure. But go read the whole thing.

This list should come in handy to Mark Sanford. I would say, all he’d have to do is run all the proscribed phrases together and presto! He’s got another speech…

‘Jumping the shark:’ You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means…

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In today’s WSJ, under the headline, “Jumping the sequester,” columnist Kimberley A. Strassel writes the following:

The phrase “jumping the shark” describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester.

The precise moment came Tuesday, when the administration announced that it was canceling public tours of the White House, blaming budget cuts. The Sequesterer in Chief has insisted that cutting even $44 billion from this fiscal year will cause agonizing pain—airport security snarls, uninspected meat, uneducated children. Since none of those things has come to pass, the White House decided it needed an immediate and high-profile way of making its point. Ergo, it would deny the nation’s school kids a chance to view a symbol of America.

The act was designed to spark outrage against Republicans, yet the sheer pettiness of it instead provided a moment of clarity. Americans might not understand the technicalities of sequester, but this was something else entirely. Was the president actually claiming there was not a single other government item—not one—that could be cut instead of the White House tours? Really?

Yeahhh… I don’t think that’s jumping the shark. Do y’all.? That sounds to me like somebody wrote the headline first, and tried to force the column to fit it. Let’s look at the Wikipedia definition:

Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that is used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of “gimmick” in a desperate attempt to keep viewers’ interest…

And here’s the origin:

The phrase jump the shark comes from a scene in the fifth season premiere episode of the American TV series Happy Days titled “Hollywood: Part 3“, written by Fred Fox, Jr.^[4] which aired on September 20, 1977. In the episode, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where a water-skiing Fonzie (Henry Winkler) answers a challenge to his bravery by wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, and jumping over a confined shark. The stunt was created as a way to showcase Winkler’s real life water ski skills.^[5]

For a show that in its early seasons depicted universally relatable adolescent and family experiences against a backdrop of 1950s nostalgia, this incident marked an audacious, cartoonish turn towards attention-seeking gimmickry. Initially a supporting character, the faddish lionization of an increasingly superhuman Fonzie became the focus of Happy Days. The series continued for seven years after Fonzie’s shark-jumping stunt, with a number of changes in cast and situations. However, it is commonly^[who?] believed that the show began a creative decline in this era, as writers ran out of ideas, and Happy Daysbecame a caricature of itself. As a nod to the episode, Henry Winkler’s character again jumped a shark in the 2003 show Arrested Development…

To me, that’s a pretty clear definition that the Strossel example doesn’t fit. You can call the White House cancellation of tours all kinds of things — in these parts, we’d call it a “Big Bird defense” — but it’s not jumping the shark.

That said, the very same Wikipedia entry I quote above gives an example, also involving Barack Obama, that I don’t think fits either:

In 2008 during the Obama presidential campaign, at a meeting of Democratic governors in Chicago, each governor was identified with a name plate while Senator Obama had a large seal – that looked official but was not.^[11] The New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich wrote “For me, Mr. Obama showed signs of jumping the shark two weeks back, when he appeared at a podium affixed with his own pompous faux-presidential seal”.^[12]

So what do I consider to be a perfect example of jumping the shark? This: When the Beverly Hillbillies went to England. Actually, that series jumped the shark several times; it was sort of a defining characteristic. It sort of did so when Jethro received his draft notice and costumed himself as Patton and bought a tank. It really, really did so when the whole cast jumped fictional universes, going to Hooterville to interact with characters from “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres.” (A radical change of venue can be a good sign that a shark is being jumped.)

In fact, those examples are so good that I have trouble coming up with any others that illustrate the concept so well, as I understand it. It’s not limited to iconic sitcoms, of course. And it can be translated to politics. When Bill Clinton played saxophone on Arsenio Hall seems a pretty clear example. If you go way back, there’s Richard Nixon’s “Sock it to me?” on “Laugh-In.”

But closing the White House to tours? Not so much…

Economist takes live-and-let-live position on Oxford comma

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An alert reader brought this piece from The Economist to my attention. An excerpt:

To recap, the Oxford comma separates the last two items in a list, as in “red, white, and blue”. For reasons opaque, the use or non-use of the final comma here stirs passions all out of proportion to its importance. As OnlineSchools.com’s graphic notes, much of the world uses it, but equally respectable publishing houses and publications do not. The Economist is in the latter camp: we would write “red, white and blue”. Defenders of the Oxford comma point to an almost certainly apocryphal story of the student who dedicated a piece of work to “my parents, God and Ayn Rand”. But anyone who writes such a thing has bigger problems than punctuation. Any sensible person would edit and remove such messes as this, whether they use the Oxford comma or not.

What I like about OnlineSchools.com’s graphic is its explanation that the Oxford comma isn’t a black-or-white, always-or-never thing. It is a matter of style. Use it or don’t, but be consistent, and you’re fine. Rarely is such finesse on display when people talk about these things…

What that sort of implies, but doesn’t clearly say, is that even someone who does not use the Oxford comma as a rule might use it, without being untrue to himself, in a series of elements that are more complex than red, white and blue. For instance, if he were to describe the same colors as the hue of an apple at the perfect point of ripeness, that of a face that has been drained of blood at the moment when its owner has heard appalling news, and the color that you see staring straight down into the Pacific when you’re out of sight of land.

No one should be so rigid about this or any other style rule that it gets in the way of clear communication.

Of course, just plain “red, white and blue” would be the more economical way to say it.

Yes, public schools should teach Bible as literature

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An op-ed in the WSJ today made the case for putting the Bible into the public school curriculum, as a foundational work (or rather, body of works) of Western civilization. The authors were educated in Europe and were taught the Bible as a matter of course. But that reckons without the reflexive horror the suggestion of doing so engenders in this country:

Teaching the Bible is of course a touchy subject. One can’t broach it without someone barking “separation of church and state” and “forcing religion down my throat.”

Yet the Supreme Court has said it’s perfectly OK for schools to do so, ruling in 1963 (Abington School District v. Schempp) that “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as a part of a secular (public school) program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court understood that we’re not talking about religion here, and certainly not about politics. We’re talking about knowledge. The foundations of knowledge of the ancient world—which informs the understanding of the modern world—are biblical in origin. Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president known more as a cigar-chomping Rough Rider than a hymn-signing Bible-thumper, once said: “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

I agree entirely, totally apart from all the phrases with which scripture has enriched the language, or the fact that Shakespeare makes 1,200 biblical references.

I think there are other things we should have to read as well. I’ve always felt sort of ignorant that I’ve never read the Iliad, preferably in the original Greek. But that’s peripheral, compared to having a thorough understanding of such allusions as Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, Jonah and Judas Iscariot. Those are basic.

And it’s not just the stories or the language. As an overview of different forms of ancient literature (poetry, allegory, history, etc.) it’s a treasure trove.

Before someone misunderstands me — nothing that I’ve said gives anyone any reason to, but Kulturkampf in this society being emotional rather than rational, someone will — I’m not an advocate of mandatory prayer in public schools. Although people should be (and are) free to pray there as well as anywhere else.

The authors of this piece, if anything, underestimate the objections such a suggestion will meet. For instance, they neglect to anticipate the objection that other religions’ texts, say the Bhagavad Gita, should be given the same status in the K-12 curriculum. But of course, that work is not foundational to western culture. It’s a great subject for upper-division college electives, but there’s no more reason to make it part of everyone’s education than, say, Kerouac’s Dharma Bums as opposed to Huck Finn. One is enrichment; the other is basic.

Anyway, since these folks brought up the subject, I say yeah: Put Genesis and the rest in there with Shakespeare. They are still reading Shakespeare in the schools, aren’t they? If not, I give up…

bradwarthen.com

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