Category Archives: Words

On a president asking God to bless America

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Sooner or later, we’ll turn to more profane matters, but to follow up on a question from Bud:

Does anyone besides me find it offputting when the POTUS says “God Bless America”? Who started this practice? I never noticed it before George W. used it at every opportunity. Now Obama is getting carried away with it.

My first reaction was that every president in my memory had done it. But I thought I’d check, however cursorily. My quick search turned up this piece from TIME magazine. Apparently, no president from FDR through LBJ had ended speeches that way. But then…

On the evening of April 30, 1973, Richard Nixon addressed the nation live from the Oval Office in an attempt to manage the growing Watergate scandal. It was a difficult speech for Nixon: He announced the resignations of three Administration officials, including Attorney General Richard Kleindienst — but Nixon nonetheless tried to sound optimistic. As he approached the end of his speech, Nixon noted that he had “exactly 1,361 days remaining” in his term and wanted them “to be the best days in America’s history.” “Tonight,” he continued, “I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my presidency.” Then came the magic words: “God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.”

Not an auspicious beginning, give the extent to which Nixon was given to self-pitying self-interest.

According to this source, neither Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter (surprised?) used the phrase to end speeches. But Ronald Reagan did, big-time. And every president since.

Of course, this account is rather nitpicking. Presidents before Nixon DID invoke the Deity’s blessing, just in different words:

Presidents from Roosevelt to Carter did sometimes conclude their addresses by seeking God’s blessing, often using language such as “May God give us wisdom” or “With God’s help.” But they didn’t make a habit of it.

As for whether presidents should do this or not (and Bud thinks not), I think it’s fine either way.  As I said in response to Bud earlier, I generally like it. No matter how pompous the speaker, those words end the speech on a note of humility. It’s a nod to that which is greater than the speaker and all the power he commands.

It is an invocation. OK, technically, since it’s at the end, it’s a benediction. But basically, it’s a plea sent aloft — Please bless this nation which I have been elected to serve. It’s impossible to imagine anything more benign, or more appropriate, for an elected leader to say.

AT THE SAME TIME…

I respect that some presidents have generally avoided such an invocation. Declining to do so is another way of demonstrating humility, and proper respect toward a deity. A serious, thoughtful politician might well consider it crass to invoke God in connection with a political speech, as the rest of the speech is necessarily tied to petty temporal concerns and usually designed to advance the position of the speaker.

I excuse the practice to the extent that it is a sort of departure from the rest of the speech. I tend to hear it as the speaker saying, “Whether you go along with what I said just now or not, whether I continue to serve you or not, whether I and my party prevail or be consigned to the dustbin of history, I ask that God bless our country.”

It at least gives me one thing I can always agree with.

Does America “feel sorry” for Obama?

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Don’t know if you heard about the snafu whereby a reporter for Yahoo (and I didn’t even know Yahoo had reporters) was inadvertently allowed to listen in on a private GOP strategy session…

Anyway, the headline from it was, the Republicans on the call were warned not to attack President Obama too directly as they try to get him fired by the electorate:

Republicans on a private Republican National Committee conference call with allies warned Tuesday that party surrogates should refrain from personal attacks against President Barack Obama, because such a strategy is too hazardous for the GOP.

“We’re hesitant to jump on board with heavy attacks” personally against President Obama, Nicholas Thompson, the vice president of polling firm the Tarrance Group, said on the call. “There’s a lot of people who feel sorry for him.”

Recent polling data indicates that while the president suffers from significantly low job approval ratings, voters still give “high approval” to Obama personally, Thompson said.

Voters “don’t think he’s an evil man who’s out to change the United States” for the worse–even though many of the same survey respondents agree that his policies have harmed the country, Thompson said. The upshot, Thompson stressed, is that Republicans should “exercise some caution” when talking about the president personally…

How about that? There’s hope for the world when we see that top Republican strategists don’t see Obama as the incarnation of all evil — or are at least reluctant to say so. Now, if I can just persuade my Democratic friends that calling other people “vicious” is not conducive to a meeting of the minds, maybe we can get together and solve some problems in this country…

How does this happen? I’ll tell ya…

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

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

How does that even happen?

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

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

Well, I’ll tell ya…

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

But basically, there is no excuse that serves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perry’s “aw, shucks” approach glosses over some ominously imperial assumptions

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This aired last night in Iowa during “The Tonight Show.” The explanation, from the campaign:

“While the rest of GOP field is busy handling scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues, Gov. Perry’s appearance on Leno and his special Leno ad show he is confident enough to use the attention from last month’s Michigan debate to highlight his status as the true outsider conservative in the Republican field,” said Perry campaign communications director Ray Sullivan.

He’s walking a delicate line, between “I’m just plain folks” and “I’m dumber than a bag o’ hammers.”

Interesting that his campaign would regard going on Leno to make fun of himself as somehow more relevant and substantial than “scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues.”

One other point: He wants us to think of him a jus’ plain folks, but among the few words in his ad, he says, “a part-time Congress.” But think about that. That’s what one who would be emperor would do: Send the Congress home.

Perry’s rhetoric is redolent with such suggestions. As many times as we’ve seen the “oops” clip, how many have noticed that what he was saying was, “It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that’re gone…” As though it would simply happen once he was elected, as though he would bring it about by fiat.

Perhaps that should attract our attention more than Perry’s folksy flubs.

Tasteful understatement on display

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My first reaction when I saw this was to flash on 1979:

Protesters Storm British Embassy in Tehran

But then, I had to smile when I read this blurb leading the NYT site:

In an assault Britain called “utterly unacceptable,” Iranian protesters entered the British Embassy on Tuesday, chanting “death to England,” pulling down a flag and ransacking offices.

Utterly unacceptable, indeed. And insupportable, I might add, if I may do so without being charged with rash hyperbole.

Oh, and by the way… the sun may have set on the Empire, but when all is said and done, I’m going to bet on the culture that says “utterly unacceptable” over the one that gets so whipped up by an ayatollah that it runs amok screaming “death to England” and destroying Her Majesty’s property.

And now, let’s drink to the King. Or to the Queen, if that’s all you’ve got.

Column II: It’s the government we’re TALKING about here, Cal

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Just as one should change a car’s oil every 3,000 miles, I think it is helpful to call “Bull!” about everything 3,000th time I hear a nonsensical rhetorical cliche.

Such as this one in a Cal Thomas column I read in the paper today:

There is something else Republicans must not do. They must avoid making the same mistake Democrats make by looking to government as a first resource.

Ahem.

Cal, you were talking in this column about people running for president of the United States. Someone to run the executive branch of the government. Someone to be in charge of government programs. Someone we trust to be in charge of the things we have decided that we want out government to do.

We are not hiring a pastor for our church, or a den mother for a Cub Scout den, or the CEO of a corporation, or the executive director of a nonprofit. We are looking for someone to run the government.

That’s the job. This person will not be in charge of anything else in the world except the government. Therefore the only tools this person will have at his (or, in one unlikely case, her) disposal will be government tools.

Therefore, the only proposals any reasonable person — whether Democrat, Republican, or whatever — would expect to hear such candidates speak about would be proposals for what to do with the government. Any other proposals would be completely irrelevant.

Now, you or I and lots of other folks might prefer to turn elsewhere for solutions to problems we see in the world, and that’s fine. We should do so as we are inclined. But that is completely irrelevant to the task of choosing a president, a person who would have nothing to do with running those other aspects of life.

Not only the “first,” but the only “resource” this person would be empowered to use in carrying out his (or her) duties would be government.

I just thought I’d point that out. It seems to me to be painfully obvious, but you seemed confused, and I like to help.

They lack lust, they’re so lacklustre…

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“… is that all the strength you can muster?”

(Elvis Costello reference.)

Anyway, that was my reaction to this list from the WashPost’s The Fix of 11 best and worst political lines of the year. As zingers or pithy observations go, they leave much to be desired. But I think it’s been that sort of political year so far:

11. “I don’t even know who this woman is.” — Businessman Herman Cain on Sharon Bialek, the woman accusing him of sexual harassment.

10. “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” — Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman via Twitter on the debate over climate change within the GOP presidential primary field.

9. “I am the government.” — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on being the government.

8. “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.” — Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin responding via Facebook to the attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

7. “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” — Herman Cain on foreign policy.

6. “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.” — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann…..in New Hampshire.

5. “Corporations are people, my friend.” — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in response to hecklers at the Iowa State Fair.

4. “Get the hell off the beach…you’ve maximized your tan.” — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) warning sunbathers to flee Hurricane Irene.

3. “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement.” — Spokesman for Sen. Jon Kyl(R-Ariz.) regarding the senator’s claim that abortions accounted for more than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.

2. “I can’t say with certitude.” — Then Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) on whether a lewd picture was, in fact, him.

1. “Oops”. — Texas Governor Rick Perry at the end of a 50-plus second (unsuccessful) attempt to remember the third federal agency he would eliminate if elected president.

See what I mean? When “Oops” is No. 1, the quality of political rhetoric, even of gaffes, has gone down…

You want to see something good? Here’s the song my headline came from:

Headline of the Week: ‘The Cain Scrutiny’

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OK, so may it’s a rather obvious play, but I enjoy nautical allusions. It’s the hed on an opinion piece at wsj.com. An excerpt:

Sexual harassment claims are notoriously easy to make, and it is impossible to judge the merits of these two cases on the public evidence so far. However, the Cain campaign’s initial response was a mistake because it merely charged political bias without a firm denial. “Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain,” the campaign said in a statement. “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.”

That won’t do for a presidential candidate. Voters want to know whether such a charge is true or false. By late this morning Mr. Cain had acknowledged as much by telling Fox News that he had been falsely accused and that the sexual harassment charges were “totally baseless, totally false.” He said the National Restaurant Association may have settled the cases but that he hadn’t been aware of the settlements.

Mr. Cain’s candidacy can survive these charges if he is telling the truth. He may even get an initial sympathy backlash from Republicans who have learned to be skeptical of such accusations against conservatives. (See Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court nomination of.) What he won’t survive is a revelation that contradicts his denial.

Then they came for the people with good taste…

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I really like this treatment, in The New York Times, of the silly-sounding new film, “Anonymous:”

“Was Shakespeare a fraud?” That’s the question the promotional machinery for Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” wants to usher out of the tiny enclosure of fringe academic conferences into the wider pastures of a Hollywood audience. Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.

Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious…

No, I haven’t seen it, and don’t intend to. I mean, I saw “The Da Vinci Code,” and I’d like to have that time back. I also read Foucault’s Pendulum, which was essentially the same thing (grand, paranoid conspiracy, involving the Knights Templar, reaching back into ancient times). That one really disappointed me, because I had enjoyed The Name of the Rose.

Bottom line, what does it matter who wrote those plays and poems? Whoever it was was probably the most brilliant writer of English ever, largely responsible for the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the Anglosphere. But so what if it was Will Shakespeare or Joe Blow down the street? What’s in a name, yadda, yadda? It’s not like the actual person can enjoy our adulation today. We can’t shake him by the hand or anything. He can’t make any money out of it. Having that name, and that visage, associated with the works suits fine. And since no one will ever know that it was someone else — even if we found a document with a royal seal attesting to it, that could be a fraud itself — what’s the point?

Would it matter that Julius Caesar was actually someone else using that name? No. Gallia would still have been divisa in partes tres. (Latin scholars, help me out — I suspect that “divisa” is wrong with “would have been.” And to me, that matters.)

It remains most likely that

They may have come for Opus Dei and gotten away with it, but they’re not coming for me, not again.

E.B. White on the “Bonus Army” in 1932

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The Bonus Army protests ended badly for these veterans. Here you see a clash with police. Later, Gen. Douglas MacArthur moved in with tanks and tear gas. Two protesters were killed.

You may find this interesting. In light of what’s going on with Occupy Wall Street, The New Yorker dug up some pieces that E.B. White wrote about the “Bonus Army” demonstrations in 1932. TNY noted that “While deeply sympathetic to the plight of the jobless in the Great Depression (see this Comment from earlier in the year), White was largely dismissive of the Bonus Army.”

The piece went on to quote White directly:

In a democracy, there are a thousand, ten thousand groups…. Each has its own particular sorrow and its grievance; there exists no common tyranny against which to rebel, not even the tyranny of hard times. If you mixed bonus marchers with Kentucky miners, they would probably spend the rest of their lives arguing about what to rebel against.

I could identify with that. With White’s attitude, that is. One of the things that bothers me so much about political parties is that they are aggregations of people who pretend their aims are the same, and mesh perfectly — when they don’t.

But even more pertinent to the protests we see today is this bit: “there exists no common tyranny against which to rebel.” To see the OWS as coherent, as having a point, you have to believe that there is some identifiable They that is oppressing the demonstrators.

But I could also identify with this sympathetic observation from a week later:

Being out of a job perforates the walls of the mind, and thoughts seep off into strange channels. To say that the country is as rich as it ever was is a joke: something is gone that used to be here—the spirit of millions of men is gone, and a man’s spirit is just as real a natural resource as gold or wheat or lumber.

While I don’t see it that darkly, I do see the world as vastly changed from what it was a generation ago. Different for my children than for me. Funny thing was, I felt like things were harder for us than for our parents. Yeah, we had more stuff as a generation — but it took two salaries even to be in the middle class, which had not been true for our parents’ generation.

Anyway, just some tidbits for thought…

Yo, GOP: Huntsman may be your man, if you’d calm down and listen for more than 30 seconds

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I was struck by Daniel Henninger’s column in the WSJ this morning. He was decrying the freak show that is this series of GOP presidential debates, and the way they are making our republic stupider by the day.

And then he got to talking about the way Jon Huntsman impressed in an editorial board meeting:

These dark thoughts came forth earlier this week when a group at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page spent some 75 minutes talking to candidate Jon Huntsman. He’s the one they stick on the end of the podium.

Say this: Jon Huntsman may or may not deserve to be the nominee, but he’s better than the back of the line.

After starting with a horrifyingly robotic recitation of his resume (exactly as he’s said in every debate), the former Utah governor took us on an intriguing tour of his thinking on a range of issues.

Mr. Huntsman said the U.S. likely would have to intervene militarily against Iran’s nuclear program in the next four or five years, a remarkable assertion. He said this in an Oct. 10 speech in New Hampshire, but even in our super-saturated media age, trees fall silently in an empty forest.

He supports “regime change in Syria” through diplomatic and covert means. We should try to make Iraq a “buffer” between Iran and Syria.

He supports the details of the Ryan Plan on entitlement reform. Like Rep. Ryan, he says this contest is “not a normal election”; if the Republicans lose, he said, the U.S. could be on course to repeat Japan’s 10 years of moribund economic growth.

There was more, some of it impressive, some not (for ideas on economic policy, he talks to his brother, an entrepreneur). The point is that one left the meeting with a basis to think about Mr. Huntsman as president, rather than the thumbs-down vote he’s gotten from the Roman Colosseum of the TV debates…

You may or may not have noticed that, when Huntsman sat down with The State‘s board recently, he also impressed them as being the guy with the most substance in the field. Or he impressed Cindi, anyway, which takes some doing.

Part of this is that an editorial board meeting is a vastly superior vehicle for assessing what sort of POTUS a candidate might be than the Reality TV formats of the “debates,” especially given what Mr. Henninger called “(t)he assumption that every cat and dog must be in the debate.” If only there were a way to duplicate that experience — sitting down with a candidate for an hour or two or three and really digging into issues, with discussion rather than robotic questions and timed answers.

But maybe there’s also something about Huntsman — something that even the traumatized, extremism-ridden, post 2008 GOP would see if they’d stop sticking him at the far end of the podium, uninvite some of the less-suitable candidates, and give him an extended listen for once.

OK, DCCC, I agree with you on this one

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Another of those fund-raising appeals that never stop coming arrived this morning, ostensibly from Donna Brazile. It starts out,

Brad —

If President Obama found a cure for the common cold, Republicans would oppose it.

I’ll ignore the laughably transparent attempt to pretend you know me (“Hey, Donna!”), when you obviously don’t if you think I’d give you money, and move on to the first full sentence.

You’re absolutely right. Now, will you agree with me on the following statement, which is just as obviously true?

Brad —

If President Bush had found a cure for the common cold, Democrats would have opposed it.

You can’t agree, Donna? Oh, well. Perhaps I don’t know you that well, either.

Too bad. Because you had hit on a punchy, terse way of expressing how pointlessly partisan Congress has become, and how destructive it is to the country for anyone to give you money for your cause, or to do the same for your Republican counterparts.

Vote UnParty, y’all.

No, really, I think Fox will tire of Sanford

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Meg Kinnard Tweeted earlier that Fox News and Mark Sanford have made it official:

Former SC Gov. Mark Sanford hired by Fox News

SC State Wire
Published: TodayCOLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is joining Fox News as a political commentator through the 2012 presidential elections, a Fox Channel spokeswoman confirmed Saturday.

The network spokeswoman told The Associated Press the two-term Republican governor has been hired as a contributor, though she declined to give any details on his pay or when he would start.

Sanford was a rising political star before he vanished from the state for five days in 2009, and reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. When he reappeared, the father of four admitted to being in Argentina with a woman he later called his soul mate.

The international affair destroyed his marriage, which ended in divorce, and derailed his once-promising political career, which had included talk of presidential aspirations…The term-limited Sanford has appeared on Fox since leaving office in January. In September, he told the Associated Press his interview with Sean Hannity was his way of slowly getting back to talking about the nation’s troubles.

“I think this represents me sticking my toe back in the water and talking about things I care about,” he said then. “I care passionately about the direction of this country and deficit and debt and all the things that seem to be in vogue right now.”

He reiterated that he had no intentions of getting back into politics, though he noted he’s learned “you never say never in life.”

Sanford did not immediately return phone or e-mail messages Saturday.

Sanford’s new job was first reported by The New York Times.

When I reTweeted the news, I added the comment, “Fox will tire of this sooner than they realize…”

Apparently, my comment was taken in a spirit other than the way I intended it, because former Sanford press secretary Joel Sawyer (recently seen with me on Pub Politics) responded:

But I wasn’t being hateful at all. I was just saying something that I believe to be true. I really do think that, six months or perhaps a year after he starts, they are likely to question the decision.

I think he has plenty of experience that will stand him in good stead at the outset. After all, they did have him on 46 times during those few months when he was fighting to prevent South Carolina from getting all of its stimulus money. Really. Not making it up.

So there had to be something they liked.

But here’s the thing about Mark: After awhile, he naturally kicks back into his normal mode of speaking. And the nation hasn’t heard him in large-enough doses to know what I’m talking about.

Except once.

After his infamous post-Argentina press conference (later on the same day Gina Smith caught him at the Atlanta airport), several national media types remarked to me the weird, aimless way he had wandered about, seemingly endlessly, in making his confession.

I was surprised that they remarked upon it. That’s the way he talks all the time! He backs into topics, and backs out of them. I don’t have much room to talk on this score, I realize — maybe it’s why I liked Sanford so much early on — but that’s the way he speaks. Like neither his nor anyone else’s time is valuable. About as hurried as he is out operating the backhoe out on the “farm.”

There’s good TV and bad TV, and it has nothing to do with what sort of human being you are. The world is loaded with fine people who would not be good on TV.

I could be wrong, but I really think a time is likely to come when someone at Fox cries to the ceiling, “Why did we do this?”

We’ll see. Or you’ll see. I don’t get those 24-hour TV “news” channels any more.

He don’t know Steny very well, do he?

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In a column today in the WSJ (“Squatting on Wall Street“), Daniel Henninger scoffed a great deal at Occupy Wall Street (“Compared to this group, Mark Rudd and the Columbia University sit-ins of 1968 were Periclean Athens.”)

I have no huge problem with that, although I think his ultimate point of trying to tie the Obama re-election effort firmly to OWS seems to go a bit far.

And I had to hoot at one passage:

And so on Sunday, Mr. Obama found a way to yoke Martin Luther King Jr. to Occupy Wall Street: “If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has praised OWS for its “spontaneity.”

What came to be known as Occupy Wall Street began several blocks from Wall Street itself, in Zuccotti Park, in downtown Manhattan. I spent a morning in Zuccotti Park this week. Let’s put it this way: I’d make a contribution to the Democratic House re-election committee to see Mrs. Pelosi lead the austere Steny Hoyer and a delegation of her House colleagues through Zuccotti Park. Spontaneity? Most of the people living atop the park’s pavement are virtually catatonic.

Hey, anybody who thinks Steny Hoyer is “austere” didn’t see him doing the Electric Slide in Columbia last year, and really getting into it. I did, and the video is above.

He don’t know him very well, do he?

A morning ‘rant’ about a borderline word

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

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

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

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

I’ll bet he wouldn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The diminishment of creativity over time

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Lately, in my truck, I’ve been listening to “The Union,” a CD put out by Leon Russell and Elton John. Speaking of gifts, my brother gave it to me last Christmas, but I only broke it out recently.

I’ve enjoyed it. It’s quite good. I’ve kept it in the player for weeks. I’ve even caught some of the tunes going through my head during the day. They worked well together, although their styles remain quite distinct. When you hear the opening piano chords, you know which voice you’re about to hear.

But… there’s this sadness I associate with it. Good as it is, it’s simply nothing like what both of them were producing in 1970 and ’71, and for a short time after that. I really enjoyed John’s work, from “Your Song” through “Tiny Dancer” on “Madman Across the Water.” As for the Master of Space and Time, I doubt that he had any bigger fan than I, back during the “Shelter People” period. “Stranger in a Strange Land,” for instance, remains an all-time favorite. And who else could have pulled off his show-stealing performance at the Concert for Bangladesh?

On that subject, Leon put on the most awesome show I saw live in the early ’70s, if ever. It was in Memphis. The opening: All the Shelter People were on stage, without Leon. There were two grand pianos. At one of them sat a black guy (who really music aficionados can probably name, although I cannot) rocking out in a gospel style (or so it sounded to my untrained ear), and the Shelter People — or whatever they were called at this point, essentially a “hippie commune bonafied” on tour — were energetically jamming along with him. The music built, and built, still without Leon. It had been going on about 10 minutes, it seemed, and everybody was pumped, and then… Leon stolled out on stage. He was wearing a white suit, with a white top hat, and playing a white Stratocaster. He ambled, back and forth, playing lead over the music… then he climbed up onto the second piano, and stood there with the guitar, rocking away. Finally, he climbed down, put down the Strat, and got serious. He sat at the second piano, and he and other pianist duelled away, with the other dozen or so other people on stage rocking along with them…

It was amazing. What a showman.

People get older. Their powers diminish. Certainly, their energies do. One great thing about being a musician, though, is that you generally retain the ability to make something beautiful, even if it lacks the power of what you did that made you a star, if you were a star.

I got to thinking about this yesterday when I saw a Tweet leading me to a thing about Kevin’s Smith’s movies, ranked from Worst to Best. There were 10 of them. Fortunately, it was not called a Top Ten list. You couldn’t even honestly come up with a Top Five from this guy’s work, not if you had taste. Basically, he had a Top One — “Clerks.” Some of you who think me a prig would be surprised that I even liked that, but it was really well done. The pottymouthed script was inventive, clever, as were the acting and the direction. Not even Jay and Silent Bob wore thin, for as long as the film lasted. It made you want to see more from this guy.

And then you did see more, and you wished you hadn’t. It’s probably a good thing he’s decided to desert his oeuvre and turn to more pedestrian, formula comedy (“Cop Out,” which this list placed last, but which was at least mildly amusing).

Kevin Smith is only 41. He was born when Elton John and Leon Russell were at their peak. But he peaked with one film.

That happens, with creativity. It’s a tragedy, when it deserts the young. Look at the Beatles. Of course, the Beatles were so amazingly improbable to begin with. How could anyone, so naturalistically, produce so much material that was that diverse, from year to year, and that appealing? It was inhuman. It was the sort of thing that in a different cultural context gives rise to dark mutterings about clandestine meetings at the Crossroads at midnight.

But it didn’t last. As they broke up, it looked as though it would. Lennon produced “Instant Karma;” McCartney gave us “Maybe I’m Amazed.” George Harrison seemed to explode, having been repressed, with “All Things Must Pass.”

And that was it. They faded. Mozart died, but they lived to see their talents fade. The wonderful thing about Paul McCartney is that he appreciated that his fans loved the old stuff. So did he. (If you’d made John Lennon stand on stage and play Beatles songs, he’d have shot himself before that other guy did.) I saw him at Williams-Brice, and loved it. But, as I noted the other day, it’s sad to see him dyeing his hair, still trying to be the Cute One. That time is past, Paul.

Of course, one looks for such fading in oneself. Fortunately for me, I never hit the heights that these guys did. I was a decent writer by local standards, impressive to some people. Just enough people, in my book. It’s nice to have strangers come up and say kind things occasionally, but it’s also good to be able to walk down the street anonymously 99 percent of the time.

And as we age, things fade. First, one is no longer indefatigable. Gone are the days when, as a reporter, I could work all day, all night, and through the next morning before taking a nap (something I did frequently, back in the day).

But if you don’t rise too far, you don’t have as far to fall. I never wrote the Great American Novel (not yet, anyway), so I didn’t have to publicly struggle to replicate that for the rest of my life, while everyone scoffed. When one muddles along, one can continue more easily.

I look back at stuff I wrote 30 years ago when I find it moldering in a box, and it’s good. It has a spark, one that I lament. But it’s strange how one’s appreciation of one’s own work morphs. At any time in my adult life, I’ve thought the stuff I’d written six months earlier SO much better than what I was writing currently. Then, six months later, I’d think THAT stuff was the best I’d ever written. That has continued through my blogging years. (My old blog was SO much better-written than this one — even though it wasn’t nearly as well-read. And the stuff I wrote on this blog a year ago is amazingly better than this tripe I’m churning out now.)

What I’m writing now is the worst stuff I’ve ever written. (In my opinion, which is what counts, since I’m an introvert.) But it has always been thus. Aside from its lack of creativity, it’s shot through with typos and incomplete thoughts, mangled sentences. Because I don’t read back over it, and don’t have an editor — and everybody needs one. But I look forward, ever hopeful, to enjoying it later.

When I don’t do that any more, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Relax, I expect.

What about y’all, in what you do? As critics, do you disappoint yourselves? If so, take heart. Perhaps it will look better later. And even if it doesn’t, the stuff Leon and Elton are putting out is still quite good…

Gov. Perdue did have a point, you know

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Speaking of emails, I just got this one from Joe Wilson:

What is Governor Perdue thinking?

She suggested recently that we shouldn’t hold a Congressional election in 2012 because you might hold your Congressional representatives accountable for the decisions they make.

Isn’t this what our country is all about? Aren’t you supposed to hold your elected officials accountable for the decisions they make?

By holding elections, you have the opportunity to send a message to your leaders, one that can have a very immediate and permanent effect.

This knowledge makes those of us in Congress aware of what our constituents want back home. It keeps us accountable. Without it, we could pass legislation in Washington that only benefited a select few.

That’s not how our country works, no matter how beneficial Gov. Perdue thinks it would be.

Your voice is important, and I consider your will as I cast my vote for any piece of legislation.

Actually, I think the lady had a point. All due respect to the Framers’ wisdom in putting “the people’s House” in perpetual election mode (which sort of got watered down when we started directly electing senators), but I have to wonder… what do we accomplish in these rituals every two years?

You know what will happen in 2012? Joe will raise a whole lot of money through emails such as this one, and the ones in which he exploits his “You Lie!” moment, and he will spend it, and he will be re-elected.

Same thing will happen with Jim Clyburn over in the 6th. I can’t speak to what will happen in the other four SC districts because I don’t observe them as closely, and the incumbents are all so new. So perhaps they are slightly more vulnerable — although probably not Tim Scott.

But Joe’s and Jim’s warchests and the power of incumbency will guarantee that no one credible emerges to run against them, and they will be re-elected.

And yes, I know that Doug and others will say this is why we need term limits. I’m not willing to drop that particular nuclear option on democracy, but we do need something. Because otherwise, these elections pretty much are a waste of time. Except to the political consultants and the media that get the advertising, of course. (See, Wesley, I didn’t just talk about you — I talked about the media, too.)

And if he’d made a different decision, he’d have been a big, fat jerk. With the emphasis on ‘fat’

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Catching up on email, I had to smile at this one from yesterday:

Statement by Gov. Perry Regarding Gov. Christie’s Announcement

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today released the following statement regarding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s announcement earlier today:

“Chris Christie is a friend, a great governor and rising star in the Republican Party.  I’m sure this was an exciting and stressful process for Chris, Mary Pat and his family, but I know they have a bright, successful future ahead of them. Gov. Christie will be a strong asset for the Republican Party as we work to build a national movement to get America working again, reduce the influence of Washington in our lives, and defeat President Obama next year.”

Somehow, I knew before opening it that it would be laudatory. What made me smile was imagining how it might have read had Christie decided to run.

Of course now, as the AP notes, this puts him in the position to be “a kingmaker.”

So he’s a great guy to know. Really.