Last night House Republicans voted in favor of an appalling piece of anti-choice legislation that could force victims of rape and incest to relive their trauma during an IRS audit and deny millions of American women access to life-saving reproductive health care.
Their assault on women has nothing to do with saving money and everything to do with forcing extremist beliefs into the tax code of the United States of America.
And they didn’t stop there. They used the occasion to sneak in a provision restricting the definition of rape to deny victims access to reproductive health care — even after they claimed to have removed the language in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
We must take immediate, decisive action against this attack on women’s health and reproductive freedom.
Hey, sign me up! I’m all about some “anti-choice” legislation — that is, when it’s about limiting the “right to choose” abortion, or the “right to choose” to force me to underwrite someone’s private education. Or anything else that’s such an appalling idea that the only way you think you can sell it is in terms of “choice.” As though we lack freedom if we’re not totally free to do anything and everything.
Notice how advocates of “choice” have trouble saying what it is that they’re actually for? They have a jargon that is unself-consciously comical in its aversion to plain speaking.
I mean hey, I wish you the best of “health.” As for “reproductive freedom” — go ahead, reproduce all you want; no one’s stopping you.
I think we need a constitutional amendment limiting the 1st Amendment so that it doesn’t protect political speech that mangles the language.
OK, not really. But one does grow tired of such abuses.
This morning, Phillip was kind enough to console me for having typed “Obama” when I meant “Osama” by sending me a link about someone else who had done the same.
I don’t really know all that much about Pound. I remember something about him boxing with Ernest Hemingway, I recall that he was sort of a godfather to some of the young expatriates of that generation, and the fact that he took an EXTREME wrong turn when he came to support Fascism.
But my horror at his politics doesn’t keep me from appreciating an interesting piece of writing, any more than I dismiss Lindbergh’s achievement as an aviator because of his political sympathies.
And not being an English major or anything, I’m only familiar with one thing about his work. My uncle had this anthology of English literature lying about at the family home in Bennettsville, and I read this poem by Pound in it, back in my college days. And it’s always stuck with me as one of the most distinctive and iconoclastic portraits of Jesus I’ve ever read, even more so than Anthony Burgess’ version. Aside from the words, I like the rhythm of it; it’s almost like a sea chanty or something. I tend to like things that cause me to think a little harder and question my assumptions about someone, especially someone as important as Jesus. Even when it comes from a fascist.
This being Holy Week, I thought I’d share it:
Ballad of the Goodly Fere
Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O’ ships and the open sea.
When they came wi’ a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
“First let these go!” quo’ our Goodly Fere,
“Or I’ll see ye damned,” says he.
Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears
And the scorn of his laugh rang free,
“Why took ye not me when I walked about
Alone in the town?” says he.
Oh we drank his “Hale” in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o’ men was he.
I ha’ seen him drive a hundred men
Wi’ a bundle o’ cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.
They’ll no’ get him a’ in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.
If they think they ha’ snared our Goodly Fere
They are fools to the last degree.
“I’ll go to the feast,” quo’ our Goodly Fere,
“Though I go to the gallows tree.”
“Ye ha’ seen me heal the lame and blind,
And wake the dead,” says he,
“Ye shall see one thing to master all:
‘Tis how a brave man dies on the tree.”
A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.
He cried no cry when they drave the nails
And the blood gushed hot and free,
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue
But never a cry cried he.
I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o’ Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between,
Wi’ his eyes like the grey o’ the sea,
Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi’ twey words spoke’ suddently.
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
Sin’ they nailed him to the tree.
Two Tweets bugged me, just a little, on Sunday. I respected this special sabbath by not commenting on that day itself. But since I think it offers some insight to how both the left and right alienate me (and therefore help to define this blog), I offer them now. The first was from our governor:
Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) 4/17/11 1:43 PM
Spending the day appreciating the sacrifices He made for us and our blessings on this beautiful Palm Sunday in South Carolina.
The second is from someone I never heard of — she was retweeted by Howard Weaver, a former McClatchy VP:
Annie Heckenberger (@anniemal) 4/17/11 1:19 PM
dreamt I stood in mass & told off a priest, closing w/ “ur the reason This Brand is failing in the western world.” James Franco was there.
Can you see, without my explaining, why these examples of typical attitudes on the left and right would put me off? If not, I’ll briefly explain…
The first is, simply put, an example of public prayer of the sort that was proscribed in Matthew chapter 6:
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
Frankly, I have what some might regard as a conflicted view toward that passage, although I prefer to think of my position as “nuanced.” For instance, someone who doesn’t understand my view might say I should also be put off by my friend Warren Bolton when he writes such a column as his Passion Sunday reflection. Or they might wonder why I quietly return thanks before eating in public places. It’s because, in our cases, I see it as countercultural.
Jesus was speaking within the context of a culture that rewarded public piety. You advanced your position in society by praying on a street corner. In the United States of the 21st century, you’re asking to be regarded as a nut if you do that. Big difference. And if you’re a newspaperman, well… if you’re not, you probably don’t understand the degree to which that is NOT the way to get ahead in the world. (Of course, being a newspaperman, period, is no way to get ahead in the world, but I’m speaking of the times when Warren and I were coming up in the business, before the collapse.) So I always encouraged Warren to write columns like that, for the same reason I encouraged him and other board members to write columns, period (and to some extent why I started blogging) — so that readers would know the people behind the editorials. And that is definitely who Warren is.
But there are certain subsets of society where Pharisaic behavior is to your advantage. And that is the case among Nikki Haley’s political base. So I see something like that from her, and I think, “That’s exactly what Jesus was on about.”
Now, if she had done something WITH it — made some original observation or something, that somehow played off the liturgy — I wouldn’t have bridled at it. But what she said was so bumper-sticker, so unoriginal, so “Look at me; I’m a Christian,” that it saddened me to see it. (And yes, I know that judging other people’s expressions of faith doesn’t seem like something that puts me in too well with the Lord, either. But I thought there was some relevant commentary to be made here. I hope I’m right.)
Then there was the second Tweet, which is just a pointless little fling at religion (particularly the flavor to which I subscribe) that was SO gratuitous, and in its own way SO like what Nikki did, that it helped inspire this post. How, you ask, was it like what the gov did? Here’s how: This writer ALSO had nothing to say to the world except to declare, to a certain subset of it, “Look at me! I’m one of you!” In her case, it was, “I have generalized hostility to organized religion, and particular to those atavistic creatures, Catholic priests!” Or perhaps it was simply, “I am a thoroughly modern young woman!” to put it on its most basic level.
The thing that got me about it was that the object of her scorn in the dream wasn’t a particular person with a particular narrative that the reader might join her in condemning. No, he was merely “a priest,” making her dream diatribe a blanket condemnation of all priests — which was all that was needed to establish her credentials with the social subset she was appealing to.
Now, fact is, this one does have some extenuating features. For one thing, it includes self-deprecating humor, with the addendum about James Franco. That lightens up the whole tweet. (I mean, I assume it was self-deprecating. If I had a dream about James Franco, and told the world, I would certainly be holding myself up to ridicule.) And her bit about “the Brand” makes me slightly curious to hear more. Is she saying she cares about and wants to protect and/or improve The Brand, and how does she define that brand? Such a discussion might prove productive.
For that matter, I can defend the governor’s Tweet, too, as being innocuous, even positive. I certainly don’t disagree with anything she said. And I realize that criticizing her for it can be seen as nitpicking of a low order. I also realize that honest, praiseworthy expressions of faith can easily, and unfairly, be mistaken for cynical, self-serving public piety. There can be something wonderful and uplifting about pausing to say “Behold this beautiful day that the Lord has made,” and I’d hate to inhibit anyone from doing so. (And if Nikki had sent that Tweet back before she became the darling of the Tea Party and so nakedly, obviously ambitious, I might have retweeted it with an “Amen.”)
But as it is… I’m just sharing with you how I reacted to those two Tweets, which came within moments of each other — and soliciting your thoughts as well.
A colleague shared with me this amusing post about what one can learn from Cosmopolitan about headline writing.
An excerpt:
Do you ask your audience mind-blowing questions?
As a reader, I appreciated how Cosmo asked me some thought-provoking, introspective questions. Do you do this with your readers?
Should You Be Gross Around Him?
What’s Up With Men Cheating Down?
Can Soy Harm your Fertility?
And finally, my favorite question:
Do You Work Too Damn Hard?
Um, not really. I just spent the whole afternoon reading Cosmo. But thanks for asking.
Of course, the only thing I know about Cosmo is the headlines that I see in the checkout line. Well, the headlines, and the come-hither babes on the cover.
And I am mystified that anyone would buy the magazine. Or rather, that anyone would buy one more than once. Because the lede headline is pretty much always about revealing the supposed mysteries of having a sexual relationship with a man. Like we’re complicated or something. Men and sex are about as complicated as a dog and his dinner bowl. Or, as the classic joke would have it:
How to Impress a Woman
Wine her, Dine her, Call her, Hug her,
Hold her, Surprise her, Compliment her,
Smile at her, Laugh with her,
Cry with her, Cuddle with her,
Shop with her, Give her jewelry,
Buy her flowers, Hold her hand,
Write love letters to her,
Go to the end of the earth and back for her. How to Impress a Man
Show up naked.
Bring beer.
And truth be told, it doesn’t have to be imported, or craft, or anything like that. Pretty much any old beer will do.
And the thing is, this one is one of Eleanor Kitzman‘s bosses — House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, 50.
This came in over the transom yesterday, and I suppose it’s the letter that John O’Connor (oh, and happy birthday today, John) referred to in this story.
I don’t read the letters to the editor as closely as I used to. OK, to be perfectly honest, I hardly read them at ALL now that I’m not paid to do so, unless someone brings one to my attention.
Today was an exception, though. As my eye ran over the page, something in the last letter jumped out at me. I saw the words, “As a former Democratic candidate for state superintendent of education,” and scanned to the bottom to see the writer’s name was “Carlos W. Gibbons.” Hmmm. I do not know a Carlos W. Gibbons, which made me curious, and I sent out an e-mail to someone who knows stuff I don’t know, and learned that apparently he is a veteran educator who ran for the office in the early 1970s — and the father of Leeza Gibbons of TV fame.
In any case, he was right to advocate that the state superintendent post be appointed by the governor.
But it turns out that, until a few minutes ago, I had missed today’s really interesting letter — the one at the top of the stack. Alert reader “Tim” brought it to my attention moments ago. I’m just going to go ahead and put the whole thing here, and hope I don’t run afoul of Fair Use. Because this was an unusual letter:
Keep ignoring reality, governor
I have known Gov. Haley for many years, and she is one of my five bosses on the Budget and Control Board. If the governor is ignoring reality as Roger Hawkins contends (“Haley can’t continue to ignore realities,” March 3), my advice to her is to keep it up; it has served her well.
Moreover, I’d suggest that others follow her excellent example. Rather than ignoring reality, however, I believe Gov. Haley has wisely rejected the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority.
There’s never any shortage of people telling you that you can’t do something.
Perhaps more insidious are those who maintain that we need their “help” to overcome adversity because not everyone has the governor’s abilities to plow through the impediments of life or navigate around diversity issues. I couldn’t disagree more and would ask why not.
We may not all become governors, but we can achieve our goals if we stop seeing ourselves as victims.
We must be fearless and willing to work hard, make good choices and, most importantly, never give up in pursuit of a dream. (Don’t even get me started on yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works to an ethnic woman.)
Eleanor Kitzman
Columbia
Now, the thing that was unusual about this may not be immediately apparent to you. But if you had known any of Ms. Kitzman’s predecessors as chief of the Budget and Control Board, you’d know. It’s sort of hard to imagine — actually, impossible to imagine — Frank Fusco, or Fred Carter, writing (or even thinking) words that would be anything like those that Ms. Kitzman put in that letter. Whether you think of them as faceless bureaucrats, or as the very models of professional discretion that they were, it’s difficult to imagine them expressing their views in such a manner.
If you don’t know those guys, and don’t have that background, my reaction to Ms. Kitzman’s letter probably won’t make much sense to you.
Under those guys, the B&C Board (which should not exist at all, but you know that once I get started on that subject I can be all day) was a lot of things, but one thing it was not was a forum for expressing personal sentiments about particular politicians — the governor, or anyone else. There was a reason for that — the director worked for five bosses with five different egos and agendas. What was the point of being too closely identified with any of them?
I mean, forgive me for sounding like “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works,” but gee whiz, folks… (I thought, as exclamations do, that “gee whiz” sounded appropriately whitebread and old fashioned, didn’t you? I’m trying to play my assigned part as well as I can, and these small touches mean so much.)
The letter was so… emotional. So indignant. So partisan, in the sense of taking one person’s side against another. There are other terms I could use, but you know what? I just keep coming back to emotional — which I suppose will just expose me to, um, passionate condemnation for gender stereotyping, but hey, leave gender out of it (isn’t that what the brutes always say — “leave gender out of it?” the cads…). Think that I’m saying it the way Lee Marvin said it to Robert Ryan, “I owe you an apology, Colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight lipped officer. But you’re really … quite emotional. Aren’t you?” (The way I look at it, you can’t get any further away from gender politics than by quoting “The Dirty Dozen.” Am I right or am I right?)
I read something like that, and I think, what possessed her to write that? Yes, she owes her $174,000-a-year position to the governor as a matter of political fact, but why call attention to that in such a dramatic way? Did the governor know she was writing that letter? Does the governor approve of her having written that letter? She certainly didn’t need such a defense; she would have been fine without it.
For my part, I hadn’t even read the piece she was referring to (remember, I’m no longer paid to), but I can bet you I went and read it after seeing that letter. It was… unremarkable, really. Kind of unfocused. Seemed like the writer was trying to make some strong points, but trying to be kind and gentle with it, and swinging back and forth between commending the governor for being a determined “don’t let anything stand in your way” type and admonishing her for engaging in “magical thinking.”
Was the op-ed from this Hawkins fella somehow an example of White Male Oppressor insensitivity? Did he show a lack of appreciation for the governor’s inspiring story of ethnic pluck that we’ve heard so… much… about…? Was he trying to brutally impose on her “the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority?” Hardly. He had, on his own initiative, shown due deference to the obligatory talking points in that regard. In fact, he went on about it as much as Ms. Kitzman did:
Haley’s success to this point in her life has been built around navigating diversity, not letting it get in her way or positioning herself as just a diversity hire. She was born into Sikhism, an Indian religion that adopts elements from both Hinduism and Islam, and later converted to the Methodist faith.
Haley earned a degree in accounting — a profession dominated by men — and began her career at a waste-management and recycling company. Throughout her formative years, she never interacted with large numbers of people who looked like her. Her political career is also based on being an outsider. She recently told an audience that Sanford told her the state wasn’t ready for a female governor.
OK, wait a minute; here’s the trouble. Seems Mr. Hawkins was, rather than being too indifferent, a bit too CONCERNED about matters of Identity Politics, for he had just said:
What Haley has done that is troubling is appoint nine white men, three white women and one African-American woman to her Cabinet. None of her 16 executive staff members is African-American.
Hey, you know what I think about all that I.D. stuff — if you wanted a “diverse” Cabinet and staff in the superficial demographic sense, you should have elected the White Guy. (And if you ARE someone who cares deeply about such things, you probably DID vote for the White Guy, and Nikki Haley knows that, so quit your bellyaching. Whoops, I’m being insensitive again…) But this guy apparently DID care about it, and said so. And for this, he’s condemned as… what was it again… “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works….” Yeah, that was it — no wait, I forgot the part about “to an ethnic woman.” Mustn’t leave that off.
Anyway, it just wasn’t the kind of letter I’m used to reading from B&C Board chiefs. This is going to be interesting going forward, folks.
Trav Robertson, as we saw him during the 2010 campaign.
Still sort of reeling from this discombobulation called Daylight Savings, and having had three glasses of sweet tea with my lunch at Seawell’s — to no noticeably helpful effect — I decided to do a wide swing through Five Points to get some REAL caffeine at Starbucks on my way back to the office.
So I got my tall Pike, and once again impressed the baristas with my fancy gift card from across the sea (thanks, Mr. Darcy!), and on my way out ran into Trav Robertson, whom I hadn’t seen since the election. Trav, if you’ll recall, managed Vincent Sheheen’s almost, but not quite, campaign for governor last year.
We chatted for a moment, mainly about the state of news media today and how it relates to politics (he said one of the toughest things he found to adjust to in the campaign was this newfangled notion that the story changes at least four times in the course of what we once so quaintly called a “news cycle”), and we parted, and as I walked back toward my truck, who was coming up the steps from Saluda but Larry Marchant. He smiled and we shook hands, and turning back to see Trav standing at the coffee shop door, I said, “Well, here’s you, and here’s Trav Robertson — we’ve just got everybody here, Democrats and Republicans…” as I moved on toward my vehicle.
Which is a pretty stupid and meaningless thing to say, but what DOES one say in such a social situation? I mean, I’m not gonna say, “Well, lookee here, we’ve got Trav, whose candidate lost a close election to a woman you claimed to the world to have slept with, and I last saw you being made fun of by Jon Stewart….”
No, I don’t think so.
And really, I suppose it’s not all that cool to say it here on the blog, either, but… it seems to me there’s a social commentary in here somewhere, having to do with Moynihan’s concept of Defining Deviance Down or whatever. And when I say “deviance,” I’m not picking on Larry or anybody else, but talking about us, the people who are the consumers of such “news.”
I mean, how does one conduct himself in polite society — or any society — in which such things are discussed, disclosed, dissected and displayed publicly? Actually, “publicly” isn’t quite the word, is it? Doesn’t quite state the case. Way more intense than that.
If you’re Jon Stewart, life is simple. You make a tasteless joke or two, get your audience to laugh, and move on to the next gag. But what do you say if you’re just a regular person out here in the real world, and you run into the real people about whom these jokes are made?
Whatever the right thing is, I haven’t figured it out, so today I just fell back on the time-honored stratagem of ignoring any weirdness inherent in the situation, and saying something insipid. Which, in this polite state of ours, still works.
As for Trav and Larry — did they speak after I left? Do they even know each other? If they spoke, what did they speak about? I have no idea. I retreated to the office with my coffee.
Larry Marchant, as we saw him during the 2010 campaign.
Anyway, my point is to share what Nathan sent me. He e-mailed me to say I should consult Jeremiah 29:11. Which I did:
For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.
Just the right words, the ones I needed to hear. In this context I also love to read Matthew 7:7-11. (Look it up.) But I already knew that one. Nathan pointed me to a source of inspiration I had missed, and for that I am very grateful. I bookmarked it on my Blackberry, and take heart from it each day.
I also very much appreciate the verses that precede it, which I recently cited in my “Stand in the place where you live” post (1/17/11):
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease. Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
I’m sorry I missed the prayer breakfast. I would have liked to have heard that.
I think I have it straight, now: if you disagree with Brad’s position, you are guilty of being over-emotional. If you agree, you are being rational. Brad, you really need to let this one go. You like to talk about “left and right” and position yourself as someone in a calm, unemotional, rational center, but the truth that you have opinions on various issues just like anybody else. They tend not to divide in a partisanly-predictable way, which indicates that you think for yourself on each issue, and that’s certainly admirable. But we are all human, and every considered opinion by every truly thinking citizen (and you certainly are that, as are almost all the commenters here) is a combination of emotion and reason, at least as that individual sees it. You’re not immune from that combination of factors, and it’s argumentatively lazy to just dismiss someone’s disagreement as saying, in effect, “well you’re just emotional and I’m rational, so the argument’s over.” You were off base on the other thread on jfx’s comment, which was no less a combination of emotion and reason than your own reasons for endorsing our invasion of Iraq. Most conservatives who criticize Obama are NOT nutty “birthers” and practitioners of Obama-Derangement-Syndrome; and most who think Blair was a slick prevaricator on the war can’t be dismissed as purely emotional BDS-ers. (That would be at least half the planet in that case.)
I certainly don’t pretend that my opinions are devoid of an emotional basis: and for the record, going back to Mr. Schiller, my point was not that the right wing or the left wing is more prone to emotionalism or even rhetorical over-the-top-ness; but that anti-intellectualism per se is (at least at this moment in American history) a cudgel wielded in particular by the right. It’s inexact for you to say that Mr. Schiller was equally guilty of “the worst kind of anti-intellectualism”: that would mean he would be doing such things as criticizing Tea Party leaders for “sounding like a professor,” just one of the gibes (meant to be an insult, I guess) directed at our current President. Schiller was guilty of a lot of things, stereotyping and overgeneralization among them, but anti-intellectualism is a very different and very specific thing.
I’ve been running from meeting to meeting today, which is why I hadn’t posted anything until a few minutes ago. But I was here for about 15 minutes right after Phillip posted that, so I wrote a medium-length reply, and just as I was about to save it and run out… Google Chrome shut down. Then Firefox shut down. Then EVERYTHING ELSE I had open shut down, spontaneously. And my laptop started restarted itself, and just as I ran out the door screaming, I saw it was adding insult to injury by running CHKDSK.
When I get back, ol’ Hal calmly informed me that he had taken it upon himself to download the following::
– Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
– Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
– Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter
– Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
I’m betting none of it was necessary. And I don’t see why the blasted machine couldn’t give me heads-up first.
Of course, everyone here at ADCO will tell me that’s what I get for insisting upon being the only person in the office who doesn’t use a Mac. On that subject, and having just mentioned HAL, you might enjoy this Apple ad.
Anyway… if I can remember, here’s what I was going to say to Phillip… But first, I’m going to “Save Draft”…
OK, here goes…
Phillip, your initial observation — “if you disagree with Brad’s position, you are guilty of being over-emotional. If you agree, you are being rational” — is slightly off the mark. That’s not a hard-and-fast law of the universe. It’s more like a useful rule of thumb.
Insert smiley-face emoticon.
But you were dead-on when you said, “you have opinions on various issues just like anybody else. They tend not to divide in a partisanly-predictable way, which indicates that you think for yourself on each issue, and that’s certainly admirable.”
Absolutely! Thank you for getting that! Of COURSE I have opinions! This is an opinion blog!
And thanks particularly for the “admirable” thing.
But to elaborate… as I try over and over to explain here, I am repulsed by the left and the right, Democratic and Republican, as they are currently constituted — because I DO think hard about each issue, which means I don’t accept the pat, off-the-shelf packages that the two predominant ideologies offer.
It’s like cable TV. The thing I’ve always hated about cable TV is that they won’t let me choose, and pay for, only the channels I want. Not because it’s technologically difficult, but because it doesn’t fit the cable companies’, or the networks’ and channels’, business model. They force me to take channels I don’t want in order to get the channels I DO want, because they make more money that way (I think; if that’s not the motivation, someone please explain it to me).
Same deal with the political parties, or the two main competing ideologies. Both Column A and Column B offer some ideas I like. But each of them also offers ideas I utterly reject. There’s no way I can buy either package and be honest with you, or with myself.
The problem is, our shared marketplace of ideas lacks a vocabulary for speaking of the way I think. I try hard to come up with a vocabulary of my own, using ordinary English words, but they so often run up against the problem that certain definitions and delineations are now assumed to be true by everyone, and my ideas don’t connect, even with very smart people. That’s because 24/7 we are bombarded with the political equivalent of Newspeak. If you’ll recall, the way Orwell conceived it, the goal was to reduce language so that it was impossible to express (and therefore, to a great extent, impossible to think of) ideas that were incompatible with IngSoc.
Well, today, the terms that most of us use for expressing political ideas are very limited terms handed to us by the two parties, their attendant interest groups, and increasingly simplistic news media, led by 24/7 TV “news” and the Blogosphere — all of whom find it in their interests to boil everything down to two choices — actually, two SETS of predetermined choices, so that once you pick one, everyone else knows what you think about everything.
I find this appalling. And I continue to resist it. And even though I’m not bad with words, I find it hard, like Winston trying to write half-formed heretical concepts into his diary, just out of sight of the telescreen. Only I’m publishing mine.
But it’s sometimes hard to express. And even when my friends and regular readers UNDERSTAND it, it’s hard for them to describe, because of our lack of that common vocabulary. So when Phillip says I “position yourself as someone in a calm, unemotional, rational center,” I know what he means, and he’s right to say it. But the fact is, I’m not in the center at all, although you’ll occasionally see me acquiesce to being called a “centrist,” just as a convenient shorthand.
But the problem with that term is that it implies that one MUST be on that one-dimensional line between left and right, and that if you ARE neither left nor right, you must be in the “center.” But I’m not. Sometimes I agree more or less with the left, and sometimes with the right. And sometimes neither the left nor the right is far enough out on its own wing to suit me. To paraphrase Billy Ray Valentine, when it comes to the political spectrum, I’m all over that place, baby.
I’m made this point before, such as on this post, and even back in my initial UnParty column. And in a variation on that theme, the Energy Party is all about taking the best ideas from left and right to do all we can to attain energy independence.
OK, I just went on at far greater length than I did on my failed comment earlier — perhaps out of frustration. And as I’ve written every word, I’ve been cognizant that if anyone is patient enough to read it all, he or she is likely to say, That Brad Warthen just thinks his thoughts are so far above everyone else’s that no one else is smart enough to understand him.
But that’s not it. If I were smart enough, I’d be able to explain it better, I suppose. I just get frustrated, because our common vocabulary HAS been reduced by people who have found it to their political advantage to do so, just like Big Brother, so I struggle to express what I truly think. Most people who are as uncomfortable as I am with the either-or paradigm just give up, curse politics, and walk away from it all. I don’t feel like I can do that as a citizen. I have to keep trying, whether I succeed or not. (And whether I get paid a salary to do it or not.) Which is why I’ve written all these millions of words over the years.
I’m almost positive that in the early years of my career, the Associated Press spelled the last name of the dictator of Libya with a “K.” (Or was it a “Q?” It’s been a long time.) Then, at some point the AP Stylebook switched to “Gadhafi.” I sorta kinda remember this because back in the 80s my responsibilities as news editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (since simplified back to The Wichita Eagle) included supervising the national desk (which dealt with national and international news), as well as the copy desk (the final arbiters of how things were spelled in the paper).
And every paper I’ve ever worked at conformed, more or less (there were sometimes local exceptions), to AP style. But some larger news organizations, just to be different and arrogant, have maintained their own, separate style bibles. And it sometimes seems that every one of them asserts its individuality by spelling Col. Moammar’s name a different way.
Me, I’ve been spelling it any way I have felt like spelling it at any given moment here on the blog. Because, after 35 years of following arbitrary rules invented to establish uniformity, I can do whatever I want now. (Freedom, Baby!) My only obligation to you, the reader, is to ensure that you know about whom I’m writing. And there are various ways to communicate that, mostly having to do with context.
And why not do whatever feels right, when there is no consensus among the MSM?
For instance:
As mentioned, the AP spells it “Gadhafi.” Now, anyway. (It’s frustrating that my Google searches have not yet produced the old spelling.)
The New York Times, with its usual “this is the way WE do it, so that, by God, is the way it’s done” manner, spells it “Muammar el-Qaddafi.” Note that they don’t even do the first name the usual way. On subsequent references, they drop the “el-” and go with “Colonel Qaddafi.”
The Times (as in the real Times, of London), spells it “Muammar Gaddafi.” The Jerusalem Postagrees. So, amazingly, does the BBC (an emerging consensus, where I thought there was none?).
The Washington Post agrees with The Times on the last name, but not the first: “Moammar Gaddafi.”
NPR, which isn’t a print medium anyway, sticks to AP style, apparently: “Moammar Gadhafi.”
But folks, that’s just the beginning. ABC, apparently aiming to make print media look ridiculous (which isn’t hard when it comes to something like this), has compiled a list of 112 ways to spell the guy’s name. I’ll give you a few of them, and you can go to the story on the web for the rest:
Qaddafi, Muammar
Al-Gathafi, Muammar
al-Qadhafi, Muammar
Al Qathafi, Mu’ammar
Al Qathafi, Muammar
El Gaddafi, Moamar
El Kadhafi, Moammar
El Kazzafi, Moamer
El Qathafi, Mu’Ammar
Gadafi, Muammar
Gaddafi, Moamar
Gadhafi, Mo’ammar
Gathafi, Muammar
Ghadafi, Muammar
Ghaddafi, Muammar
Ghaddafy, Muammar
Gheddafi, Muammar
Gheddafi, Muhammar
Kadaffi, Momar
Kad’afi, Mu`amar al- 20
Kaddafi, Muamar
Kaddafi, Muammar
Kadhafi, Moammar
Kadhafi, Mouammar
Kazzafi, Moammar
Khadafy, Moammar
Khaddafi, Muammar
Moamar al-Gaddafi
Moamar el Gaddafi
Moamar El Kadhafi
Moamar Gaddafi
Moamer El Kazzafi
Mo’ammar el-Gadhafi
Moammar El Kadhafi
Mo’ammar Gadhafi
Moammar Kadhafi
Moammar Khadafy…
That last one, before I stopped to keep myself out of Fair Use trouble, is awfully close to the way I think the AP used to do it. But I can’t say for sure.
So now you know. That is to say, you know that nobody knows.
Stan Dubinsky sends out a lot of cool stuff to read via e-mail. You should ask to be on his list — if you’ve got time to read the stuff. I don’t really, but I do tend to glance at the headlines to see if anything draws me in (which, Journalism 101 here, is what headlines are for). And “What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness” definitely did the job.
And the piece was worth reading. An excerpt:
What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness
The decline and fall of American English, and stuff
I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.
Uh-oh. It was a classic case of Vagueness, the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century. Squirrel Woman sounded like a high school junior, but she appeared to be in her mid-forties, old enough to have been an early carrier of the contagion. She might even have been a college intern in the days when Vagueness emerged from the shadows of slang and mounted an all-out assault on American English.
My acquaintance with Vagueness began in the 1980s, that distant decade when Edward I. Koch was mayor of New York and I was writing his speeches. The mayor’s speechwriting staff was small, and I welcomed the chance to hire an intern. Applications arrived from NYU, Columbia, Pace, and the senior colleges of the City University of New York. I interviewed four or five candidates and was happily surprised. The students were articulate and well informed on civic affairs. Their writing samples were excellent. The young woman whom I selected was easy to train and a pleasure to work with. Everything went so well that I hired interns at every opportunity.
Then came 1985….
Undergraduates… seemed to be shifting the burden of communication from speaker to listener. Ambiguity, evasion, and body language, such as air quotes—using fingers as quotation marks to indicate clichés—were transforming college English into a coded sign language in which speakers worked hard to avoid saying anything definite. I called it Vagueness….
We all note, and many of us decry, what social media have done to (and for; there’s an upside as well) effective and elegant use of language. But I found this piece interesting because it went far beyond that, and identified an insidious enemy not only to communication, but to clear thought as well.
The other day I ran into Wesley Donehue at Starbucks (see that, Starbucks? yet another product placement you’re not paying for), and we talked briefly about my appearing on “Pub Politics” again, which would make me a member of the Five-Timer Club. I’m totally up for it, particularly since I’d like to discuss this aptly titled “rant” on Wesley’s blog.
I think I want to argue with him about it, but first I have to get him to explain more clearly what he’s on about.
I say “rant” is apt because it seems to come straight from the gut, without any sorting or organization from the higher parts of his cortex — and Wesley is a smart guy. The problem I have is that his thought, or emotions, or impulses or whatever, don’t add up. They just don’t hang together.
He makes the following unconnected points:
Where does the media get off making like it’s a champion of transparency?
The media are just lashing out, because they are becoming irrelevant in the new media age, when politicos can go straight to the people.
“Transparency” doesn’t mean going through the MSM, so the media have no legitimate excuse to criticize the gov.
Any problems the media have are their own damn’ fault, for failing to be relevant and keep up with the times.
Did that cover everything? I may have missed an unrelated point or two.
Here, respectively, are my problems with his points:
1. Golly, Wesley, the MSM may be guilty of a host of sins, but suggesting they are somehow an illegitimate, insincere, incredible or inappropriate advocate for transparency is most illogical. They’re kinda obsessive about it, and this might be a shock, but they were into it a LONG time before Nikki Haley ever heard of it. Finally, the media are the one industry in society that actually have a vested, selfish interest in transparency (unlike certain politicians who TALK about it, but belie their commitment to it with their actions) — they kinda rely on it in order to do what they do — so I’ve just gotta believe they really mean it.
1a. Furthermore, what does this have to do with the ongoing talk about the gov’s failures to be transparent? What did I miss? This seems to me to be about the TV station defending itself from the governor’s insult. The transparency issue — the one that I hear folks in the media talk about, anyway — has to do with everything from Nikki not wanting to disclose questionable sources of income and refusing to release her e-mails back during the campaign, all the way up to meeting with two other Budget and Control Board members while excluding the others. I’m missing the connection in other words, between this incident and your complaint that the media are going on inappropriately about transparency.
2. Well, let’s see. The governor wrote “WACH FOX 57 is a tabloid news station and has no concept of journalism.” Wesley, I don’t care whether the governor said that on Facebook, or through an interview with the MSM, or in a campaign ad or by use of skywriting. The choice of medium does not take away from the fact that that was an extraordinary thing for a governor to PUBLISH (and that’s what she did; if governors and other empowered “ordinary” folks are going to take it upon themselves to communicate directly with the people without the offices of the MSM, perhaps they need to take a little seminar on the difference in significance between merely muttering something to your friends, and publishing it). Next — are you really suggesting that WACH or any other business does not have the right to defend itself when maligned by the governor? I assert that they have that right under the 1st Amendment, whether they are Joe Blow’s Used Cars or the MSM.
3. This one’s really interesting. I’ll grant you, WACH looks pretty lame technologically when it fails to provide a direct link to the FB post with which it is disagreeing. (Here you go, by the way.) But beyond that, let’s talk about the new rules. Here’s the kind of thing that happens in this wonderful, marvelous new world in which anyone can publish their thoughts and don’t have to go through the stuffy ol’ MSM. In the old, benighted days, a former employee of the governor (and of the last governor) might go around muttering about having had an illicit personal relationship with the governor, but he would have been ignored. Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology that you extol, he can publish it himself with practically zero effort or investment. So it’s out there — because, you know, those bad old editors can’t keep it away from the people. And then it starts affecting the political campaign, and therefore becomes news. Now, let me ask you — when that same blogger follows that up by publishing salacious details related to his allegation, having already caused it to be a news story, what are the media supposed to do? Well, I don’t know, and others aren’t sure either. Me? I ignored it. WACH made the call that it made. Did the governor have the right to get ticked and trash WACH because of it? Yes, she did. (Although it was, as I say, pretty extraordinary for a sitting governor to say something like that about a business in her state.) Did WACH — that poor, pathetic institution that’s falling apart as you say, have the right to defend itself? Of course it did.
4. Who said it did? I missed that. Maybe you have a link to it; I’d be interested to read/hear that argument.
5. The problems that the media have result from a massive restructuring of the way businesses — the ones they relied upon for the advertising revenue that underwrote the gathering of the news — market themselves to the public. The long-term trend has been away from mass-media advertising on the local level, and to more targeted approaches. Nothing about what the media have reported or not reported, or positions they have taken, have anything to do with it. The public is lapping up news and commentary more hungrily than ever — from the MSM as well as other sources. But the business model that supported newsgathering — the model that’s falling apart — has nothing to do with that; it’s a whole separate transaction from the one between a medium and its readers/viewers/listeners. So you’re way off base there.
Anyway, have me on the show and we’ll talk further. Keep the beer cold.
Since it’s way historic and all, I thought I’d put something here about the news that’s been breaking in recent minutes (you’d have seen it earlier if you followed me on Twitter), so y’all can talk about it even though I don’t have time to say much right now:
Military says Mubarak will meet protesters demands
By MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press
CAIRO (AP) — President Hosni Mubarak will meet the demands of protesters, military and ruling party officials said Thursday in the strongest indication yet that Egypt’s longtime president may be about to give up power and that the armed forces were seizing control.
Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.” Some in the crowd held up their hands in V-for-victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” a victory cry used by secular and religious people alike.
The military’s supreme council was meeting Thursday, without the commander in chief Mubarak, and announced on state TV its “support of the legitimate demands of the people.” A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session “to explore “what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people.”
The statement was labelled “communique number 1,” a phrasing that suggests a military coup…
OK, the military coup part may give us pause — more about that later when we know more — but what a heady moment for all those folks who’ve taken to the streets.
How about that quote?
“All your demands will be met today.”
Reminds me of Pedro’s extreme, over-the-top, meant-to-be-seen-as-ridiculously-hyperbolic campaign pledge (which was recommended to him by campaign consultant Napoleon Dynamite): “Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.”
Perhaps the general is overselling as well — and again, it remains to be seen how the people would feel about a junta (you might say that, like Pedro, the military is offering Egypt its “protection” — but if Mubarak is stepping down, that’s something Egyptians had hardly dared dream a month ago.
I knew that following Adam Baldwin on Twitter (no, not one of those Baldwins — we’re talking Jayne Cobb from “Firefly”) would pay off eventually. Today, he brought my attention to this:
QFE: “We have 3 branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.”- Sen. Schumer (D-NY) ~ http://bit.ly/eqwbNq
Hey, we all misspeak. And maybe the good senator was just checking to see whether the viewers were paying attention.
Here’s a question: Would Jayne Cobb have known about the three branches of government? Probably not. Of course, in his ‘verse, all you need to know is that there’s the ruttin’ Alliance, and there’s the freedom-loving Browncoats.
Last night I was watching an episode of “Law & Order: UK” on BBC America, and was impressed by the extent to which the writers just expect you to keep up with the idiom, and the small differences between American and British culture and assumptions. For instance, there’s a scene in which detectives are fretting over the fact that they can’t easily retrace a suspect’s movements: He doesn’t carry a mobile, and probably doesn’t have an Oyster card. Then, a moment later, there’s a reference to CCTV.
The folks who do the show’s website are less respectful of the audience’s intelligence. The “British Terms Glossary” wastes time with “bloke” and “coppers” and “flat” and “guv.” Let’s face it, folks — if you don’t know what those mean, stick to re-runs of “Hee-Haw” (“Hey, Grandpa: What’s for supper?“) or the like. They also define “mobile,” but we know what that is too, don’t we?
The Oyster card is more subtle (and, you would think, a far more likely candidate for the online glossary than “Tube”). It’s the card you buy, and top up (do we say “top up”? I forget — but they say it a lot over there) as needed, to use the magnificent London system of public transportation. You swipe it to get through a turnstile on you way into a Tube station, and — here’s the pertinent part — you do the same to get out at your destination. Which means there exists an electronic record of your movements through the city. In the previous scene we had learned that the suspect had a fear of crowds that kept him away from the Tube. So, no Oyster card.
Of course, most people know what Closed Circuit TeleVision is. But it took me a day or so to consciously realized the implications of those signs I saw everywhere: “CCTV in operation.” (I actually had to think a minute to separate it in my mind from CATV, the old term for cable TV back in the days when it was the Community Antenna for small towns and rural communities, before it went all urban.)
What they meant, of course, is that you are under surveillance a huge proportion of the time. Yes, I know businesses here have CCTV, and footage from such cameras is often important in crime investigations. But it’s just nowhere near as ubiquitous as in London, and it doesn’t loom nearly as large in public consciousness. Watch TV news there, and it seems that every other word is CCTV, whether you’re talking the images of the crossbow robbers holding up a post office, or the images of murder victim Joanna Yeates (THE big story while we were there) picking up a couple of items at Tesco, or a routine crime at an off-licence. (Now there’s a term I had to look up — turns out “off-licence” doesn’t mean the shop is extralegal, that it lacks a license; it means it HAS a license to sell alcohol for OFF-premise consumption, as opposed to a pub. Generally, it’s what we’d call a convenience store.)
Of course, such consciousness of being watched — that those bright yellow signs — are a large part of the deterrent effect in themselves.
All of which is fine by me. As I always say, knock yourself out, Big Brother. I was conscious that some of my more libertarian friends back here in the States might have found it all creepy, but at no time in my sojourn in Airstrip One — I mean, England — did I feel the least bit put-upon or oppressed.
To me, it was part and parcel of being in a place that is very much like home, with freedom-loving people who respect the dignity of the individual, but where the politics is not plagued by the legions of radical-individualist paranoids who resist any effort at putting any sort of rational infrastructure in place. I loved the novelty of being in a place with such a dream public transit system, and where waiters and bartenders don’t mind not getting tips (or at most, don’t expect more than 10 percent) — after all, what are they worried about? They have health benefits they cannot lose. And I was very happy to pay the taxes that helped pay for it all. Some friends advised me that I could get a VAT refund on leaving the country, but there was no way I wanted that. I was happy to pay my share.
(And yes, sometimes it all goes overboard, which is why the coalition government is cutting back — AND raising taxes, remember, which they’re able to do because their conservative party doesn’t make a religion of irrational tax hatred. But on the whole, it was wonderful to be in a place where it’s assumed that one should have the Tube, and the buses (that’s “coaches” to you) and trains and parks and fantastic free museums (contributions suggested, but quite low and entirely voluntary) and a population of people who don’t fear being ruined by an unplanned sickness.
And which doesn’t mind being on Candid Camera, if it means you might catch a crossbow robber now and then.
For the longest time, I didn’t have a quotation on my Facebook profile. This didn’t seem right. I’m all about words. I’m all about pithy expressions of one’s world view, yadda, yadda. (Although I fear that now that I no longer have the discipline of writing a weekly column, I’ve gotten somewhat lazy about it, hence the “yadda, yadda.”)
Loads of other people — people who were not overly thoughtful students of rhetoric, judging by the quotations they chose — had multiple quotations. They had all sorts of things they wanted to say — or rather, things they wanted to let other people say for them.
But the thing is, I like so MANY things that I read — one of my problems in reading books is that, as I read them, I follow people around reading great passages aloud to them (and a well-written book will have at least one such passage per page), which is why people avoid me when I’m reading books — that the idea of singling out one, or two, or even 10 such quotes just seemed too restrictive. I thought, What is that good that I’m willing to have it almost as a personal epitaph? People will see that and think this sums me up. What quotation is there that I like that much?
It would need to be semi-original (obviously, if it were entirely original, it wouldn’t be a quotation). It couldn’t be trite. I couldn’t have seen anyone else use it. It needed to say something I believe. And it needed to be something that has truly stuck with me over time, as opposed to, say, the funniest recent thing I’ve read on Twitter.
So one day it struck me that I should post this:
“I wouldn’t want to live without strong misgivings. Right, Chaplain?”
— Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
So I did.
And for the longest time, that stood alone, and I was satisfied to let it do so. I liked it on a number of levels. For instance, in a day when our politics are dominated by people who are SO DAMNED SURE they’re right and other people are wrong, it had a certain countercultural UnParty flavor to it. At the same time, it’s not an existential statement of doubt — the fact that he’s saying it to a chaplain, one who certainly believes in God (although in an unorthodox way, being an Anabaptist), anchors it in belief, but still expresses the idea that one should always be willing to question one’s assumptions.
It also said something I wanted others to know about me. Because I tend to argue whatever position I’m arguing rather tenaciously, even vociferously, people tend to think I’m inflexible. They’re wrong about this. I can usually think of all the reasons I might be wrong just as readily as they can, perhaps even more readily. (After all, one of the main steps in building an argument is imagining all the objections to it.) For instance, take our arguments over the Iraq War, or the debates I have with libertarians. My interlocutors think I’m a bloodthirsty war lover, and a rigid authoritarian. But I’m not, not really. I have a tendency to argue very insistently with your more radical libertarians because I think they go overboard, and that I have to pull REALLY HARD in the other direction to achieve any balance. And on the subject of the war, well… when you reach the conclusion that military action is necessary, and that action is initiated, I feel VERY strongly that you have to see it through, and that the time for debating whether to initiate it is long past. At least, that’s the way I saw the Iraq situation. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think there were viable arguments against it in the first place — I was just unpersuaded by them.
I suppose I could go on and on about why I like the quotation, but that’s not what this post is about.
This post is about the fact that I thought that quote was sort of lonesome, so I added another today:
I’ve always had a beef with people who constantly tear down the place where they live. You know, the whiners who always want to be someplace else. The people who seem to think that if it’s local, it’s no good. These people are destructive. They’re not good neighbors to have.
You know that I’m a born critic, and I’m constantly expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of Columbia, or South Carolina. But I do it from a love of my home, and from a determination to make it better. If there’s something you don’t like about your home, you should be trying with all your might to make it better.
To me, this is a fundamental moral obligation. And like most true believers, I can find Scripture to back it up. Remember the passage that Nathan Ballentine came up with to encourage me when I got laid off? It was Jeremiah 29:11:
For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.
Well, when I looked that up, I found that I liked what preceded that just as much, the passage in which the prophet told the people not to whine about being in exile, but to affirmatively embrace the place where they were, and get on with life in it:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.
Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
Let’s repeat that last:
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
Amen, I say unto you. Stand in the place where you live.
Something else I hadn’t been keeping up with the last few days… I was still out of the country when the Arizona shootings happened, and the couple of days I was stuck at home because of the snow, my newspapers either didn’t come or came after I had quit looking for them.
But I know that others among you were paying rapt attention. I know Samuel Tenenbaum was. I saw him at breakfast this morning, and asked him how he did. Well, he said, he had been in mourning Saturday night, but after the president’s speech last night, he felt a lot better. (When I wondered why the shootings — once I realized that was what he was talking about — affected him so deeply, he explained that he knew “Gabby” Giffords. He said he met her at one of the Laders’ Renaissance Weekends, and that she and Inez had been on a panel together.)
Since that encounter, a couple of other folks have mentioned how awesome the president’s speech was last night. So now, as I type this, I’m listening to it. I’m going to pause now and listen to the rest of it… In the meantime, y’all can start leaving comments…
… the part I’m listening to right now, when he’s just finished his well-researched eulogy for the dead and is applauding the heroes of the day, demonstrates a superb job of connecting emotionally with his audience, with the nation. That’s impressive, and appropriate. But here’s the bit I’m waiting for:
The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”
It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”…
That, of course, is a topic near and deal to me, and few speak more eloquently about the need for civility than Barack Obama. (It’s one of the reasons we enthusiastically endorsed him in the primary in 2008.)
I’m listening to that part now… as I hear it, I’m a bit lost because I missed the back-and-forth of the last few days that prompted the president to feel like he had to urge us not to claw at each other over this. But I’ve caught snatches of it, and I can extrapolate the rest. I know how the 24/7 spin cycle, and the parties, and Twitter, and all of that work. So without fully knowing the background, I fully appreciate the message…
I particularly like his urging the nation “to rise above ugly political debates and see civic life ‘through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol” of adults,” and his exhortation that any debate engendered by this horror be worthy of the victims. Of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, he said:
“I want us to live up to her expectations… I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”
He urged us to make sure “that our nation lives up to our children’s expectations.” Amen to that, Mr. President. Amen to that.
Nikki Haley (
Annie Heckenberger (
