Category Archives: Words

“The Assassination of Nikki Haley by the Coward Will Folks”

Sound a bit over-the-top — even disturbing, with the figurative suggestion of violence? (I almost didn’t post this because of the violent metaphor — held it for several hours before posting — and might still take it down if enough of you recoil from it the way I did. But the fact that it WAS so extreme was what I wanted to comment on…)

Yeah, well, that’s kind of what I thought when I read this overheated blog post, which you can see pictured below. I don’t know who The Garnet Spy is, but it must be one of those white guys I hear about who do not question the Official Nikki Haley Narrative, which can fit on a postcard:

Nikki Haley is a triple threat to powerful people in South Carolina. She’s (1) a woman of (2) minority heritage and (3) a political reformer.

I had thought only the national media believed that that narrative was true, and it was all you needed to know about Nikki Haley. I thought everybody in South Carolina knew enough to know better. But apparently not.

(By the way, did y’all see the movie that I’m taking off on above, in that badly-Photoshopped image? It was pretty good. Really evoked a mood.)

How much do YOU text? And why?

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There was a fascinating piece in The Wall Street Journal today, headlined, “Y U Luv Texts, H8 Calls.” Cute, huh? Anyway, the short answer to the implied question was, “We Want to Reach Others But Not to Be Interrupted.” But there was more to it than that.

There were some pretty incredible numbers in there:

For anyone who doubts that the texting revolution is upon us, consider this: The average 13- to 17-year-old sends and receives 3,339 texts a month—more than 100 per day, according to the Nielsen Co., the media research firm. Adults are catching up. People from ages 45 to 54 sent and received 323 texts a month in the second quarter of 2010, up 75% from a year ago, Nielsen says.

100 texts a day? Yeah, kids are pretty nuts about these things, but 100 texts a day? And that’s the average, rather than a pathological extreme? Come on.

Still, its undeniable that for the younger generations, texting is far more important than using the phone as a, well, phone.

That’s true even for an alter cocker like me — although “texts” aren’t my preferred medium. I’m far more likely to use my Blackberry to send an e-mail, or post a Tweet, or send a DM, or respond to a blog comment, than I am to use it to talk to anyone. Enough so that I’ve crippled my thumbs. (The pain is still considerable; I see a doctor next week.)

In total, I’ve sent out 2,702 Tweets since I started a little more than a year ago. That’s a lot, but hardly 100 a day.

Texting is undeniably useful, particularly for communicating under certain circumstances with people who have cell phones that are not “smart.” Last night, for instance, I went to a reception at Rosewood’s at the fairgrounds. When I was leaving that, I planned to connect with my daughter, who had brought her kids to the fair. I tried calling her, and couldn’t hear her over the fair noise. So I texted, “Where are you? I couldn’t hear…” She replied, “We’re @ the picnic tables under a tent right outside entrance to grandstand,” and I answered, “OK, stay there…”

Undeniably useful. But as a substitute for other forms of communication, no, I don’t think so. And how on Earth is it appealing for people who don’t have full QWERTY keyboards on their devices? Talk about tedious…

Kids don’t seem to mind, though. Which provokes a thought: Back in the ’60s, many of us thought we were SO different from our parents. And outwardly, perhaps we were. But this latest development suggests that kids today are actually, cognitively different from us. They’re wired entirely different, and technology has done the wiring.

And what are the social, cultural, political and personal consequences of that?

Orwell stands up for the language

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Picking up on my reference to Newspeak back on this post, a reader who prefers not to be named shares with us this essay by Orwell from 1946. It indeed hits on some of concerns I have about the way our language is abused for political purposes today. An excerpt:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

What followed was a set of examples of bad writing, all of which made me self-conscious. A blogger is not a careful writer. Not this one, anyway. Not by the standards I embraced in the first three decades or so of my career. I defend myself by saying one can either be careful and precise (within the strictest definitions of those modifiers) or one can blog. Most of my posts are minor miracles in that I found the time to rip them out in stream-of-consciousness fashion. Careful thought is for print, or for a blog that only features new posts weekly or less often. I throw out ideas and stand ready to be corrected as I move on to others, always distracted as I simultaneously try to earn an honest living.

And I am intimidated especially because my respect for Orwell’s mastery of the language is so complete. For much of my adulthood, I remembered reading both 1984 and Brave New World in my youth, and placed them roughly in the same category — similarly nightmarish (although opposite, one of them imagining Stalinism triumphant, the other projecting extreme consumerism) dystopias, exhibiting roughly similar levels of literary quality. I was wrong. I read them both within the last few years, and was startled by what a masterful writer Orwell was, and how unremarkable Huxley’s prose was by comparison.

I cringed at what Orwell would say about the words I carelessly thrust at my public like a stoker shoveling so much coal. I was somewhat encouraged to read his own confession of insecurity: “Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.” But I did not for a moment fool myself; I am not Orwell’s equal. But I am his ally in detesting certain sins against the language committed in the service of politics. Another excerpt:

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

It is indeed my goal at all times to be “some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line.'” And I constantly decry the “lifeless, imitative style” found in the expression of “(o)rthodoxy, of whatever color.” I am not Orwell’s equal in the use of language, but I do feel qualified to decry the pap that parties put out.

Let us end by savoring the way Orwell ended his piece:

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Note, among many other things, his implied assumption — as a lover of language — that “Conservatives” and “Anarchists” stand in opposition to each other. He certainly should believe that; I always have. The next time I hear a would-be “conservative” abuse the very idea of government, I will remember Orwell’s words, and feel a certain kinship.

“Conservative,” that surprisingly malleable word

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This morning as I parked on Assembly preparing to go in for breakfast, I ran into my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum, who was just leaving. He was agitated, as he often is. He and Patrick Cobb from AARP had just been commiserating about the general decline of our society, what Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviance downward.”

And he couldn’t even get the first few words out without being interrupted by a beat-up car with a massive sound system, pulling up at the light right next to us, drowned his words. In frustration, he raised his voice higher to say that was just the kind of thing they were talking about — look at that guy; he’s not even embarrassed! Indeed not. He had his windows part way down, the better for us to hear the obnoxious sounds emanating from within (although not enough for us to see the darkened interior).

Of course, this was just part of the picture, the triumph of low and tacky that washes over us like a tsunami, from Sarah Palin (and such maids-in-waiting as Nikki Haley and Christine O’Donnell) to reality TV. I nodded and agreed that these were parlous, tacky times. (Oh, and no fair throwing that last post at me in this regard.) I tried to pull the conversation AWAY from booming basses, lest Samuel draw gunfire from the guy in the car. You never know.

What Samuel was exhibiting, of course, was a quality that people with a respect for the language would term “conservatism,” in the purest sense — decrying change, longing for a better time when people respected each other more. This may shock those who think of Samuel, with some justice, as one of the few actual liberal Democrats in South Carolina. But that’s what it was. Samuel was being as conservative as all get-out.

This brings me to something I read in the paper this morning:

House Republicans have a simple 2010 election agenda for S.C. voters — boost their Republican majority to 75 members, then watch conservative reform take hold.

Note the lack of quotations around the oddly oxymoronic phrase, “conservative reform.” Irony is often lost on news people, who have to play it deadpan. But what interested me is how a phrase that I remember hearing for the first time this year (it first jumped out at me back here) — I remember it because it struck me as odd — has now entered the lexicon so completely that an experienced reporter like Roddie Burris would use it, straight-faced, without attribution. And that his editors would go along.

My hat is off to the Tea Party and its allies, because a result like this would make any propagandist, even the propagators of Newspeak, envious. Causing people to adopt one’s own linguistic restylings is to propaganda what the hole-in-one is to golf, or the 300 game to bowling.

My problem with the phrase, of course, is that conservatism, rightly understood, is a resistance to change — not advocacy of it, whether the change is termed “reform” or not. If a conservative wants change, then he wants to change back to the way things once were, and then the term is no longer “conservative,” but “reactionary.” Properly understood.

Yes, I get that people want to reform the government in ways that they maintain are in keeping with “conservative” principles. And that’s not inherently oxymoronic, however much it might sound that way. For instance, the kind of restructuring of state government that I and Nikki Haley and (most effectively) Vincent Sheheen advocate would introduce such “conservative” values as accountability to entities and processes that now answer to no one.

My problems is that a lot of people call themselves “conservative” when they are not, according to any traditional meaning of the term. Nikki Haley, for one, whose politics would rightly be termed populist demagoguery (nobody ever called Huey Long “conservative”), and whose personal and business financial accounts exhibit anything but conservative accountability. But one can see why a politician would call herself “conservative” in a state that worships the word. And how he or she would term his or her ideas “reform” whether they are (and sometimes they are) or not.

All perfectly understandable, and perfectly within the honored traditions of political rhetoric.

What surprises me, though, is when I see the rest of us going along with the terminology. I say this not to pick on Roddie or The State. I think they are reflecting the fact that the term has entered the mainstream. I’m just surprised that it has.

The comic stylings of Vincent Sheheen

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You can tell a lot about a candidate by the way he delivers a joke. And what I can tell from this is that we really need to elect this guy governor, to distract him from any plans he may have to pursue a standup career.

But seriously, folks…

You do see some of Vincent’s character on display here in the beginning of his speech to the Columbia Rotary Club — his casual, self-deprecating manner. And there’s a certain contrast to be drawn to Nikki Haley (who will speak to Rotary next Monday).

Whereas the joke is at the expense of a theoretical “South Carolina politician,” the gentle, warmly mocking way that Vincent makes a serious point stands in contrast to the angrier, grab-the-torches-and-pitchforks approach to “South Carolina politicians” that one might encounter at a Haley event. How Nikki manages to fool her supporters into believing that the South Carolina politician is “the Other,” that she is not herself one, is beyond me…

Ultimately, the issue of who will replace Mark Sanford is rightly a question of character. So I thought it worth sharing a tidbit from which you can infer something along those lines.

If anything, Vincent takes the whole lollygaggin’, easygoin’ thing to the point of being a fault. It’s why, I expect, Dick Harpootlian wanted Dwight Drake to run — Vincent is perceived as such a nice guy, and Dick wanted someone who would GO AFTER the Republicans. (One problem with that is that Dwight’s a pretty nice guy, too. But nevermind.)

And yes, I DO plan to post something more substantive about his speech yesterday. It’s just that I’m running out of time today, and this short clip was right at hand…

Do YOU fear Sarah Palin?

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I was on Keven Cohen’s radio show again yesterday. Sorry I forgot to tell y’all in advance (or did I? I can’t remember; maybe I said something on Twitter…). But the phone lines lit up anyway, and we had a nice, lively discussion. He wants me on the show again before the election; I’ll try to give y’all a heads-up before then.

When I got back to the office, I got this from someone who DID listen in:

Dear Mr. Warthen:

I listened to you on Keven Cohen’s program on WVOC this afternoon and I was just wondering why an endorsement by Sarah Palin to Nikki Haley would embarrass you? Of course, you once said on Kev’s program that you despised Ronald Reagan so, that comment shouldn’t surprise me.

Do you fear Governor Palin because she has more of a spine than you and your other liberals do? Are you jealous of her success? Please don’t tell me that she is a “numbskull” compared to the current occupant of the Oval Office in the White House. She is “head and shoulders” smarter than that community organizer!

Anyway, comments like that are why you are no longer employed by South Carolina’s largest newspaper. One day, THE STATE will complete the trifecta and get rid of Cindi and Warren and replace them with people who don’t toe the Democratic Party line and print their talking points.

Sincerely,

Robert Owens

Lexington

Do you see why I tend to give trolls a lot of rope here on the blog before I give in to community opinion and ban them? I’ve gotten stuff like this my whole career. Par for the course. And unfortunately, being a never-say-die guy, I actually try to reason with them, to wit:

“Fear?” It never occurred to me to FEAR her. I just would be embarrassed to be endorsed by her. That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant.

I think it’s a very great shame that my main man John McCain elevated her to prime time, for which she was most demonstrably not ready. If you’d like to read an elaboration on that point, you should check out my blog post the other day about what one of her former handlers had to say…

My effort to reach across the divide was rewarded thusly:

Well, I think that you do fear her. As far as John McCain goes, as a 20+ year USAF veteran, I respect his military service and what he went through as a prisoner of war; he is an abject failure as a politician. He and Lindsey Graham were totally against a border fence between the US and Mexico a few years ago. When The Maverick figured that he might have a tough time winning the Arizona GOP earlier this year he was all for the fence. I about puked when I saw the commercial of him walking with an Arizona sheriff and he was telling McCain about the problems they were having with illegal immigration and then Big John looking at the camera and saying, “Build the dang fence!” What a damn hypocrite! I held my nose and voted for him in November 2008 because I knew what a disaster the community organizer would be. It would have been so much better if the ticket had been Palin/McCain instead of the other way around though.

Of course, some of these former handlers are going to say stuff about her because she had some ideas to save the campaign and they had no gonads and let the Dems take the election!

You can have McCain, he is a disaster! I hope that the next time that he reaches across the aisle to help the Democrats that he locks arms with Graham, Snowe, and Collins and takes them with him. Also, do you really think that Obama is ready for prime time? What an idiot and our country is paying the price for it. He is still blaming Bush yet when he was running he was The One with all of the answers.

Anyway, here is you to getting a spine someday!

RLO

Lexington, SC

It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to connect with a fan…

Speaking the same language, but only technically

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You know how I just got HD? Well, this process all started with me wanting a Blu-ray player so I could watch Netflix without waiting for the discs to come in the mail.

That part of the project has been… tricky. I’ve spent several late nights in the past week trying to get that one simple thing done.

I thought I’d share with you my conversation — excuse me, “chat,” which isn’t the same thing — about the problem with a tech at Sony. As you read it, imagine unexplained pauses of five or 10 minutes while I wait for short, incomplete answers from the tech. Of course, when I took a couple of minutes to go try what the tech suggested (going through the process on a different browser), I got “Please acknowledge my question, so that I can assist you better.”

Note that, while it’s all in English, there is a distinct… disconnect… in the flow of communication. I get the sense that each comment is being run imperfectly through a translator. And it was amazingly frustrating. I was so desperate to work effectively with this person that I even slipped into a stilted version of English myself, hoping it would facilitate things (“Yes, it persists.” To which I got another deadpan, Hal-9000 answer):

Corinne_ > Hi Brad. Welcome to Sony Online Support. I’m Corinne. Please allow me a moment to review your concern.

Brad Warthen > Here is a full description of the problem:

Brad Warthen > I’m trying to get Netflix on my new Blu-ray player. I have an internet connection, but when it tells me to go to internet.sony.tv/netflix on my computer and enter a password, I run into trouble. That address asks me for my e-mail address and a password. So I enter my e-mail address, and the password that the Blu-ray player told me to use, and I get “The password you entered is invalid. Please enter a valid password.” So I try the password I created when I registered my player, and I get the same message. So I click on “Reset or Forgot your Password” and follow the directions, and you send me a new, temporary password. I’ve done this THREE TIMES now, and each time I enter the new, temporary password minutes (sometimes seconds) after receiving it, and I get “Your temporary password has expired. Please change the existing password at SonyStyle website.” Every time, same message. So what in the world am I supposed to do now?

Corinne_ > I am sorry that the BD Player can not be registerred in the Sony Essential website.

Corinne_ > Thanks for waiting, Brad.

Corinne_ > I’ll be happy to assist you in this regard.

Corinne_ > Do you have a SonyStyle account?

Brad Warthen > Yes.

Corinne_ > Did you try using different Web Brower?

Brad Warthen > No. I just used Firefox.

Brad Warthen > Hello? Are you there?

Corinne_ > Yes, I am online.

Brad Warthen > I said no, I just used Firefox. Is there a preferred browser?

Corinne_ > Brad, it is recommened to open the Eseential website in either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

Corinne_ > Please check the operation with a different web browser.

Brad Warthen > I’m using Firefox. 3.6.10. But I’ll go try IE as well.

Corinne_ > Sure, please go ahead.

Corinne_ > Please let me know if the issue persists.

Brad Warthen > … that is, assuming it still works… I never use IE; I always use Firefox or Chrome…

Corinne_ > Please let me know the result after using Internet Explorer.

Corinne_ > Please acknowledge my question, so that I can assist you better.

Brad Warthen > Yes, it persists.

Brad Warthen > I tried all my passwords, then requested a new one. When I entered the new one, I got “Your temporary password has expired. Please change the existing password at SonyStyle website. ” Again.

Corinne_ > I am sorry to hear this.

Corinne_ > Thanks for the additional information.

Corinne_ > I am really sorry for the delay in response.

Corinne_ > This is a dead lock issue.

Brad Warthen > What does that mean?

Corinne_ > This deadlock issue can handled by our next level of support over phone.

Brad Warthen > OK, what’s the number?

Corinne_ > They are our next level of support and better eqipped to help you resolving the issue.

Brad Warthen > OK. What’s the number, so I can call them?

Corinne_ > They are available at: 239-768-7547.

Corinne_ > Their hours of operation is:

Corinne_ > Mon-Fri 8:00AM-12:00AM (Midnight) ET

Sat-Sun 9:00AM-8:00PM ET

Brad Warthen > OK, I’ll call, and tell them it’s a “deadlock issue.”

Corinne_ > I am sure that they will be more than happy to further assist you resolving the issue.

Corinne_ > Please mention that you have contacted Chat Support Team for the same regard before while contacting the.

Corinne_ > Hence, theyb will be further assist you fixing the issue.

Corinne_ > Thus, you can access Netflix fine in the BD Player.

Corinne_ > Are you able to take it from here?

Brad Warthen > Yes. I was trying to copy the text of this chat so that I’d have the number and times, but the text box doesn’t allow me to select it. Could you e-mail me the info?

Corinne_ > Sure, Brad.

Corinne_ > I’ll forward this chat transcript to your Email ID for future reference.

Brad Warthen > Thanks. Goodbye.

Corinne_ > This Chat Transcript has been sent to: brad@bradwarthen.com.

Corinne_ > You are most welcome.

Corinne_ > It was really nice chatting with you.

Corinne_ > Have great time ahead!

Corinne_ > Good-bye and thank you for contacting Sony Online Support.

Corinne_ > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

So I guess tonight, I’ll be on the phone for several hours.

The counter-Haley insurgency within the GOP goes mainstream (but sotto voce)

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Republicans who are enamored of their gubernatorial nominee can dismiss Cyndi Mosteller (sister of close Sanford ally Chip Campsen) if they like. But they’ll have a bit of trouble shrugging off this missive from their own Speaker of the House:

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ALL REPUBLICANS YOU KNOW.

Dear Friends,

This Election Year there are a lot of accusations flying around and very few facts backing them up. Republicans need to make sure all voters are fully informed before they go to the polls this November and that is why we felt it was so important that we get the real facts out.

Recently, special interest groups in our state have tried to accuse State House Republicans of fighting against reforms that we not only support, but that we have actually voted on and passed. They are even accusing Republican leadership of not supporting the very reforms that we have worked hard to get passed.

The SC House Republican Caucus is a conservative body that has a record of conservative reforms and a clear vision for our state’s future. Over this series of emails, we will tell you the facts about that solid record and share with you our plans to build on that record.

Transparency

The House Republican Caucus supports more transparency in our state government. A more open government makes for a more accountable government. We believe the people should be able to see how their elected officials vote.

FACT: In January 2009, we adopted a Rule in the House of Representatives that was authored by Representative Nikki Haley that put more of our votes on the record. Click here to see the House Rule.

FACT: Just this past session, the House of Representatives unanimously passed Rep. Haley’s bill that would make the House Rule requiring more recorded votes a law. Click here to see the bill we passed.

Even though it passed unanimously and would appear as though it was easy to pass, there were still hurdles we had to overcome to get us there. The House Republican Caucus and I, as the Speaker, worked very hard to get this important rule passed and to get the legislation through the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, this bill never made it through the SC Senate. Because of that, the House Republican Caucus has put Transparency at the top of our election agenda and plan to address this issue again in the next legislative session.

As I said at the beginning of this email, there will be a lot of untrue allegations made during this election season, but facts are facts. The House Republican Caucus, and I as the Speaker, have not only supported more transparency in government, we have backed up the talk with action by passing a House Rule and a House Bill. This is the kind of leadership you expect from Republicans, and I am proud to be able to tell you about it.

Bobby Harrell

Speaker,

South Carolina House of Representatives

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ALL REPUBLICANS YOU KNOW.

A friend sent this to me, noting rightly that “you’re certainly not a Republican, but I thought I’d pass it on anyway.” I’m much obliged.

Whoa. Normally, when a Republican leader starts out a mailing, less than a month from a general election, with “This Election Year there are a lot of accusations flying around and very few facts backing them up,” he’s unloading on the Democratic nominee. Not this time, baby. Not the way I read it, anyway — because I’ve only heard one person try to paint the leadership as opposed to transparency.

Sure, in keeping with Reagan’s 11th Commandment, Bobby didn’t come right out and say “Nikki Haley is a liar!” But even your more comprehension-challenged Repubs ought to be able to understand this message. Right? Or are they thicker than I give them credit for being?

Or… is there something I’m missing?

That wonderful, marvelous Adam Smith

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I said something about “Adam Smith sermonizing” in The Wall Street Journal back on this post.

Speak of the devil, I just happened to read a book review in that paper this morning about the book, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (I am not making this title up), By Nicholas Phillipson.

Talk about your gushing. The reviewer writes, breathily,

Even his appearance is a mystery. The only contemporary likenesses of him are two small, carved medallions. We know Adam Smith as we know the ancients, in colorless stone.

It is a measure of Nicholas Phillipson’s gifts as a writer that he has, from this unpromising material, produced a fascinating book. Mr. Phillipson is the world’s leading historian of the Scottish Enlightenment. His “Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life” animates Smith’s prosaic personal history with an account of the eventful times through which he lived and the revolutionary ideas that inspired him. Adam Smith finally has the biography that he deserves, and it could not be more timely.

Smith’s fame, of course, was made by the “Wealth of Nations.” The book appeared in 1776, a good year in the annals of human liberty. Its teachings are so fundamental to modern economics that familiarity often dulls our appreciation of its brilliance.

Smith constructed his masterpiece on a few ingenious insights into the workings of a commercial economy….

He’s so wonderful, but so unknowable! His ways are so far above our ways, and his thoughts so far above our thoughts, that we know him only through colorless stone! Quick, a paper bag — I’m hyperventilating…

Of course, I must admit, I haven’t read Wealth of Nations. For two centuries and more, I’ve been holding out for the movie version. Maybe it’s all that and more. But at the moment I’m giving myself a break from nonfiction to reread O’Brian’s The Wine-Dark Sea, which of course actually is wonderful. (Speaking of the movie, I watched “Master and Commander” last night on Blu-Ray. If only someone would undertake to make a separate film on each book in the Aubrey/Maturin canon! As soon as it came out on Netflix, you wouldn’t see me for a year…)

After that, I’m going to read the books I got for my birthday, starting with Tony Blair’s new political autobio. Then there’s Woodward’s Obama’s War. Only then will I allow myself the pleasure of reading the latest Arkady Renko mystery, Three Stations.

Then, before I read Adam Smith, I will go back and finish Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, which I set aside to read Bob Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow and Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed, back-to-back. Then, sometime after Trotsky, I’ll go read Adam Smith — right after I poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick. Twice. Colorless stone, indeed.

Did Janette pen “world’s haughtiest e-mail?”

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Many of you know Janette Turner Hospital, the novelist who for years has run the “Caught in the Creative Act” seminar at USC.

Yesterday, a reader called my attention to a piece over at Gawker, but when I got there I didn’t read the thing I was being directed to, because I got distracted by this item claiming that the Australian writer had written the “world’s haughtiest e-mail” back to her former students here in Colatown:

Janette Turner Hospital is the author of Orpheus Lost and other books, and a professor at Columbia. She sent MFA students at her old school, the University of South Carolina, the following note about their inferiority. It is amazing.

Hospital sent this note to all of the MFA students on the University of South Carolina listserv. More than one of them forwarded it to us. “We’re all enraged,” one MFA grad from USC tells us. “She is nuts!” says another. Indeed. What’s your favorite part? The personal revelations? The breathtaking undertone of insult towards those in South Carolina? Her special pet name for the Upper West Side? This is fertile ground…

After that build-up, I actually found the e-mail to be not quite as bad as advertised. After all, she says nothing BAD about USC, she just … gushes… to a rather odd extent about NYC. But she would not be the first to have her head turned a bit by the tall buildings, or the Starbucks on every corner. I’m rather fond of the city myself — as a place to visit. Follow the link and see what you think. Or if you’re too lazy to click, here’s an excerpt:

As for news from this very different MFA planet, I’m in seventh heaven teaching here, and not only because I have Orhan Pamuk (whom I hope to bring to USC for Caught in the Creative Act), Oliver Sacks, Simon Schama, Richard Howard, Margo Jefferson, etc., etc., as colleagues, though that is obviously part of it.

My students also live and move and write in seventh heaven and in a fever of creative excitement. Columbia’s MFA is rigorous and competitive but students don’t just have publication as a goal – they take that for granted, since about half the graduating class has a book published or a publishing contract in hand by graduation – so they have their sights set on Pulitzers.

This program is huge, the largest in the country. It’s a 3-year degree, with 300 students enrolled at a given time. Each year, 100 are admitted (in fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with fiction by far the largest segment. But 600+ apply, so the 100 who get in are the cream of the cream…

And then there are all the peripheral pleasures of living on Manhattan: we’ve seen the Matisse exhibition at MOMA, have tickets for the opening of Don Pasquale at the Met Opera, have tickets to see Al Pacino on stage as Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, etc etc. Plus I’m just 15 minutes walking distance from Columbia and from all the sidewalk bistros on Broadway, and 3 minutes from Central Park where we join the joggers every morning. This is Cloud Nine living on the Upper West Side (which is known to my agent and my Norton editor, who live in Greenwich Village, as “Upstate Manhattan.” ) We love it.

What do you think? I mean, I’m glad Janette’s having a good time, and maybe she’s a bit carried away. But I guess I’m too used to the excessive rhetoric of political e-mails to be too appalled.

Or maybe my self-esteem as a South Carolinian has been so battered by the attention we’ve garnered because of the Confederate flag, Mark Sanford, Alvin Greene and Nikki Haley that I’m too numb to be insulted further.

Oh, in case you’re wondering if I’m giving her a break unduly — Ms. Hospital is an acquaintance, but we don’t know each other well. A couple of years back when Salman Rushdie was in town for her program, she asked me to moderate a panel discussion in connection with his appearance (which was flattering, but a little scary, since I hadn’t read any of his books), and I met Mr. Rushdie at a reception afterward. That’s about all I can think of to disclose.

Kennedy-Ayers affair holds lesson for Tea Party

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I really hope that Nikki Haley, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson and every adherent of the Tea Party reads that last post I shared with you. It contains an important lesson.

These people are fond of equating liberalism with dangerous radicalism. And they’ve pulled previously sensible Republicans along with them into this nasty habit of thought (if you can call it thought).

But the tale of how Bill Ayers honored Sirhan Sirhan for killing liberal icon Robert F. Kennedy, and how Bobby’s son, now a pillar in his community, led a board (likely chock full of liberals, although I don’t know that) to deny an honor to unrepentant terrorist Ayers because of what he did, is instructive.

It shows liberals as mainstream people who uphold fundamental standards of decency in their communities, just as real conservatives — in the traditional sense of the word; not the way Sarah Palin and her ilk use it — would do.

Dangerous radicals are beyond the pale. Sensible liberals, and conservatives, are the people who point out that fact.

Therein lies the difference. So knock it off with the demonization of people who are NOT beyond the pale.

Graham becomes incoherent when he tries too hard to sound like DeMint

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Just got this release from Lindsey Graham:

Graham Continues Push for Repeal and Replace of Obamacare

WASHINGTON – Continuing his commitment to the repeal and replace of Obamacare, United States Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has introduced legislation to repeal another major provision of the recently-passed health care law – the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act.

“The CLASS Act is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush,” said Graham. “It’s billed as an insurance program for long-term care, but really it’s just a huge and very costly government accounting trick.”…

“To help build momentum for repeal and replace of Obamacare, we should continue holding up all the individual pieces of this monstrosity – like the CLASS Act – to the light of day,” said Graham. “The more Americans learn about the details of this health care bill, and provisions like the CLASS Act, the less they like it. The sooner we can repeal and replace Obamacare, the better off our nation will be.”

And so on and so forth. The rest is the usual nonsense.

Why “nonsense?” Because it is patently, objectively ridiculous to be talking about repealing an incremental, half-baked mishmash reform that hasn’t had ANY appreciable effect yet (have YOU felt or seen any effects? I certainly haven’t). I think that as health-care reform this was pretty lame (can you tell?), but for the sake of all that’s logical, give it a chance to see if it does anything. Unless you’re prepared to pass REAL reform (which would be awesome, and worth upsetting a few apple carts), hush up and observe for the next few years, THEN weigh in — when you know something.

Personally, I don’t know whether the CLASS Act in particular is well-designed or not. But that’s of secondary consideration in light of the senator’s assertion that he’s only talking about it in order to accomplish the goal of “repeal and replace of Obamacare.”

Did anybody proof this release before it went out? Did anyone say that line out loud before putting it in the lede and hed (and yes, “lede” and “hed” are spelled correctly in this context, you ignorant pedantic lubbers), and then saying it a third time later in the release? Is he really pushing for “repeal (a noun, within the context of following “for”) and replace (which cannot, in this or any other context, be anything but a verb)” of Obamacare?

Is this some crazy new mangled-English construct currently in vogue with a certain kind of Republican (the kind who says abominable things such as “Democrat Party”)? Because I’m telling ya, it makes zero sense to the rest of us. Did you mean to say you are pushing TO repeal (this time a verb) and replace (still a verb) it? If so, why not say so?

Lindsey Graham was a fairly eloquent opponent of what is termed “Obamacare” before it passed. He made his case, and explained his reasons in a respectable manner. But he lost the argument. But when he tries to fulminate about that as though he were a Tea Party ranter, all his coherence is left behind. Which is a shame.

I eagerly await the return of the real Lindsey Graham, because he’s a guy I greatly admire. Let DeMint be DeMint. One of those is too many. Don’t try to be what you’re not, senator.

Yeah, OK, I’ll help spread the truth

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Just got this from the Sheheen campaign under the headline, “Help Vincent Fight Back with the Truth:”

Dear Brad –

This week, the race for governor changed. Vincent Sheheen’s second week of television ads have introduced him to a statewide audience and voters are impressed. We learned that Nikki Haley, who claims her skills as an accountant qualify her to be governor, had even more problems paying her taxes, this time for her business. The onslaught of bad news has the Haley campaign on the defensive.

Having already misled the public on her record, her positions and her business acumen, Nikki Haley has now resorted to false attacks on Vincent Sheheen rather than answering tough questions about her positions and her business problems.

In the last week, she falsely accused Vincent of wanting to raise taxes to solve the budget crisis but she is the only candidate who wants higher taxes; Haley wants to raise our grocery tax.

She claimed: “Vince Sheheen will kill our state’s competitiveness” but the Sanford-Haley philosophy of the last eight years has already left our job recruitment efforts in dismal shape and more of the same won’t improve them.

She even blamed Vincent for the fiscal problems of Washington DC and border security in Arizona. Vincent responded that maybe Nikki Haley was running for governor of the United States that the last thing we needed was another governor focused on national office and not our state.

Then she called him “slippery.” Her tactics are desperate and an embarrassment. We need your help to fight back with the truth. Donate today so South Carolina can elect a governor we can trust.

Thanks,

Trav

Trav Robertson
Campaign Manager
Sheheen for Governor

OK, all that is true.

But here’s some more truth: Nikki’s not on the ropes. She’s not on the defensive, even thought she should be, since every supposed strength she’s touted (transparency, business acumen) has turned out to be a weakness. She’s on a roll.

Today, I heard two different accounts of the appearance of the two candidates before the Palmetto Business Forum yesterday. Both said Vincent was fine and said the right things, but was low key and seemed to lack the fire in the belly.

Nikki, they said, was ON. She was in the zone. She had obviously been superbly prepared by her handlers, and recited everything perfectly. My witnesses knew, as I know, that Nikki’s understanding of issues is at best skin deep, generally not going beyond a bumper-sticker message. But she delivers the bumper sticker well.

This is a continuation of what I saw at the Sarah Palin event a couple of months back. I saw something that is unmistakable to me after my decades of observing politics and politicians closely: A candidate who was peaking, who was confident, poised, energetic and on message. She was ladling out stuff that that Tea Party crowd was lapping up, and she’s still doing it. Knowing that the business community doesn’t trust her, she has worked hard at learning key things to say to win them over. And that, according to my witnesses, was what was on display last night.

It is extremely important to South Carolina that Vincent Sheheen win this election. He is THE reform candidate, and the governor our state needs. But unless something happens to change the game, he’s not going to. Win, that is. And the business community, and the rest of us, are going to suffer another four years of a governor who fundamentally does not understand or appreciate economic development, and can’t work with key players to help move our state forward.

And we can’t afford that. But right now, that’s where we’re headed.

“Use to was:” Small town South Carolina

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Dang it, I searched on Google Books for the quote I wanted, but you know how they leave out pages here and there? Apparently the page I wanted was one of those.

Anyway, there’s a page somewhere in John le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl in which our heroine Charlie is being escorted through a bombed-out 1980s Beirut by a couple of young Palestinian-affiliated gunmen whom she, and the reader, find utterly charming. One of them speaks English with an odd tick: He throws “use to” in front of all verbs, giving his speech a strange poignancy at all times. At one point, he’s indicating where a certain landmark — I want to say a Holiday Inn, but my memory could be failing me (and maybe it wasn’t even in the book but in the movie, but good luck finding that; Netflix doesn’t even have it) — back before the city’s devastation, back when it was the Paris of the Mideast. Let’s say it was a Holiday Inn, in which case he would have said, “Holiday Inn — use to was…”

That line kept running through my head when I went home to Bennettsville Saturday for the funeral of “Teenie” Parks — my grandmother’s best friend, who lived next door to my grandparents and then my young uncle (only six years older than I) as he raised his family there, with Teenie taking the place for his kids of my grandmother, who died in 1969. There are people in B’ville who would ask Teenie how I was related to her, even though I wasn’t. We were all that close. Her husband Frank, who died in 1984, had grown up in the house that my grandparents lived in during my childhood and my uncle still lives in today. Then they sold the house to my grandfather and moved next door. From then on it was like one household; we walked in and out of each others’ houses as though the doors weren’t there. We were, as I said, that close.

The funeral was at Thomas Memorial Baptist Church, where I was baptized long before I became Catholic. It’s the scene of an incident for which I’m still remembered by some of the older folks in town — far more than for anything else, really. While at the visitation various folks made a point of saying what I hear so often, that “We miss you so much from the newspaper,” a couple of my relatives made a point of mentioning The Incident, and admonishing me not to repeat it.

(Here’s what happened: It was 1957, and I was four years old. Our preacher then, Mr. Thomas, was not the most accomplished homilist. He tended to drone and lose his train of thought. He was reciting a list of some sort in which towns in the Pee Dee were ranked. It went something like this: “Cheraw was first, Dillon second. Um, Marion was third. And Bennettsville was… it was… um… Bennettsville was, um…” I couldn’t take it. I shouted out, as loud as I could, “FOURTH!!!” The congregation, which had been as tense as I was, erupted into laughter, drowning out Mr. Thomas as he murmured “fourth.” I had not known I was going to do it; it was involuntary. Four, after all, was my favorite number because I was four years old. How could he not think of it? But now that I’d shouted it, the laughter of all those grownups overwhelmed me with embarrassment. I lay my head on my mother’s lap and pretended to be asleep for the rest of the service. Bottom line, to this day, I am known by some as the little boy who yelled “Fourth!”)

After the funeral, driving back through town on Main Street, I pointed out to my wife landmarks that once had been. That’s what put me in mind of the le Carre character. B.B. Sanders’ Esso station, where the proprietor would always lean into the driver’s window, while his employees swarmed over the car to check the oil and the tires and the water and wash the windshield, and ask us, “Y’all want a Co-Cola?” Use to was. Belk’s — use to was. The Bennettsville Department Store — use to was. Penney’s, Miller Thompson pharmacy, the dime stores, Bill Stanton’s daddy’s store, the movie theater, the A&P, the Harris Teeter. All “use to was.” The buildings are all still there, and most look fine from the outside. But they aren’t what they were. And there is almost no one walking on the once-busy sidewalks.

This morning, I almost got a parking ticket because lobbyist Jay Hicks sat across from me as I was about to get up from breakfast, and I stayed, and we started talking about a number of things. Eventually, we got onto the state of South Carolina’s small towns, especially the ones well off the Interstates. He spoke of Bamberg, and I mentioned to him how impressed I was the one time I visited Allendale — all those abandoned motels along 301, which died when the Interstates opened.

We talked about whether there was any hope for turning around South Carolina’s small towns, whether Nikki Haley (who hales from Bamberg) or Camden’s Vincent Sheheen is elected. We reached no conclusions.

And I spoke of visiting Bennettsville over the weekend. I didn’t mention the “use to was” part, because it would have taken too long to explain.

Joe just can’t (“liberal!”) help himself (“liberal, liberal! Pelosi, liberal!”). It’s like Tourette’s…

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When I saw that Joe Wilson had put out a press release talking about incentives to create jobs, I thought Great! Some substance! A release in which I won’t have to read any fulmination about “liberals” and how they’re the root of all evil! After all, a jobs plan has to be pragmatic thing, meant to address the broad complex of practical, real-world problems leading to our current economic malaise.

Silly me:

Wilson Urges Job Creation Incentives as Unemployment Rises

(Washington, DC) – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) today released the following statement after the Department of Labor announced the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent and the U.S. economy lost jobs for the third straight month:

“I’m not sure where Administration officials are spending their summer, but here in South Carolina, this is certainly not the ‘Recovery Summer’ we were promised.

“For 16 straight months, unemployment has been above nine percent. Why the Administration and liberal leadership in Congress isn’t talking about job creation plans each and every day is beyond belief. People are hurting and the time to act is now, not later or in another 16 months,” said Congressman Joe Wilson.

Congressman Joe Wilson has outlined a job creation plan that offers incentives to small business owners to hire more employees and gives American families more money to invest. See his plan here and pass it along to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

###

The boldfacing is Joe’s, not mine.

He just can’t help himself. It’s like Tourette’s or something. He’s incapable of completing a thought without reference to “liberals” or “Pelosi.” Just watch, and see if I’m not right.

God showing off, again

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Just thought I’d share a bit of last night’s glorious sunset, as I shot it on my Blackberry.

Actually, I guess that’s not technically a sunset — more of a dramatic interaction of sun and cloud independent of the time of day. One usually thinks of something like this in connection with the term, “sunset.” But then again, maybe it is a sunset but only technically, in that it occurred as the sun was setting.

Anyway, sights such as this beggar language.

Can “walk back” be walked back? And should it?

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This morning, I got a link from Stan Dubinsky to an article headlined, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” I replied:

Sure it does. And limiting our thoughts intentionally is double-plus ungood.

Which is not to say I don’t love Big Brother, in case he’s reading this. I just don’t like to see the language messed with for political purposes. (And if you doubt the power of such tinkering, see if you can have a discussion of the disappearance of the inclusive “he” with a group of mixed gender without somebody getting angry.)

Which is not to condemn the natural growth and evolution of language. But I do tend to greet new constructions with some suspicion, feeling they must prove themselves in general use before being accepted. This morning I had occasion to wonder about a certain buzz phrase, since it seemed to burst upon my consciousness with all the subtlety of the German advance in the Ardennes in December 1944.

The phrase is “walk back.” Maybe it’s old hat to you. Maybe my noticing it three times this morning was just that trick of the mind whereby the first time you become conscious of a word or phrase that’s been there all the time, you suddenly see it anywhere.

Anyway, I first noticed it this morning in this piece from CNN:

Earlier this month, Obama was accused of giving two conflicting statements regarding a planned Islamic community center and mosque several blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. His August 13 remarks seemed to lend support to the project, but he told CNN’s Ed Henry a day later that he was “not commenting and [would] not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque” near Ground Zero.

In the NBC interview, Obama denied walking back his original statement.

“I didn’t walk it back at all,” he said.

That’s twice. And my initial impression that CNN made up the phrase is set back (walked back) by the president himself using it. So I got to thinking, “Maybe this is another one of those things that people who watch TV “news” hear all the time, so it’s just new to me. Which is distinctly possible.

Then, less than two hours later, this appeared on CNN’s Political Ticker Twitter feed:

Crist walks back same-sex marriage remarks http://bit.ly/cC8tLQ 37 minutes ago via twitterfeed

So it is just me, or did this just appear in the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary, and nobody told me?

And what do I think of it? Since its use seems to be pejorative by implication (the president denied it when accused of it), is this another blow in the battle to train us NOT to think? You know, another shot fired in the effort to cause us to see the reconsideration of positions as a bad thing — along with “flip-flop,” which is used to condemn anyone who actually continues to consider his (note the use of the inclusive masculine!) opinions in the light of new data or changed conditions — which a thoughtful person would think of as a good thing?

Or am I just being overly touchy?

Le Carré trash-talks James Bond

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Don’t know if you saw this in The Telegraph last week, but they resurrected a 1966 interview Malcolm Muggeridge did with David Cornwell (workname John le Carré), in which he called 007 a “neo-fascist gangster” and elaborated:

“I dislike Bond. I’m not sure that Bond is a spy. I think that it’s a great mistake if one’s talking about espionage literature to include Bond in this category at all,” Le Carré said.

“It seems to me he’s more some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a licence to kill… he’s a man entirely out of the political context. It’s of no interest to Bond who, for instance, is president of the United States or of the Union of Soviet Republics.”

Asked now about the interview for a programme to appear on BBC Four next week, he eased up a bit, but still had to say:

“But at the root of Bond there was something neo-fascistic and totally materialist. You felt he would have gone through the same antics for any country really, if the girls had been so pretty and the Martinis so dry.”

Oh, lighten up, Francis! We get it! We know Bond is a silly Hugh Hefneresque fantasy, and we know you are the gold standard for real spy fiction (although Len Deighton has occasionally given you a run for your money, such as in The Ipcress File). And we get that it was probably pretty galling in ’66 that everybody was talking about Bond when you were putting out such gritty stuff as your masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Anyone ever notice how, if you watch an early Bond movie after seeing Austin Powers, you realize Mike Myers was hardly exaggerating at all? It was all really that goofy.

But here’s the thing that concerned me the most about the Telegraph piece:

Bond has become a Hollywood hero, but Smiley may have the last laugh. While financial woes at film studio MGM have put the 23rd Bond movie on indefinite hold, a new film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is planned for 2012 with Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch in starring roles.

Remake “Tinker, Tailor”?!?!? Possibly the best thing ever made for the telly (closest competition being “Band of Brothers”)? Sacrilege! I mean, it’s like Anna Chapman trying to cash in on her celebrity after being blown. In either case, Smiley would be appalled. Gary Oldman is awesome and all (I sort of see him as Karla, though, who does not appear in Tinker). But let’s have a little respect. Maybe instead you could do The Honourable Schoolboy, which got skipped in the original BBC productions.

Sorry Nevada, but your name is an actual word

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I love this resolution submitted by Harry Mortenson (D-Las Vegas) of the Nevada legislature:

Whereas there are two common pronunciations of the name of our great state:

(1)   the provincial pronunciation utilized by approximately two-million Nevadans, using a flat A-sound — a sound not unlike the bleating of a sheep, and;

(2)   the cosmopolitan or Spanish pronunciation used by the other seven-billion inhabitants of our planet, using a soft “A” intonation—not unlike a sigh of contentment, and . . .

Whereas it is becoming a continuous, prodigious, and daunting task for the two million colloquial-speaking inhabitants to interrupt and correct the other seven-billion inhabitants of the Planet who utilize the Spanish/cosmopolitan pronunciation . . .

Therefore; be it resolved, that henceforth, there will be two acceptable pronunciations for the name of our great state:

(1)    the preferred pronunciation will be the colloquial pronunciation, and;

(2)    the less-preferred pronunciation will be the charitably-tolerated Spanish/cosmopolitan pronunciation.

I regret that he came down on the wrong side of the issue by choosing the wrong pronunciation as the preferred one, but I like that he had a strong sense of irony about it. He realizes that the way Nevadans pronounce it sounds to a literate ear like Anthony Hopkins seeming to make fun of an American accent by the way he said “chianti” as Hannibal Lecter. It’s jarring.

You know, I believe that South Carolina would be a lot better off if more of our lawmakers had a sense of irony about our own states foibles. If only we would all resolve to lighten up and “charitably tolerate” those whose ancestors did NOT fire on Fort Sumter. We need to clone James L. Petigru.