Category Archives: Words

OK, now The State paper has gone too far…

All right, I didn’t take it personally when you laid me off. After all, as a vice president of the company, I had been looking at those horrific numbers like all other senior staffers. There was no way the paper could keep paying all of us; no way at all. Some of us had to go; and my salary made me a very attractive target.

And yeah, I was kind of ticked off when you wouldn’t let me take my old blog with me, after all the nights and weekends I poured into it for four years, building it from nothing. That was a classic case of corporate lawyer B.S., insisting upon retaining the rights to content even though something called “Brad Warthen’s Blog” could have pretty close to zero value to you going forward. (I would say “zero,” but it continues to get a surprising number of page views — 15,000 last month — considering that I haven’t posted anything since March 2009. Possibly because I regularly send readers back to it. So that’s of SOME value to your advertisers, I suppose.) But I went out that day and bought the rights to “bradwarthen.com,” and never looked back. It had 132,000 page views in April, and I’m now actually getting income from it. (See the latest ad, from Vincent Sheheen?) So I’m over that.

But now, The State has gone TOO FAR. This I cannot forgive. After we’ve been drip-tortured for months by the GOP candidates with their conservative-this, conservative-that ideological monomania, the same moldy cliches over and over and over and over, to the point that I did something yesterday that I’ve never done before in my career — told my readers that NO GOP candidate is fit to be our governor for the next four years, because I for one just can’t take it any more…

… after all that, The State actually poses this question to the GOP candidates, in print:

There are voters who accuse elected Republicans of abandoning their conservative principles. What makes you the Republican most capable of representing the party in the fall election?

Imagine that! PROVOKING them to give it to us with both barrels! Just setting it right up on a TEE for them!

So of course we were treated to an absolute orgy of… As I’ve said from Day One I’m a conservative a true conservative my daddy was a conservative daddy my mama was a conservative mama I’m a bidnessman meet a payroll don’t take bailouts lazy shiftless welfare takers the key is to starve ’em before they reproduce 100 percent rating from conservative conservatives of America my dog is a conservative dog I don’t have a cat because cats are effete I eat conservative I sleep conservative I excrete conservative I got conservative principles a conservative house and conservative clothes take back our government from the socialists even though we don’t really want it because who needs government anyway they don’t have government in Somalia and they’re doing alright aren’t they National Rifle Association Charlton Heston is my president and Ronald Reagan is my God I will have no gods before him I go Arizona-style all the way that’s the way I roll I will keep their cold dead government hands off your Medicare so help me Ronald Reagan…

And on and on. That’s just to give you the flavor; I’m just reciting from memory. Read the actual stuff if you prefer, but my version has more life to it, while in no way being a disservice to the original.

You know what would have endeared me so much that I would have dropped all my objections and endorsed one of these candidates on the spot? If he or she had had the sense of perspective, the sense of the absurd, the appreciation of irony to say something like:

Actually, I’m a liberal. A liberal all the way. I drive a Prius, I love wine and cheese parties with the faculty, I think America is a big bully in the world and no wonder people hate us (I’d be a terrorist, too, if I didn’t abhor violence so), and I never saw an abortion I didn’t like. My spouse and I have an open marriage, so scandal can’t touch us, because to each his or her own. I’m a white, male heterosexual and the guilt just eats me alive; I wish I belonged to a group that was more GENUINE, you know? The first thing I’d do if elected is raise taxes through the roof, and spend every penny on public education, except for a portion set aside for re-education camps for people who now home-school their kids. Then, if we needed more money for excessive regulation of business and other essential government services, we’d raise taxes again, but only on the rich, which is defined as YOU or anybody who makes more than you. Probably the best word to describe my overall tax plan would be “confiscatory.” And my spending (OH, my spending! You’ve never seen spending until you see my spending!) would best be termed “redistributive.” If elected, my inaugural party will have music by the Dixie Chicks and the Indigo Girls, and then we’ll all bow down to a gigantic image of Barack (did you know it means “blessed”?) Obama, the savior of us all, and chant in some language other than the ultimate oppressor language, English. French, perhaps. Or Kiswahili.

Or something along those lines. And if The State ran a response like that, all would be forgiven…

On the other hand, these are NOT the kinds of ads you want to see from one who would be governor

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Yesterday, I praised Henry McMaster for his latest campaign ad. Yeah, the praise was pretty damned faint, and I disagreed strongly with a great deal of what he was saying, but at least it was done with a tone and attitude that made you feel good about South Carolina — or at least got the impression that Henry felt good about South Carolina. And that’s too rare these days from our friends in the GOP.

Take, for instance, the pair of videos unveiled today by the Nikki Haley and Gresham Barrett campaigns.

We have Nikki labeling her rivals with the GOP cusswords “Bailouts,” “Stimulus spending” and “Career politicians” — about as neat a job of giving opponents short shrift as I’ve ever seen (as if those terms sum up the totality of who these men are) — before going on to say, in that hagiographic way she has, that SHE is the one true “conservative.” Whatever the hell that word means anymore. (It certainly doesn’t mean what it did when I was coming up.)

Then we have Gresham Barrett promising to be the meanest of all to illegal immigrants (the scoundrels!), and pass “a common-sense Arizona law.”

Sorry, folks, but neither of these glimpses of your values or your attitudes toward the world in general make me feel good about the idea of you being my governor. Not that you’re trying to please me, I realize; but that’s all I have to go by…

The gross immaturity of the blogosphere (with emphasis on “gross”)

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So this morning I noticed that a certain Rep. Mark Souder from Indiana was resigning over an affair. None of my business, of course. I’d never heard of the guy, and who represents Indiana in Congress is no concern of mine. Of course, I knew that the blogosphere would go nuts over this, because it supposedly had to do with an extramarital affair, and if this guy were a Republican the liberal blogs would have a field day drawing absurd conclusions that this said something about all Republicans, and if he were a Democrat, the opposite reaction would ensue.

But then, I was briefly tempted to post when it occurred to me that I could say something like, “Good for you, Rep. Souder — not for the affair, but for the resigning.” As in, something a certain SC politician should have done last year, thereby sparing us from hearing how he spends his weekends on the Florida taxpayers’ dime.

I couldn’t even bring myself to give Mr. Souder even THAT much of a backhanded compliment when I saw what a mealymouthed, whiny, blame-every-else explanation as to why he was resigning (pardon the all-caps; they’re from the original):

IN THE POISONOUS ENVIRONMENT OF WASHINGTON DC, ANY PERSONAL FAILING IS SEIZED UPON, OFTEN TWISTED, FOR POLITICAL GAIN. I AM RESIGNING RATHER THAN TO PUT MY FAMILY THROUGH THAT PAINFUL, DRAWN-OUT PROCESS.

Not that there wasn’t a certain justice in what he said. As to that…

A little later, I saw a link to a Wonkette post that in part said the following (please excuse the language):

Indiana Republican and eight-term congressman Mark Souder is resigning immediately because he had sexytime with a woman who was not married-in-Christ to him. Souder just defeated a teabagger in the GOP primary, but with less than 50% of the vote, and eh we’ve never heard of this guy — Indiana’s third congressional district, we should pay more attention to this hotspot! — so let’s get to the crazy all-caps SORRY JEEBUS I PUT MY WANG IN ANOTHER LADY’S LADYPARTS. Also, he’s a wingnut who campaigned on the bullshit “I will repeal Obamacare,” so let the Devil take him!The Devil take you, Mark Souder, for your Infidelity Against God! The Devil take you!

I usually don’t look at the Wonkette, or any other blogs that embody everything I don’t want this one to be. But I found myself wondering, as I usually do, is this stuff written by maladjusted 13-year-old boys? You know, an adolescent too worked up to stop and think about anything but his desire to impress his peers with his pimply disrespect for the whole world. The proper medium for this form of expression is the bathroom wall of a middle school.

Aside from being foul-mouthed, aside from taking idiotic, raving, snarling, snorting joy in the pain of other human beings, it is painfully unimaginative. Yeah, I know the history of the Wonkette, and how it interspersed commentary with sexual meanderings the founder moved on, so it has a standard to live down to. But it does it so badly, in such a thoroughly off-putting manner.

I would weep for the independent blogosphere, if I had cause to expect better of it. The good news is that the bar is so low that it’s easy to raise the standard, which I will continue to endeavor to do in my own little corner, with your help.

Ah, Jeez, Edith! Now it’s a competition…

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No sooner does Nikki Haley announce that she’s sewn up the backing of the goddess of the Tea Party movement than Henry McMaster has to weigh in with a “Me, too!”…

McMaster earns Upstate Tea Party endorsement

May 13th, 2010
Conservative group says attorney general is candidate Tea Party can trust
COLUMBIA, S.C. – One of South Carolina’s largest conservative grassroots organizations, the Boiling Springs Tea Party, today endorsed Henry McMaster for Governor. The Boiling Springs Tea Party has organized a network of thousands of Upstate conservatives since its founding last year and will encourage them to turn out voters for Henry McMaster in the June 8 Republican gubernatorial primary.

In a press release, the group praised McMaster’s “outstanding character, judgment, experience, Christian conservative values, understanding of the state’s needs and proven dedication to accountable public service.”

Boiling Springs Tea Party organizer Maria Brady said in part, “Our search for a gubernatorial candidate with conservative Christian values grounded in the Constitution led us toward Henry because he embodies the ideals of our Founding Fathers. [H]e is clearly a candidate Tea Party patriots can trust to fight President Obama” and “stop bailout-peddling Washington politicians…”

Oh, but get this next part:

Attorney General McMaster thanked the group for the endorsement. “Washington radicals threaten our very way of life,” he said. [boldface emphasis mine]

And to thing I was wringing my hands over whether I was engaging in extreme rhetoric. Guess I can relax, huh? I’m the very soul of self-restraint, by comparison.

Ah, Henry, we hardly knew ye…

How rhetoric gets extreme: a case study

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Last night after I posted the thing about Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley, I did what I usually do, which is post the headline and link on Twitter. But as I also usually do, I said a little more in the headline than I do here, as a way of drawing readers in and letting them know more about what the post is about. So instead of just “Sarah Palin coming to SC to back Nikki Haley,” I Tweeted:

Sarah Palin coming to back Nikki Haley — as if we really needed to start IMPORTING crazy here in SC… https://bradwarthen.com/?p=5456

Then, an interesting thing happened. Frequently I see my Tweets retweeted by others, and sometimes by a couple of people. This time, five different people (they were PaigeCoop, blogitch, tylermjones, JaneFredArch and sccounsel) retweeted that little come-on.

This sort of viral response, quite naturally, causes the more reptilian parts of my brain to go, “How can I get this kind of response again?” Because that many reTweets means that many more people I would not ordinarily reach are attracted to the blog, which means I get to report even bigger numbers (last month, 132,000 page views) next time I try to sell an ad — not to mention, of course, gaining a richer and more diverse conversation here on the blog, of course, which is what we’re all about here, of course. Ahem.

So it is is that I was rewarded for saying “as if we really needed to start importing crazy here in SC.” Which means my natural response is to describe MORE posts in similar terms, so as to get this same reward.

But the thing is, I wasn’t totally happy with that wording. Basically, I wanted to say that we have enough problems here in SC without bringing in a person who is a flashpoint for all sorts of conflicting emotions out in the national political buzz machine. And we have enough of our own demons here in our beloved state. There’s also the problem that we have every bit of our share of the anti-intellectualism that runs through American politics, a strain of which Mrs. Palin has rightly or wrongly become the symbol. We’ve got enough of it not to need to import the latest, flashiest, most Reality TV-esque version of it. Anyway, I’m not at all sure that “crazy” captured all that, although all that and more was what I was seeking to suggest.

But it certainly grabbed people. I was instantly rewarded for it. Which is maybe not a good thing. I have a certain knack for lurid language, which I generally try to keep in check, but not always successfully. People could often tell when I wrote an editorial at the paper (which I didn’t do all that often in recent years) because of that knack. Here is a sample of it, according to people who point these things out to me.

I really don’t need encouraging on this score.

And it occurs to me that this is the dynamic that has produced the particularly nasty morass of political rhetoric in which people think they are being hip and relevant and pithy when they call people “wingnuts” or otherwise engage in insult and calumny in the course of expressing themselves politically.

All those other blogs out there that serve hyperpartisan causes, that draw and feed anger, that thrive on treating those with whom their readers disagree with contempt bordering on dehumanization… the blogs to which I have always wanted this one to be a civil alternative … probably started down the road that they’re on by getting rewarded for getting a little punchier and a little more extreme with each post. Stimulus and response.

So… how do I grow the blog and resist that trap? Perpetual vigilance, I suppose — on my part and yours.

“Former” First Lady? Is that right?

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Just sort of noticed in passing that that release I posted yesterday about Jenny Sanford referred to her as the “former first lady.” And now I suddenly notice (gotta tell you, I don’t exactly devour most stories that have her in the headline), that’s the standard in news stories about her. Such as this.

Huh. I wonder — is that right? And if so, when did it happen? Automatically when she got her divorce? (It was flatly stated here, but who was the authority?) And if so, based on what rule or precedent? Who’s the arbiter, or the keeper of the style? Is there a written protocol rule, anywhere, on this?

Did someone just assume, and others followed suit? Maybe if I were still at the newspaper, I would have seen the memo. But I never saw a memo. I wonder if there was one. (Now watch: Like the guy in “Office Space,” I’ll get eight copies of it.)

It might be a small thing to you, but only if you’ve never been a professional journalist. Journalists have extensive debates about things like this. They form committees. They set rules. (We can be pretty ridiculous about it, something that is easy to parody.) Somewhere, someone has done that. And did they rule correctly?

I mean, isn’t she the first lady if she is still performing the duties of first lady, which last I heard she was? It’s not like anyone else is the first lady? Or is that the way we settle the issue of what to call That Other Woman?

The governor and his Latin whatever

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A friend just stuck her head into my office to say she’s sick and tired of hearing María Belén Chapur referred to as our governor’s “Argentine lover,” as in the following:

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday he spent last weekend in Florida with his Argentine lover, hoping to rekindle the affair that wrecked his marriage and his political future and brought a formal rebuke from legislators for embarrassing the state.At a news conference on an unrelated issue, Sanford did not mention Maria Belen Chapur of Argentina by name when asked about a weekend trip out of state about which his staff has refused to provide details. But the governor, now divorced, left no room for doubt.

“As a matter of record, everybody in this room knows exactly who I was with over the weekend,” Sanford said. “That is no mystery to anybody given what I said last summer. And, you know, the purpose was obviously to see if something could be restarted on that front given the rather enormous geographic gulf between us. And time will tell. I don’t know if it will or won’t.”

I told her I’d see what I could do.

Personally, I’ve avoided ever mentioning her name before just now, and I was happy that way. I’ve made passing references to her as his “soulmate,” a word freighted with much meaning, since every mention of it reminds us of the governor’s appalling lack of judgment and taste in speaking of her that way in the infamous, narcissitic Associated Press interview. But mostly I’ve ignore that part of the story altogether, as what interests me about the whole episode is the way it illustrates our governor’s essential nature as a person who is totally into “me, myself and I,” as you can tell from most of his political actions. In other words, it tells me the same thing about him that his 46 interviews with FOXNews during the stimulus debate told me. We didn’t elect… that woman. Or Mrs. Sanford, or any of the other folks concerned. We elected this guy; Lord forgive us.

Beyond that, “lover” isn’t a word I use to apply to anyone. Among other things, it evokes something better not discussed in polite company. Plus, it’s so absurdly melodramatic, to a highly cheesy degree. A slightly more graphic, less self-absorbed version “soulmate.”

One last, perhaps quirky objection: When I hear others use it with reference to a woman, it always sounds sort of false. To me, it has masculine connotations. You say “Latin lover,” without context, and people picture Don Juan or Desi Arnaz or somebody. I do, anyway. Maybe it’s the “-er” ending; I don’t know. If it ended with “-ess” or “-ette” or something I might view it differently.

Anyway, let’s see if we can avoid it, people. I’ve done that up to now, and I resolve to do so going forward. Join me in this resolution.

Twitlonger is decadent and depraved

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Lately on Twitter, I’ve gotten into Retweeting, which is the cheap and easy way to share cool stuff you run into there. For those of you not familiar with it, basically I see a cool thing (or something that MIGHT be cool; sometimes I’m too busy to follow the link myself), click a couple of times, and bada-bing!, I’ve shared it with my 520 followers. WAY better than having to GO to the link, COPY the URL, PASTE it into the form on TinyURL, copy and paste the NEW URL into the Twitter form, and type an explanation of what it leads to.

Way better, especially on the Blackberry, which is the way I look at Twitter the most.

So Retweeting is cool, but here’s something that’s not cool, as I complained this morning:

Twitlonger is a decadent indulgence. I have only contempt for those who lack the discipline to say it within 140 characters. Harrumph.

I wrote that because several items I had retweeted this morning were already too long before I tried to send them, so my Blackberry automatically sent them using Twitlonger. But it let me know each time it did so. So I could feel the shame.

So much of the virtue of Twitter is the brevity. It’s a very satisfying medium, partly because of the challenge of expressing an idea fully in 140 characters. As I’ve noted before, it’s like writing haiku (if haiku were a lot less demanding). The discipline is good for the brain, and considerate to one’s audience.

But of course, as with anything that’s demanding and challenging and has a lot of rules (marriage, the Marine Corps, being Catholic, baseball), our lazy, permissive, anything-goes society’s going to come up with a way to cheat and get away with it. Hence Twitlonger, which allows you to break the 140-character rule. Look, if you can’t frickin’ say it in 140 characters, start a blog! Use a different medium.

Instead of sullying one that is pure and good (in the way that Hemingway would say pure and good, in the way that a trout stream is pure and good, etc.). I don’t know about you, but I don’t hold with it.

Come on, people, let’s preserve the unities. Let’s have some respect for the form…

Talkin’ ’bout the Tolly-Bon

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Was listening to the radio this morning — NPR, probably (I only listen to music on commercial stations) — and the announcer was talking about the pending confab between Presidents Obama and Karzai, and a mention was made of Mr. Karzai’s dealings with the Taliban.

Only the announcer didn’t exactly say “Taliban.” He took a sort of half-hearted stab at pronouncing it the way President Obama does, “Tolly-Bon.”

Here’s the thing about that. Having grown up speaking Spanish as well as English, I approve of people pronouncing words from other languages properly (personal peeve: English-speakers pronouncing “llama” as “lama”).

But when the attempt is lame, it grates. And the president, with his extremely normal American accent, simply does not pronounce “Taliban” the way a man from the Mideast or central Asia would. He sounds like… well, a Texan speaking Spanish. OK, not THAT bad, but it sounds odd, and it’s distracting, and it causes you to miss the rest of what he’s saying while you’re going, “TOLLY-BON?”

Actually, truth be told, it can be distracting even when it’s done perfectly. I always sort of go huh? when, at the end of a report delivered in perfectly accentless broadcast English, I hear the reporter sign off as “Mandalit del Barco.” That’s because she pronounces it with a perfect, extra-intense Spanish accent. And obviously both are natural to her, but it’s still distracting. It’s as though an actor were speaking a line with an Italian accent, and in the middle pronounced two words as a German.

It’s also a bit — showoffy. Because not many people can do it, perhaps. I could have, when I was young and fluent in both. But as I’ve gotten older, it can take me several minutes to get the muscles of my mouth warmed up to read Spanish properly (which I have to do from time to time to proclaim the Gospel in Spanish at Mass). If I try to pronounce “Mandalit del Barco” properly in the middle of a sentence in English, my tongue would trip over my front teeth, and I wouldn’t be able to get any of it out. It’s not so much the “Mahn-da-LEET,” which even a Texan could almost say correctly, but getting the L and especially the R right in “del Barco.” I can’t represent the difference phonetically. They’re just pronounced completely differently in Spanish. The tongue does tricks it’s never called on to do in English. (Here’s a link to a report by her that illustrates some of what I’m saying. It starts with a gringo anchor introducing her, saying her name with a lame American accent, then she goes on to report a story about recent immigrants with a fairly smooth, nondistracting shift between words like “sombrero” and English words — which I guess contradicts my point. But when she signs off at the end, as usual, she really punches the correct pronunciation of her name. It’s like she takes several steps back and gets a running start at it. And maybe that‘s what grabs my attention. Whatever the accent, you seldom hear an announcer so overpronouncing his or her own name.)

Anyway, I have thoughts like those every time I hear her. Which is distracting. I suppose there’s something to be said about the arrogant British habit of pronouncing everything, every foreign name or word, with an English accent, and foreign sensibilities be damned. It at least makes for a smoother delivery, with fewer cognitive bumps in the road. (But, as I said in the previous parenthetical, one CAN pronounce things correctly without distracting, if one is really good. Maybe Ms. del Barco just has an ego thing about her name; I don’t know.)

Something just occurred to me: Maybe the president does that Tolly-Bon thing as a very subtle way of having his cake and eating it. Maybe he makes a lame stab at pronouncing it “correctly” in order to reach out to folks in other parts of the world, but does it with a painfully American accent so as not to sound too alien at home. Could it be?

Confession: I STILL haven’t read Moby Dick

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Stan Dubinsky sends out an interesting-looking article about whaling (someday I’ve got to get ME a gig that allows me time to read all the cool stuff that Stan sends links to… I couldn’t even do it while unemployed… but then I’m a freakishly slow, deliberate reader), and it reminds me:

Remember back when I was talking about how cool Moby Dick was, because I had finally started reading it (40 years after I had gotten an A+ on the final essay test in my advanced English class despite not having read ANY of it, based purely on my talent for BS and listening in class)?

Well… I didn’t finish it. Again.

The thing is, while the opening chapters are pretty engrossing, after Ishmael and Queequeg actually ship out, once the Pequod is underway… it begins to drag.

I just totally lost interest, long before the Great White Whale shows up. Maybe it’s because I was getting to the draggy bits at about the time I got laid off, or something. I don’t know.

Mind you, I could have gone the rest of my life still giving the impression I had read it, and discussing the characters and themes with great insight and fluency upon demand, the way I always have…

But I just had to level with y’all.

Maybe I’ll take it up again; just not right now. Right now I’m making my way through Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. On a related note, I almost bought myself a copy of Robert Leckie‘s Helmet for My Pillow over the weekend — but it turned out that I only had less than a dollar left on the Barnes & Noble giftcard that I thought I hadn’t used. So no dice.

Speaking of which, Burl: I’m still going to write more about “The Pacific,” once I’ve finished watching it for the second time, as you recommended.

What does Innovista success look like?

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How will we know when Innovista is succeeding? Well, to begin with, we won’t be at the point where we can call it a complete success for many years, at best. But along the way, there will be signs.

Some of them will be big, such as the new baseball park and the Moore School moving to the geographic area that is central to the Innovista movement. Or the eventual construction of the waterfront park that makes the area more inviting. Most important will be the development of high-tech start-ups that you won’t even be aware of at first, but that will grow and feed off each other as the dynamic starts working.

But there will also be other less obvious signs. Here’s one small, but definite, sign that jumped out at me in recent days…

Have you heard the radio ads for Thirsty Fellow Pizzeria and Pub? The part that jumps out at me is when this eatery/watering hole announces that it can be found in USC’s Innovista. I’m never in a position to take notes when I hear it, but here’s what the Thirsty Fellow says on its website:

Owners Willie Durkin, Chuck Belcher, Dean Weinberger and Terry Davis want you to join the Thirsty Fellow family. Located in the USC Innovista area, we have a comfortable atmosphere, a great menu, a full bar and plenty of televisions. Open for lunch, dinner, late night and Sunday brunch, put Thirsty Fellow on your “to do” list.

“Located in the USC Innovista area.” Whether you take that as a boast — a desire to be associated with the idea of the Innovista — or merely as an acceptable way of giving directions (thereby suggesting that everyone knows where the Innovista is), this is a small-but-telling sign of the concept moving forward, taking hold in the marketplace.

Let me say that again: In the marketplace. You know, that place where Gov. Sanford and the Policy Council don’t want USC to go messin’, the place where they believe, with all the fervor of their secular anti-gummint religion, it is doomed to fail.

And yet, the place where, in this tiny way, it is taking hold…

‘The epitome of conservativeness’

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I’ve never had much to say about Sarah Palin one way or the other, because I’ve always had trouble putting what I think of her into words, but one of her supporters does so in the video above, explaining that she is:

… the epitome of conservativeness.”

Just so. It’s not that she has any actual conservative ideas, or any ideas at all. This is not to run her down. There are different kinds of people in the world, as my late mother-in-law used to say. Most are either people people or things people. When I protested to my wife that I saw myself as neither, she said there was a third, less-mentioned, category, idea people.

Sarah Palin is not one of them. Frankly, I suspect she’s a people person, which I think is what a lot of her supporters sense. But I haven’t been able to stand to observe her long enough to tell. Just last night, I surfed past an interview she was having with one of those talking heads, and I could only listen for about five seconds, but ranted at my wife about what I heard in those five seconds for the next minute as I surfed on, which was my wife’s hint that I was feeling a lot better and could start fetching my own cups of convalescent ginger ale.

What got me was that she didn’t have ANYthing to say. She ranted against the stimulus, and when the friendly interviewer asked her what she’d do instead, she slid into vague mumblings about cutting government and returning power to individuals — incantations, rather than arguments.

She doesn’t so much have conservative thoughts as she is… conservative-y. Conservativish. Just loaded with “conservativeness,” which I take to mean the appearance, the general aura of being “conservative,” which is a quality that fewer and fewer of those who embrace the description can coherently describe (and before you liberals start feeling all smug, you have your own set of problems, and they’re not that different).

As you get farther into this clip, if you’re like me, you start to feel sorry for the subjects. I mean, it really IS mean and unfair to ask private citizens who love Sarah Palin to explain their views. I started feeling bad for them the way I felt bad for the gun nuts in “Bowling for Columbine.” Rather than getting upset over our overarmed society, I got ticked at Michael Moore for being a sneering bully.

Which of course is another secret to the Sarah Palin appeal: She generates that kind of resentment toward elites (not that Michael Moore is an elite, even though he thinks he is, even though he would claim that he’s not, and so on…). It may be THE secret of her celebrity.

You hold a microphone in front of Sarah Palin, or someone who admires Sarah Palin (for any qualities other than her undeniable pulchritude), and keep asking “Why?” or “Could you explain your view about that?” and you’re going to come across as obnoxious.

Whew, I’m so glad THAT’s over (the recession, I mean)

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Well, it’s been rough and it’s been real, folks, but I have to say I’m glad the recession is over, according to a USC economist.

Oh, but wait, there’s more (like you had to tell me). It seems that, ahem, “significant challenges remain,” a phrase that to a guy in my circumstances bears a certain understated, bureaucratic chill reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s “Mistakes were made.” No, it doesn’t mean the same thing. I’m talking aesthetically, or metaphysically, or something. The flavor of the words…

Anyway, the recession’s over, but…:

In spite of national economic growth of 3.5% during the third quarter, significant challenges remain for South Carolina’s economy — particularly for labor markets — said Coastal Carolina University research economist Don Schunk.

“I expect slower real (gross domestic product) growth in the coming quarters as the effects of various temporary boosts to the economy fade,” Schunk said. “The recession may be over, but this does not mean we are on a path of sustained recovery. As the private sector grapples with deciding what a ‘new normal’ for the economy may look like, we will likely see continued restraint in terms of consumer spending, private-sector investment, and business expansion and hiring.”

Just so you know. I don’t know about you, but I live in South Carolina, which apparently will be stuck for sometime in “yes, but…” mode in this recovery.

I’m thinking about adding “The New Normal” to my list of possible names for my band.

… but I promise to read Faulkner before I do Palin

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Yeah, I said some fairly dismissive things about William Faulkner, but you Faulknerheads out there can take comfort from the fact that I did so from pure ignorance.

And here’s something else to make you feel better: Even though everybody and his brother is going on and on and on about the new book by Sarah Palin (there’s something oxymoronic in that combination of words, “book by Sarah Palin,” don’t you think?), I can assure you, with no doubt of ever breaking my promise, that I will read Faulkner before I read Palin. Trust me on this.

There are a lot of things I’m going to read before I get to Faulkner — that new Trotsky book I got for my birthday, that biography of Alexander Hamilton that’s been on my shelf for several years now (I asked for it for my birthday or Christmas after Fritz Hollings recommended it), the Bible from cover to cover, those last few books of the Aubrey-Maturin series that I’ve been saving, and definitely The Grapes of Wrath, which my wife can’t believe I haven’t read yet, to name but a few.

But there is no way that a book by Sarah Palin will ever make that list. For one thing, I never read those books that “everybody’s talking about,” especially books by or about current political figures. The only reason I read those autobiographies by Obama and McCain last year was as pegs for those two really long columns (“Barack Like Me” and “Faith of Our Fathers“) I was going to write anyway. In other words, purely for work and not for fun.

But even if I read books like that, I can’t imagine why I’d be interested in one by Sarah Palin. Not so much that I have an aversion as the fact that I completely lack any positive motivation to do so.

Top Five Southern Novels of All Time

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Did you see that list of Top Ten Southern novels of all time that Joey Holleman wrote about in the paper Sunday? Were you as outraged as I was to see Huck Finn down at fourth place? Seriously, folks — the only question to be asked about Twain’s masterpiece is whether it’s the greatest novel of any kind ever, much less best “Southern” novel.

Mind you, this is not Joey’s fault, he’s just reporting on the list compiled by the magazine Oxford American.

Now, right off the bat, you have to figure that any mag that calls itself “Oxford” anything is going to be prejudiced in favor of a certain person, even if it is based in Conway, Arkansas. And sure enough, the list kicks off with a Faulkner work, Absalom, Absalom!

And here’s where we get into my own blind spot: I’ve never read Faulkner. Oh, I’ve tried, back when I was young and felt like I had to in order to be an educated person. But a page or two of Faulkner, and I felt like I needed oxygen. I decided that I must hold my breath until I reach the end of a sentence or something, which can be deadly with Faulkner. Anyway, I never got very far. I’ve got several of his books sitting on a shelf to this day, awaiting me. Personally, I intend to read Finnegan’s Wake first, which means Faulkner will have to wait awhile. Sorry, Bill.

So basically, we have a problem in judging this list — no publication called Oxford American could possibly be unbiased with regard to Faulkner, and I’m not in a position to judge when they’re giving him too much credit and when they’re not. So we’re just going to have to throw all the Faulkner books off the list. Sorry again, Bill, but them’s the rules I just made up.

Since three of the 10 were thus tainted, that leaves us with a Top Five list plus two, and now that we have the Faulkner distraction out of the way, we can see more clearly that the list does, indeed, fall short:

1. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren, 1946, 80 votes

2. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Mark Twain, 1885, 58 votes

3. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee, 1960, 57 votes

4. “The Moviegoer,” Walker Percy, 1961, 55 votes

5. “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison, 1952, 47 votes

6. “Wise Blood,” Flannery O’Connor, 1952, 44 votes

7. “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston, 1937, 41 votes.

See? Huck Finn still isn’t first. In fact, it comes in second to All the King’s Men. Now I’m perfectly willing to assert that All the King’s Men is a wonderful work, one of the best ever — for about three pages.

Seriously, you can read the good parts of All the King’s Men in the “LOOK INSIDE!” feature at Amazon.com, and be done well before they cut you off. I’m talking about the stretch that goes from that wonderful ode to Highway 58, and ends with the paragraph that tells you everything you need to know about Sugar-Boy, ending with:

He wouldn’t win any debating contests in high school, but then nobody would ever want to debate with Sugar-Boy. Not anybody who knew him and had seen him do tricks with the .38 Special which rode under his left armpit like a tumor.

Great stuff. (Never mind that it should be “that rode under his left armpit like a tumor,” or that there’s no reason a grown man would participate in a high school debate anyway. It’s still great writing.) After that, it’s kinda downhill with all that decadent Southern nobility and corruption-of-idealism-by-power stuff. Go ahead and stack the first few pages of Huck Finn up against it, why don’t you — and then tell me it doesn’t hold its own. Never mind that the whole tone changes to deep and dark in the middle part, or then shifts back to that broad farce tone when Tom Sawyer gets back into it at the end. The greatest Southern novel — indeed, the greatest American novel — should have unevenness and inconsistencies. I wouldn’t give shucks for any other way, as Tom Sawyer would say.

Beyond that — well, I’d put Mockingbird ahead of Warren, too. As for Walker Percy — while I’ve read The Moviegoer, and enjoyed it near as I can recall, I was never tempted to re-read it, which means it wouldn’t make it onto a top anything list of mine. (I actually have a clearer memory of Lancelot, which I did not like. That whole “Southern Man as severely dysfunctional loser” theme leaves me cold; a few pages of it is a gracious plenty, as my Aunt Jenny would have said. It’s why I didn’t read past the first chapter of Prince of Tides, and regretted having read that much.)

The absence of Gone With The Wind is of course a deliberate snub, based on its not being highbrow enough or cliched or politically incorrect or whatever. Perhaps it was too popular. And no such list would seem complete to me without either God’s Little Acre or Tobacco Road, if not both. What, the Oxford American folks don’t like books with hot parts? Or are we only concerned with the troubles of the upper classes, and don’t have time for working-class dysfunction? Caldwell’s novels were certainly way Southern; you’ve got to admit that.

We can’t blame the editors of the magazine entirely, since the list resulted from a poll of “134 scholars, scribes, and a few mystery guests.” There is something vaguely un-Southern about this. Subjecting things to a vote seems kinda Yankee to me, like a New England town hall meeting or something. A true Southern list should be drafted by one quirky individual who doesn’t give a damn what anybody else thinks. At least it wasn’t true Democracy, since the electors were hand-picked — in a process that helps us understand why the list has more than a whiff of snootiness.

So now that I’m done tearing down this list, I should post one for y’all to tear down. So have at it:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
God’s Little Acre, Erskine Caldwell
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell

OK, one last admission — I haven’t actually read Gone With The Wind, either. But I heard about it so much from my eldest daughter when she was growing up that I feel like I have. And I wanted to put it on the list just to cock a snook at those pointy-headed types who ignored it in the OA poll. I thought about putting Pudd’nhead Wilson at No. 5, just to load my list up with Twain the way they did theirs with Faulkner, or even saying “a Faulkner novel of your choice” in that spot, just as a grudging acknowledgment. But I didn’t.

A Top Five list that leaves much to be desired

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So I was reading a review in the WSJ this morning about an incomplete Vladimir Nabokov novel that has been released posthumously, and probably should not have been.

And that got me to thinking about great writers who write in English even though it’s not their first language, and I thought it would be cool to draft a Top Five List of such writers. This would be challenging, and more highbrow than a “Top Five Side One Track Ones” list.

Trouble is, I can only think of two:

Joseph Conrad, who as far as I’m concerned could occupy the whole list alone, even if you don’t go beyond Heart of Darkness. He packed meaning in and around English words in ways that native speakers never thought of. (Or perhaps I should say, “of which native speakers never thought.”)
Vladimir Nabokov.

And I must admit I’m not too sure about Nabokov. People tell me he’s brilliant, but his “masterpiece” has always sounded kinda perv-y to me, kind of Roman Polanski, you might say (which suggests a Top Five Perv-y Directors Whose First Language is Not English, which would also come up short, I’m afraid). So I’ve never read it. A case of judging a book by its synopsis. I mean, I loved A Clockwork Orange despite its disgusting themes — partly because of its creative use of another language (Russian) melded with English slang to create a new language altogether, come to think of it — but I haven’t been interested enough to give Lolita a try.

Anyway, as I wondered who might be third, fourth and fifth on such a list (and maybe second, too, since I’m not sure about Nabokov), I learned that there is a whole publication devoted to such writers — a publication that even sponsors something called the Conrad-Nabokov Award (which provides a broad hint that maybe those two are in a class by themselves). Here is how it explains itself:

This is the third issue of Shipwrights, and perhaps it’s a good time to pause and reflect. This journal is an experiment, really. It may be the only international magazine specifically dedicated to publishing the work of “de-centered” (second-language English) authors. It is, thus, one representation of the linguistic effects of globalization. As the number of second-language speakers of English in the world continues to balloon, it’s interesting to consider a possible future day when we won’t even notice whether a writer in the English literature market is a native anglophone or not. After judging the Conrad-Nobakov Award, Ms. Burroway remarked, “It’s hard to believe that these authors are writing in English as a second language, for all of them have superior command of it.”

Bet you didn’t know that. Not that you needed to.

Man named Monday finds he’d rather spend weekdays reading books than burning them

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Yesterday, I had Health & Happiness at Rotary again, and my performance was… forgettable.

Rather than publish my routine here the way I usually do, I thought I’d tell you about a much better presentation recently by Ann Marie Stieritz.

It was an audience-participation thing, and I must admit that many of those sorts of attempts leave me kind of cold. I am, at best, a grumpy participant… What? You want me to get up and what? I’m not a pep rally guy, for instance. Unlike Andre Bauer (and, I recently learned, Mark Sanford) I could never have been a cheerleader.

But Ann Marie pulled me in by appealing to one of my worst features — the desire to show off the few quirky talents I have. So it was that when she talked about the faux-lit phenomenon of Twitterature, and gave the following examples, I was the obnoxious first person (or shared that distinction with someone) to call out the titles of the books they summarized:

Hero constantly spied upon by someone claiming to be older sibling. When he complains, finds himself with head in cage of rats.
Rich kid thinks everyone is fake except for his little sister. Has breakdown.
Bloke takes boat trip in search of long-missing colleague who may well be impossible to find. Ends up wishing he hadn’t.
Group of teenagers adopt incomprehensible jargon, drink milk and discuss Beethoven before terrorising the community. All society’s fault.

Not much of a talent, really. The thing is, after writing headlines for a living, it would be pretty lame if I couldn’t recognize the headlinized versions of 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, Heart of Darkness and A Clockwork Orange, I’d be in trouble. Especially the last, all about Alex and his droogs peeting moloko plus to sharpen them up for a bit of the old ultraviolence in their platties of the night. Yes, a book about horrible people doing horrible things, but a wonderfully inventive use of language.

Some other good ones:

If you thought California was land of milk and honey, think again. Hard-working family could suffer and starve out in its golden valleys.
Dozen kids abandoned on desert island. Scene soon resembles 10-year-old’s birthday party, but worse.
Couple of drinkers with literary pretensions decide to travel across country, without plan or route. Not much happens. Which is the point.

And no, I didn’t remember them all or take notes that fast; I just asked Ann Marie yesterday to send me her notes from her presentation. I enjoyed this bit at the end, which shows what Odysseus would have written had he been on Twitter (as are the authors of Twitterature):

Calypso is the suxor for real. Seven years ago

Nice island (B). Anyone know how to get off this? Seven years ago

THNX for the raft! Laters! Four years ago

Just found new island. Naked chicks. FTW! Four years ago

Caught Demodocus show at dome. GREAT! Any one have vid? Four years ago

Just saw a dude with one eye! Four years ago

Circe is hot. All my bros turned into pigs. LULZ! Three years ago

Hot singing chicks! KTHXBAI Two years ago

Wrecked the boat. Totaled. Everyone dead. FAIL Two years ago

Back Home! Who r all these random dudes? Five minutes ago

Awaiting moderation (in more ways than one)

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Just FYI, to give you a glimpse behind the scenes…

I agree with y’all that the blog has become a more lively and enjoyable forum since I started banning bad actors — or rather, since I started requiring that comments display a constructive engagement before I let them be published.

Since some of y’all are of a political persuasion that makes you want to know what’s done on your behalf — by the CIA, by Blackwater, or by me — I thought I’d give you an update on what you are NOT seeing on the blog.

Basically, I’ve banned Lee Muller, and “Mike Toreno” and “BillC.” But you probably knew that. Something you may not know is that all three have tried commenting under different names — Lee under his old pseudonym “SCNative,” “Mike” as “CarlsBoss,” and BillC as just “Bill.” I’ve shared with you some of the things Lee had to say as “SCNative,” back on this post.

Two other individuals have failed to make the cut: Someone called “enemy within” (who may actually be a spam program; I’m not sure), and just today, our old friend “Workin’ Tommy C.”

“Workin’ Tommy” tried to comment on this post, basically as an advocate for Angry White Maledom (excerpt: “Angry white men created the government as defined in the U.S. Constitution. Outraged men of principle MADE this country…”). And as a representative of that point of view, I almost approved him … but, remembering some of his behavior back on the old blog, decided to think about it. Then “Tommy” confirmed me in my caution by posting this follow-up:

My earlier comment is still awaiting moderation.

Can’t handle the truth, Warthen?

Anyway, that’s what’s happening beneath the surface.

Yours in civil discourse,

Brad

Hey, where are all my yes-men?

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There were those who said that if I went back to moderating comments, you’d only find those who agree with me.

That was, of course, patently ridiculous — nothing in my background would suggest that (I mean, have you EVER read the letters to the editor?) — but people said it as a way of trying to get me to back off. It’s the sort of wild, slashing insult that’s supposed to rock me on my heels and let the bad actors stay.

Not even I had expected the degree to which folks who used to defend me against the screamers now take me to task. Have you noticed it? I mean, I can’t seem to say anything right. Look back through the threads, and see if I’m right.

But the difference is, it’s civil. And that encourages people to step out and disagree, knowing they won’t be subjected to unwarranted hostility, that their disagreement will be respected — even when they disagree with me and are, therefore, wrong. (People even give me the room to kid around, but of course I won’t abuse the opportunity.)

It’s lively, and it’s constructive. In other words, it’s working. Have you noticed?