Category Archives: Words

Is that the best Haley can do? Bring up Obama? Wow, that is truly lame…

There wasn’t much new in The State‘s recap Sunday of how Vincent Sheheen is pretty much thrashing Nikki Haley on her signature issues (transparency and business savvy) — nothing much you couldn’t have read here the middle of last week.

But I was struck by the unbelievably lame response recorded from the Haley campaign:

For its part, Haley’s campaign has argued Sheheen, a state senator from Camden, is ducking questions about whether the Democrat supports recently approved national health insurance law and the Obama administration’s lawsuit challenging Arizona’s immigration law, two issues Sheheen could have to deal with if elected governor.

Really? That’s the best you can do? He’s totally crushing you on transparency, and making a mockery of your desire to run government the way you run your business, and that’s your response? You retreat to the current GOP playbook? That book only has one play these days, you know. It goes something like this:

When cornered, talk about Obama. Don’t worry that it has nothing to do with the office you’re running for. Just cry, “Obama! Obama! Obama! We hate Obama! Do you hate Obama? If you don’t, you’re not one of us, because we really, really hate him…” Yadda-yadda. Just keep going; don’t worry about repeating yourself or not making the slightest bit of logical sense, because your base will eat this up…

As for the last phrase in that excerpt from The State — “two issues Sheheen could have to deal with if elected governor” — it’s hard to imagine a more transparent case of news people bending over backwards to act like a source is saying something rational when he or she is not. Yeah, you stretch a point and sure, health care reform affects every state (just as it does business and many other aspects of life) and a governor will govern in an environment in which a lot of people insist that immigration is a huge state issue. But you could say that about almost any hot-button national issue, from Afghanistan to the BP oil spill — it still wouldn’t be central. Everyone, but everyone, knows that the Haley campaign putting out that response has absolutely ZERO to do with what faces the next governor, and everything to do with the fact that if it isn’t in the Sarah Palin songbook, they can’t sing it.

Anyway, we are left waiting for a substantive response actually bearing on the two things that are allegedly Nikki’s strong suits, and why we should believe anything she says about them. And Vincent didn’t pick these issues — Nikki did.

So which was it — 99 days or 100?

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Meant to raise this question yesterday, which would have been less confusing, but when it occurred to me last night I didn’t feel like breaking the laptop back out, so here goes.

On Monday, I received a release from the Rob Miller campaign headlined “99 Reasons,” and beginning this way: “It seems far away now, but we are just 99 days from ending Joe Wilson’s congressional career.”

OK. Aside from that sounding excessively optimistic, it wasn’t particularly interesting. So I set it aside.

Then I got a release from the Nikki Haley campaign headlined “100 days,” and saying essentially that that was how many days were left. How she arrived at the number is further confused by this boldfaced passage:

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in our campaign — there are only 100 days left until Election Day.

So does that mean they were counting from “yesterday,” which would have been Sunday? If so, why does the sentence go on to use the present tense, saying “there ARE only 100 days left”? One is left to conclude that the Haley campaign was saying there were still 100 days left.

Was she counting Monday itself, as a way of asserting her wish not to waste a day? Perhaps. But I’m left with the impression, once again, that these Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything. But I set that aside, too.

Then last night, just before 10 p.m., I got a release from Karen Floyd headlined “99 Days of Bad Ideas” and just chock full of the sort of ranting nonsense you expect from parties:

We’re going to hear from liberals like Joe Biden, who just stopped in to raise money for John Spratt, saying that we should have spent even more “stimulus” money. We’re going to hear fromCongressman Spratt himself that the budget he wrote is actually fiscally responsible, although we all know it increases our debts and puts our nation at risk. We’re going to hear from Rob Millerthat it’s okay for candidates to accept millions of dollars from liberal Washington special interest groups. We’re going to hear from Vincent Sheheen that English doesn’t have to be our state’s official language and that tax cuts won’t create jobs and grow our economy. We’ll hear from Matt Richardson (he’s the liberal running for Attorney General, in case you’ve never heard of him) that we don’t need to stand up to the federal government when they step on our rights every other day. We’ll even hear from their US Senate candidate who believes action figures of himself will fix our high unemployment rate.

Why don’t they just save themselves trouble by typing “liberal” once and then just pasting it into the text over and over? “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” It would make as much sense, and be just as relevant. They could italicize some of them and boldface others, for variety. “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” If they don’t think variety is ideological heresy, of course.

And where on Earth did they get the thing about English as an official language? What does that have to do with anything? And is that really the best they can come up with as an indictment of Vincent?

Anyway, the thing that interested me was that Karen Floyd was siding with Rob Miller on the number of days left. Just goes to show that there is room for finding common ground across the partisan divide. And it demonstrates how out of touch Nikki is, even with her own party.

Yes, that last sentence would have had a smiley face after it if I did smiley faces.

Soldier? You mean “sailor,” right?

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Don’t suppose we should expect Slate to know anything this basic, but when it said:

Manhunt Is Underway for Captured U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan

Western forces have launched a massive search for two U.S. Navy personnel who went missing Friday….

… it really meant, “U.S. sailor.”

Yeah, OK, technically, the SEALs are kinda like soldiers — supersoldiers, but soldiers. And nowadays even sailors and airmen are being trained in basic infantry tactics so they can do convoy guard duty because of the lack of regular dogfaces in our all-volunteer Army. And obviously, these guys were not on the water at the time of the incident.

But still, there is a difference. It’s pretty bad when a marine is called a soldier, but a sailor? Come on. That’s a distinction that’s existed forever.

Next thing you know, Slate will call its rifle a gun…

Entire network (CBS) jumps the shark

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First things first: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!

To move on… OK, so I’m the last guy to hear this, but I was startled to read this morning that CBS has a show coming up that is based on the inimitable Twitter feed, “Shit My Dad Says.”

My first thought was that the Smothers Brothers have got to be rolling over in their … well, whatever they’re in, since theoretically they’re still alive. This is the network that found them too controversial while NBC was doing “Laugh-In.”

And “Shit My Dad Says”… well, here are some samples (another OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!):

“Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.”

12:41 PM Jun 28th

“Look, we’re basically on earth to shit and fuck. So unless your job’s to help people shit or fuck, it’s not that important, so relax.”

9:08 PM Jun 4th

“They’re offended? Fuck, shit, asshole, shitfuck; they’re just words…Fine. Shitfuck isn’t a word, but you get my point.”

7:58 PM May 21st

“Waking up when you got a baby, you feel like you drank a bottle of whiskey the night before, except the shit’s in someone else’s pants.”

2:30 PM Apr 12th

“I found some shit in your room…No, I found actual shit. Feces…Well I should hope it’s from your shoes, otherwise what the fuck?”

3:34 PM Apr 8th

Get the idea? Yes, the title is highly and literally descriptive of the content, because this Dad does indeed say it — and one other word — a lot. I mean, these posts occasionally make me laugh, but the vocabulary is really limited. Occasionally there’s one that doesn’t depend on those two operative words, such as:

“Engagement rings are pointless. Indians gave cows…Oh sorry, congrats on proposing. We good now? Can I finish my indian story?”

11:35 AM Jun 17th

“No. Humans will die out. We’re weak. Dinosaurs survived on rotten flesh. You got diarrhea last week from a Wendy’s.”

3:10 PM May 26th

“War hero? No. I was a doc in Vietnam. My job was to say “This is what happens when you screw a hooker, kid. Put this cream on your pecker.”

2:00 PM Mar 16th via web

But on the whole, there’s a theme here. And it’s not ready for prime time.

But fear not. Turns out that this CBS offering is sufficiently tame that it would not even bother the Smothers Brothers censors. Start with the fact that they wimped out on the name, then view the unbelievably insipid preview above. Generic, unremarkable TV sitcom. No originality. No crackle. No pop.

Not that I’m saying they should use the real name or content on a TV show. They shouldn’t. But I’m not the programming genius who pitched this idea. And the fact that someone did, and sold it to this point, says something about the utter desperation of Old Media when it tries to engage New Media.

Basically nothing about the original Twitter version that gives me an occasional laugh survives to the small screen. William Shatner’s supposed zingers sound as though they were written by one of those writers who pen dialogue for smart-alecky kids on generic sitcoms that I would only watch if they tied me down and pinned my eyelids open like they did Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”

The essence is totally lost. As lost as… well, it reminds me of that early SNL skit in which a singing group called “The Young Caucasians” emasculates Ray Charles’ “Wha’d I Say.”

This, folks, is an old medium dying, and reaching out to something new for salvation in a way that is pathetic.

Of course, one may argue that it happened long ago, but at this point we can definitely say that CBS has jumped the shark.

“How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”

“We Coloreds,” or, How do you get kicked out of the Tea Party?

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By now, you’ve probably heard that Mark Williams, the Tea Party guy I quoted back here, has been kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation for the satirical letter he wrote, which I will provide here in its entirety when I can find a link. Until then, here’s what several news organizations have reported of it:

In the voice of slaves, Williams wrote: “Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.

“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”

He went on to say blacks don’t want taxes cut because “how will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?”

This, of course, raises a number of questions, beginning with “What? You can get kicked out of the Tea Party? How does that work?” I didn’t know there was anybody in Tea Party who had authority over anybody else in the Tea Party. And indeed, this seems to be a battle between different factions in the movement, which seems to have as many iterations as the competing bands of communists in the Russian revolution.

Interesting how, in the four days since a letter writer in The State said that the “millions” of Tea Partiers “never have been documented to have said or done anything racist,” one Tea Partier alone has provided us with two instances that might seem to call that assertion into just a tad of doubt.

‘Finish Him Off’: Things getting rough in the 2nd District

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Whoa! Not to be outdone by the “You Lie!” guy, his opponent in the 2nd Congressional District is getting a bit overwrought in his rhetoric. I just got a fund-raising release from the Rob Miller campaign urging supporters to help “finish him off” — referring to Joe Wilson. In fact, that was the headline on the e-mail: “Finish Him Off.”

Totally aside from the implied violence of the phrase, there’s the additional problem of inaccuracy. It invokes a picture of Joe lying on the ground at death’s door awaiting the coup de grace. But near as I can tell, Mr. Wilson is poised to do what he usually does — get re-elected.

Whoa! On his last day, Mayor Bob bites back

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There has been little love lost between Mayor Bob Coble (who today becomes former Mayor Bob Coble) and Kevin Fisher since Kevin ran against him several years ago.

So it is that there is some sharp criticism of Bob in Kevin’s column about his departure from office. Sharp, but not out of bounds. In fact, much of it is written with the same crusty, edgy sort of good will that went into his column about me when I left the paper. I enjoyed his column about me, but then, I’m in the political criticism business. (Also, I was a couple of sheets to the wind from free beer when I read it, at Goatfeathers on the night that I left the paper.) I can enjoy a column for being well-done, even if it isn’t exactly hagiographic. In fact, I’d probably object if ol’ Kevin started to put a halo on me.

Bob responds in a way that makes me smile because of the irony of it. Part of Kevin’s criticism of him is that Mayor Bob was TOO nice. Oh yeah, says Bob?, and responds by giving him some sharp elbows in this letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

Kevin Fisher writes in his latest op ed piece that, “everybody likes Mayor Bob. I know I do. And he knows I do. Moreover, I dare say he likes me.” – Kevin Fisher City Watch (Sept. 5, 2007). I do like Kevin. Moreover, I admire Kevin for his political courage. If I had gotten the number of votes he received in the last two City elections after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, I would have been too embarrassed to keep writing those columns in The Free Times. But Kevin, despite the humiliation and complete rejection by the voters, soldiers on with “Joe Azar” like determination. He is one tough hombre.

I’m gonna miss this repartee between these two wacky kids…

‘I am not a moderate.’ That just says it all…

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First, an apology: I realize it’s unfair to single out this one thing that Gresham Barrett said in his interview with The State. There was a lot of other information in the piece, and I learned things about him I hadn’t known — or had forgotten. I recommend that anyone who plans to vote in next Tuesday’s runoff and is undecided read it.

But I tend to zero in on telling details, and this one really struck me — not for what it says about Gresham Barrett, but for what it tells us about what’s going on in the Tea Party-besieged GOP:

Barrett said he’s been on the receiving end of more attacks, including a Haley TV ad, than any other Republican gubernatorial candidates “My record over the last several months has been distorted. I am not a liberal. I am not a moderate. … Unfortunately, a lot of people have disagreed with my TARP vote and can’t get over it. There’s nothing I can do about that. It is what it is.”

Let’s hear that again:

“I am not a moderate.”

God forbid he should be seen as anything but an extremist. Obviously, he (like pretty much all the Republicans this year) believes that would be political death. Which reminds us why I simply could not see endorsing, or voting for, any of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls this year — which is a real departure for me.

Now, to highlight some of the good stuff I learned about him from the piece: He remains unafraid to differentiate himself from Mark Sanford, at least in small ways. I knew that he did not hesitate to criticize him in the past. But this year, Republicans all seem to be doing a calculation that goes like this: What’s going on? The voters — at least MY voters, who are usually sensible conservatives — all seem to have lost their minds this year! How can I stay on their good side? What’s my guide? Oh, yeah — Mark Sanford! HIS ideas are totally nuts… since the voters have gone nuts, maybe they’d like it if I act like HIM… and so forth. But Gresham Barrett is saying no to that, at least to some extent.

And that means voters (or at least, those who did not vote in the Democratic primary) have an actual choice next Tuesday. Not that he has a chance, but at least they do have a choice, between an actual conservative Republican, and a Sanfordista who talks about being a conservative (and not so much a Republican).

Let the voters decide the fate of Jake Knotts

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The Lexington County Republican Party has called on Jake Knotts to resign, and has done so, at least on the surface, for noble reasons. Good people everywhere are nodding their heads and thinking, “About time. South Carolina no longer has room for that sort.”

I applaud many (although not all) of the motivations that cause people to say that. And I think it might do our state’s reputation some good in the larger world if he were hounded from office.

But in the end, I think it’s none of the Lexington County Republican Party’s business whether Jake stays in office or not. As he says, he doesn’t serve the Republican Party. He serves the voters of his district. He should answer to them. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Many of the same people calling for his head within the party are also supporting the candidate who has announced she will run against him in two years. Fine. Let the battle be joined. And let the voters decide whether they prefer Jake, or Katrina Shealy. All of this mess over that inexcusable thing that Jake said should be thoroughly hashed out in that election. And it certainly promises to be an interesting one. (And maybe, if we’re lucky, someone else will step in and run, someone who is NOT tainted by the blood feud between Sanford and Knotts, so that we can have a more straight-up election about values that have nothing to do with power politics between rival factions.)

There are many things that should NOT be settled by public vote. Matters of public policy, for instance. Ours is a representative democracy, and government by plebiscite is in no way to settle complex issues.

But a vote of the people is precisely how we are supposed to settle the important issue of who will be those elected representatives. And we must have the greatest respect for that prerogative of the people, or else, whatever our high-minded standards (and I do find it ironic to hear some of the high-minded pronouncements of principle I’m hearing from some of these Lexington County Republicans, although I welcome it), our system is not grounded in the ultimate source of legitimacy, the people.

That’s what I think about the Jake Knotts affair. Leave it to the voters.

Now, I expect to get hit with all kinds of howls of protest from those who think Jake’s my big buddy, just because, after opposing him strenuously for election after election, we very reluctantly supported him over Ms. Shealy (actually, over Mark Sanford, because that’s what the election was about) in the last election. Such people fail to understand what I think about Jake. I explained it pretty well in a column I wrote at the time, and I urge you to go back and read it. If you’re still not satisfied, well, I’m working on a post that elaborates. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow sometime. (I wanted to get it done today before posting this, but it got so long and involved — it involves trying to explain some thoughts I have about the world that I’ve never tried to set in writing before, partly because they take so long to explain — that I just set it aside, and decided to go ahead and post this.)

But in the meantime, consider this: Sen. Knotts is not accused of stealing from the state treasury, or high treason, or physical violence or anything else that would justify short-circuiting the voting relationship between him and his constituents. What he did was say a word — a word that reveals a particularly nasty, grossly unacceptable set of attitudes toward other people based upon the accidents of birth. It was inexcusable, and indicative of much deeper problems, of a great flaw of character.

There are people who believe that merely having such attitudes should be criminalized. I am not among them. For this reason I oppose “hate crime” laws. It’s one of the few things I agree with libertarians (like Jake’s enemy Mark Sanford) about. I believe it is unAmerican to punish a person for his attitudes, however grotesquely objectionable those attitudes are. What we should do is punish the act. And in this case, Jake Knotts didn’t ACT upon his attitude, he just said the word.

Then, let the attitude fend for itself in the public marketplace. This is particularly true of an attitude expressed by a politician. Let the voters decide whether they can live with what it reveals of the candidate’s character. Yes, I know that many people disapprove of the decisions that other voters make. But that’s none of their business. If the poor, black electorate of Washington, D.C., wants to re-elect Marion Barry, that’s up to them — unless he commits a felony or otherwise disqualifies himself. If the redneck white electorate of Georgia wants to elect a Lester Maddox, that is likewise up to them. One of the things these Lexington County Republicans are struggling with is whether they want to be associated with attitudes reminiscent of Gov. Maddox. Good for them. But the final arbiters must be the voters, not a party.

That’s the American way. With all its warts.

More on the subject — probably more than you want — later.

But only in a real emergency, mind you…

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Thanks to Jack Kuenzie for bringing our attention to this via Twitter:

Andre Bauer, describing himself on his FB page: “The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.” Perhaps not the best wording. 1:21 PM Jun 9th via web

And sure enough, there it is, right where Jack said. The entire blurb:

From the honks to the road side chats our people are determined to vote for the real conservative in race for governor.The only candidate to give back his paycheck.The only candidate who runs his own business.The only candidate who has experience marketing South Carolina to business leaders across the world.The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.

He means it, too. When the chips are down and all other options have been exhausted, ol’ Andre will flat tell you some truth, and take a polygraph to prove the amazing feat.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Huck Finn, which I long ago used in a column about Bill Clinton:

So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.

Ol’ Huck had a finely developed moral sense, and could tell when it was time to do something as outrageous and “unregular” as tell the truth. And ol’ Andre’s making sure that we know that if and when the need arises, he can do the same.

I’ll TRY to be more colorful, if that’s what it takes

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Well, I think I know why Wesley and Phil haven’t had me back on “Pub Politics” for several weeks: I’m just not outrageous enough.

In this new environment, a blogger who wants attention is expected to claim to have done the nasty with a front-runner, and a state senator has to dredge through the darker recesses of nativist terminology to trash the ethnicity of a fellow legislator (who, coincidentally, happens to be that same front-runner).

I’m just a little too whitebread boring, I guess. I’ll try to work on that, if I can figure out the criteria for being the cynosure of all eyes in 2010: I mean, is it OK to claim to have done the horizontal mambo with ANY lawmaker, or do the standards require that it actually be Nikki Haley (because, you know, she just hasn’t been made to look like enough of a victim yet)? And are all ethnicities fair game? Can I say “wetback” or “mick;” is the “N” word going too far? Or does it have to be about Indians specifically? If so, it’s not fair, because Jake’s taken the best one. “Dot-head” seems thin stuff by comparison. And I hate to fall on the inaccurate, feeble slurs that Larry Koon supporters used against her in 2004, talking about worshipping cows and the like.

Or should I just go with my strength, and hope y’all will have me back because you think that after Jake Knotts’ performance, the show needs a little class to redeem it? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

What to say about Jake’s venture into what he terms “Saturday Night Live” humor? A number of things, I suppose:

First, thanks for holding yourself back there, Jake — seems I usually hear the full construction as “raghead sumbitches.” So you exercised some restraint. Either that, or you realized halfway through that she’s a chick, and can’t technically be a “sumbitch.”
That was really creative. Usually, the term is applied to A-rabs and the like. To expand its scope to include half-Kenyans and Sikhs displays a linguistic originality that is noteworthy.
Is that Andre Bauer camp a bunch of strategic geniuses or what? I hadn’t thought there was anything else that could make Nikki Haley look more like a martyr than what we had seen thus far, but these fellas just never say die; they can always go another mile.
Cindi Scoppe has got to be feeling really self-righteous today (if you can imagine that), being certain about how right she was to kick and scream and complain every inch of the way when I insisted that we break with precedent and endorse Jake last time around.
I might as well take down my video of Jake telling his life story (“How Jake became Jake…“), because it’s just going to seem way too dull after Wesley and them put up his latest performance on the Web.
Must I lower the standards of “The Brad Show,” if I ever have a second installment of it, in order to get viewers?

There’s plenty more that could be said, yet on another level, I sort of feel like enough has been said already.

Jake Knotts, 2008 file photo/Brad Warthen

OK, now The State paper has gone too far…

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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://fpp.3be.myftpupload.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.