Category Archives: Words

Wright context doesn’t change message

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OK, I finally got around to watching one of those longer clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — specifically, one that contains the "God Damn America" part. I’ve been told many times that I just needed to get the context to understand that what he said shouldn’t be understood in the stark way that I have understood it.

The Rev. Joe Darby, in his op-ed piece on today’s page, suggested the same point:

… America is still focused on a few ten-second sound bites from Rev. Wright’s 30- or 40-minute sermons

Anyway, I watched this six-minute, 48-second clip — and it doesn’t change a thing. "God Damn America" still means "God Damn America." There’s no part in which he says, suggests or even hints that he didn’t really mean it, or that he thought America was in danger of damnation, and he wanted to save it. No, if anything, it’s clearer that he meant what he said.

But I think some of the well-meaning folks trying to explain all this to me are actually misunderstanding me. Start with the assumption that I somehow lack information. Aside from the above quote suggesting I need the context of the remark, the Rev. Darby also says:

Dr. Wright’s critics also need to learn more about the historically black church and its clergy…

I surely don’t claim to be an expert on the black church, especially in the presence of Joe Darby, who lives it. But no one has told me anything about the black church, in the course of "explaining" Mr. Wright to me, that I did not know. Sure, maybe something is lost in translation, but so far I’ve seen no indication that that’s what is at work this time.

But what Mr. Wright said is clear. The six-minutes-plus of context that went before "God Damn America" was exactly what I would have guessed went before it. Essentially, it was a review of history, mixed with a small dollop of political partisanship (the comparison of not-so-bad presidencies with the current one). Short version: The government has upheld oppression of black people during the course of American history.

Folks, I’m an American history major, and I’ve lived in this country for most of 54 years. What part of the rather sketchy overview in that sermon do you think I didn’t know already? If I’d been sermonizing, I could have added a lot to it — including the fact that the blood offering of the Civil War, as horrific as it was, seems to have been an inevitable sacrifice to expiate the sin of slavery. And I would have said the evil didn’t end there, nor could it, there being original sin in the world, and no one of us since Jesus Christ born free of it.

But I wouldn’t have said "God Damn America." Not in a million years. For me, the point of bringing up evil is to try to overcome it — as I believe two people Mr. Darby mentions (King and Bonhoeffer) were trying to do.

Sorry, but I can’t accept that the Rev. Wright was saying "things that challenge America to rise above its sins of prejudice and greed." No, if he’d said America was in danger of damnation, or headed straight thataway, rather as Jesus said to the Pharisees in the example cited by my colleague Warren Bolton this week, that might have been seen as a challenge, perhaps even a well-intentioned warning. (Personally, although he had more right, being God, than anyone else to do so, I don’t remember Jesus ever damning anything more sentient than a fig tree.)

But Mr. Wright didn’t call on us to do anything. Instead, he called on God to damn America.

One last point — Mr. Darby seems to assume, as have other writers, that those who say things like what I just said are against Obama. Well, I’m not. But just because I like a guy, I’m not going to sugarcoat a problem. As I said, Obama gave a brilliant speech, but he did not succeed in separating himself from what the Rev. Wright had said. He couldn’t. If he had disowned him at this point, it would have been crass opportunism, and beneath him.

So this guy I like — Obama — has a problem, one he can’t get rid of. Just as another guy I like, John McCain, is way old — nothing he can do about that, either.

I would suggest that if anyone out there supports a candidate and thinks that candidate is perfect, he should look a little harder. Nobody meeting that description has come along in two millennia. Thus endeth my sermon for today.

‘God Damn America’ means what it means

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Over the last couple of days, I’ve seen and heard a number of explanations, or attempts at explanations, regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright having proclaimed, "God Damn America."

Most of them have been along the lines of the old cliche, "It’s a black thing; you wouldn’t understand," although no one has used those precise words. Well, I accept that on one level or another, I can never fully understand where any other human being is coming from. My own brother has the same genetic background that I do and grew up in the same household, but each of us has had a separate experience of life that has shaped us differently and causes us to express ourselves differently. The farther you get from being my biological brother — or, to describe someone I’ve spent a lot more time with than my brother, my wife — the wider that gap will get. The more different our experiences, the more different our perceptions of the world, and the more different our ways of speaking of the world.

But I’ve got to tell you, "God Damn America" is not a statement that is fraught with nuance. It’s very clear, uncompromising and all-encompassing. In all the explanations I’ve heard for that statement, no one has suggested that the words mean anything different. In English, they can only mean one thing. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "God Damn America," I know what he means, even though he and I probably have a lot fewer reference points in common than the Rev. Wright and I have.

And if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking from his pulpit, deliberately and clearly calls upon God to damn America, and urges his congregation to send forth the same prayer, I know what he means. It means asking God to send America to hell forever. Damnation, under any sense of the word that I have every heard of (and no one has offered an alternative definition in response to this issue), and within any theology I have heard of (and again, no one has offered a different theological meaning of the word), means that and nothing else.

It doesn’t say, "America has a lot to answer for." It does not say, "America is guilty of terrible crimes." It does not say, "America has treated you and me and millions of others horribly and inexcusably, and we can never forgive that." It means to curse America beyond redemption, beyond improvement, beyond a second or third or billionth chance. "Damn" means "damn." It goes infinitely beyond any other obscenity you might utter in expressing your displeasure with America. If you say — and pardon my implied language — "F— America," that is at least something from which the object of your anger might recover. If you say "Kill America," you have at least described something from which it might be redeemed. But the Rev. Wright did not say those things. He said "God Damn America."

I understand hyperbole. I know all about exaggeration for effect. I know that many people have profound, complex reasons for being angrier about the way the world is and has been than I ever will. But this is not about exaggeration. This word is not a matter of degree. It is not about merely using a word that goes quantitatively too far.

I also understand that black homilitic and worship traditions are very, very different from that of, say, my own church, or any that I regularly attended growing up. I’ve been in this country most of my life (like Obama, I’ve lived abroad), and I took in that fact long ago.

And I’ve read the news stories — here’s one that was in our paper today, and another I saw in The Wall Street Journal — that quote experts explaining that it’s different when Jeremiah Wright says it. But it isn’t different. There is no moral context, no separate historical grounding, no cultural style, no emotional framework that gives the words "God Damn America" a different meaning. When, in The State‘s story, the Rev. Joe Darby — whom I have known and respected for years, and to the best of my knowledge would never say "God damn America" — speaks of "the role of the historical black church in ‘speaking truth to power’," I know what he means. I agree that has been the role of the black church, and it has played that role well, and employed hyperbole in the course of doing so. But the point seems to me irrelevant. In what way, shape or form does "God Damn America" constitute speaking truth to anyone?

I also get it that I’m the clueless white guy. I’ve pled guilty to that before. But again, I remain unconvinced that I am too clueless to understand what "God Damn America" means.

Now — does what I am saying here change the fact that I respect and admire Barack Obama, and think he should get the Democratic nomination for president? No, it does not. To the contrary, I was very much impressed by the speech he gave on the subject yesterday, which in so many ways spoke to the qualities that I respect in Sen. Obama. And note that he strongly repudiates his former pastor’s message.

Am I saying he absolved himself from his connection — his extended, deliberate, close association — with a preacher who would say, "God Damn America?" No. He did not do that. And after all the years he has been going to that church, I can’t imagine any words he could say that would accomplish that feat. And if he did, he would be rightly criticized for politically convenient timing.

As a voter, and as a writer who comments upon politics in this country, I am deeply impressed by the transcendent way in which Barack Obama addresses the intensely, damnably pervasive issue of race in America. He says just what I want a presidential candidate to say on the subject, and he says it better than any politician I have heard. He reaffirmed that for me Tuesday.

But I do have to set all that alongside the fact that he has deliberately associated with the man who said — and apparently meant, since I’ve heard about no repudiation from the preacher himself — "God Damn America." That will be something that Barack Obama as a candidate will just have to live with. It can’t be changed, any more than John McCain can change the fact that he would be 72 years old if inaugurated (a very different sort of problem, but just as immutable).

Those are both inescapable facts, and voters will have to decide what weight to give them if these are the two nominees in the fall.

That trooper was hardly alone

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Don’t think there was anything particularly rare about the language that trooper used in the notorious video.

Warren Bolton says he’s gotten "some pretty interesting feedback on my trooper column" in today’s paper. He shared this "gem" with me a little while ago:

Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
To: Bolton, Warren
Subject: Re: Trooper’s actions

Bolton;
The only thing that trooper did wrong was in not shooting the bastard down. At least that would have put one less nigger crimmal [sic] out of business.
Val Green

Warren gets this sort of thing all too often. So perhaps you can see why he worries that, as he said in his column today, "we’re not there yet" in the year 2008.

Bud testifies about the constitutional amendment

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Just so you know Bud Ferillo thinks about more than spending Belinda Gergel’s money, here’s his testimony to the Senate subcommittee considering whether to amend the S.C. constitution to read that the state "will provide a high quality education, allowing each student to reach his highest potential."

Bud, as you may or may not know, is the guy who made the film, "Corridor of Shame:"

Presentation of Bud Ferillo
Senate Subcommittee
On S.1136
March 13, 2008
9:00 AM
          It is a privilege for me to address the subcommittee this morning, something I have never done before.
          While I served this state, in the 1970’s and 80’s as Chief of staff to House Speakers Rex Carter and Ramon Schwartz and as Deputy Lieutenant Governor under Lt. Gov. Mike Daniel, I come today as a private citizen still in awe of these halls and full of respect for those of you in both parties who serve our state today.
          The Constitution of the State of South Carolina which the legislation before you would amend was adopted in one of the most difficult periods of our state’s history by some of our most unenlightened elected officials. It was the era of Jim Crow and the long shadow of slavery has given way to legalized racial segregation, a cruel, one sided system of rights and privileges for the few over the many. It was not until 1911 that South Carolina attained a majority white population and so the constitution adopted in 1895 was not a declaration of human rights. In fact, it sought to enshrine the benefits of government only to those with political and economic power.
          Our racially segregated public schools remained separate and unequal for another two generations because that was state policy. Even with the Brown decision in 1954, rising from the school desegregation case of Briggs vs. Elliott in Clarendon County, it was not until Governor Hollings declared in 1963 as he left office that “South Carolina had run out of courts” and the state negotiated the admission of Harvey Garnett into Clemson University, followed a year later by the integration of USC and our public school system.
          This difficult history is painful to recall and painful to hear but it explains why we have attained no little progress in securing quality public education for all the children of the state. To be honest, we have not been about the business of providing quarterly education to all the children of South Carolina for very long.
          Even today, sadly, the legal position of our state in the Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina school funding case, still places South Carolina on the wrong side of history. This state continues to claim it has no obligation to provide even a “minimally adequate” education for our children.
          I have come to you today as a witness to the failure of our state to achieve either minimally adequate education or the opportunity for our children to achieve an excellent education which would equip them to contend in a world changing before their eyes at warp speed.
          My plea today is a simple one: I urge the General Assembly to put the issue of high quality public education to the people of this state to decide.
          Our sister states of Virginia and Florida have shown the way by amending their constitutions to require their states to provide high quality education to their children.
          A state’s constitution is its highest standard of governance; it is the document that enshrines our noblest aspirations; it is the final repository of who we are and what we care about as a people. While we were born into an unjust society in South Carolina; we do not have to grow old in it.
          I respectfully urge this subcommittee to favorably report S.1136 so that it might begin its rigorous journey through the legislative process and be given to the people of this state to determine in the general election of 2010. The amendment will serve a useful purpose in setting the highest standards of educational attainment against which future legislative actions and funding can be judged.
          My friend and ally John Rainey, who will address you shortly, and others across this state in a coalition too broad and lengthy to name will soon launch a petition campaign that will allow South Carolinians to participate directly in the legislative process.
          We will soon unveil the web site www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com where South Carolinians may sign a petition in support of this constitutional amendment. It is our ambitious but accepted challenge to present the signatures of 1,000,000 South Carolinians in support of S.1136 to the General Assembly during the opening day of the 2009 General Assembly.
          We cannot miss this opportunity to involve the people of our state in this process which will, to a large extent tell, us everything about what kind of state we have and what kind of future we will pass on to those who follow.

I’m not entirely sure what practical effect Bud and other advocates believe this wording change will have. I mean, even based on the "minimally adequate" interpretation, all that a court case that started in about 10,000 B.C. has accomplished was a ruling saying South Carolina should do better at early-childhood education, to which the Legislature responded by nodding vigorously, expanding a pilot program, then forgetting about it.

Such a wording change might make a lot of folks feel better, but the fact is that if South Carolina wants to pull up its rural areas to the educational level of the suburbs — which it must do if we’re ever to begin to catch up to the rest of the country — it will do so, whether the constitution mentions education at all or not.

Harry then and Harry now

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A news item this week provided an unusually striking opportunity to trace the descent of the King’s (or potential King’s) English:

First, Shakespeare’s Harry:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:

And then, our own latter-day Harry expressing the same sentiment:

    "It’s nice just to be here with all the guys and just mucking in as one of the lads."

Oh, well. The real Henry V might have said it much the same way, the Bard notwithstanding.

Harry

Nice lede on Buckley!

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Just thought I’d share, as one who loves words, the start of the NYT‘s Buckley story this morning:

    William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died on Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.

Nice. Not great, but nice. It’s good when an obit can bring a smile while remaining respectful.

And speaking of words — no, I did not misspell "lede." It’s a jargon thing.

The hed was good, too: "William F. Buckley Jr., 82, Dies; Sesquipedalian Spark of Right."

McCain increasingly turns toward November

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Here’s an excerpt from a McCain release that illustrates what we’re seeing more and more, which is the "presumptive" nominee starting the general election campaign:

   

The Washington Post this week clearly laid out one of the key differences at stake in the coming general election. The Post reported, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group." Barack Obama is no better; he requested and received over $91 million of our hard-earned tax dollars for his own special interests and earmarks.
    What’s worse is that Senator Obama, who claims to be a candidate of "change," has refused to disclose the earmarks he requested prior to last year, when he started running for president. Washington needs change, but we will ever see it from someone who is part of the business as usual crowd in the Senate. How many earmarks did John McCain request last year? Zero.

This is a good place for him to start, since fighting pork gets him in good with those crybabies in his base we keep hearing about, and plays well with independents. Heck, even Speaker Pelosi has teamed up with Jim DeMint to fight earmarks.

One quibble, though: It makes no logical sense to say, "Barack Obama is no better," when in the same sentence you quantify the degree to which he was at least less bad: He sought $91 million worth of pork to Sen. Clinton’s $340 million. Assuming, of course, those numbers are accurate.

Huck Finn had a good rule of them that should be applied to political rhetoric: "Overreaching don’t pay."

The real split in American politics

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LATE ON SUPER Tuesday, I was typing on my blog in one room while Hillary Clinton was addressing her supporters on the TV in another.
    I couldn’t hear every word, but the ones that did cut through were telling:

    Now, we know the Republicans won’t give up the White House without a fight. Well, let me be clear — I won’t let anyone swift boat this country’s future.

    “Republicans.” “Fight.” “Swift boat.” Terms calculated to stir the blood of the Angry Faithful. Then, later: “Together, we’re going to take back America.”
    There was kinder, gentler stuff (if I’m allowed to borrow language from that other side) in the speech, about health care for all and supporting our veterans and helping the powerless. But Barack Obama talks about that stuff, too. Since these primaries are about choosing one or the other, one listens for the differences.
    Between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, the difference lies in those fighting words. It’s a difference set out with great clarity in a recent letter to the editor in this newspaper:

    …(W)hile Sen. Barack Obama is an incredible orator and inspires hope for a post-partisan future, the reality of American politics is partisan. Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to fight the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton and her team have gone toe-to-toe with the Republicans and beaten them more often than not.

    The reality of American politics is partisan. And Barack Obama is running on a platform of changing that reality. So, in his own way, is John McCain.
    The Democrats to whom Sen. Clinton appeals don’t despise Sen. Obama (they save that for Republicans), but they don’t see him as having his blood sufficiently up for doing battle with the “enemy.” And they’re right.
    Consider what Sen. Obama said in South Carolina on the night of his primary victory:

    We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents… it’s the kind of partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea — even if it’s one you never agreed with. That’s the kind of politics that is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.

    In the Republican camp, Sen. McCain has done more than just talk about moving beyond mindless partisanship; he’s risked his political future repeatedly to work with Democrats to achieve goals that put country before party. Last week, he asked the Angry Faithful in his party to “calm down,” and defended his habit of working across the aisle. Self-appointed spokesman for the Angry Faithful Rush Limbaugh responded:

    When did the measure of conservatism… become reaching out to Democrats?… If this were a war, what we’re saying is, “Enemy, come on in, and come be who you are when you get here.”… We view those people as threats to the American way of life, as we’ve always known it…. We view them as people who need to be defeated, not worked with.

    The truly great irony here is that the Angries on the left and the right do work together. In their pas de deux of mutual loathing, they cling to each other so tightly that there’s no room for anyone who’d like to separate them and create a space for rational discourse, or — the gods of left and right forbid — agreement on issues.
    Here’s an example of how the left’s Angries work with their counterparts on the right: The left emotionally demands stem cell research, as Sen. Clinton did in her speech Tuesday. The right cries, No, Never! Ignored are such facts as a) stem cell research is going on, just without federal funding in some areas; b) recent breakthroughs could make embryonic stem cells, the kind being fought over, irrelevant; and c) the man Sen. Clinton seeks to face in the fall, John McCain, favors broadened stem cell research.
    Another example: Last week, the leftists of the Berkeley, Calif., city council dissed the U.S. Marines. Eager warriors on the right (such as our own Rep. Joe Wilson and Sen. Jim DeMint) practically fell over themselves rushing to denounce the Berkeley council. The Marines are a great bogeyman for the loonies in Berkeley; Berkeley is a rare, juicy steak to the right. Call me paranoid, but sometimes I suspect the two sides of working out these stunts between them ahead of time. Everybody comes out on top, except the Marines — and somehow I think the guys who took Iwo Jima will overcome this as well.
    There is indeed a stark divide in this country, but it’s not between the Angry Left and the Angry Right. They just prop each other up. Collectively, they are both the Other Side to me, striving to distract us from realizing the central truth that we’re all in this together.
    On the one hand are the Clinton Democrats and the Republicans who sincerely would rather see Sen. Clinton elected than Sen. McCain. They depend upon each other. They deserve each other.
    The rest of us believe we deserve, for once, a presidential election between candidates who care more about solutions than whether left or right “wins.”
    This is not about affirming some “mushy middle.” You can hardly find two positions farther apart that the McCain and Obama views on Iraq. They have very different ideas on how to fight America’s enemies abroad. But at least neither of them sees the main “enemy” as being their fellow Americans who happen to disagree.

A haiku for Mitt

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There are different ways of looking at Mitt’s departure. And when I say different, I mean different. The WSJ has a blog that’s kept count on how many lawyers there were in the race, and has been striking them off the list one by one. (I called it up because the headline, "Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ‘75) Suspends Campaign," seemed an odd thing to be stressing at this moment.)

But what’s odder still is that this "Law Blog" has invited readers to submit haiku about each lawyer-candidate who has dropped out. Some samples:

Pony with one trick,
Don’t forget Nine Eleven,
Nine Eleven’s it.

They called him “tortoise”
But now the man with no hair
Has got out of ours

They call the form "bye-ku." Here’s my first attempt at one for Mitt:

French cuffs, perfect coif
He offered a ‘turnaround’
We didn’t want one

I’m sure you can do better. And no, I don’t know offhand whether he actually does wear French cuffs. Want to see my literary license?

Somebody give these TV people a thesaurus

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Here it is early on the night of Super-Duper-Pooper Tuesday, and I’ve already heard the word "presumptive" too many times. Can’t these networks afford a thesaurus?

Sure, I like what the word means — when applied to McCain — but enough is enough.

How about, instead of "John McCain, presumptive…" they were to say, "John McCain, by the grace of God…"

True, the connotation does change. The denotation too, I suppose. But it has a ring to it.

Aesop updated: The Fable of Mitt and the ‘Sour Grapes’

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Romney_2008_wart

An interested party with a certain other campaign pointed out to me the irony in Mitt Romney having duly sought the endorsement of a certain newspaper — the Concord Monitor — only to scorn that endorsement as something he wouldn’t have wanted, after he didn’t get it. Here’s what Mr. Romney’s campaign had to say about the Monitor‘s endorsement of John McCain (who so far has received about every endorsement a candidate would want):

GOV. MITT ROMNEY: THE CHOICE OF CONSERVATIVES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
Liberal Press Disagrees With Real Conservatives’ Choice For President…

And so forth, yadda-yadda, with various quotations in the same vein. In an odd wording, the release claims that the Monitor‘s "Editorial Board Personally Attacked Gov. Romney." Golly, I hope he’s gonna be OK, don’t you? Anyway, you can see the entire release here.

It’s really sort of disturbing that a supposedly serious candidate for POTUS would engage in such mindless, vapid name-calling — saying "liberal" over and over, as thought that constituted an argument. It’s the sort of thing I usually see in the less-worthy candidates for the state Legislature — the sorts of candidates who are not plugged into their communities and their real concerns, the sort who are recruited and backed by out-of-state money that knows nothing and cares nothing about our state’s concerns. It’s just plain cheesy.

But there’s nothing remarkable about Mr. Romney acting as though he didn’t want the endorsement, after he sincerely went after it. We see this sort of Aesop’s Fable phenomenon quite frequently. We have several candidates who do that right here in S.C. in every election cycle. Right up until the day the endorsement editorial runs, they are as cloyingly ingratiating as an insurance salesman, and then (after they don’t get the endorsement they had wanted so badly), they act as though they wouldn’t have accepted the newspaper’s support at gunpoint. All of a sudden, it was the last thing they ever would have wanted. That’s another sort of cheesy behavior.

But campaigns do a lot of cheesy things. Here’s hoping that Mr. Romney rises above that level as he comes to South Carolina. I look forward to interviewing him for our endorsement. Like Messrs. Giuliani, Obama, Edwards and Mrs. Clinton, he has yet to set an appointment for that. And we need to get them set soon. We’ll only have about two good days to devote to the Republicans between the time they’re done in New Hampshire and the time we have to get the endorsement written and ready for publication.

We’re aiming for Sunday the 13th on that, by the way.

Caucus_countdown_wart2

So in Washington, spending equals revenue?

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It’s been over 20 years since my job entailed dealing regularly, via phone, with editors in the old Knight Ridder Washington bureau, so I guess I forgot what it could be like.

When I was editing the George Will column for today’s op-ed page, I ran across this paragragh:

   In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "paygo,” the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for” by compensatory tax increases or revenue cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.

Does that make sense to you? It sure didn’t to me. So I called The Washington Post Writers Group, and asked the question, did he mean "’paid for’ by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts?" The first person I asked referred me to another person (which is fine; I hadn’t exactly expected the first person to answer the phone to address the question anyway — he had just sounded like he wanted to try).

The second person I spoke with was one of those people who is unbothered by long stretches of "dead air" in a conversation. A couple of times, while waiting for a response from him, I had to say, "Hello?" to see if he was still there.

After I repeated the question to him, and waited through a long pause, he said he supposed that would be a fine substitution, as it was synonymous.

I could have just let that go in the interest of getting on with a very busy day and enabling folks to go home and start their holiday, but my inner Scrooge asserted himself: Obviously we were miscommunicating.

They’re hardly synonymous, I insisted. "Revenue" is money coming in; "spending" is money going out. It you were going to cut something in order to balance a tax cut, it would have to be the latter.

Another long pause.

Finally, he conceded that he saw my point.

After another long wait, I said, so that substitution’s OK?

Yes, he said.

And then, he added most strangely, "He just meant it in the Washington sense." If there had been irony in his tone, I would have laughed politely. But he sounded so serious, so "you folks in the hinterland wouldn’t understand our insider lingo," that I almost laughed anyway — and not politely.

But I let it go. I had a lot more work to do.

Buzzwords that don’t buzz

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Just a moment ago, I suddenly remembered who Fred Thompson keeps reminding me of, and it turns out it’s a fellow Tennessean — Victor Ashe, the former mayor of Knoxville.

Mr. Ashe was the Republican nominee selected as a sacrificial lamb to go up against Al Gore in 1984, as Rep. Gore strode easily into Howard Baker’s former Senate seat. I covered the race, such as it was.

Mr. Thompson reminds me of Mr. Ashe not because of any physical resemblance — there is none — but because of a rhetorical quirk.

During the 1984 campaign, Mr. Ashe led a bulldog around on a leash, and adopted the slogan, "Bulldog Tough — Downright Tennessee!" At least that’s the way I remember it; it was either that or something equally goofy and meaningless. (If you were there, and have a record of the exact quote, please contact me.)

Perhaps as his answer to McCain’s "Straight-Talk Express," Mr. Thompson has apparently also named his bus tour. It’s called "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" Really. I don’t know what they call the bus when they’re in a hurry. "Clear," maybe. A sample release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  CONTACT: Darrel Ng
December 17, 2007  571-730-1010
"The Clear Conservative Choice:  Hands Down!" Bus Tour Schedule
McLEAN, VA – The Fred Thompson campaign announces an updated schedule for Senator Thompson’s bus tour through Iowa from December 18-December 22.
    In addition to Senator Thompson’s previously scheduled events in Iowa on December 18th, he will also be interviewed on various radio and television programs. There are no other changes to the schedule.
    Media inquiries for the Iowa tour should contact Darrel Ng …

… and so forth. "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" is almost, although admittedly not quite, as devoid of clear meaning as Mr. Ashe’s long-ago effort.

It reminds me of some of the statements Jim DeMint has issued in favor of Mitt Romney. Never mind the details, he’s conservative, I’m telling you! Just like you and me!

Buzzwords, but no buzz, as near as I can tell. But wonderfully goofy — Hands down! Downright Tennessee!

The Eclectic Sandlapping Palmetto Tree

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The NYT today has a story keyed to the 20th anniversary of Bonfire of the Vanities, from the perspective of “how has New York changed since then?”

Thinking back on the way he wrote about the Big Apple, it occurs to me that if Wolfe would really like to write about bizarre, rococo foibles in a sociopolitical context, he should come to South Carolina. He’s done New York; he’s done Atlanta; now he’s doing Miami. All have been done to death. He should come to the home of neo-Confederates, Green Diamond, Bob Jones University, Jake (it’s pronounced “Jakie,” Mr. Wolfe) Knotts, an antebellum form of government, the nation’s most libertarian governor, Andre Bauer, Thomas Ravenel, John Land, Glenn McConnell (arguably the most powerful man in the state, Mr. Wolfe — pictured at right) and the Hunley — and, just a bit into our recent past, Lee Atwater, Strom Thurmond, Fritz Hollings, Jack Lindsay, Ron Cobb, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker… by comparison, even Rudy Giuliani seems boring.

It would be like Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test without the acid (who would need it?). Actually, come to think of that, I’d much rather see him write about us in his nonfiction mode — partly because the reality here is weirder than any fiction, and partly because I just prefer his nonfiction works, particularly Acid Test and The Right Stuff.

You know why Wolfe disappoints me as a fiction writer? He has no love for any of his characters. Think about it — is there a sympathetic character anywhere in Bonfire or the Atlanta book? It’s a very depressing view of humanity. By contrast, his detached-but-intimate style of journalism makes real people come into view in a way that is far more engaging.

The Love Song of Dennis J. Kucinich

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I don’t have anything to say about this (at least, nothing more than I already said); I just liked The Washington Post‘s headline, which I reproduced verbatim above. I also like the blurb teasing to the story:

    Dennis Kucinich is the happiest candidate in the presidential race. True, he is polling in the low single digits. But he has his wife, Elizabeth.

Here’s the actual story.

Ya gotta love it when a headline riffs on T.S. Eliot. It’s way literary.

McCain on question about beating the ‘rhymes with rich’

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Just got this from B.J. over at the McCain campaign:

Hey Mr. Warthen –
I think you might be interested in this. Here’s the deal: On Monday in Hilton Head at a Meet & Greet, some lady asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” He responded. (See Video 1) Last night, CNN’s Rick Sanchez stooped to new levels of sensationalism in reporting the incident. (See Video 2). This morning, we released a statement from Buzz Jacobs, SC Campaign Manager. (See Below) Today at noon, McCain is holding a national blogger call and this is sure to be the hot topic. I thought you might want to get on that call, so if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP and I will send you the call info.

Thanks,
BJ

I told him, yeah, I might want to listen in on that. Anything y’all want to share prior to that? Personally, my immediate reaction is that I have but one complaint about the way Sen. McCain handled it: he spoke of the nomination of the "Democrat Party," not the Democratic Party. And I think the guy on CNN talking about it makes an ass of himself.

Also, here’s the release to which B.J. referred:

STATEMENT FROM SC CAMPAIGN MANAGER ON CNN REPORT
For Immediate Release
Contact: SC Press Office
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
COLUMBIA, SC — U.S. Senator John McCain’s South Carolina campaign manager Buzz Jacobs issued the following statement in response to a report aired last evening by CNN’s Rick Sanchez:

"It is disappointing that Mr. Sanchez would choose to engage in sensationalism in the hopes of generating a story. It not only reflects poorly on him, but on CNN. If Mr. Sanchez had even the faintest perspective on the race for the White House, he would know that Senator McCain has expressed his utmost respect for Senator Clinton numerous times on the campaign trail as he did at Monday’s event in Hilton Head."

                        ###

The essence of “democracy?” Not exactly

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Reading proofs for today’s op-ed page, I found myself quibbling with a word choice of Thomas Friedman’s. It’s not that I didn’t understand what he meant; I was just in a quibbling mood.

It was his simplistic, not-quite-right use of the word, "democracy:"

    The very essence of democracy is peaceful rotations of power, no matter whose party or tribe is in or out. But that ethic does not apply in most of the Arab-Muslim world today, where the political ethos remains “Rule or Die.” Either my group is in power or I’m dead, in prison, in exile or lying very low. But democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can’t take root.

As I say, I knew what he meant. We’ve all sort of agreed amongst ourselves that the thing the Bush administration says it wants to bring to Iraq and the rest of the region (whether one agrees with that goal or not, or believe that is the true motive) is called, for convenience, "democracy." Even though democracy is not what we have in this country — or rather, it’s not what we’re supposed to have, to the extent that we respect the wishes and wisdom of the Framers who bequeathed us a specific sort of republic, defined by a constitution.

What Friedman means to say is that "the very essence" of a system like ours is peaceful rotation of power — or at least it was a goal of the Framers, though it wasn’t achieved until the election of 1800. That year marked the real American revolution, seen from that perspective. A peaceful transition was by no means guaranteed before that.

The truth is that "democracy" can occur without such peaceful transitions, and certainly without respect for other factions or tribes. (I could also point out that "Rule or Die" sounds a lot like the rhetoric of political partisans in this country, although fortunately they have not yet backed it up with civil bloodshed.)

He’s also wrong when he says democracy "is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights." No, democracy IS about majority rule, which is why it is so messy in so many parts of the world, and why Madison, Jay, Hamilton and the rest rejected it in favor of a republic with minority rights guaranteed by way of a carefully balanced constitutional form of government. Those guys were very worried about the passions of the mob, which is why our government is composed of various parts with differing constituencies and loads of checks and balances.

Again, I knew what he meant; but sometimes it helps us to think more clearly about these things when we examine the terms more closely.

Can you read this?

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posting via Treo from Rotary…

Our speaker today is Debbie Yoho of the Greater Columbia Literacy Council, talking about the problem of adult illiteracy in South Carolina.

Her Most Alarming Fact sums up why we should care: 52 percent of adults in South Carolina can’t read beyond an elementary school basis. It’s actually worse than that sounds … Debbie explains that what that means is that a majority of adults in our state can’t anything beyond 300 to 500 simple word they recognize by sight. I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing I was at that point sometime during the first grade.

Explains a lot, huh?