Category Archives: Words

Boys, give me something in a C progression…

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Hey, those guys had some pretty good timing, didn’t they?

Anyway, this morning I see that The New York Times is saying that:

Former Senator Fred D. Thompson  of Tennessee has taken new steps that make it clear that he is likely to run for the White House, potentially shaking up a field of candidates that has failed to strike a chord with the Republican base….

… and with my uncanny ability for going right to the heart of the matter, I immediately wondered, "which chord would that be?"

I’m thinking a basic C chord, within the context of a blues progression. That would be very Nashville, with a hint of Memphis thrown in. It would go with the drawl and the red pickup truck, which has been Fred’s campaign persona in the past.

Get out your ax (not the one you grind, the acoustic one) and strum C, F, G, G7 — maybe throw in an A minor in there someplace, or an E minor, or…

OK, I’m way out of my depth on music here. I can strum it, but when I try to write it, it’s too hard. Phillip, or anybody else out there?

Beyond that, in order to strike this chord in the electorate, would Fred have to sing a new song, or should it be something we know already that he could cover? I’m thinking a cover of an old favorite, or a new song that sounds old-timey. Anybody have any titles?

My big mistake

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Here’s a confessional memo I just sent to my associate editors here at the paper. While I await their responses (which could take a while, since one of them is out of the office), I seek your advice as well:

Folks, I need
your advice as to whether I need to do a correction and, if so, what in the
world it would say. Here’s what John McCain said last week during the debate, in
the context of general remarks on immigration, following an accusation from Tom
Tancredo that he (McCain) had favored "amnesty." (Note that he was not
responding to anyone else having said anything about the Fort Dix plot; he just
brought it up.):

My friend, the people that
came, that almost attacked us at Fort Dix — thank God they did not — these
people didn’t come here across our borders; they came with visas that were
expired. So, we’ve got to enforce our border, that’s our first and foremost
priority, but we also have to have a comprehensive solution and it has to be
bipartisan, and I believe we’re close to reaching that, and that’s what the
American people expect us to do. The status quo is unacceptable.

THIS is what I wrote in
my column Sunday:

    Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign
put out a statement purporting to address the proposal that was, to say the
least, oblique: “The recent Fort Dix plot is a stark reminder that the threat of
terrorism has made immigration an important matter of national security. We need
to know who is coming in and who is going out of this country if we are going to
deal with those who are here illegally.”
    As Sen. McCain had said during the debate, the
Fort Dix plotters didn’t sneak into the country illegally. The issues are
completely unrelated.
Essentially, I was
expressing my objection to Giuliani linking Fort Dix and immigration, and I just
dragged in a paraphrase from McCain in which I had thought that he was agreeing
with me. Of course, I still think what I think regardless of what McCain said.
But I was wrong that none of the plotters had entered illegally, and I later
changed the blog version of the column to say, "the Fort Dix plotters didn’t all sneak into
the country illegally."
 
That’s one thing that
would warrant a correction, if y’all think it’s worth it this late. But then, at
the start of the interview this morning, McCain said:

First of all and foremost it
is a national security issue. Since 9/11 the issue has gone from one of either
social or economic or humanitarian to one of national security. The six people
that were apprehended that were planning on attacking Fort Dix were in this
country illegally; three of them had crossed our border illegally, and the other
three had overstayed valid visas, which also describes the dimension of the
problem as well. Now we can’t have 12 million people in the United States of
America who we don’t know who they are or where they are and what they’re doing.
So it has become first and foremost a national security issue, ,and of course,
border security and enforcing our border should be and is in this legislation a
first priority.

Thinking uh-oh, I
screwed up, I said this when I had a chance to ask a
question:
I’m
a little embarrassed because I think I misheard you last week in the debate; I
had thought that you were making the point that what happened at Fort Dix was a
separate issue from this particular immigration issue, but what you’re saying is
the opposite, is that you believe that they’re very closely
connected…
And he
responded thusly:

As I mentioned, three of the people who wanted to
attack Fort Dix came across our Southern border. Every nation has the
requirement to secure its borders; if it doesn’t, it’s not carrying out its
obligations to its citizens.

… I don’t know what impression I gave you, but if we
have people who are able to cross our borders and come into our country without
us taking every step to prevent them from doing that and they do it in an
illegal fashion, then we’re not fulfilling our
obligation.

After all
this, I still think it’s a stretch to conclude that the Fort Dix plot teaches us
that the 12 million people in our country illegally, mostly Mexicans, are a
threat. And that’s what I meant. But I think McCain is right when he points out
(as he did a moment later in the interview, but I’ll spare you THAT quote) that
while most of the illegals are no threat, how will we separate out any who ARE a
threat — and it only takes a few — and protect our country from them, if all
these folks are invisible and underground?
 
So — what do
you think I should do, aside from posting all this on my blog, which I already
plan to do? And if I do a correction, how do I explain what I did wrong in less
than column length?
 
Folks, I
can’t remember when I’ve screwed one short paragraph in a column this
thoroughly. I’m sorry, and embarrassed.
 
—
Brad
 

Brad Warthen
VP/Editorial Page Editor
The State

Actually, I can’t remember when I’ve screwed anything up that thoroughly — particularly, I don’t remember ever having mischaracterized the thrust of what someone was saying to that extent. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to get that right, whatever my flaws. So yeah, ditch that one little paragraph and the column is fine; I stand behind what I said. But that doesn’t make me feel better about it.

 

The post that wasn’t

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How do you write about Nazis?

That very question is so out there, so absurd, so
anachronistic, that’s it’s hard for me to write any other way than in
the facetious tone I used in previous posts on the subject.

But that doesn’t seem appropriate. And yet I can’t react with the urge to violence that the Nazis of old inspire. I can’t even work up the indignation that seemed to inform the protesters who were there to shout back at them. The spectacle was just so grotesquely ridiculous.

But irony isn’t the right response, still less amusement. Because behind their game of dress-up was the ugly fact that Columbia, South Carolina looked like a hospitable place to them. That presents us with a certain challenge.

For the last hour or so, I wrote about the implications of that. I had intended to post it here, but it ended up being as long as a column, yet pretty uneven. I decided to save it as a column, to look at it again on Monday, and if I can whip it into shape, run it on Tuesday or Wednesday. It I decide it’s just to lame for print in the light of day, I’ll come back and post it here.

In the end, though, what do you say about Nazis in front of you on a magnificent spring day right here in Columbia, SC, in the 21st century. Today. Springtime for Hitler — Mel Brooks was making fun of this stuff forty years ago.

But it’s not funny, is it?

Here we go again

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This came in today from the S.C. Republicans:

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7,
  2007

SCGOP Chairman Katon
Dawson’s Statement
on Democrat Fundraiser

Liberal candidates out of touch with South Carolina
 
 

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Republican Party
  Chairman Katon Dawson released the following statement on tonight’s South Carolina Democrat fundraiser to be held on Capitol Hill:

“As South Carolina Democrats stand tonight with ultra-liberal Democrat White House hopefuls, they should think about the conservatives back home they continue to alienate. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and John Edwards have long embraced higher taxes, federally-funded abortions and gun control and are out of touch with South Carolina voters. It’ll be interesting to see Jim Clyburn, John Spratt and other state Democrats jockey for face time tonight with these same liberal candidates they’ll try to distance themselves from next year.”

Set aside the partisan, ideological ranting, as offensive as that is. This is a political party; that’s what they do. But at least, it seems to me, they could do it in English. I had to respond thus:

It’s
"Democratic." Here’s how it works: Joe Biden is a Democrat. It was a Democratic
fund-raiser. The first is a noun, the second is an
adjective.

I don’t know what’s so tough about that.

Yeah, I know I’m trying to turn back the unthinking tide with a teaspoon. But sometimes, I’ve just got to try. One of these days they’ve GOT to get it, right?

John Kerry’s second adolescence

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Kerrygaffe

Not being overly fond of all the partisan tit-for-tat that seems to stir so many earnest hearts in the Blogosphere, I’ll first admit that I have not sought out much information about John Kerry’s gaffe.

Of course, you absorb a certain amount without trying. I know what he said, I know what he said he meant to say (which was every bit as revealing of character as what he said), I heard that he said he wouldn’t apologize, and then he did apologize — sort of.

Nothing new in any of that. It just reminded me, in case I had forgotten, why we couldn’t bring ourselves to endorse the senator for president in 2004, even though we disagreed with about 90 percent of what President Bush was doing. (Of all the Democratic candidates who had come in to speak with our editorial board, Sen. Kerry was the least engaging and the most off-putting. Take your pick — Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley Braun, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and any others I can’t think of at the moment — all were more favorably impressive than he.)

But in what little I have absorbed on the subject, one thing has been missing. If someone else has said it, please point me to it.

The thing that struck me immediately at the very first report — before I knew how the GOP was hyping it or anything else; I’m talking about the moment I first heard the words he spoke to those students — I thought he was having a Vietnam flashback. Not to his days in combat, but to the much longer period when he was denigrating his own service and that of others.

Young John Kerry’s peers — to the extent that he would have acknowledged having any — thought of soldiers drafted to go to Vietnam pretty much the way Mr. Kerry spoke of today’s soldiers last week.

Yes, he took a commission in the Navy and went over as an officer and a gentleman and did his part, and God bless him for that. But based upon his actions afterward, I don’t think the preppie mindset toward the average grunt ever went away.

Anyway, that’s what flashed through my mind.

Kerryyoung

It’s a joke; he meant to say ‘Bush’

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Poor politicians. When they say something horrible about our troops, they are reviled. When icons of the press say even worse things, it’s just a blip, if that.

Check out what Seymour Hersh said in a speech in Montreal. In case you missed it, he essentially said the "baby-killers" that so many Americans fled to Montreal to avoid becoming were nothing compared to the homicidal maniacs we send to Iraq: "(T)here has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

This was brought to my attention by the WSJ’s OpinionJournal. The link said, "Maybe It’s Just a Botched Joke."

Defining concepts downward

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See the headline on today’s front page?

Which is better —
insider or outsider?

It refers, of course, to the superintendent of education race. It’s an idiotic question, but I certainly don’t blame my colleagues down in the newsroom for that. They are reflecting the times in which they are editing. Today, such a question regarding the head of something as complex as our schools system is … perfectly "reasonable."

You see, we have defined "reasonable" down to an absurdly low level in our politics today. Even the use of "insider" and "outsider" to describe this race is misleading, because we’ve distorted those concepts as well.

Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ran as "outsiders," and both had been governors — Reagan was the governor of our largest state, which is larger and richer than most nations. They had been chief executives before; they had some clue what the job entailed. They were real outsiders because they weren’t part of the establishment. That establishment chewed up Carter and spit him out; Reagan triumphed over it.

Karen Floyd most certainly isn’t an "outsider" by those standards. She’s had limited administrative experience in the private sector during her job-hopping career, and none in the public. She doesn’t know anything more than a randomly chosen person off the street knows about education, and less than many you might find that way. She hasn’t been working on improving schools from the outside — running advocacy groups or participating in think tanks or establishing and successfully running private alternatives. Maybe she plays a leading role in the PTA, but if she’s touted that, I’ve missed it.

The bizarre thing is, by the usual standards of "outsider," Jim Rex is it. Most of his career has been spent in higher ed — both public and private colleges — working on improving schools from the outside. He’s found innovative ways to improve the teaching pool and training, and he’s got plenty of ideas — based on actual experience — for making greater improvements.

No, today, "insider" means "someone who has relevant experience of some kind" and "outsider" means, "doesn’t know jack about the job." And the latter, in our anti-intellectual, anti-expert, Reality TV-soaked society, has enormous appeal.

I don’t understand why. But then, I expect words to mean what they mean, and voters to behave rationally. So don’t mind me; I’m deluded.

The Pedantic Camel harrumphs

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Just moments ago, I received this release from the Tommy Moore campaign, which started with this paragraph:

Mark Sanford launched two negative attack ads this weekend, which distort and outright lie about Tommy’s record.
Tommy has added a link to his Web site, Moore Sets the Record Straight, to respond to these over-the-top and increasingly desperate attacks.

So I’ve just got to ask — with apologies to Tommy, because it seems that everybody’s using this redundant phrase these days; he’s just unlucky enough to be the straw on this pedantic camel’s back…

… Where was I? I got lost in that sentence. Oh, yeah: So I’ve just got to ask: Is there such a thing as a positive attack ad?

What happened to Bombay?

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Many of y’all can no doubt answer this; I just probably haven’t asked the right people yet, so I’m still in the dark. (And yes, I’ve seen some explanations; I just don’t find them satisfactory.)

What happened to Bombay? Where did it go? Yeah, I know they call it Mumbai now (at least, sometimes), but why?

And how did Peking become Beijing? I mean, those are really different. Or Mao Tse-Tung become whatever they call him now?

I’m probably working on a wrong assumption here, but were the names we used to call these places and people supposed to be phonetic representations of the originals? So did they start pronouncing it differently, or did one dialect achieve hegemony over another and become the official version? Are there Indians who still say "Bombay" or Chinese who will always say "Peking," only they have lost some sort of battle among cultures?

Were the Western imperialists just that incompetent at rendering what they heard when they rolled into these places? Or was it the British insistence upon setting themselves apart from the natives by mispronouncing all foreign words?

Or are people who run these countries just messing with us?

And why do we write Sadr if it’s pronounced "Sodder?" Or is it actually pronounced in some way that the Western tongue can’t get around?

I have many stupid questions. Here’s hoping someone out there has some smart answers.

Propaganda as gibberish

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What I was looking for when I ran across the old link discussed in my previous post was the lead story from the NYT’s Week In Review section.

It was all about how scary the North Korean missile tests are, seeing as how:

    Perhaps everyone can learn from failure, even the North Koreans.
    Their missile, the Taepodong 2, took flight briefly last week, and seems to be in no shape to send an atom bomb whizzing halfway around the globe toward the United States. Experts judge that many years of testing beyond that inaugural flight on Tuesday will probably be needed before the North would entrust the new missile with anything as costly and precious as a nuclear warhead.
    "It would take five or six tests of their final design before they’d be confident it could go someplace," said Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the nation’s nuclear arms.

Kim_jong_ilSo, it will be "several years" before the Dear Doofus is likely to boost some warheads our way. That’s good.

At the same time, that assumption seems based on the belief that North Korea will act rationally, not throwing away the first nuke they manage to produce. That’s weak assurance.

I gain more comfort from the caption on this propaganda poster, which the Times assures us reads, "First sound of gunfire from big power."

Really? Even allowing for idiomatic and stylistic differences between cultures, or poor translation, that is amazingly awkward and uninspiring. And, well, stupid.

How am I supposed to take seriously a threat from someone who can’t write any better than that?

They ought to require essay contests or something before letting bad guys into the Axis of Evil.

Me wonder, too

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Some folks suspect that the very choicest bits don’t make it into "Letters to the Editor." And in some ways, they’re right. Sometimes letter-writers get so mad at us they lose all ability to communicate, and it would unfairly hold them up to ridicule to run what they submit.

I usually don’t see these things in raw form, but sometimes they are copied to me, or (erroneously, let me hasten to add; the correct address for letters is [email protected]) sent to me first.

A favorite from the last few days was one that took issue — to put it mildly — with Associate Editor Cindi Ross Scoppe.

"What planet does her reside?" the overwrought writer demanded to know.

I sometimes wonder the same thing myself.

Last words

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It’s not just headlines. I can’t stop myself from doing that "finishing thoughts" thing with quotes, either.

Take this one from Gen. Michael Hayden:

Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern, constantly. And it’s a concern in this program, it’s a concern in everything we’ve done.

The rest of the thought:

It’s more than a concern; it’s a damned nuisance if you ask me. And I’ve heard more than I want to hear about it.

That’s the trouble with the biased media — always taking quotes out of context, leaving behind the good parts.

Finishing Thoughts

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Subhead: "If You Use the Term ‘Thoughts’ Loosely"

This definitely goes under the heading of something you wouldn’t confess if you didn’t have a blog.

I am a notoriously slow reader, and one of the stupider reasons for that is that I can’t seem to read any small grouping of words — a headline, a bumper sticker, a quote — without adding some nonsensical something to "finish the thought."

Take The New York Times today. Please. I found myself composing "subheads" for several of the headlines.

Actual headline: "Europe to Offer Iran Conditional Incentives"
My subhead: "’You Don’t Blow Us Up, We’ll Do Business’"

Actual headline: "Lens Cleaner is Recalled Worldwide"
My subhead: "Household Product Stirs Fond Memories"

Actual headline: "U.S. Urges Jurors to Punish ‘Lies’ at Enron"
My subhead: "12 Bars of Soap Handed Out by Judge"

Actual headline: "Most Bush Holdings Listed as Real Estate"
My subhead: "Democratic Response: No, it’s FALSE Estate"

OK, I’ll go away now.

Although it really doesn’t feel right…

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The Columbia Postmaster suggests, in a letter to the editor today, that we try "patronizing" our rural mail carriers.

Well, OK. I don’t feel right about it, but I’ll try:

Hey, love the car, really. With that wheel on the right-hand side, I thought for a minute it was James Bond’s Aston-Martin. Wow. And I’ve always said nothing beats an early-80s, Day-Glo green Chrysler for style. It’s just as good as one of those "official," custom-built panel trucks the fancy-pants city carriers drive. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

I really don’t see how this does anybody any good, but I tried.

‘Mary’ stands accused

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I’ve decided to set before this "community" an interesting proposition. Buried deep among the record 108 comments on my lengthy March 26 column is the following, from fellow Unpartian (I think) Paul DeMarco:

Thanks for trying to keep the debate civil. Personal attacks simply
demonstate that the attacker’s argument won’t stand on its own merit.
Mary’s "worthless piece of garbage" routine is tiresome and mitigates
any impact the substance of her message might have. If I were Brad, I
wouldn’t stand for it. I’d warn her and her like and then ban them from
the site if they continued. If not, I predict, the ugliness will only
worsen.

As you can see, the Unparty — assuming I’m right about Paul’s affiliation — is not for libertarians. We believe in the rule of law.

The thing is, the shifting community that has formed on this blog has no laws as yet. And we are still small enough that we have not formed a republic, therefore to the extent that we deliberate, we must do so through the "town-meeting" sort of direct democracy.

But now Citizen DeMarco has proposed not only a law, but presented its first test. He says that Mary Rosh‘s behavior is unacceptable in these virtual parts. He proposes a community standard, and a means of enforcement — a warning, followed if necessary by excommunication.

This is fascinating. We are present at the birth of a society, however rudimentary it may be. I’d like to see where the group will take this. I expect a wide variety of viewpoints to be expressed, but I’m curious to see whether we can nevertheless move toward a consensus — one way or the other, or in between somewhere.

Since I have a rather unique role in this society — you might say I’m sort of a unitary executive in a very liberal (in the classic sense) democracy — I’m not going to say what I think about Mary’s case at this point.

Anyway, we have the bill before us. Let’s debate it.

Hal makes a statement

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I thought this was sort of interesting: I was sending a link to my last post to someone via e-mail, and in my note I referred to the straight majority using the shortcut "heteros."

Guess what the spell checker on Outlook wanted to change it to? "Haters." Actually, it suggested several alternatives (such as "heaters," "hereto," "meteors," "hectares," etc.), but that was its first choice.

So was the programmer of that tool trying to make a political statement, or did the boola-boola logic (or whatever in the world drives those things) just lead inevitably to that word? I believe it’s the latter, but I could see how some folks would suspect the former.

Could it be? Could Hal the devious laptop be trying to tell us all something? Nah.

Why “gay?” Why not “queer?”

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Somehow, my last, brief post having fun with Mark Sanford’s reputation for frugality quickly led to a discussion between readers about whether Abraham Lincoln was gay. Don’t ask me how, just look and see if you don’t believe me. Such is the nature of blog comment threads.

Anyway, the discussion led me off on my own mental digression. I started thinking about words.

Lincoln_statues_1To begin with, I don’t believe there was anything "gay" about Lincoln, in any sense of the word. He was pretty much chronically depressed, as I recall.

Along those lines, have you ever considered what an odd euphemism "gay" is for "homosexual?" I’ve never liked it, and I don’t know why "gay" people do. First, I don’t see why anyone would associate unreserved felicity with any particular sexual orientation, much less one that carries so much painful stigma with it. To call people who carry that burden through their lives in this hetero world "gay" is to mock the pain that must, very often, certainly be their lot. Also, it seems insulting and dismissive to me. It’s like we’re calling them "giddy" or "silly," or in some other way dismissing them as unworthy of being considered seriously.

Why people would embrace it as a way to describe themselves is beyond me. It seems, if you will forgive the term, perverse. It’s as though one is declaring, "Look at me, I’m a silly person who fulfills all the stereotypes in your head — I just go gaily through life thinking of nothing but Judy Garland, decorating my home and clothes shopping." And maybe that’s what it’s about — defiant irony. But I don’t think it works.

To see how inadequate the term is, follow bill‘s suggestion and go to Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Check out the serious thoughtfulness with which he deals with issues. Is "gay" a proper term to use to describe him, simply because he is homosexual? It certainly isn’t the first word that would come to my mind.

Even if it is embraced ironically, "gay" just doesn’t make sense to me. (Of course, I have to admit that homosexuality doesn’t make sense to me either, so I guess my lack of understanding is to be expected.) I think those more "in-your-face" activists who defiantly use the term "queer" are more on the mark. The word makes sense from both hetero- and homo- perspectives. To straight people, homosexuality is queer, in the sense of being an aberration (certainly in the statistical sense, at the very least), and so alien to the way we think that it is beyond our ken. For homosexuals themselves, it seems to be a more effective banner to fly to demonstrate pride in being different — especially if you’re trying to be defiantly ironic.

Anyway, that’s the way the words strike me.