Over the weekend I neglected to mention (in connection with my Sunday column on the subject) Robert Ariail’s wonderful cartoon of July 4, which states the Energy Party position with the same incisive relevance as the original Ben Franklin cartoon that inspired him did the cause of the Revolution.
And I didn’t even put him up to it…
My longtime colleague Bill Robinson (I was his editor about 20 years ago) was one of the 11 journalists who stepped forward to accept a buyout offer to leave the newspaper as a cost-cutting measure. Even though he had been looking at relocating anyway, I know it wasn’t an easy decision.
His — and their — last day was Thursday, July 3. After he had left for the day, Bill sent the following message to all the news and editorial employees at The State. While Bill is a little younger than I am (he was in high school during Watergate; I was in college and already working as a copy boy at The Commercial Appeal), the values he expresses are those that have inspired a generation of journalists in this country. It is in that spirit that I share Bill’s message:
Dear colleagues:
Thank you for laughing at the silly story about my first two days as a reporter at old The Columbia Record 23 years ago. As Mark Lett knew, I wouldn’t pass on an opportunity to have a final word.
However, after attending the past several Hampton-Gonzalez award events, I knew I would be unable to compete with the oratorical eloquence of Sammy Fretwell, Carol Ward, Allison Askins and Rick Brundrett.
But I wanted to leave you with a final thought or two …
Richard Milhous Nixon was the POTUS when I was in high school and as history books note, he had a little problem called Watergate.
Actually, his problem was with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, or as my J-school law class professor used to call them, collectively: "Woodstein."
They are the reason a lot of journalists of my generation entered the profession. Being a reporter, as Sammy noted in his acceptance speech, was an opportunity to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" — and get paid for it.
I remember vividly reading that whenever Nixon had to give a speech about Vietnam, he would order the White House theater to provide him a private showing of the film "Patton." Nixon apparently was enamored with the George C. Scott’s opening sequence speech to get him fired up.
I say this for a reason. Over the years, when I felt like the job was getting me down, I would pop into my VCR a now well-worn tape of "All The Presidents’ Men." Not because I was emulating Nixon; I did it to remind me why I got into the business.
It always provided me a pick-me-up.
Over the next few days or weeks, as you contemplate the future of print journalism, I strongly recommend that you go rent a copy of All The Presidents’ Men.
Newspapers have value in this country and you all are on the front line. I wish I knew a way to wake people up and remind them about the important work The Washington Post and New York Times did reinforcing democracy in the mid-1970s. But I don’t.
The Fox News Channel or any of the other TV broadcasters are not going to do what you are capable of delivering. I will be watching from afar.
Best wishes and thank you again for all the kind words of support and praise over the past several days.Bill Robinson
I have my own copy of "All The President’s Men" on DVD. But that’s no compensation for the loss to this trade of a guy who knows what it means.
Somebody started griping, irrelevantly, about my big ol’ round horn-rims back on this post, which led me to
point out that I used to wear smaller, round wire-rims, which made me remember that there used to be a mug shot of me wearing those on file down in the newsroom, which caused me to go look for it (and not find it), which caused me to run across the mug I just put up on my blog to replace the offending one with the big specs that I actually wear every day.
I’m not absolutely sure, but I think this one was taken when I first arrived at The State, from the Wichita paper, in 1987.
But hey, you’re the one who didn’t like the accurate, up-to-date one with the glasses. Or one of y’all was…
Anyway, the "new" one is what I really look like… in the sense that a soft-drink still costs a dime.
Boy, did it make me feel good to get this message from a colleague urging all members of the newspaper’s senior staff to take part in our upcoming blood drive:
All: Please consider setting a good example and donating blood at The State’s drive next Wednesday, July 9, if you’re able. We have about a dozen time slots left to hit our target of 26 units. Clink on the link in the first item on the intranet to book an appointment that fits your schedule. Thanks…
I was able to respond that I gave already (although not at the office)! And it’s not just a line! It’s true!
Do I get a medal or anything, or do I just get to gloat?
We had a nice time in Memphis over the last few days — all of my kids and grandkids were there, as well as all of their relations on that side of the family. But the all-day drive back Monday, and the shock today of starting the process of putting out a week’s worth of pages in three days, has me feeling sort of like one of my twin granddaughters when we put them into the stroller at the end of the big-bash wedding reception Saturday night. Or rather, at the end of it for them — bigger people got to keep on dancing.
Specifically, I’m feeling like Baby A, on the right. Baby B took it all a bit more philosophically.
That’s life. Some people keep on dancing, but some of us have to strap in and get back to flying the airplane. Or sailing the ship. Or whatever — I’m not really up to metaphors today…
Cindi’s got another column on tomorrow’s page that involves the S.C. legislative practice of "bobtailing." As usual, she uses the term as though it makes perfect sense, although it doesn’t.
Cindi defends the word as one that has meaning within the context of the State House, and she has enough of a point that I leave the term in when she uses it (Hey — you try to argue her out of it). Cindi uses the term because, as she put it, That’s what they call it, so that’s what it is. I’m grateful that in one recent column, she at least put the term, as used by S.C. lawmakers, in quotation marks.
Yes, if we’re going to describe what these folks do we need to use the lingo, but this is just an example of our lawmakers abusing language. They use the term to refer to ADDING something, or somethings, to a bill — something that doesn’t belong there. In the English language, the term "bobtail" indicates that something has been TAKEN AWAY — or mostly taken away.
To "bob" a tail is to cut most of it off. It applies to things other than hair, of course (I refer you to Fitzgerald’s "Bernice Bobs Her Hair.") A Bobtail Cat is so called because he has a mere stump of a tail.
Far more accurately descriptive is the "Christmas Tree" metaphor, of hanging amendments on a bill in the manner of ornaments. Unfortunately, in South Carolina, "bobtailing" is what they call it. I just thought I’d point out that they are WRONG to call it that.
H
aving made a reference to "Room 101" in Orwell’s 1984, I went to find an explanatory link. (On some
level or other, the very existence of hypertext is one of my biggest motivations for blogging. Even though most of y’all may not — and probably don’t — follow the links, just finding them and setting them up releases endorphins in my brain. I dig making the connections; my favorite literary device is allusion.)
In this case, I was more than usually rewarded.
Like Winston Smith, you probably know already what Room 101 is. As O’Brien explains it to the prisoner,
You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the
answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the
worst thing in the world…
The worst thing in the world… varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.
In my case, it was having blood drawn, which is why it took me almost 49 years to work up the nerve to start making donations at the Red Cross.
But the really cool thing, the point of this post, is to share with you what I learned by reading the Wikipedia link:
Orwell named Room 101 after a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House where he used to sit through tedious meetings.
Boy, can I identify with that! I certainly hope Wikipedia was right on that one, because it really brings Orwell down to where I can relate.
Here’s a creepier fact I ran across, about the days when the Stasi terrorized East Germany:
The people of the GDR lived through their own private Nineteen Eighty-Four every single day. Funder describes Orwell’s book as "like a manual for the GDR, right down to the most incredible detail". The party, if not the proles, knew that very well. She remembers that the much-dreaded Stasi chief Erich Mielke even managed to renumber the offices in the secret-service headquarters. "His office was on the second floor, so all the office numbers started with ‘2’. Orwell was banned in the GDR, but he would have had access to it. Because he so wanted the room number to be 101, he had the entire first floor renamed the mezzanine, and so his office was Room 101."
On today’s page, you saw our endorsement of Jake Knotts in the runoff in the Republican nomination in Senate District 23. You also saw Cindi Scoppe’s column that was her way of thinking through, and explaining to readers, what was for the whole board a difficult decision. (And despite the little bit of fun I had about DeMint "clarifying" things, it was and is a difficult one.)
It’s worth reading, if you only get one thing out of it: This isn’t as simple as being about whether this person is for vouchers (or, worse, tax credits) or that one is against them. This is about what video poker was about — whether a group that does not have the state’s best interests at heart is allowed to intimidate the Legislature into doing its will.
It’s easy to say that, but very hard to communicate to readers. It’s hard to understand if you don’t spend as much time as I have, and as Cindi has (and she has a lot more direct experience with this than I do) observing lawmakers up close, and watching the ways they interact, and the way issues play out among them. I know it’s hard for readers to understand, because all these years later, folks still seem to have trouble understanding what the video poker issue was about for the editorial board, and why we took the position we ultimately did (to ban the industry).
I know we’ll be explaining this one for the next 10 years, and possibly longer. It’s just tough to communicate, and made tougher in this case because video poker was at least unsavory on its face. The face of this campaign funded by out-of-state extremists appears to be perfectly nice, ordinary people like Katrina Shealy and Sheri Few.
But it’s not about them. And it’s not about Jake Knotts, either. It’s certainly not about whether one or two candidates who favor (or might favor) vouchers get elected to the Legislature. By themselves, those one or two candidates can’t change the fact that spending public funds on private schools is (quite rightly) an unpopular cause. What this is about is the fact that if Jake Knotts loses, Howard Rich and company win, and that will play in the Legislature this way: Our money took Jake down. We can do the same to you. And at that point, lawmakers who don’t believe in vouchers and know their constituents don’t either can be induced to vote along with those interests anyway.
We saw it happen with video poker — until the industry was put out of business, cutting off the flow of cash that was corrupting the legislative process. We’re seeing a similar dynamic here. And that’s what this is about.
Anyway, as I mentioned, Cindi had a column about that. On Sunday, I’ll have a very different column about this endorsement. At one point in the column, I refer to one of the big differences between our editorial board and Jake Knotts — his populism. So it is that I post the video below, which features Sen. Knotts talking about that.
After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to provide a little extra perspective on the Richland County Council runoff (stuff you couldn’t possibly get elsewhere, for whatever it’s worth), I decided I’d better check and see if there was anything urgent in my e-mail the last couple of days before dragging myself home late as usual. At that point I ran across this:
We can solve the financial problems of the city,
the transit problem, the big dig on Main St., etc. Just hire relatives of Rep.
Clyburn. Where is the indignation from the paper on the editorial pages?
Between naming things for his legacy and money for "relatives of Jim" – seems
rather hypocritical. Oh wait – he’s a democrat and black – must be
untouchable! Larry
What do you say to someone that clueless? Basically, I say nothing. I just thought I’d share it with y’all as part of my usual campaign to let y’all know what goes on behind the scenes around here — and "fan mail" such as this is part of the gig.
Of course, if I did answer, it would be along the lines of:
- You’re kidding, right? You’re writing this ONE DAY after the news report (less than a day after I read it, since this was sent at 7:39 a.m.), and already all worked up about not seeing an editorial yet?
- What newspaper did you read it in? The paper reports it, and YOU think this is evidence that the paper is looking out for Jim Clyburn? It was, in fact, the lead story in Monday’s paper. Bet ol’ Jim appreciated that, huh?
- You want to see criticism of black Democrats (and obviously, this is what matters to you)? I don’t suppose the thing I just frickin’ finished typing (with video) counts, huh?
But just so you know, that missive from ol’ Larry wasn’t one of our more hostile or least-well-reasoned bits of fan mail. Here’s one of the bad ones. NOTE: Don’t read this if you’re easily offended — or even moderately sensitive, for that matter:
Sir:
Generic news reader/bureau chief/flesh-colored dildo Tim Russert is dead at 58.
Of all you awful people, he was possibly the most oleaginous — as unctuous to the
likes of Bush, Cheney and Madeline Albright as any human dildo could possibly be
. . . a real Uriah Heep, brought to life and plopped down like a steaming pile of
shit onto our television screens each Sunday to "interview" the powerful.
Good riddance, fathead.
You mediocrities at The State can lower your ass-licking tongues to half-mast.Ray Bickley
That was sent to me, by the way, at 6:44 p.m. on Friday, the very day Tim Russert died.
You can see why I just love e-mail.
Trying to get Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy to provide a rationale for her Richland County Council candidacy was like pulling teeth. She basically could not provide any good reason why voters should elect her back to the body she left under a cloud a decade ago.
Ms. Kennedy is best remembered for a taxpayer-funded junket she and another council member took to Hawaii. And that’s about it, really. To get further details, I had to search the database, and came up with this editorial from our editions of Dec. 8, 1997:
We should have known Richland County Councilwoman Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy wouldn’t leave quietly after her failed re-election bid.
At her last regular meeting, Mrs. Kennedy and three of her children were up for appointments to county boards or commissions. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is the same councilwoman who took a $3,000 jaunt to Hawaii on county money to a conference for Western counties only to return with nothing constructive to share. Then, faced with a runoff bid she wouldn’t win, she had a change of heart and admitted the trip wasn’t a good idea.
Mrs. Kennedy obviously is intent on having a lasting impact on Richland County by getting family members appointed to boards. Sadly, other council members didn’t see the folly in it all and appointed two of Mrs. Kennedy’s daughters to positions. Kim Kennedy and Fay Kennedy were appointed to the Music Festival Commission and the Building Board of Adjustment, respectively.
The lame duck council, four of whom are on their way out, might have selected Mrs. Kennedy and her son, a Richland County sheriff’s deputy, to a position had the two not withdrawn their nominations after they were challenged. Mrs. Kennedy had applied for a spot on the county Planning Commission and her son, Theodore Kennedy Jr., had applied for a position on the Building Board of Adjustment.
This was an obvious attempt by Mrs. Kennedy to try to stack county boards with herself and her family members as she leaves the council. Council members should have known better and left all of these appointments to the next council.
Shame on them all. It’s these sort of shenanigans that have residents angry over the way the county is operated. The new Richland County Council, the membership of which will be completed in tomorrow’s election, can’t be seated soon enough.
The good news is that the new council was somewhat better. No trips to Hawaii, anyway.
But the truth is that bad candidacies are frequently marked by the lack of good qualities as much as bad ones. And the things that strikes me as I review video of our interview back in April with Ms. Kennedy is her utter inability to articulate why anyone should support her.
Please excuse the length of the above interview. I just included a lot of unedited footage (except for transitions between my camera’s three-minute-maximum clips) so you could see — if you were patient enough — just how far you can go in giving a person every possible opportunity, without that person rising to it. It’s tedious, but telling. In fact, some of you who are accustomed to the contrived theater of TV interviews will wonder, "Why were you so patient and easygoing with this woman?" The answer is that, contrary to what many of you believe, we really do try to go the extra mile to allow candidates a chance to make their case in their own way — particularly the candidates who come in with apparently little chance of gaining our endorsement. Some candidates make the most of the opportunity, and are impressive — an example of that would be Sheri Few, who didn’t think we would endorse her but to her credit wasn’t about to make that decision easy on us. Ms. Kennedy made the decision very, very easy.
Unfortunately, Ms. Kennedy managed to squeeze past a couple of more attractive candidates to make it into a runoff next week. One nice thing about runoffs — it gives me time to present you with more info about the candidates that I was able to do during the crowded initial vote.
If you don’t have the patience to make it through the long video above, here’s a shorter and more interesting one. After having given her every opportunity to deal with her checkered past — a simple, "I did wrong when I was in office before, and have learned my lesson" would have been good — we finally had to confront her (politely, of course, that being Warren’s style) about the incident that lost her the position on council.
Basically, once she was specifically asked about "The Trip," she tried lamely to deflect. She tried to allege that the controversy was over her husband going, and that wasn’t at taxpayer expense. She noted that she’s been to Hawaii a number of times, and only once at taxpayer expense — as though that established anything other than the fact that she likes Hawaii. She tries to make us believe that she believes that if elected, we would falsely report that the European trip she’s saving up for was on the taxpaper’s dime.
But what am I doing describing it? Just watch the video.
Remember a few months back, when I was visited by Zoe Rachel Usherwood, Foreign Affairs Producer for Sky News in the U.K.? Well, whether you remember or not, it was right after the primaries, when there had been a lot of international attention focused on South Carolina. Well, today the same international program brought Desirée Jaimovich by the office.
Desirée is a writer and editor for the Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language publication. Argentina is, as you probably know, one of the more cosmopolitan of South American countries, a lot of people having ethnic roots from across Europe.
We talked about a number of things. She asked in particular about a recent story that recently led our front page, "S.C. first in on-job deaths of Hispanics." I told her that illegal immigration was an extremely hot issue in this country, but that unfortunately, while our lawmakers will demagogue no end about illegality, there is little talk among our politicians about the dangerous conditions that illegals often work in — and there should be.
She of course asked WHY illegal immigration was such a hot issue, and I somewhat glibly told her that it was a matter of xenophobia. A little later, though, I told her not to go by me, that I don’t understand and never have understood the roots of passion over illegal immigration. (And don’t explain to me for the millionth time that it’s because it’s illegal; as I indicated back here, maybe I’ll believe that’s core of it when folks get as stirred up about speeding on the highway.)
Anyway, we had a nice visit. I never did practice my Spanish on her though, because it embarrasses me. When I was a kid living in Ecuador, I was more or less as fluent in Spanish as English. But I’ve been back in this country since 1965, which is a long time. Whenever I try to speak it now, it’s such a struggle that I find it distressing.
Sorry I haven’t had time to blog today, folks. Not much to say — or at least, nothing that needs to be said immediately — about the primary results. The overwhelming majority of our endorsees did well, I see. More about that later.
Right now, I’m playing hooky from a meeting (Bob Coble and Charles Austin are talking about Columbia city budget matters with Warren Bolton in our board room) to try to catch up on all sorts of neglected work, such as reading the live page proofs that I have to have to Mike in 18 minutes.
This is e-mail I got last night, and am just now seeing. I can’t stop to read it, but I’m sure it will be of interest:
June 10, 2008
News Release – For Immediate ReleaseRob Miller‘s Victory Speech
Victory Speech:
First, let me thank everyone who helped us win our first battle for change tonight, especially my wife Shane and my son Robert.
Blaine Lotz called me a few minutes ago. Blain is a good man, and he ran a good campaign.
Three-and-a-half months ago, I was a Captain in the US Marine Corps. On February 16, we began our campaign for change.
Tonight we celebrate this win, but tomorrow the real battle to change Washington begins.
The incumbent is a proud card-carrying member of the status quo. He’s been in Washington for years voting for ballooning deficits and out-of-control spending. He took money from and had fundraisers with corrupt and dishonest politicians like Tom DeLay, who he still says is a man of integrity. Joe Wilson has been in Washington too long. He doesn’t believe in change and is out of touch with the people he is supposed to represent.
This campaign, our campaign, is all about change. Unlike the incumbent, we understand that times are tough.
We’ll work for change by developing a sensible exit strategy for Iraq and reinvest those resources here at home to rebuild our infrastructure because we need good jobs, we need safer neighborhoods, and we need more affordable health care here in South Carolina.
We’ll work for change by pushing Congress to do more to develop alternative forms of energy so we can say goodbye forever gas that’s to $4.00 a gallon.
We’ll work for change by making the politicians in Washington balance the budget. Families all over South Carolina live within their means and it’s time for Congress to do the same.
The forces of the Status quo will not stand down without a fight. But, after serving 13 years in the Marine Corps, to include twice in Iraq, I’ve never been afraid of a good fight.
I understand I can’t win this by myself; I need all of you fighting with me.
Go to my web site at RobMillerForCongress.com and join our battle for change.
The battle for change begins tomorrow.
Thank you.
Noticing the last line, I should point out: "Tomorrow" would be "today" now, since this was sent last night.
All of y’all who get worked up about having Spanish-speakers around will love this letter on today’s page:
I am sick and tired of the wailing and gnashing of teeth by some business owners and Chambers of Commerce over the new immigration law.
I don’t normally put much faith in our legislators, but they hit a home run for a change. I only wish the law had been implemented earlier.
My company hired a Hispanic three years ago who used falsified documents. He worked two weeks, suffered an aneurysm and our Workers’ Compensation Commission, in its infinite wisdom, ruled it was job-related and awarded him $175,000. As a result, my workers’ compensation insurance increased dramatically.
If this law had been in effect three years ago, it would have saved me a lot of money and much grief. As a result of this incident, we now use the federal electronic database and verify every new hire.
My advice to all the malcontents: Make sure your employees are in this country legally or hire U.S. citizens.
So it turns out that illegal immigration causes aneurysms! Who knew?
Isn’t that just like those Hispanics? They come up here and take jobs just knowing they’re going to have an aneurysm, no doubt as a result of the very act of wading across the Rio … The nerve of these people.
Remember, hire U.S. citizens (or, if you must, legal aliens), because they don’t have aneurysms.
Here’s a veto that I missed last week. I guess I should have noticed it, since it was one of those rare ones that the Legislature actually sustained:
I am very sorry to have to report to you that funding for the Executive Institute was vetoed by the Governor and the veto was sustained by the House of Representatives. Therefore the Institute will not begin it’s 19th year in August as planned and we will shut down the operation at the end of this fiscal year.
I would like to thank all of you for the friendship, enthusiasm and support you have shown us over the years. You are the major reason for the success we have had. Thanks so much for 18 great years.
Tina
Tina Joseph Hatchell
Director
Executive Institute
Alongside such biggies as the SCHIP program and indigent defense, this one was easy to overlook. But now that I know, I’m sorry to hear it.
I’m an alumnus of the Executive Institute, class of ’94. Back then, the director of the program was Phil Grose. That was thee year that I was getting ready to come up to the editorial department from news (end of ’93, beginning of ’94). My predecessor Tom McLean paid for me to do the program, because back in those days, we had money for such professional development. Primarily, the Institute existed to train up-and-coming managers in state government, although there was always a smattering of private sector folks for leavening — which helped give the government types exposure to the private sector, and vice versa. The interaction itself was educational.
It was particularly useful because of the Institute’s teaching method. It was run in conjunction with the Kennedy School at Harvard, and the instructors led the class through real-life case studies, in which we were asked to put ourselves in the places of the public administrators who had navigated their way through a variety of crises and challenges.
Being the newspaper guy, I had to overcome a great deal of distrust and wariness on the part of my classmates, which was essential to the kind of interaction that the classes called for. Middle managers in government see press types as natural enemies, for a simple reason: Newspapers don’t write about what they do except when there is a problem, consequently we help create the phenomenon we see in the comments on this blog — a lot of folks in the electorate who only see them in terms of the worst mistakes that anyone like them has ever made, because that’s what gets written about.
But we managed to get a good enough rapport going to have some pretty good discussions going. Frequently, my role was to try to convince people that having the problem (in the case study) get into the newspapers was not the end of the world. It was interesting, and I think helpful to having a better-run state government.
Does that mean I think lawmakers should have overridden the veto. No, not if they were going to leave the prisons, mental health, our roads and 4K all underfunded. But if they were going to override either this or their pet "Competitive" Grants Program, they should have overridden this.
So guess which one they overrode — "overwhelmingly"?
Just so you know that I’ve been doing some actual work on these days that I’ve been tossing out pretty lightweight posts in a desperate effort to keep y’all interested, I’ll point first to our endorsements page, and then give you another quick gallery of pictures from the endless interview…
The pictures that follow are, respectively:
And we have a couple or three or four more coming…
Here are the pics…
Last night, while my wife was monopolizing the TV watching "So You Think You Can Dance" (that’s OK; I can watch that "Sopranos" DVD tonight), I sent a heads-up to my former pupil who has since gone over to the Dark Side, Joel Wood. Basically, as I told him, I didn’t want to be talking about him behind his back:
Hey, Joel, how are you?
I thought I’d better tell you, as an old friend, that I mentioned you on my blog, in the context of sort kinda disagreeing with your perspective on things:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/05/hey-wait-a-minu.htmlYou see, I’ve become one of those single-payer radicals. It’s funny because I’m not radical about anything else. This is the one thing I agree with Dennis Kucinich about; I promise. Here are a couple of columns in which I set out my thoughts on the issue several months ago:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/11/health-care-ref.html
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/12/can-anyone-any.htmlAnyway, I thought I should give you the chance to demolish my arguments, which you probably can do, on account of being a professional in this particular policy area and all…
I didn’t want to be talking about you and your industry behind your back.
And besides, I wanted an excuse to say "Hey."
So, hey.
— Brad
About an hour later, Joel wrote back, which was nice, because it was good to hear from him. But that’s not the good part; that’s not the schlag, the whipped cream atop the dessert — the lagniappe, if you will (as Johnny Malone used to say — you remember, Joel). The good part is that this now-senior lobbyist for the insurance industry wrote back, at 10:45 p.m. on a Thursday night, on his Blackberry from a cocktail party. If you put this stuff in a movie, they wouldn’t believe it.
Anyway, he promises to send a more substantial rebuttal to my ramblings later. In the meantime, this is all he said:
Total kick, and a delight.
But as I’m still in cocktails at a soiree with my benefits guys at the Homestead (every horrible image you imagine!), I can only glean so much from my peckings on the BlackBerry. First blush is that you have some insightful readers who make my case. But certainly when I get back to town, or to a regular computer screen, I shall respond as a good Republican insurance lobbyist should, probably with some invective about Michael Moore and commie journalists getting their due through diminished circulation. But, in the meantime, I am stupified that this stuff gets read by people I care about, and thoroughly thrilled that you would give it the time of day. And very happy to hear from you …. You would be proud to know my editors and colleagues, to whom I forward this, are no less redistributionist than you. …. Miss you!
Thanks Brad.
j
Consider that a preview.
Needless to say, I get a lot of unsolicited, pure junk mail in my line of work. Most of it goes into the round file with hardly a glance. But I guess I was moving slow or even more easily distracted than usual today (and folks, if I weren’t easily distracted, I wouldn’t be doing a blog), but I happened to notice something today that made me say, wait a minute… and actually open one of the pieces of junk.
The junk in question is this slick magazine with a snazzy cover called Edge. or Leader’s Edge (look at the cover and tell me which one it is). It’s a big one, as you can see compared to The Economist above. To the extent that it has registered on my consciousness at all in the past, I’ve just thought it was some generic thing aimed at business execs, a category in which I fit only technically (on account of having the title of V.P.). But today, I noticed there was, shall we say, a theme running through the headlines of the articles teased on the cover:
The last one grabbed me, as it seemed to be about health insurance, and seemed to suggest that we
currently have a system that works. Those of you who know me know that I strongly disagree.
So I opened the mag, and eventually found the masthead, and sure enough, this is a publication of "The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers." It’s full of institutional advertising from such luminaries as UnitedHealthcare.
But that’s not the good part, the part that prompted me to write this. The good part is that in the few seconds I spent flipping through this thing, I ran across the name of an old friend, Joel Wood.
I first met Joel when I was a reporter operating out of a bureau in rural West Tennessee back in the 70s. He was a student who wrote for one of the local weeklies. Later, when I was the news editor of The Jackson Sun, he was one of my best reporters. But after the 1982 election, he left the paper to become press secretary to Don Sundquist, who had been elected to Congress over a candidate whose campaign press secretary was another former writer at the paper (whom I later hired back, as it happened). Sundquist later became governor of Tennessee. But before that happened, Joel became a lobbyist for the insurance industry. In one of those startling coincidences that make Washington seem like such a small town, I ran into him years later when I was showing one of my kids around the Capitol.
Anyway, I last ran into Joel three years ago at a Jackson Sun reunion. True to form, he kept doing deals via cell phone while the reunion was going on, as seen in the picture I shot below.
Now that I’ve read his mag, and read in his latest column (the one about destroying "what works," which isn’t on line yet; here’s a previous one) that "I’ve been blessed with terrific health benefits in my 15 years at the council," which he says is a good thing given his lifestyle, which he says consists of "attending political cocktail parties professionally in the selfless service of our member firms," all I can say is…
Joel, it’s not too late. Come home! All is forgiven. And don’t bring the phone this time…
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
OVER THE last 10 days, we’ve started running our endorsements of candidates for state and local offices in the June 10 primaries.
Our choices are the end result of a process based in years, even decades, of observation of the issues and institutions involved — and in some case, long exposure to the candidates. The most visible and obvious part of the process is the candidate interview (we’ve done 41 so far). But the process doesn’t start, and usually doesn’t end, with that ritual.
Sometimes, our editorial board will produce a ringing, enthusiastic endorsement of one candidate over his or her competition. Examples of that are the ones favoring John McCain and Barack Obama in their respective primaries back in January.
Such clear, unequivocal choices are rare. Far more often, we’ll pick our way through a thicket of pros and cons.
But we always try to choose in the end. That’s because one of these candidates is going to occupy the office, and that matters. It affects your life. It determines the laws you will live under, how those laws are enforced, and the taxes you will pay. On rare occasion in years past we have thrown up our hands and said “We can’t in good conscience endorse either of these candidates.” But that is a cop-out and a disservice to readers, and I regard each time it has happened as a failure.
In fact, I suspect that the most difficult and uncomfortable endorsements are sometimes the most valuable, because you can see us wrestling more strenuously than usual with the very issues you must consider as the voter, whether you agree with where we end up or not.
Consider this excerpt from our endorsement of Rep. John Scott last week for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Patterson (his opponent is Vince Ford, longtime Richland 1 school board member):
Mr. Scott is the fighter, the man with a chip on his shoulder who, although he understands the big picture, often gravitates to smaller matters. Mr. Ford is the consensus-builder, smooth and polished and focused on the big picture.
Normally, with such similar positions on policy, the better choice for the gentleman’s club that is the state Senate would be the candidate with Mr. Ford’s profile….
But in the end, there is probably no greater unresolved challenge in the Midlands than the failure of our largest school district to overcome its problems. If we endorsed Mr. Ford for higher office, at what point would we hold anyone accountable for the turmoil, confusion and failures of the district?
We wouldn’t have been comfortable either way. But we made a choice, and we stated why; make of it what you will.
To contradict a widely held assumption, endorsements aren’t about whom we like personally. If that were the case, we’d have endorsed Sheri Few for the Republican nomination to replace Rep. Bill Cotty in House District 79. She’s smart, energetic, personable, and understands how the Legislature works.
She came in with a deficit on our scorecard — her vehement advocacy for vouchers and/or tax credits for private school tuition. That made the choice easy two years ago, when she ran against Mr. Cotty — one of the most dedicated and effective supporters of public education in the Republican caucus.
But as important as that issue is, it doesn’t automatically trump everything. And during our interview this time, I found myself mentally building a case for endorsing Ms. Few. But then, she brought up the cigarette tax, in order to make sure we knew she would never increase it, even in order to lower another tax. The good that a higher cigarette tax would do, in terms of fewer teens hooked on tobacco, did not move her. Her dedication to the ideology of never, ever raising a tax under any circumstances reminded me of how shockingly rigid she is. I was reminded of something I had written on my blog after we met her in 2006, that “she clings firmly to ideology, even when it doesn’t seem to fit her own experience….”
She has many traits that would make her an effective lawmaker. But effectiveness in the service of an ideology more extreme than that held by Gov. Mark Sanford would not be a good thing. So we endorsed the less experienced, less savvy David Herndon, who was motivated to run by his wish to stand against some of the worst things Ms. Few stands for.
Other difficult choices lie ahead. We haven’t decided yet what to do in Senate District 23. There, the leading candidates are Jake Knotts, a populist with quite a few, shall we say, rough edges, and the much smoother, more conventional Republican Katrina Shealy, whom powerful interests are backing in an effort to take out Mr. Knotts for the sin of having made an enemy of our governor.
That one won’t be easy. It’s the kind of choice that causes me to have to remind myself that we are blessed to have choices. As tough as some of them are for us — and more to the point, for you as the voter — the “tyranny” of having to choose is far better than the real tyranny of not having a choice.
And please, don’t you cop out. Read our endorsements — and read the rest of the paper, and the mailings you get from the candidates. Go to candidate forums; debate the options with your neighbors. And then, whatever your decision, go out and apply it on June 10. Because in each and every case, one of these folks is going to win that office, and will be calling the shots for all of us until the next election.
You may or may not have noticed that we never took an editorial position on the 5 Points South project — the six-story private development that would include two stories of city parking. There were plenty of words on the editorial page on the subject, both pro and con — just not from us. There were letters and op-eds, but no editorial.
This is because we had no consensus on the subject. The problem was me. I didn’t like the project. Why? It just seemed too tall to be right there. It didn’t move me to know that there were other buildings even taller just a block or two away. This would loom right over the heart of Five Points — right over the new fountain forming a gateway at Saluda and Blossom. Besides — and I realize this is purely a personal whim, so I wouldn’t have taken an editorial position on the strength of this; it just didn’t help — I don’t like parking garages. I’ll park half a mile a way and walk rather than get tangled up in a parking garage. Something about the tediousness of getting in and out of them. I like to know I can make a quick getaway, or something. I don’t know what it is.
Other members of the board thought the project was fine, but it wasn’t a burning issue to them. That is to say, they didn’t favor it strongly enough to push me on it. And they had their hands full, as did I. We were in the midst of endorsement season, and unfortunately, state primaries come along concurrently with the last few weeks of the legislative session — a doubly busy time for us. So basically, no one had the time to do the research to overcome my objections. So we neither came out for it or against it.
In the last couple of weeks before the city’s final decision (which came Wednesday — it was approved), advocates for the project asked to come in to talk to us. With the pace of interviews we were dealing with (and remember, with our present staffing levels, we all work a full day getting the pages out without any meetings), we weren’t sure whether it would be time well spent, given how far apart we were on it.
But all of that is hard to explain, so Warren and I agreed to meet with the group on Monday. The delegation included Anne Sinclair from city council, our own James D. McCallister (who I believe is associated with Loose Lucy’s — correct me if I’m wrong, Don), Duncan McRae from Yesterday’s, longtime Five Points leader Jack Van Loan, developer Ron Swinson and city and Five Points Association staff.
I asked them all my questions, and I was satisfied with the answers. The parking is needed, not everyone has my aversion to garages, and the setback should avoid looming over the entrance to Five Points excessively. It means a lot that the businesses most likely to be loomed over want it.
James brought up a good point about "Five Points" as a concept being something that some of us react to emotionally and sentimentally. I acknowledged that to me, that wasn’t even Kenny’s, but the Winn-Dixie. And does it really make sense not to have secure parking for patrons and employees because I don’t want a building taller than the Winn-Dixie?
So that leaves, what? Residential neighbors who don’t like it, right? That’s something that should be respected, but does it outweigh the legitimate reasons set out by the advocates?
With the decision coming up on Wednesday, I huddled with Warren and Cindi to see whether they thought we should take a position before the meeting. At the same time, I made the point that while I had been won over, I didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t time left to spend equal time with opponents. (If I had thought they would be that persuasive, we would have tried earlier to make provision for that.) We decided, in light of what we already had planned to say editorially on Tuesday and Wednesday, not to leap to a conclusion editorially at the last moment. Warren did write a column mentioning the project favorably for Wednesday’s paper, but mentioned MORE prominently the smoking ban, which we were already on record as strongly for.
Why a post on why we didn’t take a position, when we take very clear positions on bigger, more controversial issues than this all the time? Well, I just wanted to post the video of James et al., and this provided the excuse.
That makes three of our regulars who have now been featured in picture (and now video) on the blog — Doug Ross, bud, and James.
On this blog, everybody gets famous eventually. And not just for 15 minutes, either — even though this is the future previously referred to.
At the start of this year, when we were about to do our endorsements in the S.C. presidential primaries, I asked the folks downstairs at thestate.com to set us up a page where our current endorsements would reside. As long as we remember to do the right coding on the editorials as we run them, they go to this page, and stay.
It just occurred to me tonight, now that we’ve run a few endorsements in the June 10 primary, to check to see if it’s working. And it is. Here’s the link.
That is, it’s mostly working. For some reason a couple of months back, the pictures that were set up to run with the McCain and Obama endorsements disappeared from the files. I went in and, using my limited understanding of the inner workings of thestate.com, managed to restore the McCain one, but the Obama picture defied my efforts to remove the recently passed expiration date.
I think I might go in and try again on that…