TweetWell, I’ll probably get some heat for that headline, from irony-deprived people who get as put off by it as I did when I heard about the “Don’t blame me; I voted for the white guy” bumper stickers after the 2008 election. But I couldn’t resist; there’s just so much ironic goofiness inherent in the […]
TweetRight after the election, I noticed a Nikki Haley bumper sticker, and it struck me that I hadn’t seen a whole lot of those during the election, which caused me to Tweet: Ever notice how you see more bumper stickers for a candidate AFTER he/she wins than you did before Election Day? I do… It […]
Tweet That was my compromise headline, by the way. My first thought was “How Nikki Haley seduced me,” and boy, that would have driven my traffic up and helped me sell some ads. It would have been a perfectly fine use of figurative language. But I decided against it. I’m not THAT anxious to sell […]
TweetSeveral months ago I went by to check out a “tea party” on the State House steps, and I ran into Boyd Summers in the crowd. He said he was there because he had looked out of his office window and said to himself “I wonder what all those white people are doing down there.” […]
Tweet I’m a guy who likes encountering messages that defy stereotyping. For instance, I was happy this morning to see a car with side-by-side bumper stickers for Republican Leighton Lord and Democrat Jim Rex. Now there, thought I, is a voter who thinks. I may or may not agree with his conclusions, but at least […]
TweetOne conclusion to be drawn from my last two posts — the one about censuring Sanford and the one about the S.C. Senate’s slavish devotion to a bankrupt governing philosophy — is that our state is in desperate need of better leadership. Or just leadership, period, for a change. The importance of this coming gubernatorial […]
Tweet Almost forgot this until I was cleaning pictures off my Blackberry. On the very day that Stanley Dubinsky thoughtfully shared this item from The Onion: Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be November 14, 2009 | Issue 45•46 ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous […]
TweetHere’s the thing that really frosts me about this health care debate: One of the little bargaining chips offered by those milquetoast “liberals” who don’t have the guts to stand up for the public option (and seriously, a “liberal Democrat” who won’t stand up for single-payer or something equally sweeping is a waste of skin) […]
TweetSigh. I really don’t want to have this argument with friends, especially not on the anniversary of 9/11, but I can’t let what Kathryn said over on Facebook stand without responding. It was in reply to this post back here, in which I asserted that Democrats drag themselves down to Joe Wilson’s level when they […]
Tweet By BRAD WARTHENEDITORIAL PAGE EDITORONCE, NOT so long ago, serious people decried the reduction and trivialization of political ideas to the level of a bumper sticker. Some days, I long for the coherence, the relevance, the completeness of bumper stickers. Let’s knit together a few of the unraveled threads that have frayed my mind […]
TweetBy BRAD WARTHENEDITORIAL PAGE EDITORBACK IN JANUARY, I said — on video; you can view it on my blog — that this year’s presidential election presented the American people with a no-lose proposition. It was the first time in my career when the two candidates we (and I) enthusiastically endorsed for their respective nominations […]
TweetThere’s a pleasingly dispassionate treatment on the WSJ op-ed page today of that modern phenomenon of passions gone wild, Bush hatred. Specifically, he deals with the oddity of intellectuals who actually defend hatred — by that word — as a rational response. More broadly, he brushes over the fact of president hatred in general. A […]
TweetThe nature of this discussion is changing for me. That is, the nature of what interests me in it is changing. I find myself becoming less interested in my original question, and more interested in the phenomenal barriers to communication that human beings will erect when having a discussion of political philosophy. I’m going to […]
TweetJohn McCain is wrong about one issue that is of any personal importance to me: the Confederate flag. And of course the moderator in last night’s debate asked him, and only him, about it. That’s fitting, since a moderator should probe a candidate’s weak points in trying to get at the truth. Fortunately for McCain […]
Tweet Today I saw my first actual “Republicans for Sheheen” bumper sticker on an actual vehicle. And this was on an SUV, so it was definitely a real Republican, right? (Just kidding, GOPpers — can’t you take a joke?) I’ve heard, privately, from a lot of folks whom you might otherwise expect to vote Republican […]