Problems with “Mad Men” season opener

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Well, I don’t really know how to put my finger on it; I just found it lacking. As my wife said, if this is an indication of what the new season is going to be like, we’ve waited a long time for nothing good.

A writer for Advertising Age is much more specific in his objections:

I felt George’s pain in the opening scene of Sunday’s episode, however. Don Draper is at lunch with an Ad Age reporter, and our guy’s first line is: “Who is Don Draper?” Don doesn’t know what to say, so he asks how other people responded to such a question. “They say something cute,” our reporter says. “One creative director said he was a lion tamer.”

The Ad Age reporter is taking notes for his story in shorthand. He asks about a Glo-Coat ad that caused “a bit of a squeal,” then says he has enough for his story. “It’s only going to be a few hundred words. The picture may be bigger than the article.” At that point other members of the agency show up, including Roger Sterling, and when the reporter gets up to leave he turns his leg entirely around and explains he lost his real limb in Korea. When he departs, Sterling quips, “They’re so cheap they can’t afford a whole reporter.”

What’s wrong with this picture? No. 1, we never did interviews over lunch; No. 2, we didn’t take notes in shorthand; No. 3 we didn’t ask cute-ass questions; and No. 4, our pictures were never bigger than our stories.

OK, dude; lighten up. It’s a TV show. But yeah, it was lacking.

There was one part I liked. It was when Don Draper makes a pitch to unappreciative clients (or potential clients; I doubt that anything had been signed), and then gets so ticked off at them he storms out of the meeting. Then, when one of his associates follows him out to say something about trying to salvage the situation, Don essentially says Hell, no and marches back in to summarily throw the philistines out of the office.

My wife sort of went, “Whoa!” at such extreme behavior. Which was my cue to say, “That’s essentially what I do at ADCO. That’s my role.”

I can get away with stuff like that now. When I was at the paper, she could see what I did every morning. Now, I can be more mysterious.

Soldier? You mean “sailor,” right?

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

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

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

… it really meant, “U.S. sailor.”

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

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

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

Entire network (CBS) jumps the shark

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First things first: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!

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

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

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

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

12:41 PM Jun 28th

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

9:08 PM Jun 4th

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

7:58 PM May 21st

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

2:30 PM Apr 12th

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

3:34 PM Apr 8th

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

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

11:35 AM Jun 17th

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

3:10 PM May 26th

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

2:00 PM Mar 16th via web

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virtual Front Page, Friday, July 23, 2010

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Just a quick rundown:

Seven EU banks fail stress tests (BBC) — So I don’t know if this means they need a bypass or what, but it sounds bad. Here’s the WSJ version.
Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says (NYT) — Oh. Well, I guess this means that next time, we’ll want them to have it, you know… turned on. Sheesh.
Forecast: Federal budget gap will exceed $1.4 trillion in 2010, 2011 (WashPost) — Which is more than I make in a year. Even more than I made when I was at the paper.
Journalism Legend Daniel Schorr Dies At 93 (NPR) — OK, so he used to get on my nerves. But he was, indeed, a legend.
Biden credits Hollings with his success as VP (thestate.com) — Just to give y’all a taste of that event I missed.
U.S. Losing Ground In College Graduation Race (NPR) — Why back in MY day, we used to graduate — but we didn’t see it as a race.

A quarter of a million page views in one month

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Just an update on how things are going with the blog…

They’re kinda slow on the advertising front because I haven’t tried to sell any in the last few weeks. I really pushed on it during the primary, then slacked off. As y’all know, I do have a job, and while the folks at ADCO love the blog (I keep having to tell one of the partners that if she keeps sending me cool blog fodder she finds on the Web, I’ll never get to my ADCO work), I do need to set priorities. And ad sales have been low on the list. Also, I really want to find somebody to help me sell it for commissions — especially to non-political customers, with whom I am less confident. And I haven’t found anybody yet.

But while the revenue side has been slow, the circulation department is booming.

Last month was my best month ever for readership. I had 254,545 page views. (By the way, page views are the measure I use because that’s the only stat I had available to me on my old blog at the paper, so it’s a meaningful number to me. Other stats for June include 92,713 “Visits” and 1,347,519 “Hits” — but those don’t mean as much to me.) That pretty much stomps the record set the previous June — the month that the Mark Sanford scandal broke and people across the country were looking for SC blogs — of 168,995.

On the old blog — the one that I did as editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper, which meant I was able to promote it from that large print platform — it took me three years to reach a million page views. At June’s pace, it would take me four months.

The biggest month I ever had on my old blog when I was at the paper was 84,472 in January 2008 — the month that the eyes of the nation were on SC because of the presidential primaries. As you can see, I was blogging like mad that month, but back then I just couldn’t get the traffic I do now.

Of course, I don’t expect to get a quarter of a million every month — so far this month (since we don’t have the primaries — and Alvin Greene and alleged scandals about Nikki Haley — driving interest in political news) I’ve had 101,585 so far. That’s more like May, with 148,391. But the trend is ratcheting upward.

Just in case you wanted to know.

“Graham’s courageous stand for the republic”

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After I got done stewing about having screwed up on the Biden thing, I remembered that I owed Cindi Scoppe a phone call. Speaking to her reminded me that I meant to call your attention to The State‘s editorial yesterday, “Graham’s courageous stand for the republic.”

It was really, really good. So good that after I read it at breakfast yesterday, I e-mailed Cindi to say:

Excellent lede today. Did you write that, or did I?

It needs to be said loudly and often.

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t be a compliment to you, but I think Cindi saw it as such. You know, knowing my ego as she does.

But it really did say pretty much everything I would have said — of course, one of the great things about working with Cindi over the years was that she could do that. There was a time when I felt like I had to write any important edit about state government or politics to get the message just right, and the right tone and feel into it (to please me, anyway). But I realized shortly after I brought Cindi up from the newsroom that if I just spent a few minutes explaining to her what I wanted, in a few minutes she’d turn it around into an edit that was everything I had wanted, and just as good as if I’d written it — and several hours faster.

The great thing about this was that I didn’t have occasion to tell her what I wanted (you may have heard, I don’t word there any more), and yet I got it anyway. But more important than it being what I wanted, it’s what South Carolina needed to hear about Graham’s decision to vote for Elena Kagan’s nomination, and his cogent explanation of his reasoning.

An excerpt:

THROUGHOUT the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems.

But as Sen. Graham told the Judiciary Committee, things are changing…. What matters today are individual agendas, and punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with their every opinion.

That’s a threat not just to the independence of the judiciary but to the republic itself…

As when he voted to confirm Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment a year ago, Sen. Graham said Wednesday that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have appointed, but Mr. Obama won the election; the job of the Senate is merely to stop a president from appointing people who are objectively unfit to be judges.

Will Ms. Kagan join the liberal wing of the court? Probably. Just as President Bush’s appointments joined the conservative wing. We wish there weren’t such clearly defined wings…. But that’s a political preference we have; not a constitutional standard appropriate for senators to consider. As far as confirmation goes, there’s nothing wrong with Ms. Kagan. Just as there was nothing wrong with Sonia Sotomayor. Or with John Roberts. Or with Samuel Alito. And any senator who votes or voted against any of them was simply wrong.

But go read the whole thing. And share it with every South Carolinian you know.

Everything conspires against me, including myself (See you next time, Joe)

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Well, I was sort of looking forward to seeing ol’ Joe Biden again for the first time since fall 2007. He can be quite entertaining, especially when he’s talking about his old buddy Fritz Hollings. Also, I hadn’t seen Fritz in a while, and was interested to know how he was doing.

So I was glad to RSVP that I would indeed attend the dedication ceremony for Fritz’ new library, and grateful to Harris Pastides et al. for remembering to invite me. (Still am, so thanks again for including me in your plans.) Then, after I RSVPed, I put it on my calendar and put it out of my mind.

Then this morning, I had a new thought: It was Friday. I knew from memory that I had no meetings with ADCO clients. So I decided to go casual like everybody else at the office. Or casual for me, anyway. I put on some worn-out, rumple gray chinos and a sport shirt I bought several years ago for $3 at a Wal-Mart up in Pennsylvania. And a jacket from an old khaki suit. I have to wear a jacket, so I have someplace to put my stuff (wallet, keys, notebook, other junk).

And no tie. Which to me is like walking down the street naked. This is only like the second time I’ve done this since starting at ADCO.

Then at breakfast, I read that the Hollings library thing was today. OK, so I do have something to do today. Forgot that. Fine. It will give me something for the blog, maybe something good.

Then on the way out after breakfast, I saw myself in a mirror. Oh, no. I was going to have to go all the way back home and change. I looked like a seedy character from a Graham Greene novel, on acid (the strangely colored shirt being the acid part).

(At this point, you highly organized people are wondering, “Why don’t you consult your calendar every morning when you’re getting dressed, so you know how to dress ahead of time?” And you’re wondering it with that really irritating tone that highly organized people have. Well, I’ll tell you … years ago, I decided to dress in a suit and tie every day so that it didn’t matter what I had to do that day, since often things came up during the day that I couldn’t anticipate, things that weren’t on my calendar yet anyway. So I started waiting to consult my calendar when I got in. It just had not struck me, standing half asleep in the closet this morning, that deciding to do something as radical as not wearing a tie required entirely different assumptions about daily procedures. In the future, I’ll think of that.)

But I needed to get to the office and do SOME work. So I went, and feeling like I neglected the blog yesterday, I posted something quick and easy and then plunged into my e-mail and getting organized on a couple of ADCO projects. Next thing I knew, it was 11:13, with the Hollings thing starting at 12.

For a second, I thought about going as I was. That way there’d be no rush. I could walk over to the event. But then I thought, no, your invitation is at home. And this isn’t a typical university event; you’re going to be dealing with the Secret Service, and you know what obsessives they are. They aren’t just going to say, “Oh, it’s Brad; come on in.”

So I ran home, knowing I could still be on time if unless I ran into really bad traffic.

When I’m a block from the office, I realize I don’t have my camera. Damn, damn, damn. Turn around? Try to swing back by the office to get it on my way after changing and getting the invitation? Neither. I decided I’d make do with the Blackberry. I wanted to be on time. Any other event like this, the speaking wouldn’t start until half an hour into it, but the Secret Service was involved. I had to be on time.

And at this point, I would have been. At least, I would have made it by noon — fairly easily.

So I get home, a little impatient with the traffic, but it’s OK. I’m good. I change into a good suit, white shirt, tie. No problem. And then I start looking for the invitation. It’s not on the dresser. Damn, damn, damn. It’s not on the desk in my home office. Damn, damn… I suddenly remembered: Even though I had received the invitation at home, when I had called to RSVP, I had done it from the office.

Oh, damndamndamndamndamndamn.

At this point, having turned up the thermostat in the house when I’d left that morning, I’m starting to sweat in the suit. So I jump back in the car, and rave at the traffic all the way back from the office. I’ve got the AC on me full blast, but the sweat is taking hold. I go to park in front of ADCO, and for the first time since I’ve started here, there’s a guy standing right there checking meters. So I get out my SmartCard and put 20 minutes on the thing, when I just need 20 seconds. Then I rush up the stairs, tripping on one, causing a co-worker to call out, “Are you OK?” Yeahyeahyeah, I’m fine.

The invitation is not readily at hand. I start picking up piles of paper and other junk and rifling through it, dropping every pile on the floor as I finish going through it. Of course, the invitation is at the bottom of the very last pile. I jam it into my pocket and grab my camera, long as I’m here…

Damndamndamn…

I get back in the car, head over toward campus, and as I start looking for a parking space, it’s noon. Well, I failed. By now I’m sweating like a pig in the new suit, and I’ve gone to so much trouble that I figure I’ll try to go anyway. Luckily (my first bit of luck all day), I find a space only a block away, since it’s summer. I get out, put an hour and a half on the meter, take off my coat and head for the library. Sweating like mad.

As I’m heading there, it occurs to me that I don’t know exactly where I’m supposed to go, beyond the fact that it’s the Thomas Cooper library. The new thing is on the other side of the building, so where should I approach from?

I’ll bet the invitation will tell me…

Mind you, this is the first time that I had had any reason to look at the invitation beyond the time, date and place (“Noon on Friday, July 23, 2010,” it had said). I mean, what else do you look at an invitation for, aside from dress code and how to RSVP? And sure enough, there was a card inserted into the invitation with a map on one side saying to enter through the library main entrance. Good. That I can find.

Then, on the other side of the card from the map, there was a bulleted list of information, which if I had noticed before I suppose I had thought it was information about the new collection. You know how there’s usually an insert about that sort of thing. But it wasn’t. It was a list of instructions beginning with “Please bring this ticket with you to the dedication ceremony.”

Well, I had done that, but my heart sank. I had a premonition that there were going to be other requirements, perhaps requirements that had something to do with the fact that even though I was only five minutes late to an event that I knew would involve everybody being carefully checked at the front door, meaning people would still be filing in at this point… and the front of the library was deserted…

Yep. There it was. Third bullet: “Doors open at 10:00 a.m. All attendees must be in the Thomas Cooper Library by 11:45 a.m. Please allow ample time to find parking, walk to the Thomas Cooper Library, and be processed through event screening. There will be no exceptions made to this time frame.”

So that was that. After all that, I had failed to make it. I was too hot and harried at this point even to go, “Damndamndamn” any more.

But being the world’s most persistent optimist, rather than turning back to the car, since I had already walked halfway, and since I had spent a rushed hour trying to get this far, I kept going to the door.

And was turned away by a USC security guy who explained that the doors to the event were closed and the Secret Service, as is their wont, weren’t allowing anyone else in. “No exceptions.” I saw the Secret Service guys standing there, looking around with no more crowd to deal with, and reflected from long experience that no exceptions meant no exceptions. I’ve been pushed out of the way and yelled at for standing in the wrong place by these guys often enough in my career to know that they are no respecters of persons, and there is no arguing with their procedures (which is why I was never fond of covering events that involved them, since as a reporter I always sort of assumed that boundaries were for those other, less enterprising, reporters). I lamely, foolishly, gave the guy my excuse about having to run home looking for my invitation, because at a moment like that you want people to know that you weren’t being cavalier about the time, and he was sympathetic, but…

Sheesh.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t have a report for you on Joe Biden’s visit, or on how Fritz is doing. And why I’ll have to get the sweat cleaned out of my good suit even though I didn’t even make it to the event I put it on for. And why I’m feeling the frustration of knowing that the punctual people among you, the people who have judged and harangued and lectured me all my life because I’ve always tried to do to much and put myself in these situations, will smugly judge me again for this failure. Y’all are like that.

But I tried. I tried hard. It just didn’t work out.

Sorry, Fritz — I had wanted to see you again. Sorry, Joe. Sorry, Harris, for not making it to your event. I really wanted to.

Dang.

Remember when MTV showed VIDEOS?

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This item this morning made me think of something:

NEW YORK – MTV held a solid lead among 15 networks for its representation of gay characters last season, according to a report released Friday.

In its fourth annual Network Responsibility Index, the Gay & LesbianAlliance Against Defamation found that of MTV’s 207.5 hours of original prime-time programming, 42 percent included content reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people. This earned MTV the first-ever “Excellent” rating from GLAAD.

“MTV programs like ‘The Real World’ and ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ have offered richly diverse portrayals of gay and transgender peoplethat help Americans better understand and accept our community,” said GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios.

And the something it made me think of was this: Remember when MTV showed … music videos? As in, that was its entire point?

I loved music videos. Back at the start of the 80s, when I didn’t get MTV on my cable in Jackson, TN, I would stay up late on Friday night (I think it was Friday — or was it Saturday?) and watch a program on TBS that was nothing but an hour or so of videos.

As a new art form, it was awesome. They combined the appeal of popular music with cinema in a way that stimulated pleasure centers in my brain that no other form had yet discovered. It was startling the way those fleeting images filled out and magnified the impact of the music. There was a popular music renaissance based entirely on the fact that new bands were well suited to this form. I found it entrancing. Before music videos, I would tell people that if I could wave a wand and do anything other than be a newspaper editor, it would be to direct movies. In the early 80s, I switched that idle wish to making music videos.

(And yes, I realize that something like music videos existed previously, such as the music sequences in “A Hard Day’s Night,” which spawned a new device in loads of other movies. And then there was the occasional free-standing video — film, actually, in those days, I suppose — with two impressive examples being Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” But MTV launched an explosion of the form, and innovated the concept of continuous videos like listening continuously to songs on the radio, with VeeJays instead of DeeJays.)

Of course, once I had access to MTV I could watch music videos any time. My favorite time was when I was working out. I used to go down into the basement gym at The State, get on the treadmill and crank up MTV or VH1, and the time just sped by as I sweated and got healthy.

But even then — the late 80s and early 90s — MTV itself started to betray the new medium, by polluting its schedule with such unmitigated trash as “The Real World.” And look at the harm that has done to the world. Now, we have hundreds of TV channels to choose from, but at any given moment, it seems that more than half of them are showing this putrid garbage that involves appallingly stupid narcissists obsessing about their mock-private lives. It astounds me that even one person on the planet would ever watch this junk for two seconds, much less support it to this extent.

MTV started it all, to its everlasting shame. And it started with such a wonderful product…

Eat your heart out, George Costanza

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Sorry I haven’t posted today, but I’ve been busy.

I’m just branching out into all sorts of new fields of endeavor since becoming a Mad Man and joining ADCO — exploiting latent talents I didn’t even know I had.

Here’s the latest: Hand model. Soon, you might be seeing my hand on a billboard down in the Lowcountry. That’s because we needed background art — of anonymous hands operating office equipment — for a board we were doing for a client. Karen and I ran over to the client’s showroom to shoot it earlier this week, and she shot a bunch of exposures of my hands pretending to push buttons. I shot some of her doing the same, but it was Karen’s camera (a very nice Nikon SLR) and she’ll be picking the image we use, and in my experience, when given a choice, photographers prefer their own work.

So this is my big shot. A number of years ago I pressed The State to include in a billboard campaign several boards highlighting the faces of my associates Cindi Scoppe, Warren Bolton and Claudia Brinson. I thought then that someone in Marketing (The State actually had a marketing department back then) would say, “We need one of Brad, too!” But they didn’t, drat the luck. So my colleagues got famouser and I didn’t.

But this is my big break. And I’m going to be really careful with my hands. I’m not going to mess them up the way George Costanza did his. (Yes, now I, too, have “hand,” George!)

And in a way, this kind of notoriety is sweeter than having people know your face. I won’t be pestered for autographs. I’ll be able to sit in a restaurant, for instance, undisturbed and overhear women at an adjoining table:

FIRST WOMAN: Have you seen that wonderful new office equipment ad?

SECOND WOMAN: Those hands! They’re so… so hot!

FIRST WOMAN: Yes! They make me all quivery…

… while I smile enigmatically, perusing the menu.

Just please — don’t hate me because my hands are beautiful.

Here's pointing at YOU, kid...

Virtual Front Page, Wednesday, July 21, 2010

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This morning, reading the paper, I was kicking myself because I missed a couple of late-breaking local stories (the full-time mayor recommendation and Sheheen releasing his tax records — both of which, to my shame, I had to read for the first time in the paper this morning) for yesterday’s front. But hey, I’ve got a reporting staff of one, so cut me a break.

The hard thing today is coming up with a lede. Here’s what I have at this hour:

Obama Signs Sweeping Financial Overhaul Into Law (NPR) — Since this is anticlimactic, since we knew it was going to happen, this is a very low-key lede — one column, and maybe not quite at the top of the page. But it actually happened, unlike other things competing with it (Bernanke speculating; oil companies promising to do something), so lede it is.
Bernanke Sees No Quick End to High Rate of Joblessness (NYT) — In testimony before Congress today.
Oil Majors Building Disaster-Response System (WSJ) — The companies would pool resources to be able to respond properly next time — if there is a next time. There won’t be if drilling isn’t allowed, and this proposal is aimed to help persuade Washington to allow it.
White House Apologizes to Fired Official (NYT) — Wow. It’s pretty amazing how easily the White House let itself get railroaded by a smear from a right-wing blogger.
Sheheen Challenges Haley to be Transparent (The State) — This one’s old now because I failed to hear about it yesterday, but it’s significant as sort of the opening shot in the fall campaign.
Panel urges full-time mayor (The State) — With the election of a mayor who actually ran on the issues, we seem poised to finally act on two long-overdue reforms that have never gotten anywhere: A strong-mayor system for Columbia, and consolidation of city and county services. Big stuff for Columbia’s future.

Alvin Greene not really anything new for SC

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At lunch today, I said something about “Mad Men,” and a lady friend mentioned that one of the actresses from the show was on the cover of Playboy. This grabbed my attention, although I calmed down a bit when she told me it was NOT Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Holloway. Yes. I was disappointed, too. But I wanted to know who it was, and was already trying to think whether an actress from “Mad Men” being on the cover would be a good enough excuse to buy a copy, the way I justified to my wife buying the Jimmy Carter interview edition (think, honey — all those interesting articles!), while the lady did some hunting on her iPhone — and came up with the picture.

And as I looked, and admitted I didn’t recognize her, but might if given the opportunity to study additional photos more closely, she said, “You know, this is what Alvin Greene got arrested for.”

Which is true. And in fact, the more I think about it, that arrest is perhaps the one thing that explains why we’re so flabbergasted that he is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. There are other things. His unemployment, for instance. But I was unemployed for a year, and I’d vote for me. The fact that he lives with his Dad? Why wouldn’t a single, unemployed guy, recently out of the Army, stay with his aged father? As for being out of the Army: Sure, we don’t know why he was involuntarily released, but is it all that unusual to have unanswered questions about a candidate’s military service, if he even has any? Do we really know where W. was when he was supposed to be on Guard duty? Has anyone yet learned exactly where and how John Kerry was wounded to get those Purple Hearts that were his early ticket home? Mr. Greene was honorably discharged, and how much else to we need to know.

OK, so he’s no public speaker, and his grasp of the issues is unimpressive. Whoop-te-doo.

Allow me to remind you that this state’s last Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate was no great bargain either. Remember Bob Conley? He, too, was a bit on the flaky side. Sure, he actually had some campaign materials, but they reflected a set of values that seemed oddly out of place in a Democrat, and would make a reasonable person wonder how in the world he won the nomination.

Here’s what I wrote about him in The State’s endorsement of Lindsey Graham:

Bob Conley is one of those anomalous candidates who occasionally step into political vacuums — a nominal Democrat who takes the position of the angry right wing on immigration and would abolish the Federal Reserve. His Web site touts words of support from Ron Paul and the wife of Patrick Buchanan.

Bob Conley

In fact, he sounded for all the world like he was running under the Tea Party banner, before we’d even heard of the Tea Party. For more about Bob and his views, check this campaign flier.

He was fringe. He was out there. He was nobody’s concept of a Democrat. In fact, the few views that Alvin Greene has expressed are a far better fit for the party. So how did this guy win the nomination? The same way Alvin Greene did. Zero attention was paid to the race beforehand because Lindsey Graham, like Jim DeMint today, seemed like a sure bet (once he got past the extremists in his own party in the primary). So voters went into the booth without crucial information — and inexplicably, inexcusably voted for someone they knew nothing about. Sound familiar?

It could just as easily have been Alvin Greene — and this time, it was.

There is very little new in this situation. So the guy faces charges from showing pictures to a co-ed? Hey, he could have been an ax murderer for all the voters knew.

So why are we so worked up about Alvin Greene, as though nothing like this has ever happened before? Here’s my theory: The national media had their eyes on SC because of the craziness surrounding Nikki Haley, and just before they turned away, they went “Hey wait — and these nuts also elected some guy they’d never heard of…?” And from that, another star was born.

Silly national media. They didn’t realize we do this all the time.

… but no pledges, please, Vincent

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Having praised Vincent Sheheen for challenging Nikki Haley to actually be transparent for a change (since that’s, you know, her platform), I’ve gotta say I’m with Nikki on this:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen has signed a pledge, promising to make an effort to appoint qualified women to senior level positions on state boards and commissions if he is elected.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley declined to sign the pledge.

Like Nikki, I wouldn’t sign the pledge, either.

Now settle down, ladies. (If you’re OK with me calling you ladies.) Nothing against hiring women.

The problem is the pledge.

My objection may seem a bit wonkish and technical, but please attend:

I believe candidates should not sign pledges about what they will do or not do in office. The cause doesn’t matter; the problem is the pledge itself. It undermines the integrity of the political process. Candidates may speak of general intentions, but specific promises — particularly when taken to the extreme of putting them in writing — are a bad idea.

It is essential to self-government, and particularly to our system of representative democracy, that once in office a public servant should study the actual situation that he faces in office (which can never be accurately, fully anticipated before the election), and engage as an honest, unencumbered agent in deliberation with others to reach a decision about what to do.

You think this is just a fine point, a mere ephemeral abstraction? Well, you liberals applauding Vincent for this stand should take a moment and contemplate the severe damage done to South Carolina by the fact that Grover Norquist got so many GOP lawmakers to sign his anti-tax pledge. It has made comprehensive tax reform impossible, and led to a downward ratcheting of tax revenues that had nothing to do with the state’s actual spending needs, and everything to do with Norquist’s aim of shrinking government to the point that he can drown it in a bathtub.

But whether you like the aim of the pledge or not, they are a bad idea — that includes the pledge that Democrats were passing around awhile back to promise to spend more on education — because they shackle an officeholder from dealing in the future with the actual, practical situation that lies before him.

So Vincent — please do express your desire to see more qualified women serve in your administration. That’s great. But no pledges, please.

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

Good move, Vincent. Now release your e-mails, too

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Finally, after a couple of weeks hiatus, there’s a sign of life from the Sheheen campaign, and it’s a good one. Vincent released his last 10 years of tax records, and challenged Nikki Haley to do the same.

Normally, this kind of gesture wouldn’t mean much to me. But it means a lot in the context of this particular contest. As you may recall, refusing to release the last 10 years of her tax records is one of several rather glaring ways in which the Republican running on a “transparency” platform has refused to be transparent. Only after Gresham Barrett pressured her into releasing the last three years (saying, when asked by The State, that releasing 10 years would be an “excessive” amount of transparency) did we learn that she had previously failed to disclose that Wilbur Smith had paid her$42,500 for her influence.

So laying his tax records out and challenging Ms. Transparency 2010 to do the same is perfectly appropriate, and a service to the voters.

Now I’d like to see him release his publicly-issued e-mail records. That is, if he hasn’t done so already (I didn’t get a release on the tax records and had to read it in the paper of all things, so for all I know I missed one on the e-mail records, too). There is no way that a candidate running entirely on trying to tear the veil of secrecy from the Legislature should be hiding her e-mail records behind a special exemption to FOI law that lawmakers carved out for themselves. No way at all.

I did think this was of note:

The couple’s charitable giving has risen as they earned more money. The couple reported charitable donations of $1,025 in 2000, or 1.4 percent of their income. In 2009, the couple reported $7,301 in charitable donations on $372,509 in income, or 2 percent of their total earnings.

Haley and her husband, Michael, earned a combined $196,282 in 2009 and gave $971 to charity, or one half of one percent of total earnings.

Yeah, OK, so he’s giving more than Nikki, but 2 percent is pretty sad. Maybe this doesn’t include giving to the church. I mean, we Catholics are notorious for not tithing but come on, Vincent.

At least he’s not hiding the fact, though.

But first, Graham gets cheap shot from the left

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Today everybody and his brother in the national media is writing about how Lindsey Graham can expect attacks from the right wing of his own party for voting to confirm Elena Kagan.

But they reckoned without him getting hit by a cheap shot from the left — from the S.C. Democratic Party, specifically:

DeMint and Graham Place Partisanship Over SC

COLUMBIA-Today South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint held tight to their Republican Party principles by voting against legislation to restore unemployment benefits to workers who have been out of work for more than six months. Despite the senators’ efforts to continue a Republican filibuster of the bill, the measure passed 60-40.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler called Graham and DeMint’s votes shortsighted and wrong.

“It’s shameful that Senator Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint would ignore the needs of thousands of hardworking South Carolina families for the sake of partisanship. We can’t afford to play politics in a state where the unemployment rate continues to be well above the national average. Our senators should have stood with their fellow Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and done the right thing for South Carolina,” said Fowler.

Really. Not a word about his courage in voting for Kagan — nothing about the actual news that he made today. No, the Democratic Party — being a political party, and therefore incapable of mastering anything more complex than “him Republican; them all alike” — attacks him with the slur of saying he’s no less a knee-jerk ideologue than Jim DeMint.

And that’s outrageous.

Virtual Front Page, Tuesday, July 20, 2010

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Yesterday was sufficiently newsless that I saw little point in compiling this page (isn’t it liberating? none of that “gotta-put-out-the-paper-anyway” tyranny I lived with for 35 years), but today there’s more happening:

Senate advances jobless benefits legislation (WashPost) — After all that Obama drama, the job gets done.
S.C. jobless rate shrinks to 10.7% (CRBG) — But only because 8,000 of us gave up and quit looking for a job…
Graham is panel’s lone GOP vote for Kagan (WSJ) — Which made him the only senator on the committee of either party not voting slavishly along partisan lines. If the Republicans don’t want him any more, can the UnParty have him?
Sidebar on Graham political risk (NPR) — Pretty much all the national media are watching to see how Lindsey weathers the risky experience of thinking for himself. They’ve seen, with Bob Inglis, how risky that can be in SC. Actually, a better sidebar might be the WashPost one I cited on a previous post.
Cameron: Don’t blame BP for Lockerbie bomber release (BBC) — The new Tory PM, visiting this country, sticks up for the oil giant back home.
E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon (NYT) — I thought that was kind of an interesting take-note-of sort of thing. As the NYT said in its lede, “Monday was a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future.”

Graham’s vote for Kagan, in his own words

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To follow up on the previous, here’s how Lindsey Graham explained his vote for Elena Kagan for the court.

I have defended, and will defend, our senior senator for his thoughtfulness, while at the same time being mortified that it is necessary to defend someone for acting with intellectual honesty and not acting like a partisan automaton. What has our country come to that this sort of thought-based action has to be defended? What happened to us that such principle has become so rare?

In any case, he defends himself better than I could.

I like in particular that he gave a Federalist explanation for his decision. It harks back to a time when intelligence and principle were not rare at all in this country:

Graham Supports Kagan Nomination

WASHINGTON – Citing the Constitutional and historical role the Senate has played in Supreme Court nominations, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today said he would support the nomination of Elena Kagan.

“No one, outside of maybe John McCain, spent more time trying to beat President Obama than I did,” said Graham. “But we lost and President Obama won.”

Graham cited Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Number 76 in listing the reasons he would vote for Kagan. Graham noted Hamilton wrote, “To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate? I answer that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though in general a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, would tend generally to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from family connection, from personal attachment, and from a view to popularity.”

“The Constitution puts a requirement on me, as a senator, to not replace my judgment for the President’s,” said Graham. “I’m not supposed to think of the 100 reasons I would pick somebody different. It puts upon me a standard that stood the test of time: Is the person qualified? Is it a person of good character? Are they someone that understands the difference between being a judge and a politician? And, quite frankly, I think she’s passed all those tests.”

“Are we taking the language of the Constitution that stood the test of time and putting a political standard in the place of a constitutional standard?” asked Graham. “Objectively speaking, things are changing, and they’re unnerving to me. The court is the most fragile of the three branches. So while it is our responsibility to challenge and scrutinize the court, it is also our obligation to honor elections, respect elections, and protect the court.”

“I view my role as a United States Senator in part by protecting the independence of the judiciary, and by making sure that hard-fought elections have meaning in terms of their results within our Constitution,” said Graham. “At the end of the day, Ms. Kagan is not someone I would have chosen, but I think she will serve honorably.”

#####

I, too, demand that the Senate vote on… Dang, they already did…

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Dang it! Like the president, I, too meant to demand that the Senate vote on extending job benefits — knowing, as did the president, that they were going to — so that when they did, I could revel in my power.

But they went ahead and did it before I could set out my ultimatum. I was gonna do it in no uncertain terms, too.

But now I just look foolish. That’s OK, I’ve had lots of practice.

Hey, the president looked pretty silly, too, with his faux partisan showdown talk. From this morning’s AP story:

WASHINGTON – With a new face and a 60th vote for breaking a Republican filibuster, Senate Democrats are preparing to restore jobless checks for 2.5 million people whose benefits ran out during a congressional standoff over deficit spending.

But first, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies are pressing for maximum political advantage, blaming Republicans for an impasse that halted unemployment checks averaging $309 a week for those whose eligibility had expired.

Obama launched a fresh salvo yesterday, demanding that the Senate act on the legislation – after a vote already had been scheduled for today – and blasting Republicans for the holdup.

“The same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans,” Obama said….

Hey, I agree with President Obama on this. We needed to extend those benefits. But that partisan showboating was beneath him — and ridiculous, given that it was so transparently unnecessary.

Sanford Redux? Let’s pray not. But the long knives ARE likely to come out for Lindsey

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First, the good news: As the one most thoughtful and principled Republican in the United States Senate — a guy who will fairly consider Democratic court nominees, just as he demands the same intellectual honesty from Democrats with Republican nominees — Lindsey Graham today became the only GOP senator to vote Elena Kagan out of committee.

Sure, some of the Republicans who voted against her and Democrats were voting for were voting their convictions, too, but the only person you KNOW was doing so was Lindsey Graham, because there was nothing in it for him politically. Except for the respect of us UnPartisans, and we’re not that powerful a lobby.

So, for the sin of being thoughtful and intellectually honest and really meaning it when he says elections have consequences and presidents’ choices, if qualified, should be given respect by the opposition, back home the yahoos are lining up to run against Lindsey Graham in the 2014 primary.

Really. Because this is South Carolina, where we don’t wait around for crazy; we grab it by the throat and ride it to death.

And of course the national media, from the MSM to Jon Stewart, have come to expect crazy from us, and have even started trying to anticipate it.

Which is why today, on the very day of the Kagan vote, we already have The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza speculating about which Republicans will line up to run against Lindsay.

Frankly, I think it’s an overreaction. I suspect that when all is said and done and four years have passed Lindsey will — if he still wants the seat — face only marginal opposition from within his own party. But given what the nation has seen from the GOP within SC in recent months, who can blame Cilizza for compiling this list?

* Katon Dawson: The former chairman of the state Republican party would have the financial network and connections in the state to make a serious run at Graham. And, he may be looking for a next act after losing out on the Republican National Committee chairmanship in 2009.

* Jeff Duncan: Duncan, a state representative, is the odds-on favorite to replace Rep. Gresham Barrett in the 3rd district this fall. (Graham held that same Upstate seat before being elected to the Senate in 2002.) That would provide a real geographic base from which to run in four years time.

* Mark Sanford: Yes, that Mark Sanford. The soon-to-be-former governor has made clear to political insiders that he is interested in a return to politics and targeting Graham in 2014 might give Sanford enough time to rehab his badly damaged image.

* Trey Gowdy: Gowdy is a heavy favorite to come to Congress this fall after he crushed Rep. Bob Inglis (R) in a primary in the strongly Republican 4th district. He gets rave reviews from smart political people in the state but it remains unclear whether the Senate is an office he covets.

* Mick Mulvaney: Mulvaney, a state senator, is currently running against Rep. John Spratt (D) in the 5th district. Win — or even lose — and he’s likely to be in the Graham primary mix.

* Tom Davis: Davis is a state Senator from Beaufort (in the Lowcountry). He’s also a close ally of GOP gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley. If Haley is elected governor this fall, her allies will be in the catbird’s seat for offices down the line.

“Yes, THAT Mark Sanford.” Just sends chills down the spine, doesn’t it? It that man’s political career is not over, then there is no justice in the political world. And between the kind of insanity that has some Republicans who would actually vote for him again (and you know there are a lot of them), and enough people on the Democratic side who would and did vote for Alvin Greene, it would pretty much end my faith in democracy as a positive force in South Carolina.

But you know what’s really awful about this? With Lindsey Graham, South Carolina has the best representation in the U.S. Senate that it’s had in my lifetime. Representation that, for once, we can truly be proud of. And the very idea that anyone would want to take that away from us is appalling.

But that they would be motivated to do so by his acting like a rational human being is what really provokes despair.

Here’s hoping that when all is said and done, this kind of doomsday thinking about SC is wrong. But recent history is not reassuring.

Let’s just say it over and over:

This is nothing but wild speculation from an outsider… This is nothing but wild speculation from an outsider…This is nothing but wild speculation from an outsider…This is nothing but wild speculation from an outsider…This is nothing but…

Leon Lott’s just saving the world, isn’t he?

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First, my twin, Sheriff Leon Lott, magnanimously agrees to solve one of the city of Columbia’s knottiest problems by taking over its police department.

Now this:

Lott heads to Iraq to train police forces

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has been invited to travel to Iraq to train Iraqi police forces.

The sheriff traveled to Iraq at the invitation of the U.S. Army and the S.C. State Guard where he is a provost marshal, said sheriff’s department spokeswoman Monique Mack. Lott will be at the Iraq Police College for two to three weeks.

While in Iraq, Lott will teach courses in community policing and will talk about the importance of having women on a police force, Mack said.

– Noelle Phillips

Ol’ Leon’s just saving the world, isn’t he? He’s pretty much got my endorsement for his next election sewn up.

Next: Mideast Peace!…

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