Category Archives: Popular culture

Ya know what I think I might do?…

Surfing channels a few minutes ago, I ran into an Andy Griffith gem that I had to go to Facebook and share with my oldest friend in the newspaper biz, Richard Crowson (you know, the cartoonist who got laid off about six months before Robert and I did). I wrote to him:

You know what I just saw, not two minutes ago? Andy and Barney were just a-settin’ on the porch, talking about going downtown to get a bottle of pop. Andy allowed as how he reckoned it might be a good idea, and Barney he said the same right back at him, and they were poised to act upon the suggestion when they noticed the fella they were a-settin’ thar with had fallen asleep, and the episode ended on that high note.

Deeply satisfying.

May none of y’all will appreciate that the way Richard would, but I pass it on just in case.

Here’s the actual dialogue:

Andy: You know what would be a good idea? If we all went up town and got a bottle of pop?
Barney: That’s a good idea, if we all went up town to get a bottle of pop.
Andy: You think Mr. Tucker would like to go?
Barney: Why don’t we ask him…..if he’d like to go uptown to get a bottle of pop?
Andy: Mr. Tucker?
(No response from Mr. Tucker)
Andy: You wanna lets me and you go?
Barney: Where?
Andy: Uptown to get a bottle of pop?
(Camera pans to a sleeping Mr. Tucker, with a completly peeled apple skin dangling from
his hand.)

I’ll go to bed now and stop bothering y’all.

Whad’Ya Know? Plenty.

In case you missed the show today, here’s everything you need to catch up and be like the cool kids.

First, we have a photo above taken by my favorite “pollster,” Emerson Smith. It shows me with Michael Feldman (that’s Michael in the garnet “Cocks” shirt). That’s bassist Jeff Hamann hanging his head in the background; I don’t know what I said to make him do that.

Then, there’s this synopsis of the segment featuring me from the Web site, notmuch.com:

:10 – Michael talks with Brad Warthen, formerly of The State Newspaper and blogger of “all the opinions that weren’t quite good enough to put in the actual paper.” See http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/. Warthen was the Vice President of the paper and the Editor of the editorials and lost his job. What happened?! “It’s happening all over,” Warthen said. He and Michael talk about the state of the economy in South Carolina. The Governor of South Carolina doesn’t want to accept federal stimulus funds, “because he doesn’t believe in public education. He actually has control over this. Congress is sending out this money in a way that allows Governors to apply for it, assuming that they will. This is actually a moment in which he actually gets to make a decision…and we see the quality of the decision he’s made.” Other political hot buttons? “Everything is related to [the Governor’s choice]. We have 11.4% unemployment,” for example. The cigarette tax is .07 cents…it’s the lowest in the country, “all but subsidizing kids to smoke.” Is Columbia a Democratic enclave? Richland County is. Lexington County, where Warthen lives, has been one of the most Republican counties in the country. The University of South Carolina is working on a new fuel initiative. In the area of research, there’s unprecedented cooperation between USC and Clemson. Michael asks Warthen if he has season tickets. “I do not…I’m not a football fan,” he admits. He went to school here for one semester, started in the Honors College, but had a disasterous experience. “There was all this freedom!” he exclaimed. He transferred to Memphis State University after that, and majored in journalism and history. See bradwarthen.com for Warthen’s online columns, or his blog noted above.

Or, you can go to that same link and listen to the whole show.

Finally, for those who wonder what goes on in the moments before the show, here’s some very bad video from my phone, shot from the wings. About the only part you can hear clearly is when Michael is coaching the audience to say “Not much. Y’all?” instead of the usual “Not much. You?”

If you’ll forgive the cliche, a good time was had by y’all.

Whad’Ya Know? I’m gonna be on the radio

Don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m going to be on “Whad’Ya Know?” when it broadcasts live from the Koger Center on Saturday. Show starts at 11, but I have to be there at 10:30. They said there’d be coffee.

And that’s about it. No prep. I’m told that host Michael Feldman is prepping by reading thestate.com and this blog, which is probably why his signature answer to the title question is, “Not much.” The Web site, in case you haven’t been there, is notmuch.com.

And if you haven’t seen the show at all, Otis Taylor provided a taste of what it’s like in his story today. The State also provided some “if you’re going” info.

Do you know what your sin is?

Yes, that’s a quote from “Serenity” — the Operative, in point of fact. Do you know, I once took a quiz online to find out “which “Firefly” character are you?,” and it said I was the Operative. Some of my libertarian friends out there will get a chuckle out of that, but I didn’t like it a bit. Then I took it several more times — going the other way on questions that had been close calls — and each time I was somebody else. Never did get to be Jayne, though, which was disappointing. I didn’t even get to be Mal (I was stuck with the doctor — my least favorite character — and Shepherd Book).

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I did the first reading in Mass today, which is a rare privilege. I much prefer doing the 1st reading (Old Testament, usually), but I almost always get scheduled to do the 2nd (usually Paul’s epistles). I really get into the Old Testament readings — they tell stories; they take you somewhere — while Paul is usually too dry and abstract to mean as much to me as it should.

So it fell to me today to do the 1st reading, and this was it, from Jeremiah 31:

The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers
the day I took them by the hand
to lead them forth from the land of Egypt;
for they broke my covenant,
and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD.
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

One of the ways that my faith manifests itself is that I see meaning in my being chosen to read this to the people. And this reading seems particularly pregnant with meaning for me.

You see, I’m going through a rough patch in my professional life at the moment — what with being laid off and all. And it reminds me of when I went through a much worse one, almost exactly 22 years ago. And God delivered me and my house from that. I’ll tell you the story of it in greater detail another time, but suffice it to say that the four seemingly interminable days it took my wife and me to drive our two cars and (then) four young children out of the Western wilderness to the East Coast caused the 40 years of wandering in the desert to be much more immediate and real for me. And I have always thanked God for leading us out of there, to the land of my fathers, where we have been blessed.

So that part of the reading, about the earlier covenant when God took the people by the hand and led them out of Kansas — I mean, Egypt — is a reference I personally find applicable.

But God says through Jeremiah that that deal is now off, just as my time of being blessed in my job at The State is over.

So that leaves me with two questions:

What was my sin, if indeed sin there was? Maybe there wasn’t one in particular, since I don’t feel all that much of a sense of loss. But if there was one, I should know what it was.
What’s the new deal?

Mostly lately, my mind has been focused on the new deal, the new covenant that lies before me. As it has begun to take shape — just bits of it so far — I’ve gotten pretty excited about it. And the mind naturally turns to “What’s next?”

But this reading causes me to wonder: Is there a lesson yet to be learned from where I was? If so, I need to figure that out. I’m planning on going to the Lenten Reconciliation Service at St. Peter’s Monday night. So I’m reflecting upon this…

Too heavy for you? Well, then go to the mall, as Jack Black’s character said in “High Fidelity,” just to bring us back to the realm of pop culture, for those who are more comfortable there.

Getting paid to have a blast: Working with Robert

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
REMEMBER “The Dick Van Dyke Show”? For you younger folks, it was about a guy named Rob Petrie, the head writer for a fictional variety show (and if you’re too young to know what a “variety show” is, go look it up) called “The Alan Brady Show.”

There were these wonderful scenes of Rob and his colleagues at work, writing comedy sketches — a process that involved a lot of bouncing around the office, acting out and collaborative improvisation. Morey Amsterdam’s frenetic character would jump up and say something like, “OK, so Alan walks into the room…” and the other two would throw in various wild things until they made each other laugh, and the skit would take shape. It looked like the most fun a person could possibly get paid for having.

That’s what it’s been like working with my friend Robert Ariail over the past 15 years. Just like that.

Robert would come into my office after the other editors and I were done with our morning meeting (Robert doesn’t do meetings), usually with several sketches. Sometimes he’d come with nothing, but that was unusual. I’d react to the sketches, maybe suggesting dialogue changes, maybe an entirely different approach. Robert pays me the compliment of saying I think like a cartoonist. And I do. I have everything it takes — except the talent.

Robert has truckloads of that. He can sketch an idea as quickly as you can describe it, and many of those initial sketches could be published as they are. But was he satisfied? No way. He might go through 10 versions in the course of the day, coming back to my office several times to seek further feedback. This was fine, although more often than not, his first instincts were the best. He would refine, and it would get better and better, but he usually had it nailed from the start.

As you know, Robert and I are both leaving the paper. Today is our last day. Such is the state of our industry. So much for getting paid to have fun, for a collaboration that almost daily, for years on end, had both of us laughing like a couple of hyenas on nitrous oxide. How many people get to do that for even one day? We’ve had 15 years, and for that I feel blessed.

But it hasn’t been just about fun. What Robert has done has mattered, to South Carolina and the nation (which is why he’s won every national award except the Pulitzer, and he’s been a finalist for that twice). Robert can pack more punch into a cartoon than I can get into a hundred columns. There’s just something about a funny picture with a point.

That’s why the prestigious Calhoun Lecture Series at the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University had Robert deliver the last talk of the term, just last week. He spoke of the history of cartooning in general, and at The State in particular. Among other things, he told this story:

Robert is the second cartoonist actually to be employed (rather than contributing on a freelance basis) by the paper. During the 1910 gubernatorial campaign, the first one did a cartoon on the race-baiting populist Cole Blease. It was hard-hitting. The surviving Gonzales brothers (original editor N.G. Gonzales had been gunned down five years earlier) didn’t see the cartoon before it appeared in the paper. The cartoon was seen as so harsh that it was widely believed to have helped Mr. Blease win the election, by causing voters to feel sorry for him. The Gonzales brothers apparently decided that having a cartoonist was a risky thing, because they never hired another one.

In fact, the position remained vacant until Robert filled it in 1984. Before he started, he was interviewed by the late Ben Morris, then the publisher, who just had one thing to tell Robert: “Don’t surprise me.” It wasn’t until Robert read the history later that he understood the reference.

Here’s hoping cartoonists aren’t like comets. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take another 74 years for another one to streak across the sky.

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. After all, Robert will still be around. He has a new Web site, robertariail.com — just being set up as I write this — where he will post new cartoons, and where you can find links to his old ones. And he will still be syndicated nationally, which provides him with a monetary incentive to keep ’em coming.

Beyond that, I’m happy to have reason to believe Robert will be just fine.

You see, Robert is not my first close cartoonist friend. Richard Crowson and I were at Memphis State University together in the early ’70s. The first column I wrote for the editorial page of the journalism department lab paper was illustrated by a Crowson cartoon. After college, he and I worked together for a decade at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun. After I became news editor at the much-larger paper in Wichita, Kansas, in 1985, I persuaded Richard to pull up roots and join me out West.

So imagine how I felt when The Wichita Eagle laid Richard off six months ago — for the same reasons Robert and I are leaving The State. I was so torn up about it that I didn’t call Richard to talk about it until two days ago. And guess what? He’s happy as a clam. “For me personally, the layoff has just been great,” he said as he was driving to a recording session (he’s the finest bluegrass musician I’ve ever known). “I don’t have any money, but… how do you put a value on peace of mind?” He doesn’t miss the daily pressure one bit.

And after all my worrying. Robert’s, too. We knew he was not long for this newspaper. Sadly (for me), it has cast a pall over our daily brainstorming sessions, sometimes making me impatient and crabby — although Robert kept cranking out wonderful cartoons anyway.

But the past few days, since the news broke, have been great. With the pressure off, the old fun has returned. That may sound odd, but it’s true.

And this is the way I’m going to remember it.

Robert and I will still collaborate at every opportunity. Find his future work at robertariail.com. My new address is bradwarthen.com.

‘I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?’

Just had to smile when I saw a release a few minutes ago from a company that does “pet health insurance.” Smiling not at the company, but at the association it brought to mind.

It made me think of Martin Blank, the professional assassin, rehearsing what he would say to people at his 10th high school reunion: “Hi… I’m a pet psychiatrist. Yeah, yeah. I sell couch insurance…” He goes on to say (if this guy I’m linking to quoted it right; I don’t have the DVD on me at the moment:

“… Mm-hmm. And I — and I test-market positive thinking. I lead a weekend men’s group, we specialize in ritual killings. Yeah, you look great! God, yeah! Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? Hi, I’m Martin Blank, you remember me? I’m not married, I don’t have any kids, and I’d blow your head off if someone paid me enough.”

Not that I’m being the least bit critical; at least these people have jobs. In fact, speaking of John Cusack, I started quoting him completely unintentionally the other night when I was telling one of my kids in all seriousness the things that I would probably not do in my future pursuit. I said something like, “You don’t want to ask me to sell anything…” and my daughter, having my genes, immediately started laughing and quoting,

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

Well, I had to laugh, too, because I guess what I said did sound sort of like that. Maybe I should be a little less picky than Lloyd Dobler, though, under the circumstances. What do you think.

Never mind maneuvers…

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Just watched the end of a movie in which Lawrence Olivier was strutting about in Napoleonic-era admiral’s uniform with an empty right sleeve, which could only mean he was portraying Lord Nelson. And there was Vivien Leigh talking about Lord Keith and St. Vincent and the rest, so I was hooked to the end of it. Saw a highly melodramatic rendering of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar.

As you know, I’m a huge fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Lord Nelson was Jack Aubrey’s hero. In the books, Jack is the one to whom Nelson said, “Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at ’em.” In reality, he said that to Lord Cochrane, upon whom Aubrey is largely based.

Here’s the kicker: After the movie, the guy who introduces the features on TCM said the movie was so chock-full of homilies about the importance of standing up to dictators that the director was summoned to Congress — still gripped by isolationism — where our lawmakers were investigating pro-war propaganda by Hollywood. He was scheduled to appear on Dec. 12, 1941, so he lucked out there. By his appearance date, isolationism was no longer quite the thing, you know.

Imagine that — Hollywood being investigated for pro-war propaganda.

I’d better go to bed now.

’25 Best Conservative Movies’

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As y’all know, I am inordinately fond of movies, and also of Top Five Lists and their lesser cousins, Top Ten lists and other denominations.

So it was with interest that I perused this one put together by National Review, “the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years,” which are described as “great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more.” It’s not a list it would have occurred to me to compile, since I don’t think in those left-vs.-right terms. And in some cases NR has to put an odd spin on them to make them “conservative,” but in others I see the point, to the extent that it matters. Who cares? A good movie is a good movie. But I perused it with interest, as I do all such lists. Here I add a little of my own commentary on each (for the magazine’s commentary, follow the link):

The Best Conservative Movies
1. The Lives of Others (2007): This WAS wonderful, and if you haven’t seen it, order it from Netflix or whatever. It’s in German, with subtitles — so Herb should especially like it. I think maybe it made No. 1 on this list because it was one of the last movies William F. Buckley saw, and he raved about it. Well, the man always had good taste.
2. The Incredibles (2004): This was good, but would not make any kind of “best 25” list I would compile.
3. Metropolitan (1990): Never saw it.
4. Forrest Gump (1994): OK, fine.
5. 300 (2007): Didn’t like it all that much. Too artificial.
6. Groundhog Day (1993): Definitely a Top 25 on any list, but this is one where the “conservatives” are missing the point, although they’re certainly right to say, “Theologians and philosophers across the ideological spectrum have embraced it.” You know where I first heard about it? In a homily at St. Peter’s. Msgr. Lehocky was impressed by it because the entire point of the movie is that the only way Murray’s character can escape the pointless treadmill of his existence is to live one day that is perfectly lived for other people, NOT for himself. “Conservatives” of the über-selfish, modern libertarian variety have to overlook that obvious message to like this flick. Again, it’s not about the value of “the permanent things,” but about living for OTHERS. But I’m glad for them to like it anyway. Everyone should.
7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Haven’t seen it.
8. Juno (2007): Yes, it was wonderful. And yeah, it had a “conservative” message in that if affirmed life. Although I’m still, after all these years, trying to figure out how affirming life got to be “conservative.” Yet another way that Roe has distorted the way we think, and even the way we think about thinking, in this country.
9. Blast from the Past (1999): Very enjoyable, and yeah, it spoke up for traditional values.
10. Ghostbusters (1984): Bet you didn’t know that this one was political. Neither did I. The justification for this call is pretty thin. It seems mostly based on the bad guy being from the EPA, and Akroyd’s hilarious line: “I don’t know about that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Yeah, OK — I can see that.
12. The Dark Knight (2008): Again, seems odd on this list. And while it might be one of the best 25 new movies I’ve seen in the past year, I wouldn’t elevate it above that.
13. Braveheart (1995): Saw it. Hated it. The first sign of Mel Gibson’s obsession with characters who are gruesomely tortured to death, which is all I remember of it.
14. A Simple Plan (1998): Never saw it.
15. Red Dawn (1984): Well, of course. And I enjoyed it for what it was, minus the political preaching. I enjoyed it on this level — there were times as a high school student I would have welcomed the fantasy of paratroopers suddenly landing in the schoolyard and shooting up the school, so that I’d have a good excuse to grab some friends (including girls) and some guns and run up into the mountains for an extended adventure. Didn’t you think thoughts like that in school? OK, never mind…
16. Master and Commander (2003): Yes, folks, this is why I posted this entire item. As y’all know, I’m always bringing up O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin books here on the blog, and nobody ever engages the subject, which is a big disappointment. This offers me another excuse. And yes, if you’re reaching for it, I guess this movie extols conservative virtues. (I guess it didn’t strike me because, having grown up in the navy, the conservative values it portrays are ones that I, and John McCain, take for granted.) As NR says, the H.M.S Surprise is “a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place.” Granted. And Jack Aubrey is as Tory as they come. But then the stories are equally about Stephen Maturin, who is after all a former Irish republican, who detests authority from that practiced by naval officers to that assumed by Buonoparte. But Stephen is no modern, milksop liberal — although strangely, in the movie version, he is portrayed that way (right up until the moment he boards the enemy ship sword in hand, which the movie makers really didn’t prepare the viewer for, since at every moment up to that point you were given the impression he was a pacifist or something). Yeah, the movie was great, but the books are a thousand times better — whatever your political orientation. Some of y’all go read them, so we can discuss them here.
17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005): Didn’t see it; never particularly wanted to. I’m guessing you had to read these books as a kid to be interested.
18. The Edge (1997): Never saw it.
19. We Were Soldiers (2002): This was OK, but not any kind of top 25. An ironic choice for NR, since it was written by Joe Galloway, who was there. If you’ve read Joe’s columns, you know what I mean. He doesn’t see the world their way (or mine, either).
20. Gattaca (1997): Yeah, it was OK. Worth seeing. Not that great, though.
21. Heartbreak Ridge (1986): This movie stunk up the place! I can’t get past the first 10 or 15 minutes. Awful acting. Cartoonish depiction of the Corps. Yeah, I was hoping this movie would be what NR seems to think it was. But it wasn’t. Not one of Eastwood’s better efforts.
22. Brazil (1985): Hated it. Yeah, it had its cool parts — DeNiro’s guerrilla repairman, for instance — but on the whole a bummer. I hate these nihilistic, hopeless tales that go to such lengths to conjure a world in which life is useless and meaningless. Isn’t life depressing enough?
23. United 93 (2006): A fine film, a fine tribute. Not a Top 25, though.
24. Team America: World Police (2004): Never saw it; never wanted to. (You get the idea that they included this one for ironic effect or something?)
25. Gran Torino (2008): Just saw it SUNDAY NIGHT, and it was great. My wife and I had a rare night out. It surprised me that she wanted to see it, and one of my daughters almost talked her out of it (we considered going to see “Slumdog Millionaire” instead, which would have been OK, but I really wanted to see this one). Well, we both loved it. The reviews that rave about it are not exaggerating. Clint Eastwood just gets better and better at his craft.

The magazine then listed 25 “Also-Rans,” as follows:

Air Force One, Amazing Grace, An American Carol, Barcelona, Bella, Cinderella Man, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hamburger Hill, The Hanoi Hilton, The Hunt for Red October, The Island, Knocked Up, The Last Days of Disco, The Lost City, Miracle, The Patriot, Rocky Balboa, Serenity, Stand and Deliver, Tears of the Sun, Thank You for Smoking, Three Kings, Tin Men, The Truman Show, Witness

Of those, several should have made the Top 25, being way better than most on the list that made it, specifically:

Air Force One — Nothing like a president who kicks terrorist butt personally. He’d have my vote. Aside from that, just a well-done action flick, as only Wolfgang Peterson can make ’em. (Although you know what I liked better? “In the Line of Fire.” Not for its conservatism, but for its communitarianism. What? You don’t remember Eastwood saying repeatedly how much he loved public transportation?)
Bella — Beautiful flick, although the parts that flash back to the terrible thing that happened are hard to take. It helps to understand Spanish (the movie’s sort of bilingual), but it’s not necessary.
Knocked Up — A real hoot, and of course we know about how it’s an unconventional evocation of traditional values. It’s still a hoot.
Serenity — A little preachier than the original series on the whole anti-Nanny State thing, but the characters and the action make it easy to ignore. Why did “Firefly” not last? Because it was too good, I guess.
Witness — Another of Harrison Ford’s best. Excellent fish-out-of-water drama.

Heck, even “The Island” was better than most of those that made the list…

Oh, just to finish the job. If I were to pick a Top Five List from among the above 50 — just Top Five, regardless of political “message” — I’d go with:

Groundhog Day
The Lives of Others
Master and Commander
Air Force One
Serenity

Mind you, if I were compiling a list of Top 25 from the past 25 years without restrictions, it would include a lot of flicks not among the 50 above. Such as “Almost Famous,” “American History X” and “Apollo 13,” and that’s just the A’s. How about you?

‘That stupid ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX!’

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I just retreated up the stairs to my home "office" — one of the rooms my kids have moved out of over the years — because my wife was yelling about struggling to figure out "that stupid alternative minimum tax." She was telling me that if I wanted to do something useful, I could do something about that.

Mind you, this is about five minutes after we were having a conversation about how people are always coming to her with things they want ME to do something about, like the editorial page editor is in charge of the world or something. She said I have no idea how many things like that she deflects for me. I said I probably DO have an idea, because I get it all the time myself. It's weird. It's sort of like being the Godfather, with people coming to confide a problem, and you're saying in soothing tones, "What can I do for you, my old friend?…" It would be a big ego boost if I actually thought I had the power that some people seem to assume I have.

Anyway, five minutes after she's acknowledging how silly it is that people think I can do all of these things, she's asking me to do something about the alternative minimum tax. Hey, I don't even fully understand what it is. You know why? Because my wife does our taxes. Thank God.

Maybe, when things calm down a little downstairs, I should go down and think of something to do or say to express my appreciation for that, huh?

Maybe I'll tell her I gave that alternative minimum thing to one of the congressmen on the family payroll, and he's going to take care of it. That's what the Godfather would do…

My band’s playlist

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You know that event over the weekend I mentioned attending back here? It was a fund-raiser for Hand Middle School over at Gallery 701. And while a lot of folks did come up and converse with me about newspaper business, our dialogue was somewhat constrained by the fact that it was hard to talk over the sound of the band.

The band was a group of local lawyers who call themselves The Sugardaddys, as in the candy. That, of course, is not nearly as cool a name as what one of the band members told me they thought about calling themselves, which was “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” That band member, by the way, was bassist James Smith, also known for his nonmusical work at the S.C. House and in Afghanistan with the National Guard.

The band was pretty good, and in fact their opening number was one I think I’ll add to my band’s playlist — The Band’s “The Weight.” That song would fit right into my band’s ouevre, or idiom, or what have you.

Oh, you don’t know about my band? Well, it’s just in the planning stages, where it’s been since about, oh, 1971. The thing is that first I’ve got to come up with a cool name for it. I mean, you’re not going to see me settling on something like “Sugardaddys” just to move things along. No, I’m taking my time; I want to get this right. For awhile there I was sort of enamored of “Wireless Cloud” as a name, but I’ve moved on. Suggestions are welcome (up to a point). I may end up with the one that a friend suggested many years ago, after inadvertently learning my first name: “Donnie B. and the All-Night Newsboys.”

But I did draft a preliminary playlist of cover songs a couple of years back. I meant to post it on the blog, but didn’t get around to it or something. I ran across it the other day, and here it is:

Don’t Look Now
Can’t Be Too Long
Paint It Black
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Simple Kind of Man
Bring It On Home
Mustang Sally (but only if I can line up the Commitmentettes)
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
Hard-Headed Woman
Soldier of Love
Lawyers, Guns and Money (hey, it was on the list before James mentioned it)
The Pretender
Desperado (Don’t know how this got on here)
One More Cup of Coffee

This list, now that I look back on it, is WAY incomplete and poorly thought-out. For instance, as I say, I don’t know how Desperado got on there (watching too much Seinfeld, maybe). If I went with anything Eagles-related, it would have to be Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry.” And when it comes to Beatles covers, I’d do “I Should Have Known Better” way before the one listed above — or “Eight Days a Week.”

And this doesn’t even get into my original material (perhaps mercifully).

Anyway, once the name is set and the playlist is all worked out, I’ll see about trying to line up some actual musicians. Oh, and a manager. Don’t be bugging me with gig requests; that’s for the manager to deal with. All in good time.

Well, that would be a radical departure

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Headline from the Greenville News site:

Sanford says he will look at stimulus plan, act in the state's interest

I also enjoyed this quote from the AP story (which we also ran, under a more realistic headline), which in Mark Sanford's book is a major admission:

"Throw enough money at any problem and you're going to help some folks."

Watch now — Lee's going to start calling him a socialist…

One more thing… you notice how, if you want to know what Mark Sanford is doing or saying, you have to go to Washington or tune in to national media? He's never been very interested in South Carolina, much less in governing it, but he's definitely gone to new extremes in recent weeks.

Keep a clean nose

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Here's a little news-you-can-use info.

You remember how sick I was before Christmas? Well, I never really got over it. I had the usual resolution to start working out in the New Year, and still haven't done it once, because I haven't had a day when I didn't feel like total crud, Ferris.

It's morphed. Started out as upset stomach, turned into bronchitis, followed by asthma, followed by recurring bouts of the worst head cold/allergy symptoms I've experienced in many a day. I've done two courses of antibiotics, been on prednisone over a week in between, and in the last few weeks have been taking antihistamines and associated remedies every four hours, including in the middle of the night, and STILL haven't been able to stop my nose from running.

And when I talk runny nose, I'm talking incapacitating. Like you can't do anything but blow. Night before last, my wife was leaving the kitchen and asked me to mash the potatoes she had just cooked. I said I couldn't. Feeling guilty, I TRIED while she was out of the room, but it went like this — blow nose (and I'm talking fire hose here, not some dainty dabbing), throw away the tissue, wash hands, dry hands, pick up fork, turn to the potatoes, DROP fork, grab tissue, blow just in time, and so on. Had lunch yesterday with Clemson's President James Barker, and it was really embarrassing. I must have gone through half a box of tissues; poor President Barker.

I was taking antihistamines (diphenhydramine, Alka-Seltzer Plus) on top of other antihistamines (zyrtec, or, when I lose faith in that, allegra 180) and still couldn't stop it. The only way I could go to sleep was stop up my nose with cotton balls. Yeah, way more than you wanted to know; I getcha.

But I say all this not to gross you out or cry the blues, but to tell you about the drug that my allergist's office called in yesterday. It was a nasal spray called ipratropium bromide, the generic name (and of course, I got the generic) for something that is marketed as Atrovent.

It worked unbelievably well. No, I still don't feel great; my sinuses still hurt — but my nose is no longer like a busted fire hydrant. It's dry. I'm able to use my hands for extended periods for something other than reaching for the Puffs.

And I'm sort of shocked that in 55 years of fighting severe allergies, with all the major hay fever bouts I've had, I've never run across this before. Or if I did, I'd forgotten it.

So, in case you have similar problems, I thought I'd let you know about it. Look on this as one of those "ask your doctor about…" ads, except that I'm not getting paid for it. Which shows you what a terrible businessman I am. Maybe I should get an agent.

There's one cool side effect. All of a sudden, I understand "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Maybe that's what I've got. Seems as good a diagnosis as any. Just follow the links:

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough

Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when

But you're doin' it again…

Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows…

Historians: Lincoln is tops; W. ranks 36th

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Just for a talker, I thought I'd share the results of this C-SPAN survey on how historians rate the leadership of presidents:

C-SPAN RELEASES SECOND
HISTORIANS SURVEY OF

PRESIDENTIAL
LEADERSHIP

Abraham Lincoln Retains Top
Position;

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
and Bill Clinton Advance Since 2000 Survey; George W. Bush Ranks 36^th
Overall By Historians

(Washington, DC, February 15, 2009) – Timed
for Presidents Day 2009, C-SPAN today releases the results of its second
Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65
presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten
attributes of leadership.

As in C-SPAN’s first such survey, released in
2000, Abraham Lincoln received top billing among the historians, just as the
nation marks the bicentennial of his birth. George Washington placed second,
while spots three through five were held by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, in that order.

Based on the results of historians surveyed,
George W. Bush received an overall ranking of 36. Among other recent
Presidents, Bill Clinton who was ranked 21 in the 2000 survey, advanced six
spots in 2009 to an overall ranking of 15; Ronald Reagan moved from 11 to 10;
George H.W. Bush went from 20 to 18, and Jimmy Carter’s ranking declined from 22
to 25.

As in 2000, C-SPAN was guided in this effort by
a team of academic advisors: Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University; Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Associate Professor of History, Howard
University; and Richard
Norton Smith, Scholar in
Residence at George Mason University. The team approved the ten criteria, which
were the same used in C-SPAN’s 2000 Survey, reviewed the list of invited
participants, and supervised the reporting of the results. Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at
Harvard, also consulted on the names of invited historians with an
overall goal of geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity.

“Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant aren't often
mentioned in the same sentence – until now. Participants in the latest C-SPAN
survey of presidential historians have boosted each man significantly higher
than in the original survey conducted in 2000. All of which goes to show two
things: the fluidity with which presidential reputations are judged, and the
difficulty of assessing any president who has only just recently left office,”
said Richard Norton Smith.

“As much as is possible,
we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair minded, and it’s
fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the
top of these presidential rankings,” noted Dr. Douglas Brinkley.

“How we rank our presidents is, to a large
extent, influenced by our own times. Today’s concerns shape our views of the
past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy, or human
rights. The survey results also reinforce the idea that history is less about
agreed-upon facts than about perceptions of who we are as a nation and how our
leaders have either enhanced or tarnished that image we have of ourselves.
Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived
to embody the nation’s avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in
the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion; those who
collect near the bottom are perceived as having failed to uphold those values,”
concluded Dr. Edna Medford.

Full rankings for each of the 42 presidents are
available at
www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey <http://www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey>

Methodology

C-SPAN’s academic advisors
devised a survey in which participants used a one ("not effective") to ten
("very effective") scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential
leadership: "Public Persuasion," "Crisis Leadership," "Economic Management,"
"Moral Authority," "International Relations," "Administrative Skills,"
"Relations with Congress," "Vision/Setting An Agenda," “Pursued Equal Justice
for All,” and “Performance Within the Context of His Times."

Surveys were distributed to 147
historians and other professional observers of the presidency, drawn from a
database of C-SPAN's programming, augmented by suggestions from the academic
advisors. Sixty-five agreed to participate. Participants were guaranteed that
individual survey results remain confidential. Survey responses were tabulated
by averaging all responses in a given category for each president. Each of the
ten categories was given equal weighting in the total scores. Overseeing the
2000 and 2009 tabulations were C-SPAN CFO Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert
Browning, a political scientist who serves as director of the C-SPAN
archives.

Note that presidents might do well in one category, not so well in another. For instance, Bill Clinton made the top ten on "Public Persuasion," but was sixth from the bottom on "Moral Authority." Which makes sense.

I was going to construct my own Nick Hornby-style Top Five List, but I found it hard to argue with the one that the historians came up with:

Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harry Truman

I hated that my favorite Founder John Adams didn't make the Top Ten — he came in 17th — but it's hard to argue with. His greatest contributions to the nation came long before he was president, and however much I like him, he was not that successful a president (probably the greatest thing he did as president was surrender power peacefully to Jefferson). Sort of like the fact that I LIKED Jimmy Carter, but can't say he did that great a job, accomplishment-wise.

I didn’t get a harrumph out of that guy…

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Being an editor is often a thankless job, but you get these little rewards now and then. Such as this one, which probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't love words as much as I do, but was a nice treat for me…

One of my colleagues had used "harrumphed" in an editorial I was editing, and I decided that I would check the spelling, on the off chance that it was actually in the Webster's New World College Dictionary, which is the one we use as an official arbiter in our style rules.

And it was! Which I thought was way cool. Also, I believe it's correct to call it an onomatopoeia, which doubles the fun, since that's a fun word to say.

Finally, it allowed me to use my favorite line from "Blazing Saddles" as a blog headline.

And who says editors don't have fun?

Tessio?!?! I thought Michael had you whacked…

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Don't know about you, but I was really surprised to see on today's business page that Abe Vigoda is still active and
working. In a story about Super Bowl commercials, there was this bullet item:

“Barney Miller” co-star Abe Vigoda lends his voice to an H&R Block ad for income tax services, playing Death.

OK, so he's portraying Death, which is not the most upbeat of gigs, but hey, he's still around. That's really saying something, when you consider that his shtick on Barney Miller was playing the really, really old guy who was falling apart with various ailments. And that was the 70s.

He'll be 88 next month.

So I guess Tom Hagen did let him off the hook for old times' sake. Good for you, Sal.

This goes straight to the bottom of my list of worries (and does not pass ‘GO’)

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Yesterday this notice came in from the International Trademark Association:

SUPER RISK OF COUNTERFEITS AND KNOCK-OFFS AT SUPER BOWL
Trademark community tackles problem and offers defense for consumers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: MATTHEW SCHMIDT

NEW YORK, NY – January 28, 2009 – With Super Bowl XLIII only days away, The International Trademark Association (INTA) today issued a warning to the legions of fans hoping to buy official Super Bowl gear and offered tips on how to spot fake merchandise.

This year, Super Bowl Sunday will be one of the biggest days of the year for sports fans around the world, as the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals face off in what is destined to be an incredible football game.

At last year’s Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, counterfeit NFL gear was widespread, and hundreds of consumers left the game with cheap, fake football jerseys and merchandise. According to federal, state and local authorities, there were more than 6,000 pieces of counterfeit goods totaling more than $300,000 sold out of trailers and vans at Super Bowl XLII.

Counterfeiters are planning on taking advantage of loyal NFL enthusiasts again this year, and INTA is committed to raising awareness on these fake goods and apparel. Illegal counterfeit goods promote child labor and fund organized crime. Counterfeit and knock-off goods also use sub-par materials that leave consumers with second-rate merchandise.

“Super Bowl Sunday is more than just a sporting event; it is an American pastime shared by families and friends, and we want all fans to be aware of the fake jerseys and other phony NFL merchandise being peddled by counterfeiters. Nothing can replace the memories of a fantastic Super Bowl, just like nothing can replace the quality and value of authentic NFL gear,” said INTA Executive Director, Alan C. Drewsen.

To help fans, INTA has compiled tips on what to look for when purchasing Super Bowl apparel and merchandise. Consumers should:

1. Shop in established stores and be wary of street and out-of-trunk vendors.
2. Research goods beforehand to know exactly what you want.
3. Do not buy items of poor quality that have irregular stitching or uneven coloring.
4. Avoid items without an authentic logo or with an awkward looking label.
5. Do not buy items with prices that are uncharacteristically low.

To learn more about trademarks and how they protect businesses and consumers, please visit www.inta.org/go/mediacenter.

####

Folks, I'm a big believer in copyright and the protection of intellectual property, but I gotta tell ya, I'm not going to buy ANY NFL merchandise, real or fake. So this is a bit of a theoretical question for me.

And I find myself wondering how many people out in the NFL-merchandise-buying public are deeply worried about "authenticity" in the sense of worrying about the NFL getting its cut — at the same time they're worried about keeping their jobs… Does Joe Sixpack football fan say, "Oh, no! That jersey that I already know was not actually worn by that guy who makes millions playing football, but merely a copy of it, might not be 'authentic'!?!? In fact, I'm running a Super-Risk! I gotta do something!"

Not that they shouldn't be worried about it — respect for rule of law and all that — but how worried will they be? And that's what I thought of when I got this release: I thought, if I'm in charge of protecting the NFL's cut, do I think I'm going to accomplish that more by asking the general public to watch out for my interest, or am I better off working with the folks who run the teams and the stadiums and the police in those cities?

I guess they're doing both. I don't know. I know I just spent more time on it than it was actually worth in light of what I need to do today. Something just struck me as a little off about this, but it was harder to explain than I thought it would be…

I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market

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That's about all I wanted to say, after I saw this item on thestate.com:

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.”
The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped
amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds
of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on
the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say
well more than 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating
or sometimes scolding its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be
ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Don't anybody tell Paula Moore over at PETA. Or George the Lobster, either.

Even I might want to pass on this carnivorous extravaganza. Although, on the upside, I'm not allergic to the recipe, which is not something I can often say about junk food…

Pork bellies, of course, are where we get bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich…

Excuse me for getting all earnest, but how can we interact more meaningfully here?

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And yes, I mean "earnest" and not "Ernest" like in my last post, although if you'd like you can attribute the seriousness of my message here to the influence of my serious new notebook.

Anyway, I wrote the following as a followup comment on my otherwise silly, fun post on Tina Fey, and it occurred to me I should elevate it to a separate post and see if we can get a good dialogue going on the subject here. Rather than rewrite it, I repeat myself:

Funny thing is, I used to not like Tina Fey — or Jimmy Fallon, or,
going way back before them, Dennis Miller — in their Weekend Update
days.

As y'all know, I like to have fun and kid around, but I do
take the news and the issues of the day seriously, and at some point I
get turned off by people who day in and day out sneer and make jokes of
serious issues. I mean, let's have fun and kid around, but when one's
entire diet of commentary consists of such junk food, and it's all
about mocking and never taking anything seriously, I think it has a
corrosive effect on society. Taken at it's extreme, I think it has
helped raise a generation that has trouble respecting anyone and
anything in politics. The constant drip, drip of smarmy satire adds to
all the partisan attack politics and tactics of personal destruction to
prevent us from coming together to solve the problems we have in common
— which is what representative democracy can be all about.

Needless
to say, I have NO appreciation for Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. And
while I enjoyed meeting and kidding around with Stephen Colbert (see video), I can't get into his shtick, either.

But
even though the Palin gag was pretty hard-hitting satire, it was so
enjoyable that it caused me to have a soft spot for Tina I didn't have
before.

I should also mention that I revised my opinion of Dennis Miller just from the couple of brief spots I've done on his radio show.
I had always thought of him as just too much of a wise guy, too
impressed with his own snarky cleverness, to be borne. But he's
actually deeper than that, and pleasant to talk to.

Of
course, this is just a corollary to something I've found about life —
almost anyone is a more likable, admirable person once you get past the
shorthand, bumper-sticker version of that person. To know a person is
to appreciate him or her more. Maybe this sounds trite, but in our 24/7
headline news/blog world, we increasingly go by the bumper sticker, and
don't get into people deeply enough to appreciate them.

And just
to get WAY philosophical on you…. One of my great disappointments
with this blog is that I had hoped, by having this forum for going way
beyond what I'm able to say and explore in the paper, I could forge
some avenues where I could have more meaningful exchanges with my
readers and fellow citizens about the important issues of the day —
and the people who are important players in those issues.

Unfortunately,
the resistance to that is just tremendous. So much of what passes for
dialogue here remains on the superficial, partisan, shorthand,
bumper-sticker simplistic level. I try to say something to provoke
thought, and somebody gives some standard, boilerplate ideological
response, and someone else shouts the established bumper-sticker
counter to THAT, and off we go on the kind of pointless partisan
merry-go-round that you can read or hear anywhere in the blogosphere or
on 24/7 talking head "news." And what is the point in that?

I
draw hope from the fact that occasionally, we get to the point where
some actual, mutually respectful dialogue occurs between people who
HAVE gotten to know each other beyond the surface here. I see this
particularly with Phillip and Herb and Karen and a handful of others —
and in the past (although, unfortunately, not so much lately) from you,
Randy. I even get an encouraging word now and then from bud or Doug.

I just wish I knew how to build on that. I'm open to suggestions.

Maybe I need to make this a separate post…

… which I just did.

How about it? Do you see any way we can start having conversations here that matter?

We’re nowhere near Barstow, but the drugs have begun to take hold

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Just glanced out my window while cross my office to my desk, as the sun was setting, and could have sworn the 101st Airborne Division, circa 1944, was drifting down from the sky over the Congaree River.

Turns out, upon a double-take, it was just some small scraps of dark cloud that happened to be roughly WWII-era parachute-shaped, in the same sense that the beacon at Castle Anthrax was grail-shaped ("Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!")

More about the drugs later. And yes, the headline is a Fear and Loathing reference.

Today’s Will column, with links

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The George Will column I put on today's page is one of his oblique ones — the closest thing to a point in it is what I said in the headline, which is that in a National Endowment for Humanities project, of all places, Mr. Will seems to have found what he regards as "A government program worth the money."

But the column caused me to look up some of the artworks he describes, and I enjoyed doing that. Of course, I couldn't reproduce them on the page itself, but I can run the column here with links, to make it easier for you to look at them yourself. Enjoy:

By GEORGE F. WILL
The Washington Post
In Winslow Homer’s 1865 painting “The Veteran in a New Field,” a farmer, bathed in sunshine, his back to the viewer, his Union uniform jacket cast on the ground, harvests wheat with a single-bladed scythe. That tool was out of date, and Homer first depicted the farmer wielding a more modern implement. Homer then painted over it, replacing it with what evokes a timeless symbol of death — the grim reaper’s scythe. The painting reminds viewers how much Civil War blood was shed, as at Gettysburg, in wheat fields.
    Homer’s painting is one of 40 works of art that the National Endowment for Humanities is distributing, in 24-by-36-inch reproductions, with teaching guides, to all primary and secondary schools and libraries that ask for them. About one-third of them already have done so, according to Bruce Cole, the NEH’s chairman.
    So as Washington’s dreariest year in decades sags to an end — a year in which trillion-dollar improvisations that will debase the dollar have been bracketed by a stimulus that did not stimulate and a rescue that will prolong automakers’ drownings — at the end of this feast of folly, consider something rarer than rubies. It is a 2008 government program that costs next to nothing — $2.6 million this year; a rounding error in the smallest of the bailouts. And “Picturing America” adds to the public stock of something scarce — understanding of the nation’s past and present.
    The 40 works of art include some almost universally familiar ones — John Singleton Copley’s 1768 portrait of a silversmith named Paul Revere; Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware”; Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ bronze relief sculpture “Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth Regiment Memorial” on Boston Common. But “Picturing America” is not, Cole takes pains to insist, “the government’s ‘top 40.’ ” Forty times 40 other selections of art and architecture could just as effectively illustrate how visual works are revealing records of the nation’s history and culture, and how visual stimulation can spark the synthesizing of information by students.
    The colorful impressionism of Childe Hassam’s flag-filled painting “Allies Day, May 1917” captures America’s waxing nationalism a month after entry into World War I. And it makes all the more moving the waning of hope captured in Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph “Migrant Mother.” This haunting image of a destitute 32-year old pea picker, a mother of seven, is a springboard into John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
    One of the 40 images in “Picturing America” is more timely than Cole could have suspected when the project was launched in February. It is a photograph of Manhattan’s Chrysler Building.
    Built between 1926 and 1930 — between the giddy ascent of the ’20s stock market and the Crash — this art deco monument to the might of America’s automobile industry is decorated with motifs of machines and streamlining. There are winged forms of a Chrysler radiator cap; an ornamental frieze replicates a band of hubcaps. The stainless steel of the famous spire suggests the signature of the automobile industry in its salad days — chrome.
    To understand the animal spirits that drove New York’s skyscraper competition — the Chrysler Building was the world’s tallest for less than a year, until the Empire State Building was completed 202 feet higher — is to understand an era. Two eras, actually — the one that built the building, and ours, which has reasons to be reminded of the evanescence of seemingly solid supremacies.
    After seven years of service, Cole, the longest-serving chairman in the 43-year history of the NEH, is leaving to head the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge. America has thousands of museums, including the Studebaker National Museum (South Bend, Ind.), the Packard Museum (Dayton, Ohio) — yes, Virginia, there was a time when automobile companies were allowed to perish — the Hammer Museum (Haines, Alaska), the Mustard Museum (Mount Horeb, Wis.), and the Spam Museum (Austin, Minn.) featuring the sort-of-meat, not the Internet annoyance. There is, however, no museum devoted to the most important political event that ever happened, here or anywhere else — the American Revolution.
    Cole says there will be one, at Valley Forge. It will be built mostly by private money, for an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the sum of public money currently being lavished on corporations. Perhaps a subsequent iteration of “Picturing America” will feature a thought-provoking photograph of the gleaming towers that currently house, among other things, General Motors’ headquarters. Looming over Detroit’s moonscape desolation, the building is called the Renaissance Center. Really.

Write to Mr. Will at georgewill@washpost.com.