Monthly Archives: August 2008

What the other candidates look like

Well, I certainly got some reactions on that last one, some quite condemnatory. It makes me wonder — would these folks have reacted so vehemently if they had heard me share that cultural association with regard to Gov. Palin, face-to-face? Probably not. Even as she was speaking — I had flipped on the little TV outside my office to listen while going back and forth getting work done — I had given her a glance and shared that observation with Cindi. Cindi paused in what she was doing only long enough to glance at the tube, and correct my facts — I had described her hair as looking as though she had quickly pinned it up atop her head to get it out of her way while getting work done, and Cindi informed me that she had paid good money to get her hair done that way.

Which of course changes nothing. The point in the end is that Sarah Palin apparently puts her hair up in a way that looks pragmatic and businesslike to ME, and wears Serious Eyeglasses rather than contacts, as a deliberate statement meant to balance her beauty. It’s a way of being taken seriously. And for those of you so deeply offended on gender grounds, men do the same thing — they wear suits.

Would it make y’all feel better if I describe some of the other figures in terms of snap judgments based on their appearances? OK, I will. It won’t be quite the same, of course, because a beautiful woman evokes a response that’s unlike any you get with a man or a less-attractive woman — something that I believe Sarah Palin understands well enough to hide some of that light under a bushel. OK, here we go:

Let’s start with Joe Biden. Joe’s a nice-looking guy, don’t you think? He’s got a smile that could
light up a stadium (what does he use on those teeth?). Joe sort of radiates "politician" — more specifically, Irish politician. Loads of Blarney, but I mean that in a good way — I enjoy hearing Joe talk, up to a point (the point is when — and I’ve had this happen a couple of times — I speak to him more than once in a week, and he starts telling me the same anecdote that he told me the other time). Beyond that, he projects something else that apparently is inconsistent with his working-class background: He looks Patrician. If he’s Irish, you think, he’s certainly not shanty Irish. Lace-curtain all the way. Shows how looks can deceive.
John McCain looks like what he is — the aging fighter jock. He’s got the build, the bantam-rooster feistiness, however wracked by old wounds. He has a pretty bright grin
of his own, but it’s of a different quality from Biden’s. Biden’s grin is of the master salesman about to close a deal. McCain’s is about cockiness, the cockiness of the Naval Aviator. That cockiness seems to have gone into his pick of his Veep candidate. He’s saying, I don’t particularly need a vice president; I plan on sticking around, so experience and qualifications didn’t matter. Might as well pick somebody who pleases all those whiners in my base and maybe peels off some of the more emotional HIllary supporters, the ones for whom it was all about her being a woman. This is a quality that strikes his supporters as reassuring confidence, and his detractors as obnoxiousness.
Barack Obama… well, my first reaction is that he does not fit a type at all. He’s unique. He, too, has a winning grin, but he doesn’t use it all that much; his stock persona is
deeply serious. But then I remember that there is ONE sort of character that he does sometimes remind me of, and it’s completely in tune with that seriousness. I mentioned it to my wife the other night: He looks like something out of the early 60s, particularly one of the young Best and Brightest of the Kennedy Administration. I had trouble saying WHY he looked that way — was it the cut of his suits? Were his ties that narrow? Was it the way he rolls up the sleeves of his white dress shirts? My wife said it was his thinness — people are bulkier than that these days. His thinness makes him look like he’s from another era. Maybe. Of course, if you wanted to play on the race thing, you could say he’s like Sidney Poitier (60s again) in either "To Sir With Love" or "In the Heat of the Night." The "black" guy who comes across as whiter, as more Establishment, more conservatively attired and carefully spoken, than any white guy you ever saw.
If you want to go farther afield, you could say Hillary Clinton is the "Smartest Kid in the Class (Just Ask Her; She’ll Tell You)," the one who absolutely has to get the best grades — also the one who takes names of those who misbehave if the teacher leaves the room, and gives a full report when the teacher returns. BILL Clinton is the clever wastrel who is probably at the top of the list of defaulters she gives the teacher — the kid who’s just as smart, but wastes it on trying to be the class clown, or the most popular kid in the school. Funny thing about Bill — I had seen him around for years. I first saw him in person back in 1978, and he had this manner about him that caused me to read him all wrong. I would have pegged him as the child of privilege, the fair-haired one who could do no wrong and loved life because everything went his way. It really shocked me to learn that he didn’t come up that way, because he projects that kind of guy. That’s one thing he and Joe sort of have in common.

So there you go — shallow, quick-impression assessments of all the major characters. None of them are exactly sitcom characters, but I worked with what I had.

Yelling at the television

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THE DEMOCRATIC convention forced me to an unpleasant realization: I’ve become one of those crotchety old guys who yell at the television in helpless frustration: “Lies! How can they say such things? How can anyone sit still for this stuff?”
And this week, I’m in for more of the same with the Republicans.
What sets me off? Oh, take your pick — the hyperbole, the self-importance, the us-against-them talk, the stuff that Huck Finn called “tears and flapdoodle.”
Take, for instance, this typical bit from Hillary Clinton’s speech:

My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team. And none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win together. I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise…

Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
Take back the country? From whom? Did I miss something? Did the Russians roll right on through Gori and into Washington? No? You say Americans are still in charge, just the “wrong” Americans, of the wrong party? But your party controls Congress! Take it back from whom?
… a single party with a single purpose. Now there you’ve hit on the biggest lie propagated by each of the major parties, the conceit that there is something coherent and consistent about such loose confederations of often-incompatible interest groups. Did you not just spend the last few months playing with all the force you could muster upon those very differences, those very tensions — between feminists and black voters, between the working class and the wine and cheese set? What single purpose, aside from winning an election?
This is a fight… No, it isn’t, however much you love to say that. Again, I refer you to what the Russians are doing in Georgia — that’s a fight, albeit a one-sided one.
… that we must win together. Actually, that raises a particularly pertinent point, which is that the only “fights” that “must” be won are the ones in which “together” is defined as all Americans, or all freedom-loving peoples, whereas such divisive factions as your party and that other one that will meet in St. Paul militate against our being able to win such fights together.
I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… You’re absolutely right; you haven’t. So spare us the war metaphors.
… to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise… Like that’s what matters, the stupid party label. Like there isn’t more difference between you and Barack Obama in terms of philosophy and goals and experience and what you would bring to office than there is between John McCain and Joe Biden. Come on! Please!…
Sigh. Fume. Mutter.
This stuff wouldn’t upset me quite so much if not for the fact that this was to be the year that we rose above this stuff. That’s why I so happily supported both John McCain and Barack Obama in their parallel bids for the White House. Both men offered themselves as alternatives from the incessant, bitter, destructive partisan warfare of the Clinton-Bush years.
John McCain is the man the GOP’s partisans love to hate, the guy they call a “Republican In Name Only,” the man they stooped to new lows to destroy in 2000, the senator who’d just as soon work with Democrats as Republicans, the candidate who, coincidentally, has been giving Sen. Clinton a lot of love in his latest campaign ads.
Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s column on the facing page.
When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that way because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.
What I had wanted to hear was the kind of thing that caused me, while blogging on live TV the night of his South Carolina primary victory, to write “What a TREMENDOUS victory speech!” A sample of what impressed me so that night:

“We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House…. We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents… That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.”

That sort of anti-partisan vehemence would not have played well in Mile-High Stadium. Maybe, as he escapes the gravitational pull of Denver, the Obama of January will come out to inspire us again. I hope so. In the meantime, on to the Republicans….
Just moments ago as I write this, as he announced he’d chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, Sen. McCain promised the GOP crowd that he’d “fight for you.”
Lord help us.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

You know who Sarah Palin reminds me of?

Those of you who did not like my referring to Sarah Palin as a "babe" yesterday probably won’t enjoy this post, either. But I am honor-bound to be honest with you, my readers. Also, I have a journalistic duty to tell y’all as much as possible about a candidate about whom so little is known, even if it’s based on nothing but my overactive imagination.

I had never before seen a picture of Sarah Palin, and yet from the first moment I saw her, she looked familiar. Did she to you? If so, you’re dating myself. It’s not so much that Gov. Palin looks like a particular individual. But she’s a dead-ringer for a stock character that frequently appeared in sit-coms back in the ’50s and ’60s. If you’re my age, you’ve seen that character dozens of times.

Here’s a summary of a "Beverly Hillbillies" episode which featured that character (I’ve bold-faced the relevant part):

It’s Spring Tonic time, and Granny hands it around to the family, giving Jed a double dose because he made a mean comment on it. Meanwhile, at the bank, the secretary Gloria Buckles, who has worked on the Clampett account, has said she can take the paper work to Jed. When she gets up there, she transforms herself from a plain secretary to a gorgeous one, with her sights set on Jed’s money. She flirts with Jed, telling him that she needs a mountain man to make her happy. The family is worried about this young gold digger, and the fact that Jed has had a double dose of tonic. They call Drysdale and he rushes over, not recognizing Gloria. She reveals that her and Jed have discussed marriage, and when questioned, Jed says it is true. Gloria asks when they should set the date, and Jed says a few years, because that is when Jethro will be of marrying age. Jethro runs off with Gloria, and Jane runs after them to get her man back. Elly asks her father why he doesn’t want to marry her, and he says you have to start worrying when the bait starts chasing you.

Do you recognize her now? Yes, she’s the frumpy secretary who first appears in a conservative business outfit, wearing glasses, with her hair tied up on top of her head, who, at a critical moment in the plot, suddenly removes her jacket, whips off the glasses and lets her hair come tumbling down, and immediately looks like Miss America.

Of course — and this was the really cheesy thing about this plot device — she looked like Miss America when you first saw her, just Miss America with glasses and her hair done up. I never could decide whether the sitcom writers really thought America was stupid enough to be surprised by this plot device, or whether we were supposed to see through it, and see the transformation-to-glamour coming — you know, so that the folks at home would say, "I know what’s going to happen — watch this!"

That’s what made me realize that’s who Gov. Palin reminded me of. She IS beautiful, obviously so, and the specs and the tied-up hair are simply devices meant to say to us, "I’m serious; I’m not just a babe; you can vote for me."

The bad thing about this is that on some level, deep down, some of us who grew up on 50s and 60s TV are thinking, "This is gonna be good — watch this!" (And subconsciously, we’re expecting a scene in which she suddenly lets her hair down and removes the glasses, and of course, Cindy McCain walks in at that moment and says, "John! Who is THIS?" and a befuddled McCain goes "Hominahominahomina," and the laugh track plays.) Or maybe that’s the GOOD thing, in terms of keeping voters interested in the ticket. I don’t know.

By the way, I couldn’t find a picture to illustrate what I was talking about, but here’s video of the relevant part of the Beverly Hillbillies episode. The transformation of Gloria Buckles occurs toward the end of the first part:

LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

TIME magazine features Anton Gunn

Just got a heads-up that Anton Gunn — Democratic nominee for Bill Cotty’s House seat, S.C. political director for Barack Obama — has been featured in TIME magazine. A sample:

Anton Gunn is a first-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention from South Carolina, and he has never so much as watched a political convention on television before. Even Barack Obama’s famous keynote address in 2004 didn’t grab his attention (he sheepishly admits he still hasn’t listened to it). In fact, until two years ago, when Gunn ran for a state house seat in Columbia and lost by 298 votes, he’d never been involved in electoral politics.

Obama’s candidacy has brought a wave of new voters and volunteers into the Democratic Party, but even among them, Gunn, 35, stands out. In addition to being a Democratic delegate and a candidate once again for the state legislature, he now has a line on his political résumé few can match: political director for the Obama campaign in South Carolina, the state that more than any other launched the Illinois Senator’s successful candidacy.

You know, I don’t think I would have singled out Anton as one of those people brought into politics like Obama. I saw a number of such folks back in the state primaries, and some of them were real novices. Anton was relatively NEW to politics, but he was already in it before he met Obama. That doesn’t take away from his achievement helping Obama win the primary, a job for which he was quite inexperienced.

I guess this sort of exposure is kind of hard to match if you’re David Herndon, Mr. Gunn’s opponent in November. Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent TIME magazine readers are a factor.

Mayor Bob’s response to today’s editorial

Mayor Bob Coble sent this at 7:55 a.m., but I just got to it:

Safety and Security Ordinance is needed

I wanted to respond to your Friday editorial, “High-crime areas should draw more police protection.” Your editorial says “when crime escalates to the point it becomes ‘an unacceptable risk to public safety’ — whether at an apartment complex or in an historic neighborhood — residents should be able to expect swift, intense police intervention. But under a proposal by Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, if you live in an apartment complex beset with crime, you would have to depend on your landlord.” That statement is both untrue and misleading. A more accurate description of the Safety and Security Ordinance I have proposed would be, “if you live in an apartment complex, owned by an absentee landlord and funded by the federal government, that consistently rents to drug dealers and other criminals, and the Columbia Police and Richland County Sheriff Deputies are constantly coming to the same apartments time and time again, and the level of crime on the private property owned by your absentee landlord exceeds one percent of total major crime in the City, then your absentee landlord has a responsibility to be part of the solution.”
The City of Columbia recently did a gang assessment that was conducted by the University of South Carolina and Benedict College. That study demonstrated that a great deal of the drug and gang activity as well as domestic violence and violent crime are clustered in several large, federally funded, apartment complexes in Columbia. The State did a series of articles about North Columbia and reported the same findings. These apartments receive hundreds of thousands of federal dollars through project based Section 8 vouchers, federal tax credits for low income housing, or individual Section 8 vouchers. The federal government, since it provides subsidies for housing in these complexes, should require security just as it has structural safety requirements-but the federal government does not. The residents of these complexes are the victims of these crimes. They deserve the same level of safety as every other citizen.
The requirements of our Safety and Security Ordinance would start if an apartment complex was the source of one percent of major crime in the City. A safety and security plan is not a substitute for the police. The apartment owner can do things the police cannot: enforce lease provisions against renting to those convicted of drug crimes, enforce rules of the apartment established by the property owner such as a curfew; and screen persons for trespassing more effectively. It’s not appropriate for city police to stay in one apartment complex 24 hours a day and act as private security, at the neglect of nearby areas.
Gable Oaks is an example of success. The former owner hired private guards and instituted other measures earlier this year that transformed one of the city’s toughest housing complexes into a safe community. The City Police and the Richland County Sheriff worked in partnership with Gable Oaks to produce this safer community. The City, of course, has the obligation to provide protection for our citizens. A Safety and Security Ordinance is part of a larger strategy to fight crime in Columbia. Chief Tandy Carter is preparing his comprehensive plan for the Police Department. This year’s City budget that was adopted in June included monies for our pay and retention plan for both police and firefighters that will total $2.5 million phased over three years. Additionally, this year’s budget includes funding for 14 additional officers with seven added in this fiscal year and seven in the next. The City is implementing a security camera system, our Gang Initiative, as well as our Criminal Domestic Violence Task Force. A Safety and Security Ordinance should be part of that strategy.

Mayor Bob Coble

Choosing Sarah Palin

Folks, I’m absolutely swamped, this being Friday morning, but I thought I’d give those of you with the time a place to discuss McCain’s choice of … let me go check her name again… Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Here are some conversation-starters:

One thing’s for sure, I don’t have any video to share with you of Gov. Palin. Never met the woman.
For a brief moment this morning, I thought maybe Bobby Jindal was back on the short list, when I saw this piece by him in the WSJ. (I know that’s not logical, but the human mind is susceptible to the suggestion of coincidences.) That would have been cool, because it would have made the two tickets perfectly symmetrical — McCain playing the role of Biden on the GOP ticket, and Jindal (young, charismatic, ethnic) playing Obama.
Do you think McCain made a big mistake not beefing up his ticket’s economic cred with Romney?
Not that I want to attach a lot of importance to her gender, but it would seem that McCain is really, really serious about going after those disaffected Hillary voters, the ones who took HER gender very, very seriously.
Where’s Wayne Campbell when you need him for expert commentary on whether she, if elected, would qualify as the first babe to be a heartbeat from the presidency?

Talk amongst yourselves.

How about that Obama speech?

Obamaspeech

On the Sarah Palin post, Wally said he wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama’s speech last night. Well, here’s PART of what I have to say about it in my column coming up Sunday:

Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s speech on the facing page.
When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.

Don’t just go by me; be sure to read the Broder column I mention above (it’s embargoed until Sunday). Frankly, I was a little worried that I was the only one (other than David Brooks) left flat by the speech, until I saw what Broder had written.

But don’t just go by him, either. What did y’all think?

‘Famously Hot:’ The Pitch

This clip, which I’ll be posting on our Saturday Opinion Extra page, is from a meeting we had this week with representatives of the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports & Tourism, which had come to talk to us about the new "Famously Hot" campaign.

Our lead editorial Sunday will be about the special challenge that faces this or any other attempt to market our capital city: The fragmentation of the local market. As you will see on this video, the marketers have decided that there’s only one way to sell the metropolitan area: as Columbia. They brush aside "Midlands" as being meaningless to potential visitors (although it’s in their name).

Can they get the other 18 municipalities, 2 counties, and multiple other jurisdictions to go along with that? They think they can. We’ll see. If they can’t, this effort won’t go far.

Did that mob look familiar?

Students of Robert Ariail’s work may note that there’s something really familiar looking about that cartoon criticized on a local feminist blog.

Take a look at the cover of his last book, Ariail! There’s at least one particular character who appears in both. Of course, she appears in a lot of Robert’s cartoons, such as this one and this one and this one. He even has a name for her: He calls her "Auntie Bellum." She was to be a character in a comic strip that Robert and I kicked around a lot back in the 1990s, but never got around to developing (I haven’t given up hope of getting back to it, though).

Here’s how that cover developed: One day in 2001, Robert had another group of women angry at him — Muslim women who maintained that a gag he did about dress codes for pages at the State House (he’d drawn them in burqas) was anti-Islam. I said something like, "You’ve just got everybody on your case lately, don’t you — flag supporters, the governor, Democrats, Republicans, traditional Muslim women…." The drawing arose from that, and then Robert got to thinking that would be a good cover for a book….

You will note that women are not the only people who get really, really mad at Robert.

Robert’s ‘sexist’ cartoon

Robert’s in trouble now! He mentioned to me a few minutes ago the negative attention his cartoon from yesterday about Hillary and Barack has garnered, particularly on a blog called "Feminist Law Professors."

That blog took time out from considering "Which Wine Should I Bring To A Party At My Dean’s House?," a post that demonstrates at least a sense of humor of a sort, to bristle over "Political ‘Humor’ in the South Carolina MSM," which features Robert’s cartoon. It was filed under the category, "Sexism in the Media."

Key commentary from that blog:

That’s the same cartoonist that produced this and this and this and this.

Now I invite your commentary…

Today’s puzzler

In the spirit of Click and Clack, I offer the following conundrum. Consider first this letter to the editor from today’s paper:

Stupid blue laws thwart purchase
Government is the only source of such stupidity. Or at least with the authority to enforce such ignorance.
After church, my wife, Mary, and I went to Wal-Mart for a new sports watch for her. She decided on one and told the clerk to ring it up. The clerk said, “I can’t ring it up until 1:30, and it’s only 1:15. Why don’t you shop around and come back in 15 minutes?”
We wandered around for about 10 minutes and saw folks were checking out with bananas, potato chips and, yes, even beer, but you can’t purchase a watch until 1:30. I said I’ll have a beer while I wait till 1:30 to buy the watch.
Woe unto you who think government is the answer. When are we going to vote these nitwits out?

Bruce G. Kelly
Columbia

This is an interesting letter on several levels, but the most immediate question that arises is this: Where in the Midlands do you find a jurisdiction where it would be illegal to buy the watch before 1:30, yet legal to buy beer on Sunday?

The simple answer is that there isn’t one. Poor Mr. Kelly would be hard-pressed to find the "nitwits" that he wants to "vote out," since there is no jurisdiction that has made those two decisions that he finds so maddeningly inconsistent.

Give up? I had, but then Warren proposed a potential answer — while there is no one such jurisdiction, this Wal-Mart was in an anomalous location that was both in the city of Columbia and in Lexington County. It’s not a thought that would have immediately occurred to me, but of course there are such places.

My first guess was that we’re talking about the new Wal-Mart on Bush River Road, right next to Malfunction Junction. The map on my wall in the editorial dept. shows it as in Lexington County. It does NOT show it as being in Columbia, but it’s an old map, and I have the advantage of private intelligence in this case: I recently tried to buy beer there on a Sunday, and succeeded. Ipso facto, to wit, etc….

But that’s not where this happened. When Randle, who edits our letters, got back to the office, I asked her to call Mr. Kelly and get to the bottom of the mystery.

The answer: This incident occurred at the Harbison Wal-Mart, which is certainly in Lexington County, and — while I couldn’t find confirmation of the fact on any map readily at hand, the odds are that if it’s in that area and developed, it’s in the city.

Of course, Mr. Kelly still can’t find anyone to vote out of office for creating this situation. Even if he lives in both the city and Lexington County, it’s beyond the power of any local elected official to solve his problem. A Columbia city council member, for instance, might change the beer-sale ordinance, but could do nothing about Lexington’s blue law — and vice versa, if you follow me.

His problem is similar to one we’ve pointed out many times before, in somewhat different contexts. It’s not a matter of too MUCH government, but of too MANY governments.

He can vote against EVERY incumbent if he chooses (the Doug Ross solution), just as a sort of universal, howl-at-the-moon sort of protest, but that wouldn’t solve his problem. That is, if you consider not being able to buy a sports watch for 15 minutes a problem. And I’m sure many of you would. So commiserate with poor Mr. Kelly, a man without recourse to redress.

But I thought they were AGAINST brassieres (which shows how little I know)

Did anyone else do a double-take this morning upon reading the news about the woman who was extremely indignant about the scrutiny she received after the underwire in her full-figure bra set off the metal detector?

No, there weren’t any pictures. And yes, I thought of Jane Russell, too, but that’s probably unfair either to Nancy Kates (the lady in question) or Ms. Russell…. Anyway, back to the subject at hand… Hey! Boys! Over this way… Pay attention…

Ms. Kates said she would "talk to her family lawyer as well as the American Civil Liberties Union
and the National Organization for Women and decide how to pursue the
incident."

The ACLU I can understand. But isn’t the NOW historically opposed to bra-wearing? Or am I remembering that wrong? Maybe so.

Nick Clyburn? or, ‘Hey, Buddy…’

One thing jumped out at me when I read the piece about Jim Clyburn on today’s front page:

"…Then, he disappears down the restaurant’s narrow stairway, his three-man security detail in tow…."

Apparently, Rep. Clyburn is channeling the Nick Theodore of 20 years ago. This is from a Lee Bandy story of July 20, 1988:

SIX-MAN GUARD RIDICULED
A top state Republican is ridiculing Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore’s security contingent at the convention, but a Theodore spokesman said the six-person contingent is needed.

"While we don’t dispute the need for basic security even for a part-time job, Theodore needs a half-dozen bodyguards like Dolly Parton needs a body lift," State Republican Party Chairman Van Hipp said.

Four SLED agents and two state troopers are in Atlanta with Theodore, SLED Chief Robert Stewart said.

Theodore normally has two SLED agents, but "whatever is requested by the governor or lieutenant governor, we’ll send it," Stewart said.

Theodore spokesman Lyles Glenn said long hours and admission restrictions necessitated the extra manpower.

Spokesman Tucker Eskew said Gov. Carroll Campbell would have three or four bodyguards at the Republican National Convention next month in New Orleans.

Ah, those were the days. I was with Lee at that convention (did I mention that I’m not at this one?), and I well remember Nick’s "command post" in a room on the ground floor of the Days Inn there in Buckhead, from which his ongoing security operation was coordinated via radio.

Poor Nick never did quite live that down. Echoes of his armed force reverberate today through consideration of Andre Bauer’s security expenditures.

Anyway, that was the last part of Mr. Clyburn’s day that grabbed me. Somehow, I think I had more fun following Lindsey Graham around at the GOP shindig four years ago. After all, I got to meet Biff Henderson.

Actually, Michael DID say it was personal

Bonasera

Forgive me for going into Cliff Clavin mode here, but…

I had a little fun with the "Godfather" cliche of business-vs.-personal in my Sunday column. But it’s a little-known fact that in the novel (as opposed to the movie), Michael Corleone did say it was personal, and not business.

The irony is that the "it’s not personal… it’s strictly business" line is probably the most quoted from the movie. It’s used in business, sports, anywhere and anytime American males do something distasteful for which they do not wish to be held morally responsible. It’s like the kinder, gentler, all-American version of the Nazis’ "I vas only followink orders."

Hey, I’ve been guilty of using it, to help me separate personal feelings for a newsmaker from the responsibility to report or comment without reference to those feelings (Hey, he’s a nice guy, but this is business…). But it can be a pious copout, if you’re a real human being.

And that was Mario Puzo’s point. In fact, the central theme of the novel, and of other works by Puzo, such as The Fourth K, was the exploration of the personal as opposed to larger societal obligation, such as to the rule of law. The seduction of The Godfather is that you are invited to care about these characters personally, and forget that they are unapologetic, sometimes murderous, criminals.

Anyway, the central speech in the novel occurs just before Michael goes off to kill Sollozzo and the police captain. He’s speaking to Tom Hagen:

…Tom, don’t let anybody kid you. It’s all personal, every bit of business…. They call it business, OK. But it’s personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That’s what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal. Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes. Right?…

It’s the epiphany around which the whole story is based. But somehow, as great as the movie is, that got left out. We were left with the opposite impression of the point. Odd, isn’t it?

Mayor Bob on city finances

Still catching up with e-mail from over the weekend, I ran into this message from Mayor Bob Coble about the city of Columbia’s finances:

I wanted to give you my perspective on the progress the City is making in getting our Finance Department in order.
The 2007 CAFRA has been given to our auditor and shows a general fund balance of $24.9 million. That is a net increase over the year before of $1.6 million. Of the $24.9 million, $11 million of that will remain as the City’s “rainy day fund.” $2 million is encumbered and about $12 million is unallocated. Some portion of the unallocated $12 million may be used in future years, if needed, to handle fund balance deficits in accounts like the risk management fund, the TN Development Corporation, the Business Improvement District, a general obligation bond debt service etc. Our accountant, Don Mobely indicated at the retreat that future revenues and transfers from other funds would handle these deficits in future years. The 2007 CAFRA showed $9 million more in revenue and $4.4 million less in expenses than was budgeted.
The City is close to correcting problems in the Finance Department. The risk management fund has been corrected for past budgets. City Council will amend the current budget on September 24, 2008 to correct the problem for 2009. Health care costs will appear in each department’s budget. City Council approved a contract in July with Sungard Bi-Tech to correct the problems with our two computer systems, IFAS and Banner that were at the core of the problems with the Finance Department. Reconciliation and financial reports will be given to City Council on a monthly basis in January. We will have income and expense statements in October. Bill Ellis has been hired as the Deputy Finance Director. Two or three more account professionals will be hired by Bill. A new permanent CFO will be hired in January. A CFO Advisory Committee of prominent local CEOs, CFOs and business men and women has been established and has met. This committee will help select the best CFO possible. The internal control weaknesses that were reported in the last management letter will show corrections in the 2009 and 2010 CAFRA. The restructured Finance Department will be responsible for risk management.
The City must reduce health care costs and budget for GASB 45, as all governmental entities must do. Towers-Perrin, a nationally recognized, health care consultant, made a presentation at our retreat last week and will make recommendations on September 3rd for changes in our health plan effective July 1, 2009. I believe those changes will bring the City’s plan more in line with other governmental plans but not be a radical departure based on the initial report from Towers-Perrin. GASB 45 will be addressed after those changes have been made because those changes will impact the future liability under GASB 45.
Clearly, these financial problems have been embarrassing. They have caused us to plan poorly and react slowly because of a lack of information. These problems are being addressed, and we look forward to having the best Finance Department possible using best practices.

For the views of council members Kirkman Finlay III and Daniel Rickenmann, stay tuned to The Pulse, I suppose…

No, I’m NOT going to the conventions. And you?

Early Saturday morning, I ran into David Stanton of WIS at the Lizard’s Thicket on Sunset in W. Cola. He was having oatmeal, for those who want details.

Anyway, he asked a question I had heard frequently during the last few weeks, "Are you going to the conventions?" (Actually, when you hear it from partisans, the say "convention," singular, because they think there’s only one.)

And the answer was a sad, "No." I had been tentatively planning to go as recently as about three weeks ago. My publisher, in spite of all our cutbacks, had repeatedly expressed the willingness to pay for it (despite the fact that plans to get ad sponsors for the blog to pay for the venture apparently didn’t materialize), but in the end I had to say "no, thanks," mainly because I just couldn’t face Warren and Cindi and tell them I was going to go off and have fun and leave them to figure out how to carry on without Mike or me, either (we’re still in transition on that; we’re getting some more part-time help from the newsroom starting this week, in fact). I had felt bad enough spending those few much-needed days at the beach.

The thing about conventions is that they can be such a blast, but have little immediate, obvious return. The long-term return is huge, because hanging out all hours with the political leadership of your state for a week is sort of like going to summer camp with some of your best (and worst) sources. You just learn an awful lot more about them, and that knowledge pays off. But you don’t find a whole lot of really meaningly stuff to write about in the short term. Conventions are VERY short on substance.

The reason I wanted to go — and had looked forward to going ever since I went to New York in 2004 (I let Mike have Boston that year) — was the blogging opportunity. In 2004, I found things I wanted to write about 20 times a day, although very little that was column-worthy. Just lots of fascinating little tidbits. It was the frustration of having all those urges to write, and having reserved only three column slots that week, that first planted the idea of blogging in my head. I started this blog a few months later, and spent the next four years looking forward to the ultimate blogging opportunity, the 2008 conventions.

But I’m the editor; I’m not supposed to have that much fun. I didn’t go. Ah, well. Maybe next time.

Oh, by the way, back to David Stanton. I said, "No. And you?" Nope. In fact, I don’t think anybody from his station went. He and I agreed that we weren’t missing much of substance, just some good blogging. Sour grapes.

Meanwhile, The State has two people from our newsroom at the convention. Just not me. I know I made the right decision. Maybe at some point in the future it will feel like it.

Meanwhile, over in the Hillaryverse…

As the Clintons prepare to engage in catharsis tonight and tomorrow, it seems fitting to see what’s going on over in the alternative universe in which the diehard Hillary supporters live and move and have their being. We’ve visited it before, but it remains a strange place to the uninitiated, a place where people can say the following without a trace of irony:

Open Letter To SuperDelegates:

Rarely is one person given the opportunity and the responsibility to make a decision which will affect the future of their country. This is indeed such a time. It is as important a decision as the decision that citizens of this country made to revolt against the British government. It is as important a time as the moment that John Hancock decided to prominently sign his name, knowing that his signature would be considered treason punishable by death. Soon, each superdelegate will make a decision that will irrevocably usher in a time of corruption and political cheating or prosperity and a stable productive government. Such is the choice you have before you: whether to nominate Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama has no substantial experience in government, no distinguished voting record, and no history of patriotic service to this country. Further, he has no leadership experience, having accomplished little during his tenure in Illinois or the Senate. His only experience is as a community organizer, a woefully inadequate preparation for the presidency. However, due to positive exposure from the media and the DNC, he has managed to catapult himself beyond far more qualified candidates. Further, he won many delegates from caucuses, a troublesome sign given that widespread caucus cheating has been documented and caucuses do not fairly represent the will of the voters. He has alienated key groups of traditionally Democratic voters. Do not be lulled into thinking that new younger voters will compensate for such voters, as they represent a huge block of moderate voters who elected Bill Clinton president. Do not think that empty phrases of change and hope can substitute for hard-core experience and a love of this country. Barack Obama’s only agenda is to get elected. He neither knows how to run this country or to be loyal to it. His loyalty is to himself alone, and to the goal of being elected president.

Hillary Clinton has substantial experience and a desire to do what is right and good for this country. While the media and the DNC abandoned her, she stood firm and strong, propelled by the loyalty and needs of eighteen million citizens. With her perseverance and policy knowledge, she demonstrated that she can lead this country while she weathered adversity and stood alone against the media and the political establishment…

Really. You can find that at justsaynodeal.com. But there is more. There is, as I say, a whole universe to explore — a universe where IT’S NOT OVER:

You can, for instance, find that Obama "was registered as a Muslim in Indonesia" from the video above, at hillaryclintonnews.blogspot.com.
Or read denunciations of the "Democratic National Coronation" at hireheels.com (motto: "We adore shoes, but we love Hillary," which at least shows the ability to poke fun at oneself).
Or read that "McCain Gets It" at hillaryorbust.com.

Here’s a longer list of such sites. Enjoy.

Imagining an old JFK

You know what I kept thinking last night when Ted Kennedy was talking, and not for the first time? I was Kennedys
thinking how impossible it is to imagine any of his older brothers as old, feeble men, being lionized in the winter of their years. Not Jack, certainly not Bobby, and absolutely not Joe Jr.

And yet here was the baby of the family, fabulously old and famously ill. It’s weird.

Something else occurred to me: He doesn’t have nearly the heavy accent that Jack and Bobby did. It’s there, but his manner of speech is much more whitebread America. I found myself wondering if this has happened over time and I’m just noticing it, or did he always speak this way? Is it that he has lived through a time of greater homogenization of the culture, a time his brothers didn’t survive to live through, or is it just an individual difference?

I’m always thinking stuff like this, instead of paying attention to the words…

Who’s this Tommy when he’s at home?

One of the things expected of someone in my job is that I know things — lots and lots of things, enough to reach critical mass so that I can deal with complex issues against a fairly massive context. (More than that, of course, I need to know how the things I know fit together and interact, but that’s another subject.) That means knowing history, but being very up to the moment as to what’s happening now.

And generally, I meet that test — sometimes quite literally. I have a very good working knowledge of history and of political systems, but also popular culture. I’m good at tests of broad knowledge, and also at Trivial Pursuit. But every person’s knowledge is finite. I only know the things I know by NOT knowing a lot of things that other people take for granted. Sometimes, the things I don’t know are things people would assume I do know, such as who’s who on TV news. Other times, it’s something that other folks just keep up with without thinking, such as sports.

A couple of days ago, there was this big headline in our paper, "Bringing up Beecher," and I got this strong impression that I was supposed to know, without being told, who this Beecher was. There was a large photograph that made me think he was a football player, judging by attire, and assuming that was him. (Of course, I could have read the story, but that would be like cheating, wouldn’t it?) My eyes moved on, and I thought no more about it. Coincidentally, the next day, I was a captive audience in a meeting in which someone happened to mention that someone named "Tommy Beecher" was a relatively untested USC quarterback. Ah. Good to know. This will save me from embarrassing myself if I am surrounded by people who dwell in this alternative universe called Gamecock football (this has been known to happen). It will save me from asking my reflexive question:

"And who’s this Beecher when he’s at home?"

I am, of course, channeling George Harrison’s wonderful scene in "A Hard Day’s Night," when he’s surrounded by people for whom "Susan" is the center of the universe, and they assume she’s the center of HIS universe, and comedy ensues from that disconnect.

I often feel like George when in the company of sports fanatics. They can’t believe I don’t know who they’re talking about (although I try harder than George to hide the fact, because I don’t like shocking people; nor am I trying to be "too cool" for their enthusiasms a la George). For my part, I’m amazed they don’t get the movie allusion if I do say, "Who’s this (blank) when he’s/she’s at home?" For that reason, I seldom say it any more. I just stay quiet and try to infer what in the world they’re on about, and hope my ignorance isn’t plain to see. Because I’m supposed to know stuff.

How SC gummint looks from the outside

One of the obstacles I had to overcome to get the Power Failure project done back in 1991 was persuading my managing editor and executive editor that the problems I proposed to write about were indeed particular to South Carolina. They would ask, "Is it really different from the way other states do things?" and I would say "Yes!" with supporting evidence.

A reader shares with me this item from Governing magazine, which might have helped me make my point more quickly if it had been written back then:

The Budget and Control Board is just one reason why South Carolina’s
governor arguably has less power than any other in the country. And
that has been true for more than a century. As recently as 15 years
ago, the governor didn’t even have a cabinet or submit a budget.
Legislation in 1993 changed that but, even today, the governor can’t
hire or fire the heads of many agencies without the legislature’s
permission. This is separation of powers beyond James Madison’s wildest
dreams.

That Madison reference is a bit off — the S.C. way violates the fundamentals of separation of powers by allowing the legislative branch to trample all over the executive (and the judicial, in many cases). But on the whole, it’s a very good piece. It essentially provides the point of view of the informed outsider, bemused at just how oddly we do things in the Palmetto State. There’s nothing new in it — you’ve read all this stuff in The State before — but it’s a decent step-back piece. The writer even saw through the governor’s thin pretense to be restructuring’s best hope, getting to the core of why Mark Sanford has set the cause back:

Although Sanford has been the strongest advocate of restructuring, he
has also, in a sense, been its greatest enemy. He has clashed
repeatedly with his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly over
even the smallest issues. He’s targeted legislators’ pet projects and
pushed for spending cuts that virtually no lawmakers were willing to
accept. He’s continued to press for school vouchers in the absence of
legislative support.

Anyway, the piece is a nice primer on the problem. It sort of reminds me of some of the initial pieces I wrote on the subject back in ’91.

Of course, the writer was guided by a good source. You’ll see Cindi quoted several times in the piece. In fact, before posting this I asked Cindi about this Josh Goodman (whether he was indeed the outside observer I supposed him to be), and she said,

He DID speak to me; came right here and chatted. He is NOT from around here, although I don’t recall where he’s from. I gave him a copy of the restructuring special section/reprint, not sure if I gave him Power Failure or not, as my supply is dwindling.

In other words, his message is so familiar to me because he was working from our text — just as Sanford did in his 2002 election. (So in other words, something like this likely would not have been written before Power Failure.)…

Towards the end of his piece, Mr. Goodman adopts a hopeful tone about the possibility of future reform, noting some of the same positive developments you’ve read about here, from Vincent Sheheen’s efforts to the sudden turnaround of some black Democrats (long among the most committed foes of restructuring) who were persuaded by the recent Highway Patrol scandals to change their minds.

We’ll see. As usual, we’ll keep pushing for these changes, and keep hoping…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits