Category Archives: Media

Ted Vick makes the Daily Mail

Yes, the Daily Mail, as in the one in London — the one in “Paperback Writer,” for my fellow Boomers.

Imagine my surprise. I just this morning loaded the Daily Mail app onto my iPod, and this was one of the first stories to pop up, right there on the main U.S. news page.

And why on Earth would an arrest of a South Carolina lawmaker be worth a headline in such a venue? I think maybe it was Todd Rutherford’s explanation about the rock in his shoe. They even squeezed that into the hed, “South Carolina Democrat arrested for second DUI in a year but blames ‘impairment’ on rock in his shoe.” An excerpt:

A South Carolina state representative has been arrested for his second DUI in less than a year despite claims by his attorney that his perceived impairment was because of a rock in his shoe.

State Rep. Ted Vick, D-Chesterfield, was arrested on the Statehouse grounds around 11 p.m. Tuesday by the Bureau of Protective Services, according to Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli.

An officer followed Vick after seeing him stumbling as he walked into a parking garage in Columbia. Vick got into his car and hit a cone before the officer could catch up and ask him to stop…

But Vick’s lawyer, fellow Rep. Todd Rutherford, said Vick was not impaired.

Vick was walking funny because he had a rock in his shoe, said Rutherford, D-Columbia…

Kevin Fisher on Sanford, Kathleen and me

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Kevin Fisher is a thoughtful columnist. He called to leave a message and warn me that I’d be mentioned in his column this week, as follows:

I realize that sentiment cuts to the quick of Sanford bashers, including people I like and respect. For example, former editorial page editor of The State and local blogger Brad Warthen sometimes seems obsessed with Sanford’s misdeeds, real or imagined.

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s own superb nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker badly missed the mark in a prominent column leading up to the recent election, writing “Sanford’s candidacy is on life support … not only did his former wife Jenny not stand by her man, she wrote a book, went on TV and recently took him to court for trespassing … Where the wife goes, so go the people.”

Apparently not, to the dismay of not only the usually astute Warthen and Parker but also the inevitably smug and self-righteous commentators of MSNBC.
While partisan hacks are now the norm on cable news (both left and right), Chris Matthews and company repeatedly made fools of themselves by ridiculing the idea of a Sanford comeback, all while assuring each other that the people of SC-1 would not be such knaves as to vote for him…

Kevin always does that. He doesn’t really have to, when he’s saying something that mild, but I’m impressed that he does.

I did call him back to make a couple of points: One, that I never shared Kathleen’s belief that Sanford was toast. I sort of marveled at the fact that she seemed so convinced of it. In fact, I cast doubt on it at the time — even though between the time she wrote her column and I reacted to it, a poll had come out showing him 9 points behind. This is me then:

I think it’s premature to count Mark Sanford out. That district is so Republican, and he won the crowded GOP primary. The same people who voted for him all those times before seem poised to do it again. Relying on those voters not to show up on election day seems like a thin premise.

I now think he may lose. [That was because of the PPP poll.] I’d very much like to see him lose, because it would go a long way toward bolstering my faith in democracy in South Carolina, which frankly has been repeatedly bruised over the last few years. It would show that voters in that district have some sense.

But I’m not counting on it, not on the basis of information currently available to me…

And on the day before the election, I flatly wrote, “he is likely to win tomorrow…”

As for Kevin’s observation that “Brad Warthen sometimes seems obsessed with Sanford’s misdeeds, real or imagined,” I have two things to say. I write like that — very insistently and repeatedly — when I’m worried that something bad is going to happen. In this case, the bad thing being Mark Sanford returning to public office. It was a clear and present danger, as the outcome confirms.

Looking back, I think my best statement of the reasons voters shouldn’t have elected Sanford came after the election, when it was too late. That was in this comment:

Nor should voters have voted against Sanford because of the Argentina thing. Or the pathologically narcissistic interview a week later in which he droned on about his “soulmate.” (Michael Jackson died to save Mark Sanford from further humiliation, but he just had to grab the spotlight back.) Or messing up the State House carpet with the stupid piglet stunt. Or vetoing the entire state budget in 2006 (hours after it was too late for anyone to vote for his opponent in the GOP primary). Or the constant contempt he has heaped on his fellow elected Republicans over the years. Or being the only governor in the nation who didn’t want his state to get the stimulus money that they’d be on the hook for just as much as taxpayers in the rest of the country.

Not even for his maddening verbal tics. I would say.

No, at the end of the day (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em), it should have been cumulative. People should have learned from the totality of his record in public life.

But they didn’t.

Note that those are real, not imagined, misdeeds.

And somehow, in all of that, I failed to mention his 37 ethics violations, including flying 1st or business class instead of coach as state regs required, using state aircraft for personal travel and spending campaign funds for noncampaign expenses. Mind you, this is the guy who was such a watchdog of public money that he made state employees double up in hotel rooms when they were on state business. And you know, that’s why his supporters supposedly love him — because he’s so respectful of their money. Which is hogwash, just for the record.

Missing the point about the wicked Lowcountry

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Last night before the results were in, a friend shared with me this Facebook update from John Dickerson of CBS and Slate:

If Mark Sanford wins tonight it will mark a real evolution for South Carolina as a state where values voters play a big role. Sanford, Gingrich’s win in the SC GOP primary. This is not the state where George Bush spoke at Bob Jones in 2000.

No, no, no. Apples and oranges. As I responded:

It’s the Lowcountry. Stuff like that never mattered as much in the Lowcountry. Bob Jones is in the part of the state where they think Charlestonians are all heathens.

I could have added, “drinking, swearing, gambling, fornicating heathens,” but it was a text, so I kept it short.

The Calvinist/fundamentalist part of the state, where Bob Jones is, is the Upstate. It’s like confusing Maine and Florida, only on a smaller scale. Charleston is where the hell-raisers live, and let live. It has always been thus.

Mr. Dickerson compounded his error with a piece in Slate this morning headlined, “Paris, South Carolina:”

South Carolina conservatives may still say a candidate’s sins matter, but they aren’t voting that way. In fact, if you weren’t privy to the state’s strong social conservative history, you could almost mistake South Carolinians for city folk—people who vote for experience, policy, and political leanings and show a sophisticate’s relativism toward personal moral failings. These days, South Carolinians seem almost Parisian when they enter the voting booth.

It’s a clever angle. And accurate, in that Charleston is, indeed the Paris of South Carolina. The difference is that South Carolina isn’t France.

It’s true that the values voters don’t have the impact statewide that they did back in the early 90s. The two strains of libertarianism (economic, not cultural) — the Club for Growth types who love Sanford, and the more populist Tea Party types who love Nikki Haley — have crowded them out to a great extent.

But they’re still here. And just because Sanford won in the Lowcountry doesn’t mean their influence isn’t still felt. Maybe he would have won in another part of the state. But winning down there doesn’t prove it.

The Gingrich angle that Dickerson brings up is indeed intriguing. But I don’t think that’s a good example. South Carolinians had a fit and broke with their history of choosing the eventual nominee because Gingrich at that moment was coming across as the guy who most wanted to rip out Barack Obama’s throat with his teeth. It was a weird moment. He appealed to something dark and visceral and atavistic in the SC electorate, something that for me hearkened back to Tillmanism. There was that, and the fact that a lot of establishment Republicans didn’t want Nikki Haley’s candidate to win.

I don’t think the two instances mark a trend away from family values. But yeah, Charleston is Paris if you like…

‘Meanwhile, Sanford’s opponent spent the day campaigning elsewhere…’

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My headline should seem familiar.

It seems to me that there’s a line like that in most stories about the 1st Congressional District special election. For instance, this is the only mention of her in first 16 paragraphs of the Island Packet story I referred to in my last post:

Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent in the May 7 special election, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, campaigned across Beaufort and Charleston counties where most of the district’s voters live. She attended fundraisers and forums, declaring herself the victor in Monday night’s debate.

That, of course, was the story about Mark Sanford’s endorsements by Rand Paul, Larry Flynt and a website that promotes extramarital affairs.

The pattern for both national and state stories about this race is as follows:

The lede about the latest development or nondevelopment involving Sanford (his asking his ex-wife to manage his campaign, his goofy plywood signs, Jenny accusing him of trespassing, his soulmate popping up at his primary victory party, changing versions of the Super Bowl story, “debating” a picture of Nancy Pelosi, etc.).
A quick mention that his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, spent the day campaigning elsewhere in the district. Somewhere out of sight and hearing of the press, apparently.
An extensive elaboration on the latest Sanford development or nondevelopment, including a recitation of previous revelations.

You get the impression that if the Democrat weren’t the sister of a national celebrity, she’d hardly ever get a headline of her own.

This underlines, yet again, the point I made in the previous post — that the only way the three-ring circus goes away is if Sanford loses next week. If he wins, this is what we have to get used to.

Great story: the shootout in Boston, by Cullen of the Globe

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Earlier today, I heard Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe on the radio, giving a riveting, shot-by-shot description of the gun battle between Boston-area cops and the Tsarnaev brothers last Thursday night. It’s a great story, and Cullen tells it well in his column this morning. In fact, I don’t recall ever having read a more compelling story about cops in action in a newspaper. An excerpt:

Joe Reynolds is a young cop in Watertown, and last Friday he was driving, alone in his cruiser, when he saw them.

The bombing suspects.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar were in two cars, following each other closely.

Reynolds called it in.

Do not engage, the dispatcher told him. Not on your own.

The brothers pulled over. So did Reynolds. He didn’t know it, but he was about to interrupt the two as they tried, police believe, to transfer their crude, homemade explosives from one vehicle to another.

As Reynolds waited for backup, it felt like hours, but it was only minutes and that backup, in the form of Sergeant John MacLelland, was speeding up the street just as the Tsarnaevs turned and at least one of them opened up on Joe Reynolds. Reynolds threw his cruiser into reverse and sped backwards. He and MacLelland got out and began returning fire.

The suspects had to know they had only one chance if they were going to make their way to New York, perhaps to kill again. They had to shoot their way out. But the cavalry was on the way to ensure that would not happen. A bevy of Watertown, Boston, Transit, and State Police were rushing to help….

It’s not quite the same as hearing it in Cullen’s accent. But just pretend that when he writes “cops,” you’re hearing “cawps.” That will help…

Is Mark Sanford entitled to equal time on Comedy Central?

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The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

I thought this question, posed on Slatest, was intriguing:

As the faux-conservative Colbert Report host, Stephen Colbert has lampooned campaign finance laws and the U.S. electoral system by starting his own super PAC and announcing bids for the presidency and “the president of the United States of South Carolina.” But another Colbert—this one with a hard t at the end—is also vying for the political spotlight: Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Stephen’s older sister, who’s facing off against avid Appalachian Trail hiker and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in a May 7 special election for South Carolina’s 1^st Congressional District. Colbert has twice devoted show segments to his sister’s campaign, including one endorsing her candidacy, and has mocked Sanford on countless occasions. With the show’s nightly viewership of 1.5 million and the documented “Colbert bump” in a politician’s support after an appearance, is Colbert violating election laws by blending his hosting role with his sister’s campaign?

Probably not. The central law in play is the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule. Beginning with the Radio Act of 1927, which Congress enacted in response to fears of broadcasters’ ability to sway elections by limiting a candidate’s access to the airwaves, radio and television networks have been required to offer equal airtime (or opportunities to purchase advertising at a reduced price) to all candidates if they request it. Exemptions were later added for documentaries, newscasts, news interviews, and on-the-spot news events.

Since it covers news stories and political issues, The Colbert Report would likely fall under the newscast or news interviews exceptions…

Really? I would have thought it was entertainment.

In any case, I’ve always found the equal-time rule sort of hard to follow. And now that we have “news shows” that are entirely satire, how would you go about giving equal time, anyway? And if you gave it, how could you be assured it would be to the advantage of the one demanding it? When everything is dealt with ironically, how do you make sure your equal time is quality time? Make it an infomercial, so you have total control? Maybe. I don’t know. But even that could backfire, as Comedy Central viewers go there for smart-aleck, not for earnest.

What do y’all think?

Kathleen Parker writes as though Sanford were toast

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The State today ran this column by Kathleen Parker, which doesn’t come right out and say “Mark Sanford’s gonna lose,” but seems to assume that to be the case throughout. Here’s how the piece ends:

Sanford didn’t even have the decency to resign from office but rather finished his term and vanished for a couple of years only to re-emerge in pursuit of a fresh legacy. He recently won the Republican primary for an open congressional seat and faces Elizabeth Colbert Busch (sister of TV’s Stephen Colbert) in a special election May 7.

To many South Carolinians, especially women, Sanford’s candidacy is an embarrassment of Weineresque proportions. But if history is any guide, his candidacy is on life support. Not only did his former wife, Jenny Sanford, not stand by her man, she also wrote a book, went on TV and recently took him to court for trespassing. This in the wake of his fiancee showing up at his primary victory party and appearing onstage with him and two of his sons, one of whom had not previously met his future stepmother.

Sanford’s lack of empathy for his family, not to mention his impeachable judgment, should disqualify him from further public service, an opinion apparently shared by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which recently withdrew support for his candidacy.

Where the wife goes, so go the people…

An interesting detail to note is that this piece is several days old. It’s dated for April 19, which was three days before the PPP poll showed Elizabeth Colbert Busch leading by 9 points. So Kathleen was just sort of going on gut on this — assuming that her theory, that if the wife doesn’t forgive the voters won’t, would apply.

I think it’s premature to count Mark Sanford out. That district is so Republican, and he won the crowded GOP primary. The same people who voted for him all those times before seem poised to do it again. Relying on those voters not to show up on election day seems like a thin premise.

I now think he may lose. I’d very much like to see him lose, because it would go a long way toward bolstering my faith in democracy in South Carolina, which frankly has been repeatedly bruised over the last few years. It would show that voters in that district have some sense.

But I’m not counting on it, not on the basis of information currently available to me.

And I don’t think you can predict it based on any generalizations about sex scandals elsewhere in the country. National media (and I know Kathleen isn’t like other national media, since she lives in SC, but the audience she’s writing for is national) keep making the mistake of lumping Sanford in with Weiner and others, as though there were a connection. When there isn’t.

This is related to another fallacy that national media treat as gospel — that you can make generalizations about individual congressional elections based on party. As though a Democratic or Republican victory at one end of the country indicates a trend that will bear out at the other end of the country. Which utterly ignores the fact that every candidate is different, and is running under different conditions, in a different venue with different voters.

And just as with Tolstoy’s observation that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” every sex scandal is different. And one involving Mark Sanford is necessarily more different than others, because Mark Sanford is utterly unlike any politician I’ve ever encountered in my long career. The odd ways that he relates, or doesn’t relate, to other human beings (including, and perhaps especially, member of his own party) is just unique. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Therefore the psychology of what motivates people to vote for him is also unique. His political appeal is a strange animal, hard to understand and harder to predict.

So I would not dismiss him yet, as much as I may want to. But to do so, I’d have to be more certain that I am that voters who show up on May 7 in that district will act sensibly, rather than embarrass our state. And there are just too many quirky variables to predict with confidence.

DCCC’s Appalachian Trail advert

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The national Republican Party has washed its hands of Mark Sanford — but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is firmly in the corner of his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch,

As evidenced by the ad above.

Meanwhile, some Republicans seem to be worrying about their association with Sanford even if he wins. The concern seems to be that he would further damage their reputation with women, either way.

In that vein I share the below interview with Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.

Boston bombings: Why did authorities telegraph the arrest? (Uh… what arrest?)

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While I was at home having a late lunch, the following bulletins came on my phone in rapid succession:

AP Mobile: Breaking (1:41PM EDT): Law enforcement official: Arrest imminent in marathon bombing, suspect to be brought to court.
WSJ: Suspect in Boston bombings about to be arrested, according to AP. WSJ can’t independently confirm.
NYTimes: Investigators Say They Have Video of Man Believed to Have Planted Bombs in Boston
AP Mobile: Breaking (2:02PM EDT): Law enforcement official: Boston Marathon bomb suspect in custody, expected in federal court.

And then just now, as I was typing this, the following:

AP Mobile: Breaking (2:47PM EDT): Federal officials deny that Boston Marathon bombing suspect is in custody.

OK, first, why on Earth would any law enforcement official say someone was about to be arrested when the suspect was not yet in custody? Do they suppose mad bombers don’t have smartphones? I mean, a guy doesn’t even need a police scanner these days to keep tabs on the cops at this rate.

And then, on that last bulletin — What the…? Does anyone, in the media or the law enforcement establishment, know what’s going on?

Blaming media, Nobel for rise of modern terrorism

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Probably for the same reason I got a second major in history in college, I enjoy when someone takes a step back from events to provide a bit of historical perspective, as Max Boot did this morning in the WSJ on the history of modern terrorism.

And just as Eli Whitney revived the cotton industry and therefore slavery in this country, Boot (I love that guy’s name; sounds like a character Arnold Schwarzenegger would play in a movie) says three things helped launch a wave of terrorist groups around the world about a century ago: the inventions of dynamite, the telegraph and the high-speed newspaper press:

Nobel

It is no coincidence that the era of modern terrorism began at almost the same time that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite: 1867. There had been a few isolated terrorist gangs before then—which is to say, groups that murdered civilians in order to further a political or religious agenda. The Sicarri, the Jewish dagger-men who killed Roman collaborators in first-century Judaea, come to mind. So do the Assassins, the Shiite sect that terrorized Middle Eastern leaders in the Middle Ages. But such examples are few and far between, whereas the late 19th century saw the flowering of the first age of international terrorism, featuring such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Fenians, the Russian Nihilists and the anarchists who operated in both Europe and the Americas.

Their growth was greatly aided by the invention of portable weapons such as breech-loading revolvers and especially dynamite, which was 20 times more powerful than the gunpowder that Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators had used in an attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

Just as important was the invention of the telegraph and the high-speed printing press, which made possible the rise of cheap newspapers and magazines—the world’s first mass media. Terrorism is above all an act of communication, insofar as terrorist groups are too small and too weak to fight conventional armies in the open field. Unlike guerrilla groups, most purely terrorist organizations don’t even attempt attacks on security forces; they prefer to strike “soft” targets such as the Boston Marathon, where they know that their actions, the more heinous the better, will attract widespread publicity. (Note, however, that many insurgencies use both guerrilla and terrorist tactics, striking both security forces and civilians, as the Irish Republican Army and the Viet Cong did.)…

There’s one flaw in this explanation, as it applies to the most recent incident: The pressure-cooker bombs used in Boston may have used black powder, rather than dynamite or plastique.

Still, I like a good theory.

Speculation in the era of 24/7 news

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I got an email from blog regular Barry this morning:

another very disappointing thing to see (Boston)

Watching TV media folks (Savannah Guthrie on The Today Show a few mins ago for one) asking terrorism experts to speculate “what does your gut tell you?” in questions regarding who is responsible for the attack. (BTW – Savannah is also an attorney)

The expert this morning told Savannah ” I don’t speculate and I don’t go off my gut. I am trained to look for evidence and go where the evidence takes me.” - a great answer to a really sorry question.

How pitiful – asking someone to speculate on such a tragedy – and I suspect she asked it so that will have something to jump on him if his speculation or “gut” feeling isn’t correct. Sick of seeing that type of questioning from media folks.

My answer was to say that I don’t have the highest opinion of 24/7 cable TV “news” to begin with. But I think it’s off-base to speculate that “so that will have something to jump on him if his speculation or ‘gut’ feeling isn’t correct.”

Questions like that arise from the very nature of 24/7 TV “news.” They have to keep talking, throughout the long hours when nothing is known. So inevitably, just to have something new to talk about, they get into speculation. And yeah, eventually the talk itself becomes the topic, and a misstatement by an official could become the latest thing to talk about.

It’s not good. But it’s not nefarious.

What it is is an argument for the old way of doing news — once a day, which gave you a chance to pull things together and think about what you were presenting to the world, whatever your medium.

But we’ll never get that toothpaste back into the tube.

And just so you don’t think I’m just picking on broadcast, note the above headline from the New York Post from yesterday afternoon. I mentioned it on my blog yesterday, even having that number in a headline briefly (but cautiously attributing it to a “report”).

The thoughtful hedonist: Russell Brand on Thatcher

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You probably don’t want to watch it with your mom, or with your children for that matter, but I have seen few things funnier in recent years than Russell Brand in “Get Him to the Greek.” From his first line, “I’m Aldous Snow, the rock star,” his embodiment of an out-of-control hedonist is so devastatingly spot on, you come away convinced that that is who he really is (of course, his personal biography isn’t that far distant from Snow’s).

But messed up as he may be, he’s a bright guy who can actually be fairly thoughtful (interestingly, there were flashes of that in the Aldous Snow character, tucked among the Jeffrey-induced outrages). He showed that in a piece he wrote for The Guardian a couple of days back. Excerpts:

One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It’s kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. “What’s going on there, mate?” John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. “Maggie Thatcher,” he said. “Comes here every week to water them flowers.” The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn’t until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon…

The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear”. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate…

Rough stuff. But then there are bits like this:

When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It’d be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. “I thought I’d be overjoyed, but really it’s just … another one bites the dust …” This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher’s ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies…

I found it interesting because it gave me insight into the attitudes of a young Brit growing up in the Thatcher era — someone whose life wasn’t politics. I think he probably speaks for a lot of people in his generation, those who aren’t inclined to engage in the execrable “Ding-Dong” celebrations, but aren’t at all interested in fitting her with a halo, either.

I was also intrigued by the bits of communitarianism that crept into the writing of this young man best known in this country for playing a narcissist, such as “If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t.”

I share it as something from an unexpected quarter that broadened my understanding a bit.

The amazing thing about newspapers, as interpreted by ‘George Costanza’

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Romenesko shared this, which he got from The Harvard Crimson. It’s from an interview with Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on “Seinfeld”:

The first time I really thought, “Oh my god, Jerry Seinfeld is brilliant” was when he did a joke about newspapers, and how relieved the editors of a newspaper must be when exactly the right amount of things happen everyday to make the paper come out perfectly, so that at six o’clock at their deadline, you don’t go, “Oh, one more thing happened,” and now you have a blank page with two paragraphs.

I’ve always loved that joke, too. Because while it is meant to be seen as ridiculous, it taps into a sense of wonder I had about newspaper from an early age.

When I was in second or third grade, I read a book of short stories aimed at people my age. It had a theme — each story opened a window on some different aspect of the big wide world, meant to show kids the possibilities for when they grew up. One story, the one I remember best, was about a kid who went to work for a newspaper as a copy boy (which would be my first newspaper job, at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, years later). The reader followed the boy as he learned about everything it took to publish a newspaper each day.

I was struck with awe at the enormity of such a task. I couldn’t believe any group of people, no matter how experienced or talented, could get all of those things done in a day, every day. And yet there was the proof, on my doorstep each morning.

Decades later, after I had mastered every aspect of the process, I used to wonder sometimes at the complaints we’d get from readers. Someone would be griping at me about some small thing that, in his or her opinion, wasn’t quite right in the paper, and I would remember that story and how it impressed me. And I’d think, Hasn’t this person ever thought about what a miracle it is that the paper comes out at all? Obviously not, or they’d have backed off a bit.

I’ve never thought a single actual error in any paper I worked for was excusable. And readers deserved to demand the same high standard from us. But occasionally, when they were going on and on about some tiny thing that had gone wrong (or that they saw as having gone wrong), I’d find myself wishing they’d pause, just a moment, to be impressed by everything that was right, against all odds…

Oh, wait, one other thing… Having spent a lot of years making the news fit the paper, ruthlessly wielding a light-blue felt pen (which humans could read, but the camera that shot the page when it was done could not pick up) in composing rooms, or trimming with marginally greater delicacy on a computer screen, I found myself puzzled that Yahoo paid a high-school kid tens of millions for an app that… well, here’s the description:

Yahoo was attracted to Summly’s core technology for automatically summarizing news articles. The technology, which included an algorithm for deriving the summaries, was created with help from SRI International, a Silicon Valley research-and development firm that has an artificial-intelligence lab and has an ownership stake in the startup….

In 2011, Mr. D’Aloisio founded his company, at the time called Trimit. He redesigned the app to automatically boil news articles down to 400-word summaries and re-launched it as Summly in late 2012 with help from SRI…

I thought, hey, I could have done that for Yahoo for half the money. And I wouldn’t have needed an app for it. It only takes seconds per story. I’ll admit, the slashing I used to do in composing rooms (and on computer screens) wasn’t always a work of art when I was in a hurry (which was most of the time) — but I kind of doubt this app is any more respectful of the writers’ precious words…

The passing of Roger Ebert, a great movie critic

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33ebert

This from his paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, a few minutes ago:

For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

“No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

He
lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity…

Ebert had announced a few days ago on his blog that cancer had struck again, and that he would be taking a “leave of presence,” dialing back his own involvement and running mostly reviews from others on his website. “I am not going away,” he said.

If only he could have kept his promise.

I had come to appreciate Ebert more than ever in recent years, as I embraced social media. He was an avid practitioner, Tweeting all hours of the day and night on all topics, using the new medium to make up for his inability to speak. I thought it great that he could do that, and not be cut off from the world.

But now he has been cut off from it. That’s sad news, and I thought I’d share it.

AP says there are no more ‘illegal immigrants’ in the U.S.

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But Doug and others who’ve been yearning for this day shouldn’t get overexcited. AP says we still have an “illegal immigration” problem.

It’s a matter of style.

Most news organizations in this country follow The Associated Press Stylebook quite religiously. Except for a few local exceptions here and there, so did every paper I ever worked at.

And AP style just changed. Those who follow the guide are no longer to call anyone an “illegal immigrant,” or refer to people as “illegals.”

Romenesko quotes from the statement today from AP explaining the change:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally…

The discussions on this topic have been wide-ranging and include many people from many walks of life. (Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as “undocumented,” despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)…

… we had in other areas been ridding the Stylebook of labels. The new section on mental health issues argues for using credibly sourced diagnoses instead of labels. Saying someone was “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of schizophrenic, for example.

And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to “illegal immigrant” again.

We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance.

So we have….

Here’s the way the entry in the Stylebook reads now:

illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.

Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

There’s a certain logic to this, but I think the AP is going about a step too far. I can see not describing humans as “illegals.” It’s lazy, and unless a person has been declared an outlaw in the full meaning of the term (is that even possible in today’s legal system), the person himself is not illegal.

But by doing away with “illegal immigrant,” AP is eliminating a perfectly clear and accurate way of describing one aspect of a person. I doubt the service would balk at “recent immigrant,” or any other accurate modifier used with the word “immigrant.” “Illegal immigrant” is a quick, accurate way to describe a characteristic of an individual that is important to the story (else it wouldn’t be mentioned at all). I see no reason to inconvenience thousands of writers and millions of readers by forcing them into less direct ways of communicating the same concept.

At the end of the day, Mark Sanford needs to read this list

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Enjoyed this piece about cliches from an editor at The Washington Post:

Pity the poor editor seeking to avoid cliches. It is a futile attempt that, for better or worse, only shines a spotlight on what has become the new normal.

Be that as it may, it is fun. Over the past couple of years, I have joined with colleagues throughout The Washington Post, especially the inimitable Anne Kornblut, to collect cliched words and phrases that journalists rely on too much — indeed, at their peril. It was a little-noticed collection that has suddenly become oft-cited, perhaps even going viral.

After Jim Romenesko posted the list on his blog, I expected pushback from the powers that be, who might want to double down on their use of such terms. Instead, we received support from a dizzying array of sources, in particular through a feeding frenzy ofretweets and e-mails. Clearly, this hot-button issue struck a nerve…

You catch his drift, I’m sure. But go read the whole thing.

This list should come in handy to Mark Sanford. I would say, all he’d have to do is run all the proscribed phrases together and presto! He’s got another speech…

The problem with writing your column ahead of time

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Meant to mention this over the weekend…

Peggy Noonan tends to work ahead of time on her weekly column for the WSJ, which runs in the print version on Saturday. I can’t swear to this, but I think I’ve seen it posted early on Friday in the past.

That makes her more of a Cindi Scoppe than a Brad Warthen. Cindi always wrote a piece as soon as the idea had fully coalesced and she had all the legwork for it, even if it wasn’t to run for days. I never started writing a column until the day it was due. I take that back; “never’ isn’t quite right. Sometimes I would stay late on Thursday night trying to write my Sunday column (which was due midday Friday). But when I did, I usually scrapped it for a fresher idea, or completely rewrote it, on Friday. Which made the work ahead of time seem sort of pointless.

There was also the thing that I just wrote better under deadline pressure, which is why what I did on Friday was better than anything I’d written on Thursday, usually.

But the biggest reason why I didn’t write ahead of time was beautifully illustrated by Ms. Noonan’s column this past weekend. An excerpt:

It’s not a debt and deficit crisis, it’s a jobs crisis. The debt and the deficit are part of it, part of the general fear that we’re on a long slide and can’t turn it around. The federal tax code is part of it—it’s a drag on everything, a killer of the spirit of guts and endeavor. Federal regulations are part of it. The administration’s inability to see the stunning and historic gift of the energy revolution is part of it.

But it’s a jobs crisis that’s the central thing. And you see it everywhere you look…

That’s how it started. This is how it ended:

… Mr. Obama is making the same mistake he made four years ago. We are in a jobs crisis and he does not see it. He thinks he’s in a wrestling match about taxing and spending, he thinks he’s in a game with those dread Republicans. But the real question is whether the American people will be able to have jobs.

Once they do, so much will follow—deficits go down a little as fewer need help, revenues go up as more pay taxes. Confidence and trust in the future will grow. People will be happier.

There’s little sense he sees this. Dr. Doom talks about coming disaster when businessmen need the confidence to hire someone. He’s missing the boat on the central crisis of his second term.

Unlike many of her columns, which range across several topics, the whole thrust of this one was what a failure Obama is on jobs.

And yes, that column ran the day after we learned the economy had added a surprisingly high 236,000 jobs in February, bringing the unemployment rate to its lowest point in four years.

Now of course, one can quibble about how good that news is. And indeed, her column was updated with the new unemployment figure, and she wrote, “The jobless rate, officially 7.7%, is almost twice that if you include those who have stopped looking, work part time, or are only ‘marginally attached’ to the workforce.”

But still. If she’d waited until Friday to write the thing, she’d have chosen a different topic. This was the worst Saturday in four years for making the argument she advanced in this one.

‘Jumping the shark:’ You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means…

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In today’s WSJ, under the headline, “Jumping the sequester,” columnist Kimberley A. Strassel writes the following:

The phrase “jumping the shark” describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester.

The precise moment came Tuesday, when the administration announced that it was canceling public tours of the White House, blaming budget cuts. The Sequesterer in Chief has insisted that cutting even $44 billion from this fiscal year will cause agonizing pain—airport security snarls, uninspected meat, uneducated children. Since none of those things has come to pass, the White House decided it needed an immediate and high-profile way of making its point. Ergo, it would deny the nation’s school kids a chance to view a symbol of America.

The act was designed to spark outrage against Republicans, yet the sheer pettiness of it instead provided a moment of clarity. Americans might not understand the technicalities of sequester, but this was something else entirely. Was the president actually claiming there was not a single other government item—not one—that could be cut instead of the White House tours? Really?

Yeahhh… I don’t think that’s jumping the shark. Do y’all.? That sounds to me like somebody wrote the headline first, and tried to force the column to fit it. Let’s look at the Wikipedia definition:

Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that is used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of “gimmick” in a desperate attempt to keep viewers’ interest…

And here’s the origin:

The phrase jump the shark comes from a scene in the fifth season premiere episode of the American TV series Happy Days titled “Hollywood: Part 3“, written by Fred Fox, Jr.^[4] which aired on September 20, 1977. In the episode, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where a water-skiing Fonzie (Henry Winkler) answers a challenge to his bravery by wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, and jumping over a confined shark. The stunt was created as a way to showcase Winkler’s real life water ski skills.^[5]

For a show that in its early seasons depicted universally relatable adolescent and family experiences against a backdrop of 1950s nostalgia, this incident marked an audacious, cartoonish turn towards attention-seeking gimmickry. Initially a supporting character, the faddish lionization of an increasingly superhuman Fonzie became the focus of Happy Days. The series continued for seven years after Fonzie’s shark-jumping stunt, with a number of changes in cast and situations. However, it is commonly^[who?] believed that the show began a creative decline in this era, as writers ran out of ideas, and Happy Daysbecame a caricature of itself. As a nod to the episode, Henry Winkler’s character again jumped a shark in the 2003 show Arrested Development…

To me, that’s a pretty clear definition that the Strossel example doesn’t fit. You can call the White House cancellation of tours all kinds of things — in these parts, we’d call it a “Big Bird defense” — but it’s not jumping the shark.

That said, the very same Wikipedia entry I quote above gives an example, also involving Barack Obama, that I don’t think fits either:

In 2008 during the Obama presidential campaign, at a meeting of Democratic governors in Chicago, each governor was identified with a name plate while Senator Obama had a large seal – that looked official but was not.^[11] The New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich wrote “For me, Mr. Obama showed signs of jumping the shark two weeks back, when he appeared at a podium affixed with his own pompous faux-presidential seal”.^[12]

So what do I consider to be a perfect example of jumping the shark? This: When the Beverly Hillbillies went to England. Actually, that series jumped the shark several times; it was sort of a defining characteristic. It sort of did so when Jethro received his draft notice and costumed himself as Patton and bought a tank. It really, really did so when the whole cast jumped fictional universes, going to Hooterville to interact with characters from “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres.” (A radical change of venue can be a good sign that a shark is being jumped.)

In fact, those examples are so good that I have trouble coming up with any others that illustrate the concept so well, as I understand it. It’s not limited to iconic sitcoms, of course. And it can be translated to politics. When Bill Clinton played saxophone on Arsenio Hall seems a pretty clear example. If you go way back, there’s Richard Nixon’s “Sock it to me?” on “Laugh-In.”

But closing the White House to tours? Not so much…

The truth about SC: Taxes are low and getting lower, and government is not ‘growing’

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Cindi Scoppe struck another blow today in the lonely fight to base public policy in South Carolina on facts. It’s not only a lonely, but a losing battle, since the people who are driving things in the State House have contempt for facts, preferring to “govern” on the basis of extremist ideology, which holds that facts are bunk.

Basically, she was answering this kind of nonsense:

Consider this analysis from an Upstate anti-government activist, speaking recently to The Greenville News: “Every year our state budget continues to go up, up, up, far exceeding our growth. So we’re getting more government, we’re getting higher taxes.

“They tell us, ‘We cut taxes.’ That’s nonsense. How can you increase spending and cut taxes and yet you claim that we also are not running a deficit? The numbers don’t add up.”

That certainly sounds like a sensible analysis. And there are circumstances under which it could be accurate. If, say, our population were remaining stagnant, or declining. Or if people’s income or purchases remained flat, or declined. But of course none of that is happening.

What’s happening isn’t that complicated. It just isn’t necessarily intuitive…

And what is happening is that tax rates have been lowered over and over for the past two decades. What is also happening is that, while the total amount of state funds spent on government is greater because of our skyrocketing population growth, the amount spent per capita is less and less:

South Carolina’s tax collections are the lowest in the nation, at $1,476.50 per capita; they dropped 18 percent from 2001 to 2011 — more than they did in 48 states. Our combined state and local tax burden per capita was less than all but one state, at $2,742. Our 2012 Tax Freedom Day — the date when we’ve earned enough money to pay all of our federal, state and local taxes for the year — was earlier than all but three states, at April 3.

This is simply not a state in which we’re “getting higher taxes.”

Ah, but our government is growing, right? Well, if by “growing government,” you mean that the total amount spent on state government each year is generally more than it was the previous year, then yes, it’s growing. With the exception of two years during the recession, state general fund expenditures (the money over which the Legislature has the most control) are growing — although this year’s $6.1 billion general fund budget is still down from the $6.7 billion in 2008-09, just before the recession hit.

But remember: While the general fund grew by 12 percent over the past decade, our state’s population grew by 15 percent. That means the Legislature appropriated less general fund money per resident, even without considering inflation, in 2012 than in 2002…

Ah, but what about all those “other funds,” from the feds and fees? Hasn’t that increased the size of government? Consider:

What’s a little surprising is that even with all that federal and other money, the total number of state employees is actually down, from 63,000 in 2002 to 56,000 in 2012. In fact, the total number of state employees has decreased over just about any period you look at during the past two decades, except last year, when it rose slightly from 2011, but remained well below the 2010 level.

So if by “growing government” you mean government is increasing the number of people on the payroll, it’s not.

If you mean government is providing more services, it’s also not. Our state is providing services to more people — Medicaid and food stamps, both funded primarily by the federal government, are prime examples — but it’s not increasing the services to each person…

Actually, you should just go read the whole thing.

Hoffman: Another TV ad from the 1st District

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Looked at from this distance, the contest for the 1st Congressional District GOP nomination has looked like a case of Sanford sitting atop the name-recognition hill, and Larry Grooms exerting the most energy trying to take it from him.

A third candidate I keep hearing from (and let me remind you that my perspective is skewed by the fact that I keep hearing from this guy and Grooms; others could be running just as hard but not making the effort to let me know about it) is Jonathan Hoffman.

No, I hadn’t heard of him, either, so of course he’s running a standard “I’m not a politician” campaign. To the extent that is appealing, he certainly has an advantage over Sanford and Grooms.

But this new TV ad tells me next to nothing. It shows him in uniform, and I thank him for his service. It shows him with the last Republican president. He uses the word “conservative” only once in 30 seconds, which by Republican primary standards shows extraordinary restraint. Of course, he uses other phrases that suggest such values to the base, such as “small business owner.”

And he makes the usual dubious claims that Republicans in SC tend to believe as gospel, such as:

He wants to be elected “to take on out-of-control spending and the growth of government.” Compared to what absolute measure, I find myself wondering. It’s interesting to contrast this belief to what I read this morning in the libertarian Economist, which, after asserting that “By most measures Mr Obama’s positions have been rather moderate,” notes that the public now is in a more conservative mood: ”The conservative idea that spending must be cut is taken for granted, even though government spending is already lower in America than in most advanced economies.” Did you catch that? Looked at from outside, the U.S. government is not some out-of-control behemoth. It is only that to people who choose to believe it is.
Then there’s this chestnut: “let’s get back to constitutionally limited government.” Something that, of course, we’ve never left. He doesn’t have to explain what he means because no on in the GOP base would challenge him on it. Me, I want details. Back during the Bush administration, Democrats would say this very same silly thing. They were usually referring to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 measures that Democrats as well as Republicans voted for and legally passed, under lawmaking provisions of our, ahem, Constitution. Now, Republicans generally mean something like Obamacare. Which, according to the GOP-appointed Chief Justice and a majority on the Supreme Court, is constitutional. Or is he referring to killing U.S. citizens with drones and without the benefit of due process? If so, I’d like to hear him square that with is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush in fighting the Global War on Terror, which the current president is only guilty of pursuing a tad more aggressively than his predecessor, casting drones far and wide and putting boots on the ground in the very heart of Pakistan.

Mind you, I’m not being critical of Mr. Hoffman. He’s not doing a thing that pols of both parties don’t do in this ridiculously facile medium, the 30-second ad. It would be practically impossible for him to answer the questions he raises in my mind within that format.

But these ads aren’t meant to answer questions. They are meant to communicate, in the most minimalist, Gestalten flicker, a set of emotions along the lines of “he’s like me,” or “I trust that man.” So they deal not in facts, but in presumptions, ones that are shared, even if they fly in the face of reality.

Grooms’ ads are the same. Sanford’s go a bit farther, because so much is known about him, and some of what is known is problematic and has to be addressed. But it is of course addressed in the most emotional, simplistic kind of way, merely communicating, “You must not hold it against him.” Why? Because “I trust that man, despite all.”

But it is on these extremely thin, grossly inadequate bases that we decide elections in this country.