Brad Warthen's Blog

Brave new world of political discourse

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ONCE, NOT so long ago, serious people decried the reduction and trivialization of political ideas to the level of a bumper sticker. Some days, I long for the coherence, the relevance, the completeness of bumper stickers.
    Let’s knit together a few of the unraveled threads that have frayed my mind in the past week, shall we?
    Thread One: A Colorado congressman who takes pride in his technological savvy claimed partial “credit” for the demise of a newspaper, saying, “Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? We’re all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it’s mostly for the better.... The media is dead and long live the new media.”
    Thread Two: Last week, I started working out again. I can’t read when I’m on the elliptical trainer because I bounce up and down too much, so I turn on the television. This gives me an extended exposure to 24/7 TV “news” and its peculiar obsessions, which I normally avoid like a pox. I hear far more than I want to about Rush Limbaugh, who wants the country’s leadership to fail, just to prove an ideological point. The president’s chief of staff dubs this contemptible entertainer the leader of the president’s opposition. Even more absurdly, the actual chief of the opposition party spends breath denying it — and then apologizes for doing so. See why I avoid this stuff?
    Thread Three: Two of the most partisan Democrats in the S.C. Senate, John Land and Brad Hutto, introduce a mock resolution to apologize to Rush on behalf of South Carolina so that our state doesn’t “miss out on the fad that is sweeping the nation — to openly grovel before the out-spoken radio host.” The Republican majority spends little time dismissing the gag, but any time thus spent by anyone was time not spent figuring out how to keep essential state services going in this fiscal crisis.
    Thread Four: At midday Thursday I post on my blog a few thoughts about the just-announced candidacy of U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett for governor, and invite readers to share what they think of the Upstate Republican. As of mid-afternoon Friday, there were nine comments on the subject, and three of them were from me. By the same time, there were 66 comments about the Rush Limbaugh flap.
    Thread Five: A colleague brings to my attention a new Web site called SCTweets, where you can read spontaneous “Twitter” messages from such S.C. politicians as Anton Gunn, David Thomas, Bob Inglis, Nathan Ballentine and Thad Viers, with a number of S.C. bloggers thrown in. It’s the brainchild of S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP “political operative” Wesley Donehue (which would explain why Rep. Gunn is the only Democrat on the list I just cited). They see it as “a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.” It sounds like a neat idea, but when you go there and look at it... well, here’s a sample:

bobinglis Want a window into our campaign themes? Check out my recent letter at http://wurl.ws/9coX Join us if you can!

annephutto had a great lunch

AntonJGunn Having lunch with the Mayor of Elgin.

mattheusmei Prepare to have your mind blownaway http://tinyurl.com/b6w8w9 #sctweets, simply amazing!!!

RobGodfrey Beautiful day in Columbia. #sctweets

thadviers just had lunch with little Joe at Jimmy Johns.

    Perhaps this will be useful to someone, and I applaud Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue for the effort. But so far I haven’t figured out what Twitter adds to modern life that we didn’t already have with e-mail and blogs and text-messaging and, well, the 24/7 TV “news.” Remember how I complained in a recent column about how disorienting and unhelpful I find Facebook to be? Well, this was worse. I felt like I was trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack topped with Pop Rocks, stirred with a Slim Jim.
    Thread Six: Being reminded of Facebook, I checked my home page, and found that a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago was exhorting me to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

    I followed his instructions. The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here’s the fifth sentence on page 56:
“He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame.”
    Not much without context, but you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.
    I just remembered that I said I would knit these threads together. OK, here goes:
    It occurs to me that Twitter and Facebook are the bright new world that the Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extolled. In this world, political discourse consists of partisans prattling about talk show hosts and elected officials casting spontaneous sentence fragments into the dusty, arid public square.
    I was going to write a column for today about Congressman Barrett’s candidacy for governor. As I mentioned a couple of weeks back when I wrote about Sen. Vincent Sheheen entering the race, I’m trying to get an early start on writing as much as possible about that critical decision coming up in 2010, in the hope that if we think about it and talk about it enough, we the people can make a better decision than we have the past few elections.
    But I got distracted.
    I’ll get with Rep. Barrett soon; I promise. And I’ll try to write about it in complete sentences, for those of you who have not yet adjusted.

For links and more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

This is worse than Facebook

You know how I've complained about how I just don't get Facebook -- that I find it disorienting, and just generally a lousy way to communicate information?

Well, I've found a worse way -- Twitter.

Have you seen this new site that S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP "political operative" Wesley Donehue have started, SCTweets? Basically, its point is:

...to find a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials. Specifically, we expect the Statehouse crew to be twittering a lot from the floor and we thought it would be cool to see what they were saying. That goal somehow expanded and we decided to showcase all South Carolina politicos with our directory. We then gave them a way to interact through #sctweets.

Look, I don't mean to criticize Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue at all. I appreciate the effort. Go for it. But when I try to obtain any sort of information of value from a series of incomplete, typo-ridden sentence fragments from a bunch of people ranging from Anton Gunn to David Thomas to Bob Inglis to Nathan Ballentine to Thad Viers, with a lot of Blogosphere usual suspects such as Mattheus Mei thrown in, I feel like I've trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack with cotton candy and Pop Rocks on top, stirred with a Slim Jim. Just a jumble of junk.

The "authors" aren't to blame. It's the medium. I'm still waiting to find any value in this Twitter thing. I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

What do I consider to be GOOD way to communicate information? Well, here's a coincidence: I actually looked at my Facebook page this morning, and as usual got little out of it. But I noticed where a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago posted something that seemed a deliberate illustration of the incoherence of Facebook. He exhorted readers to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

So I followed his instructions (except for the posting part). The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here's the fifth sentence on page 56 (if you count the incomplete, continued sentence at the top of the page as the first):

"He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame."

And you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.

It occurs to me that Twitter is the bright new world that that Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extols. And then it occurs to me that to the extent he is right, to the extent that this is the future of political communication, we are in a lot of trouble int his country...

'life and prosperity, death and doom...'

Perhaps I should begin this post with the opening words of today's first reading in the Catholic lectionary:

Moses said to the people:
"Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom..."
        -- Deuteronomy 30:15

Since this last post on the subject ("TNR on the 'end' of newspapers") -- when I mentioned the bankruptcies of the Philadelphia papers and alluded to that of the Journal Register Co. -- the flood of bad news in my industry has continued unabated this week. For instance:

• Hearst Corp. said if it can't drastically cut expenses enough in the next few weeks, it will close or sell off The San Francisco Chronicle, northern California's largest newspaper.
• Washington Post Co. earnings fell 77 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.
• The Providence Journal will lay off another 100 people.
• Meanwhile, Morris Publishing Group, which publishes several small papers in S.C. (in North Augusta, Hardeeville, and Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton counties) as well as the Augusta and Savannah dailies, continued to be mentioned among the more troubled in the business.

That's just a sampling.

But that's not the big story, is it? The big story is that what's killing the newspapers is the dying economy -- no economic activity, no advertising, no newspapers.

As President Obama gamely tried to buck up the country Tuesday night, the picture looked grimmer and grimmer for the whole economy. Of all that I've read this week about bailouts, layoffs, losses, cutbacks and so forth this week, nothing made as big an impression on me as a piece in the WSJ yesterday about several new economic indicators.

The story began with Ben Bernanke telling us that we could start to snap out of this by 2010 -- if EVERYTHING goes right from here on. It continued:

The confidence of U.S. consumers tumbled in February to its lowest level in more than 41 years, partly because people are increasingly discouraged about job prospects. Two fresh measurements suggest home-price declines are accelerating. New Fed data showed rising bank-loan delinquencies. And companies from software giant Microsoft Corp. to retailers Office Depot Inc. and Macy's Inc. reported a worsening profit outlook.

That worst-in-41-years was actually the worst ever, since consumers' pulses were first taken this way in 1967. Additionally:

The jobless rate has already risen to 7.6%, and fresh data indicate that Americans are pessimistic that the outlook will improve any time soon. The Conference Board's consumer-confidence index fell to 25 in February, its lowest level since monthly data were first collected in 1967, and 48% of people surveyed said jobs were hard to get, the largest percentage since February 1992. Some 47% said they expected jobs to decrease in the months ahead, the highest percentage since December 1973.

Almost a quarter of respondents said they expected their incomes to decrease over the next six months, an all-time high.

If only a quarter expect their incomes to decrease, it makes me think three-quarters of us are fooling ourselves.

Oh, by the way, speaking of Ben Bernanke -- did you see that his boyhood home in Dillon -- yes, Dillon, S.C. -- was foreclosed upon? It was no longer owned by the Bernanke's, but still, as omens go... The WSJ followed up that story with a slideshow of Dillon (including pics from South of the Border).

Let me add to all this my firm belief that we can't possibly turn this around until we start feeling a little more upbeat about our prospects. So enough of the gloom and doom for today; I just needed to get that out of my system.

Anybody have any happy news to share?

For me, I'll return to today's readings, where the responsorial psalm promises this to one who hopes in the Lord:

He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.

Amen to that.

ANOTHER social networking site? ARRGGGHHH!

Just got this press release:

Hi Brad,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to let you know about a unique social news service that just launched - BUUUZ.com.

Have you ever wanted access to a community of people who have the same interests as you? Where you can share artistic visions, muses and styles? Many people find social websites like Facebook and MySpace invasive and difficult to navigate. At BUUUZ registration is simple and members create virtual "islands" based on subjects of interest (islands are populated with news from websites across the internet as well as BUUUZ community discussion). Creating an "island" for a topic is as easy as picking a few keywords that best describe your interests.

As an example, if you love to oil paint like I do, you can use favorite artists, museums, etc. as island keywords to be alerted on stories and member conversations mentioning them. Then you instantly become a part of a worldwide conversation through this new service, where you can find and interact with new friends who have the same interests.

In light of the Facebook Terms of Service uproar from last week I wanted to mention:

- BUUUZ's subscription revenue model, makes it so they do not have to "fight" with the users about owning their data.
- At BUUUZ, when a user deletes their account, and their data is completely deleted
- BUUUZ has also set up automatic deletion of old messages

Please feel free to take a look at the service at BUUUZ.com and reach out if you would like images or have questions.

Best Regards,
Brent

Brent Bucci
FortyThree PR

... to which I can only say, "ARRGGHHH!" Or, perhaps, "AIIIEEEE!!!" Or somewhat more sedately, "Please; not another freaking social networking site."

Since I did that column over the holidays about Facebook, I have had even MORE "friend requests," and some of them have been from being I actually felt obliged to say "yes" to, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. (And yes, some of them were people I'd actually like to maintain connections with, but not all...) And some of them were ... a tad... weird. Like, if I thought myself a target for such things, I'd think "stalker." Which is not a good feeling.

Who's got time for all this socializing? Hey, you've got time on your hands, go read a newspaper. And then, go to the mall and buy something, and tell the merchant to buy some ads. Make yourself useful.

If you love books, dig my tie

Recently some of you had disparaging things to say about traditional men's neckwear. Well, this should turn you around -- at least, it should win over those of you who have enjoyed our discussion of good books back on this post.

Both p.m. and I put pretty much anything Mark Twain wrote on our favorites list, and I doubt that we're alone.

Anyway, I acquired this cravat a couple of years ago -- it was a Father's Day present that I sort of picked out myself. I had seen it in the gift shop of a museum/performance hall in Harrisburg, Pa. I don't know where you would find it closer than that. The label says "Museum Artifacts," which led me to find one on this Web site. Just don't wear it to any event I'm likely to attend, 'cause I found it first!

There's a tantalizing detail on this tie: One of the book covers at the bottom is of a book called Innocents at Home, which I had never seen or heard of, much less read. And I find few references to in on the Web, although Amazon does seem to have a line on A copy.

Something to add to my "to read" list, for sure -- if I can get my hands on one. I loved Innocents Abroad.

We're lining up for soup

Maybe it's not the 1930s yet. I haven't seen more people than usual lining up for free soup.

But apparently, a lot more of us are buying soup, the cheaper the better:

According to a November survey of Wal Mart stores focusing on canned foods by Longbow Research analyst Alton Stump, the canned soup category is gaining momentum, and within the category, Cambell’s Soup (CPB) is gaining share against rival Progresso, made by General Mills (GIS) as consumers look for less expensive meal alternatives.

According to the survey, volumes in the soup category expanded at a rate of 10% annually in November, up from the 7% to 8% gains registered so far during most of 2008.  “The category volume boost of late resulted in part from an apparent shift in consumer demand towards takehome food items, which benefited soup in particular as a less-expensive meal alternative,”  Mr. Stump said.

That's from a relief from an outfit known as Longbow Research.

You, too, can use irony -- no experience required

Wow. As cool as Barack Obama is -- and he IS cool, all the time -- some of his supporters are VERY emotional.

Two of them -- Jennifer and Pam -- got so worked up by my very mild use of irony on this previous post (referring to their guy as "The One") that they mistook me for a Republican. To wit:

I don't understand why Republicans continue to call Senator Obama "The One" - none of his supporters has ever used that term. Why do you rely on mocking the man and spreading lies about him? Is it maybe because you are obviously wrong on the issues? Crawl back into your caves, please, and let us get to work cleaning up another one of your messes.

Posted by: Jennifer Mullen | Oct 29, 2008 9:13:15 PM

_____________________________________

When a party has no good ideas or solutions you slander your opponent. Just like Brad , you know " the one " comment. The consistent theme from the RNC and the McCain campaign is fear and hate . And , this paper's editorial board enforces that theme. Sad to think that some in this state are unable to look to the future .

Posted by: pam,greenwood | Oct 30, 2008 9:58:27 AM

Talk about letting emotion override the higher faculties...

p.m., thanks for pointing out the painfully obvious:

Jennifer, Oprah Winfrey introduced Obama as "The One" years ago. I have seen the videotape. If you would Google it, you could probably find it....

Posted by: p.m. | Oct 29, 2008 10:43:00 PM

Yes, I got the thing about "The One" from that font of Republican bile, Oprah... We "Republicans" always go to her for our marching orders, talking points, swastika armbands, etc.

Folks, where are we when we can't even use the smallest bits of irony in our public discourse without somebody getting all offended?

Come on, folks -- Phillip gets it. He's for Obama, and he can josh about the cheesiness:

Naturally, my biggest complaint was the syrupy Saving-Private-Ryan-ish background music.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 30, 2008 4:40:54 AM

And I didn't even notice the music -- leave it to Phillip; he's our music guy. I just noticed the cheesy set, which someone was careful to make ALMOST exactly like the Oval Office, but enough unlike it to allow for plausible deniability. I mean, LOOK at it, people. Now that's artistry.

Folks, cheesy is cheesy. Joe the Plumber -- cheesy. Pandering with a gas tax cut -- cheesy. Picking Sarah Palin -- cheesy (although, to quote from the movie Phillip cites, I find myself "strangely attracted..."). Maverick this, maverick that -- cheesy.

Now, you Obama supporters -- make some ironic comments about your guy. Come on, you can do it. Look, this guy's going to be the president, and I just won't be able to stand four years of y'all being so deadly earnest. Loosen up.

Who (if anyone) is John Vierdsen, and why does he want to be my 'friend'?

Call me a mossback, but I admit it: I don't get Facebook. It's not that I ain't hep! Blogging is second nature to me. Almost everything else about the Internet, from Google to e-commerce, I do as though I've always done them. I've essentially been instant-messaging since the early '80s.

But Facebook foxes me. It doesn't make sense. I don't understand why information flows the way it does on that site or is structured the way it is; I have trouble obtaining the simplest information from it.

But most of all, I don't get the whole "friends" concept. Mind you, I'm not the world's most sociable guy. There's family. There's co-workers. There's sources. There are nice people I see at church or at Rotary. But friends? Not so much. We're not encouraged to have "friends" in my business. I've been the recipient of disapproving remarks from colleagues on the rare occasions I've called someone a "friend" in a column. It's considered unprofessional.

But ever since I set up a Facebook account (I did it when my youngest daughter's boyfriend died last year, and I'd heard his sister had set up a page where a lot of people had said nice things about him), I've had this steady trickle of e-mails saying

(Name) added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know (name) in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

To confirm this friend request, follow the link below:

Sometimes these are people I know, usually professionally. I usually confirm them, if only to keep open the lines of communication. Some are members of my immediate family, such as my children. I approve those, of course, although "friend" seems an awfully inadequate way to define the relationship. Some are people whose names are only vaguely familiar, although I generally recognize them when I go to their pages. Then I have a dilemma -- should I snub this person who has asked me to be his or her "friend," or potentially compromise myself by declaring to the world that this person is a "friend?" (This category includes a lot of people, usually younger ones, who work in politics professionally.)

Yeah, I get it that the site using the word "friend" to describe a range of relationships much broader than the original meaning, but I'm still not sure what to do.

Then there are the total strangers asking me to be their friends -- some of them attractive young women (and some of them young men whose motivation I wonder about, but never mind). The very first person who asked to be my "friend" was an attractive lady (which I knew from the glamor shot) who lives in Germany and is married. I "confirmed" the friendship just so I could send her a message asking, as delicately as I could, whether we knew each other. She said we did not. OK. Whatever.

That was a year ago, and I still don't understand what's going on.

Now, along comes a message saying that "John Vierdsen" wants to be my friend (that is allegedly a picture of him at right). That rang a bell. Sure enough, I went back and found this e-mail I'd received from Randy Page of SCRG on Oct. 13, to wit:

Brad,
I trust that you are doing well.  I noticed that “John Vierdsen” is quoted in the S.C. Blogs section again today.  From all accounts, “John Vierdsen” is a pen name because no one knows who “John Vierdsen” is.  Rumors swirl about his possible identity, but no one really knows....

So I decided to make use of my vaunted "social network." I went to the page on Facebook where I was being asked whether this John Vierdsen is my friend, and saw that we had a number of "friends" in common. I noticed they were mostly Democrats or fellow travelers, such as Bob Coble, Joe Darby, Joe Erwin, James Smith, Laurin Manning, and so on...

... and former colleague Aaron Sheinin. So I sent e-mails to both the mayor and Aaron asking if they knew who, if anyone, this guy is. The mayor responded with possibly the shortest e-mail I've ever gotten from him:

I do not know him.

I haven't heard back yet from Aaron.

So can any of y'all shed light on this guy? Basically, I just want to know whether we got hoodwinked on our Monday blog rail, as Randy alleges.

And then while you're at it, maybe you could advise me as to whether I want to be "friends" with Darrell Jackson (his is the only "friend suggestion," rather than "friend request," which I take to mean that HE didn't want to ask me, sort of like getting a third party to ask whether you want to be friends, which sort of takes me back to the 5th grade), or Tom Fowler, or Scott Sokol, or a lovely young lady from Connecticut named "Tiffany..."

Christmas decorations. Already

As long as I'm in a griping, humbuggish mood, I might as well put in my bid for winning the prize for spotting the first Christmas decorations of the "season."

I shot these pictures with my Treo at the Walmart store on Bush River Road on Saturday, Oct. 11.

And yeah, I fully expect some of y'all to be able to claim to have seen some Christmas stuff before I did, and spoil what tiny bit of satisfaction I might gain from being the first in my neighborhood to publicly gripe about it.

Bah. Double Bah. Bah squared.

Wall Street's worst week ever

Well, the stock market had its worst-ever week. But you knew that this morning, didn't you? This just confirms it.

Those hammerheads need to calm down. Somebody take them out for a good time this weekend or something, OK? Improve their outlook on life. Buy them a lot of beers, or whatever they drink. Get them... I mean, introduce them to some companionship of the opposite sex or something. Or turn a hose on them.

Somebody besides me do it, I mean. Those people drive me crazy; I don't want to get anywhere near them.