Good Morning Lowcountry

GMLc column defunct

Pluffmudders won't find GMLc's brand of local news and lore in the daily paper anymore. The Good Morning Lowcountry column has been dumped from 2B, it's little home since 2000, as of last Saturday. Couple of reasons for this. 1) We're in a hiring freeze and I am needed to help edit Community News. 2) We shrank the paper in width, and 2B is needed for runover copy, jumps of stories, other stories, etc. But, as I've been told, this was not so much a real estate grab as a warm body grab.From my point of view, GMLc might have run its course. I'm OK with turning my attention to other priorities at the paper. Regular readers have been e-mailing and phoning in their disappointment, and I appreciate that.  But I'll be also working on a book proposal of essays, column outtakes, etiquette, critters, Lowcountry pronunciations, Lowcountry history and other bits of wit and wisdom from the GMLc material. If bloggers who read GMLc in the past have any favorite stuff, let me know. Thanks for the fun. I'll continue to blog here.

McCain's thinking ...

GMLc Blog has been neglected and lonely. I have no excuse ... but Spoleto is over and I am bronchitis-free and thought anybody who might be reading this should read the fascinating piece about John McCain in Sunday's New York Times if they haven't already:

In ’74 Thesis, the Seeds of McCain’s War Views

Reading it brought was a freaky and scary deja vu of the those war years. It's confusing as hell, much as those years were and much as I misunderstood them ... being only 3 years old. Kidding. Being only in my teens. My brother was in Vietnam in 1967-1968. I was paying attention. I remember the sense of outrage in the country that Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and was photographed with the enemy.

But did American really blame those POWs who took "amnesty" from their North Vietnamese and were released in return for saying "This war is wrong."? McCain is furious (still) that few people did blame them, and that some of them were promoted within the armed services on their return from Hanoi. No one in the American public nobody believed that they were not coerced into these "confessions" -- same as no one failed to understand that hostages held recently by hooded Islamist terrorist holding a machete to their throats were reading from a statement prepared for them by the terrorists.

I fail to see how that undermined the Vietnam war effort ... at home or abroad. I do see that for an angry resister captive like John McCain, those soldiers who cooperated created more difficult conditions for him. Under torture, John McCain cooperated, too, eventually. I did not know that he was offered amnesty and release by the North Vietnamese because of the extent of his injuries and his medical condition. He refused it, and stayed in captivity for five years.

McCain's thesis in 1974 at the War College was that victory itself in Vietnam was thwarted by lack of political will ... i.e. war protesters ... at home and by those POWs  who caved. And further that if American government would just do a better job of explaining its foreign policy to Americans, this sort of protest could be avoided. I don't buy it, and I don't know of anybody who does, including McCain's fellow prisoners, soldiers still on the ground in Vietnam, veterans today. Taking into account the whole complicated history of American involvement in Vietnam ... it seems the government explained the foreign policy pretty well -- deny and prevent Communist incursion into and takeover of South Vietnam. Why? Fear of Chinese communism and The Domino Theory. Vietnam would fall to communism and other countries would follow, in a domino like collapse around South Asia. The government explained it. Then Lyndon Johnson ordered bombing of North Vietnam. The American public began to doubt that a) any of this action was working b) it was worth the massive loss of American lives.

McCain seems to be applying WWII-type clarity to a war that was undeclared and anything but clear. Reading this article is like traveling to another time, if not another planet. I get the impression that McCain not only thinks the Vietnam carnage was worth the fight, but that had the fight continued, America could have won. I don't know any soldiers who were there who believe that ... including a friend who piloted a Huey and whose helmet is in a war museum. Is McCain also saying that citizens of a democracy have no right to question their government in a time of war? I don't read the Constitution that way. To me, knowing that McCain's foreign policy is informed by a failed foreign policy and huge waste of life in Vietnam is a scary thought. He seems to have many axes to grind, some of them stemming from deep psychological scars and resentments, even though he has made a show of forgiveness through the years. I don't question Sen. McCain's patriotism or sacrifice or public service. I question that is head is still in 1974 ... and 1968. It seems so ... old, and it seems the lessons most of us took from that time are not the ones he's holding onto. If anything seems clear from the last 30 years, it's that this, 2008, is a very different world, and planet. This is not 1974. It's not 1968, either.

Shepard Fairey, etc. ...

Congratulations to native Charleston graphic artist Shepard Fairey who is getting all SORTS of attention for his fab Barack Obama poster. In The Washington Post:

"LOS ANGELES -- When the street artist and guerrilla marketer Shepard Fairey got word from the Obamaa people that they would welcome his contribution to the campaign, he knew what he wanted to create:  a phenomenon."

"All political art is propaganda (that is the point), but most political posters are bland, forgettable, wallpaper, like Fred Thompson on an off day. Fairey wanted something more iconic -- aspirational, inspirational -- and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster (with all that implies). More Mao, more right now. The kind of poster that might make its way onto dorm room walls of fanboys. The kind of poster that might sell on eBay, as a signed Fairey Obama recently did, for $5,900. He wanted his posters to go viral."

Read the story. Here's the photo.

(Shepard Fairey put his street-art sensibility to work for his candidate of choice, in hopes of "appealing to a younger, apathetic audience." By Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post







A few other good things to read, if you haven't read 'em already:

The Hillary Lesson: What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Has Taught Our Daughter

Baltimore Sun's great pix of Big Brown!

The Great American Novel?

Goose update

The backyard Canada geese who are tending a nest have gotten jumpy. When she leaves to go take a bath in the lake or get something to eat, he squawks and chases her and bites her on the neck. She ignores him. Is this beginning to sound familiar?

(This is the female, I guess, sitting on the nest by the cypress tree. The fuzzy stuff is down she has pulled from her breast to blanket the eggs.)

Hey, it might be the other way around. Canada geese look exactly alike so I can't tell if it's the male or female who is sitting on the nest or if they trade places. It's been almost a month since she laid and I wish the eggs would hatch already so I can reclaim the yard and maybe pick up some sticks that have come down in storms and mow ... etc. I read online that as soon as the goslings hatch they take to the water. BUT Canada geese apparently mate for life and come back to the same nest so I guess they'll be back next winter/spring.

(Here she is again.)

Wood ducklings have already hatched out. They're paddling around on their mother's tail. I've seen two clutches -- one with four or five, one with 12 or 14.

Here's the male standing, or rather sitting guard nearby.

Here are a couple of pictures of Backyard GMLc:

The "bitter" end ...

OK, I'll put in my 2 cents worth on the Obama remark about "bitter" underpaid Americans turning to (well, "clinging" to) cultural issues like guns and religion as a basis on which to vote.

New York Times blogger Dan Schnur argues today that questioning working-class voters' vote against their own economic interests amounts to liberal elitism and that Democrats just don't get it about the importance of values.

He makes a good point that non-economic matters
drive the cultural-values voting behavior of both poor conservative
people and rich liberal people. But Schnur says there's a double standard -- in questioning those cultural-issues-based-voting by poor, working class people, and not questioning cultural-issues-based voting by those in Martha's Vinyard or Beverly Hills.

Rich liberal people aren't voting their economic interests when
they are voting on "cultural issues" that require money and taxes. But rich people have far more latitude to vote against their own economic  interests... call it noblesse oblige in honor of the Titanic anniversary ... because they can afford to. So I do not see it as  wrong to question the motivations of those who against their own economic interests who CAN'T really afford to do so. It becomes more crucial and more interesting. Questioning that voting behavior is observation, not an "insult" to the underclass of America, or the blue-collar worker just trying to get by.

Obama said they vote on softer issues because they're bitter, or hopeless, about money, and why shouldn't they be? What president has done ANYTHING for them lately? Or for me, the middle class wage-earner, for that matter? If underclass and middle class voters had any sense, we'd all vote for the candidate who best supports unions, higher wages and better working conditions.

The argument becomes circular. Poor conservative people are hopeless and bitter, so they vote on issues other than pay, and then those cultural issues become prominent and nobody does anything for them economically because economics is not what got those votes. Guns and abortion and opposition to gay marriage got them those votes. So politicians have carte-blanche to continue to blather about guns and abortion and gay people and do nothing economically for the people who elected them ... their base, as it were.

I think the circle breaks down if, say, the liberal rich Democrat votes against his or her pocketbook and for, say, initiatives on global warming. If those initiatives rise to the forefront, are they going to complain about their taxes being raised? Probably, yes. But they don't have to. They can afford the higher taxes. Cultural issues are gravy.

I haven't put this very well. But suffice it to say that when candidates talk about voting behavior they are following social science. They're not trying to insult anyone. Obama calling this electorate 'bitter' is hardly revolutionary with the president having only 28 percent approval and the country having long rejected the still ongoing, and seemingly endless, Iraq war.

The NYT editorial page sums up the whole silliness of Democrats talking about duck blinds, shots of whiskey and God. That's Republican territory. How'd they get there?

Maybe what we need to do is redefine cultural values, and value-based issues. Values aren't just what one pundit ... or American political party ... decides they are. Yes, values include marriage, the constitutional right to bear arms, the constitutional right to practice the religion of your choice. Values also include inclusion, equal opportunity, tolerance and peace.

Media matters

A note: The GMLc Blog banner is in a stage of deconstruction and reconstruction.

Geoff pointed out this take by journalism prof and columnist Bill Thompson posted on the BBC:

Net gains and pains for journalism

Meanwhile, GMLc the other day had a few words to say about The Webbys. Although I wrote that I'd give up my newspaper when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers, I do way more newspaper reading online than in hand.

The Guardian in the U.K. won't be the last newspaper to have a great Web site and oh-by-the-way also a dead trees edition. The New York Times comes to mind. I love my Sunday Times, the fat, $5, dead trees edition with the Dell computer ad supplement that falls out and dirty ink that gets all over your hands. This week, the Times online, however, posted this very funny and telling profile of MSNBC's Chris Matthews in advance of Sunday magazine publication. Why'd they post it so early?  Because parts of it were leaking out anyway -- might as well. See the comments on the story.

Internet Week in New York is a festival I'd like to go to. It's a week of events surrounding New York's Internet industry "and the many talented companies, organizations and innovators creating the future of online media!" as they say on the site. Internet Week New York is produced by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with the City of New York and the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. It's June 3-10 which is smack-dab in the middle of our own Old World Festival ...
Spoleto.

Last fall, journalist Ken Doctor asked if locial (local plus social) is the Next Wave in online journalism.

A note on politics: I'm not a fan of the gotcha political maneuvers that plague such a long, long campaign process. I can't keep up with 'em for one thing, and I really just don't care for another. I assume that campaigns are lying, manipulation (words and images), false advertising and so forth. As comedian Lewis Black says, "I'm used to my government lying to me. I've gotten comfortable with that." But if you want to check on the accuracy of the mud being slung, don't forget about FactCheck.org.

Memories ...

I found some old pictures that I took. Really sort of old. From trips to Europe and various places. I will share just for fun:

Paris, 1975

Spain 1975
Near Rondo