Gold Medal Stupidity

Watching the opinion writers at The State vie to see who can manufacture the most hideous inanities, transparent lies, and self-righteous twaddle is like watching a particularly close Kentucky Derby. As the riders bunch up, their horses galloping furiously, you can see that one jockey's whip is hitting another's animals haunches. You wonder how the beasts of burden don't fall over each other and tumble to the ground, what with all the speed and the thicket of moving hooves. You imagine that any horse stuck in the middle of that crowd would almost be carried along by the sheer velocity of the tumult around it.

Today, Cindi Ross Scoppe sticks out her handsome muzzle with particular aplomb. In a death-defying feat of stupidity, Scoppe's article combines all the adrenaline-pumping excitement of a 7th grade civics lesson with the intellectual firepower of a hot dog eating contest, to claim that last month's refusal to vote on Put Parents in Charge was actually. . . a vote on Put Parents in Charge.

Here's what Ms. Scoppe—who will never win a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer, or the respect of any half-educated human being—had to say about what happened:

[I]n the South Carolina General Assembly, bills don’t actually get killed. They get sent back to committee...

But not this time. This time, the House, apparently understanding that a powerful message needed to be sent, actually voted to table Gov. Mark Sanford’s pet plan to pay parents to withdraw their children from the public schools. There could be no confusion about how House members stood on this divisive measure.

The implication, of course, is that this time the General Assembly actually took a stand rather than adopting their usual course gaseous posturing and flaccid symbolism. Scoppe makes it clear that she's no fan of the Governor's "pet plan" and that she's ecstatic and grateful that the reform measure was defeated after their "straightforward and courageous vote."

There's only one problem: it didn't go down like that. Here's what actually happened, according to The State:

Debate Wednesday was expected to take hours. Instead, three quick procedural votes to kill the bill took just 10 minutes.

It ought to be shocking that a writer for South Carolina's largest newspaper can't tell the difference between a full and fair debate and procedural legerdemain. If you ran a daycare center the way that Brad Warthen runs his newspaper, it would be staffed almost exclusively with pedophiles.

Bowing and Scraping, Fawning and Toadying: Just another Editorial from the state

Everyone has their own reason for hating The State. Personally, I've focused on factual inaccuracies, tendentious reporting, ideological axe-grinding, and unsurpassed journalistic laziness.

But other people have their own pet peeves. For instance, there are the Clemson fans who constantly getting short shrift in the sports section and the decently educated, who object to the paper's daily abuse of the English language.

Today's nauseating excerpt from America's Worst Newspaper, however, highlights a different despicable tendency. It's the obsequious, pusillanimous, quivering adulation afforded to politicians who toe their line. So when Senator Lindsey Graham failed his gut check and voted to stand down rather than go to bat for some federal judges, The State feted his "courage:"

For taking part, Sen. Graham knows that he will hear some grumbling. . . . But South Carolinians traditionally have applauded mavericks. Those who think the senator has served his state and country well should make sure he hears from them, since he’ll certainly hear from his critics. Sen. Graham again has shown that he will defy political pressures to act in the national interest, and that he has the makings of a great U.S. senator.

He and the other centrists have acted to protect the Senate from those who would ditch its role as a deliberative, not majoritarian, body.

Luckily, since this is a national story, there are real newspapers reporting on it. Here's the reliably entertaining Peggy Noonan providing a sort of Lindsey Graham translator—a handy device that's really necessary only for nincompoops, imbeciles, half-wits, and editors of The State.

But my favorite [self-obsessed Republican turncoat] was Lindsey Graham, who said, "I know there will be folks 'back home' who will be angry, but that's only because they're not as sophisticated and high-minded as I am. Actually they're rather stupid, which is why they're not in the Senate and I am. But I have 3 1/2 years to charm them out of their narrow-minded resentments, and watch me, baby."

Oh, excuse me, that's not what he said. That's only what he meant. It was the invisible scroll as he spoke. The CNN identifier that popped up beneath his head as he chattered, however, did say, "Conceited Nitwit Who Affects 'Back Home' Accent to Confuse the Boobs."

Oh wait, that's not what it said. It said, "R-South Carolina." My bad.

Read the whole thing!

A Result That Only The State Could Love

Our students are failing but our test is getting high marks.

"Isn't that awesome?" asks The State.

What's the word I'm looking for? No.

Here's the fodder for The State's gloating:

[Education Next's] report exposes this reality: South Carolina’s state test is among the nation’s best at ensuring students are measured against high standards.

That's great. So, how are South Carolina students doing when measured against those nice, high standards? Very poorly, according to the State Department of Education.

74% of 8th graders cannot read and write proficiently

62% of 6th graders are not proficient at math

74% of 4th graders are not proficient at science

And don't even ask about how poor or minority students are doing.

Still, The State comments smugly when the Governor's spokesman dares to say, "'At the end of the day, your objective isn’t necessarily to have the best testing system in the nation.' Yes, he really said that."

Here's a thought: Maybe they'd rather try to help the kids than brag about their wonderful test?

2-For-1 Special on State Mess-Ups

In previous posts, I have highlighted The State's propensity to soak the taxpayers and its penchant for uncritical government boosterism.

Today's State provides extraordinary value by combining both features in one short article.

The State vs. Taxpayers

In an earlier post, I commented on the general worldview held by the editors of The State:

According to The State, taxes are never high enough, government spending is always too low, and people should never be allowed to make their own choices with either their money or their lives.

To a great extent, this blog documents the persistently elitist, obnoxiously paternalistic, and vaguely authoritarian outlook that pervades The State, from its opinion pages to its "straight" news stories. But don't take my word for it, here's The State editorializing today:

Just as it would be hard to justify a tax that is effectively among the highest in the nation, it’s hard to justify having one of the lowest taxes in the nation. And like our anemic cigarette tax, our gasoline tax is knuckle-scraping low.

Did you hear that? Having the lowest taxes is "knuckle-scraping" e.g., primitive or gauche. Having low taxes is not like being the smartest student in class or the prettiest model on stage or the tallest dude on the basketball court. Low taxes, says The State, are nothing to brag about. Taxes are not bad after all. Therefore, you should learn to stop worrying and love the taxes. You didn't want all that extra cash anyway and besides, your family didn't need it. You wanted other people—people with opinions more like those of The State—to decide what to do with the money that you earned.

That's The State's worldview: if you want to keep the money that you earned, you are an old-fashioned, backwards, uncivilized, greedy buffoon; a mouth-breathing troglodyte who wouldn't know their own enlightened self-interest if it bit them in the patoot. Better to let the progressive people at The State—and in state government—take care of it.

Will South Carolinians succumb to The State's siren song calling for higher taxes, bigger government, and more laws for us to follow? I sure hope not, but only time will tell.

Taxpayers May Get Reprieve - The State Sqeals Like a Stuck Pig

Governor Sanford returned his budget to the state legislature today. Since Sanford realizes that all the government goodies doled out to the favored and powerful must be paid for by regular taxpayers, the Governor is not shy in using his veto pen in order to safeguard the family budgets of ordinary South Carolinians.

Here are the vital stats:

Number of items vetoed: 163

Total taxpayer money saved: $96 million

Total amount of state spending preserved: 99%

So, of course The State reports this like it's a fiscal Dresden. Here's a sample of some of The State's "objective" analysis:

Sanford is a proud tightwad.

(Great job, Mr. Bandy!) Although the Governor said "The vetoes have little to do with the merits of individual programs" and were instead intended to reduce non-essential spending, The State entitles its list of vetoed programs "What He Didn't Like." Subtle, real subtle.

Also check out the front-page shot they took at, I mean of, Governor Sanford. It's such a bad photo that you wonder why they didn't go all the way and draw horns on the guy!

But give The State a little credit: at least they linked to his veto message online. (As for print readers, they're stuck with less comprehensive coverage.)

Who's Looking Out for You?

When the University of South Carolina Law School comes up middling in the rankings, it makes the front page of The State.

When South Carolina ends up 50th among 50 states in SATs, we have to turn to the Atlanta Journal-Consitution to get the story.

And ye Shall Know them by their survey questions...

The State wonders if school districts shouldn't be able to unilaterally raise taxes as needed. After all, it's obviously too difficult to raise taxes today.

Our Day is Coming

The State has taken to reporting about feisty, upstart websites that expose what's rotten among South Carolina's insiders, power-brokers, and self-declared elites.

Mr. Warthen, I'm ready for my close-up!

A Deficit of Diligence

Today's edition of The State features some lazy reporting. Result: what could have been a compelling and important story instead remains underdeveloped, a yawn.

Here's the flabby article, a puff piece on Columbia's small, superflous, second airport.

Here's the Owens Field Downtown Airport website. Here's the website of Columbia's real airport.

Anyway, let's get back to the story. Gina Smith points out that the renovations cost $4.5 million but she never follows the reporter's first rule: follow the money. Who's getting it? Is it taxpayer money? Is there any suspcious or unaccounted overspending?

Instead we get banal, boring, booster-ish paragraphs like this one:

The project is looking so good that the S.C. Aviation Association recently chose the new terminal as the location of the S.C. Aviation Hall of Fame display.

Local journalism doesn't have to be dull. So why does The State insist on it?

Sometimes Awful Sells

South Carolina's largest newspaper profiles Hootie and the Blowfish.

Is Civility a Partisan Issue?

From Jennifer Talhelm's better-than-average article about the (temporary?) defeat of Put Parents in Charge:

Rep. Ken Kennedy, D-Williamsburg, yelled up at bill supporters in the balcony.

“All of you out-of-town people — go back,” Kennedy said, referring to lobbyists from out-of-state groups who have pushed for the bill and funded campaigns against its opponents.

“Go back to Colorado and Washington. Get the hell out of here.”

While such belligerance may be unremarkable for a juvenile delinquent, those certainly were extraordinarily hostile words to come from an elected official. Surely Kennedy's boorish and ungracious tone is not representative of his constituents. I have it on good authority Williamsburg residents are as polite and hospitable as any in the state.

A couple of weeks back when John Graham Altman publicly breached common courtesy while speaking to a TV reporter, Brad Warthen took an entire column to call him a "jerk."

Will Warthen use his bully pulpit to rebuke Ken Kennedy's lack of manners?

Or is he only moved to remark on bad manners when the offender is a Republican?

A Decent Try by Talhelm

Sometimes The State comes really close to writing a really great article, only to throw in one or two throwaway lines of garbage that mar the whole thing.

An excellent example is today's recount of the anticlimactic culmination of the Put Parents in Charge debate.

Jennifer Talhelm does an artful job of condensing a long, complex, heated, statewide debate into a few paragraphs of summary. For that she is to be commended. She also managed to capture the feeling of the debate on the floor. Highly anticipated as an ideologically charged debate over how to best improve our state's failing education system, the House of Representatives instead jettisoned the reform bill and turned it's back on South Carolina children.

Talhelm captures it all. Bravo! But then comes this train-wreck of a paragraph:

[Opponents] feared it would help only white, middle-class parents, leaving poor minority children behind in underfunded schools.

How is it possible that a bill that does not discriminate by race; that includes scholarships and extra allowances for the poor; and that does not affect public school funding could do any of these things? Again, read the bill.

I understand that it is Talhelm's job to report what is said and not to take a side. But does that mean that she must report whatever comes out of some muckety-muck's mouth, no matter how ridiculous? If the anti-parent oppositon to Put Parents in Charge said that PPIC would put the Klan in charge of South Carolina—these dopes have made similar claims—would Talhelm report that, too? At what point is something so ridiculous, so divorced from the truth, that no newspaper should stoop to reprinting the odious twaddle?

It's like a textbook of media bias

State "reporter" Aaron Gould Sheinin is looking to become the Babe Ruth of slanted journalism—a giant in the field. How else to explain today's obscenely tendentious farce of an article?

Here's the nugget of fact buried deep beneath the towering mound of speculative twaddle: North Carolina is looking to hike its cigarette tax by 25¢ to 30¢ a pack. So how does America's Worst Newspaper™ report the story?

Pressure mounts to hike tax on cigarettes...South Carolina soon could be home to the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation, as lawmakers in North Carolina move closer to raising rates in the Tarheel state.

...With a tax hike in Kentucky set to take effect June 1, South Carolina’s 7-cents-a-pack tax rate would be 10 cents lower than the nearest state — Missouri’s 17-cents-a-pack tax.


With South Carolina’s tax out of alignment with other states, proponents of raising cigarette taxes — who say a higher cost would encourage some to stop smoking and keep others from starting — see an opportunity.

The rest of the article is a bunch of thumbsucking nonsense on the prospect of raising cigarette taxes. The high ratio of direct quotes from SC tax hike supporters and specious, paraphrased arguments in favor of tax increase leave little doubt where The State's sympathies lie. According to The State, taxes are never high enough, government spending is always too low, and people should never be allowed to make their own choices with either their money or their lives.

Jennifer Talhelm, "Reporter"

When it comes to the Put Parents in Charge plan for school choice, The State throws away even its minimal commitment to fair and accurate reporting. Judging from this Saturday story, they cannot even write a single accurate sentence about the bill. Here's the article's first sentence:

That fiery House floor debate we’ve all been expecting on Gov. Mark Sanford’s bill giving tax breaks for private school tuition?

Okay, let it again be noted that State writers refuse to limit themselves to complete sentences. While such sloppiness would draw a failing grade for an 8-year old's composition, that won't stop intrepid State "reporters" like Jennifer Talhelm.

But what's more important is that Ms. Talhelm thoroughly fouls up her description of the bill. Talhelm distorts the facts to say that it's a private school tuition subsidy. In reality, the bill covers educational expenses of all sorts that include independent school, home school, public school tuition for other districts, transportation and other education related services. The point is that tax relief goes to parents to pay for educational expenses. The type of educational expense is up to them. That's why it's called parental choice.

Is it too much to ask Talhelm to read the bill that she's reporting on?