Help!

Will someone please buy Lee Bandy a nice retirement home in one of our state's lovely lakes or at least a time share in Florida?

I mean, really, this is ridiculous. The dude wants to retire and it's a perfectly respectable. There's no law that says you have to work until you practically peter out, like poor ol' Strom.

If Bandy wasn't hinting that he wants out, he wouldn't write buncombe like this. Using a sample size of about eight people, Bandy pretends to tell us better than modern, largescale, scientific polling what it is that the people of South Carolina think.

I know that Dewey didn't defeat Truman but there have been advances since then!

And I'm sure Lee Bandy knows it, too.

Let's all chip in and get him the gold watch that he's so clearly asking for. He deserves it!

Advocacy Journalism

When dimwits train their "talents" on reporting non-events, the signature stench of wishful thinking practically jumps of the page.

Creepy

The State can't tell the difference between a tennis tournament and a teenage beauty pageant.

Ashley Harkleroad is broken. That she knows this exasperates her. That she knows not what to do about it is downright painful.

Gone was the precocious girl once known as “Pebbles.” There was no sign of the 17-year-old with slap-your-dirty-uncle good looks, the one who took Charleston by storm in 2003 during an improbable run to the Family Circle Cup semifinals.

Nice; very classy.

Riddle

What do you call an elected official who refuses to agree to a broad-based tax increase?

Answer: "an extraordinarily substandard idiot"

(Answer is courtesy of Brad Warthen, editor of The State, whose authoritarianism goes straight to the bone...)

Utterly Nauseating

The State sees a capable, energetic, successful and reform-minded challenger for the position of Mayor of the stagnant, mismanaged, over-taxed, floundering city of Columbia. Greeted with this candidate who can only be described as a breath of fresh air flowing towards the stuffy, smoke-filled back room of corrupt Columbia city politics, what does The State do?

Why, they endorse his opponent, of course.

The vapid Mayor Bob has virtually nothing to recommend him.

Much like a certain capital city newspaper I know.

Seriously, the level of toadying at The State would make the editors of Stalin-era Pravda blush with shame. I know that Power Corrupts and all, but The State is just shameless.