By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Deep morning thought. Don’t get jiggy. Just yet.
One of my theories about life is that one day, unannounced, we stop living forward and start living backward.
We stop accumulating new experiences….stop living sequentially.
On that day we begin to become nostalgic. We look backward and start to painstakingly yet lovingly make sense of our lives and our world.
We have a new job…a new mission. It is the day we stop thinking of stealing second base because we are assigned to be the new third base coach.
The daily currency of life isn’t new adventures anymore–but piecing together in a sensible way old adventures –which we play with like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—until the life we lived starts to make sense.
And that is a good thing.
But the day we become nostalgic, is the first day of our death, which may take decades to complete, but have moved into a state of decay. That’s why, on this day, today, I urge you to join me and commit to yourself and your family to stay the heck away from jigsaw puzzles.
By Krystal Ball, on Tue Mar 13, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
Mitt Romney has both a southern problem and a southern opportunity.
Mitt enjoys “sport.” He’s not an ardent NASCAR fan but he does have friends who are team owners.
He’s “always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will.”
If this sounds like a guy poised to win over the hearts and minds of southern conservatives, then your only experience south of the Mason-Dixon likely involved a trip to visit relatives in Boca Raton.
Alabama and Mississippi are coming up on the primary calendar, and they are likely to prove quite challenging for Romney, who has yet to prove that he can win anywhere in the South.
With heartland states on the calendar as well, the March lineup is a tough one for former Governor Romney. This challenge is also an opportunity, though.
It gives Romney a chance to prove once and for all that he can win over demographic groups that he’s fallen flat with thus far.
As a daughter of the South who was born and raised in King George, Va., I can tell you that Mitt Romney’s southern problem is severe but surmountable. There is no question that, to the extent the South shares a cultural, religious, and personality aesthetic, Mitt Romney is the antithesis of this aesthetic.
Read the rest of… Krystal Ball: Romney’s Southern Problem and Opportunity
Rick Santorum’s victory in the Kansas caucuses on Saturday wasn’t much of a surprise, but his margin was toward the high end of expectations as he took 51 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 21 percent. It was the largest margin of defeat for Mr. Romney in caucus or primary to date, although he lost the “beauty contest” primary in neighboring Missouri by almost as large a margin.
Mr. Santorum’s success in Kansas was also geographically sweeping. He took all four Congressional districts and all but one small county. Under Kansas’ delegate allocation rules, he should receive about 33 delegates to Mr. Romney’s 7 once the results are verified.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Mar 12, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
A friend on Sunday I hadn’t seen in a while said to me, “Hey, you’ve put on some weight recently, haven’t you?”
It was a gentle, friendly comment. Not insulting.
I said, “Well, I’m involved in a international protest and am on a “diet strike” until justice prevails. This is day 14 of not going on a diet.”
My friend paused for a moment and then realized it was safe to laugh–and did.
“What protest?” he asked?
“Well, that’s sort of fluid right now….I haven’t exactly decided yet. But I was ready to commit to my form of protest and wanted to get a head start.”
“You ain’t right” came back the answer.
I get that response more often than I care to report.
The important point is “You ain’t right” isn’t the insult it seems at first blush. In fact it’s kind of a back handed compliment.
Anyway, that’s my status update. And I’ve narrowed my choices for protesting. And today is day 19 of my “diet strike”—and there is no turning back at this point.
There is a hard to miss media bias against the relevance of trends that start in Alabama. That partly explains why a popular, effective governor like Bob Riley received not a sliver of response to his nascent presidential ambitions, despite a record that compared well to Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry; and why the weirdness of the state’s teacher union linking arms with a conservative Republican in the last governor’s race drew no national coverage–despite an ad by the union (an arm of the liberal NEA) pillorying a more moderate Republican for backing “Barack Obama’s federal takeover of our schools”. The theory seems to be that the state is too self-consciously parochial, too doused in racial embers, for its politics to deserve much scrutiny. The state’s controversial immigration law and its perennial political corruption merit national mentions largely for the stereotypes they reinforce.
Spencer Bachus
No surprise, then, that one of the most striking primary races this cycle is a week away and entirely below radar. On March 13, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, faces a challenge from a state legislator who has cultivated Tea Party support and challenged the incumbent as a Washington enabler. The race is thought to be competitive and the 20 year incumbent could well lose.
The challenger, a state senator named Scott Beason, has the kind of tangled history that makes Alabama politicians so confounding for outsiders to understand. A few years ago, Beason was entangled in the same grassroots snare he has set for his current rival: a clumsy vote to raise legislative pay brought him the ire of conservative activists, and a reputation for being a Republican with vaguely moderate inclinations.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Real Alabama Republican Primary
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Need help with advice.
Etiquette question..I can’t find an entry for this in Ms Manners and hoping there is a ready formula for dealing with this awkward situation.
OK, you walk into a social event and see someone you’ve known for several years and never had trouble recalling their name, but suddenly blank out.
You quickly run through the alphabet in your head as they are walking toward you but to no avail.
You have a family member with you and don’t have time now–after wasting precious seconds on the alphabet –to tell the family member to introduce himself first to this “good friend” bc you can’t remember his name. Or even the letter his name might begin with.
So, you quickly grab your Blackberry and run a check on what you think his first name is.
You are correct, look up, and eagerly greet and introduce your friend to your family member….just before your “good friend” glances down at your Blackberry to see his name staring back at him.
He pauses to ask, “Were you going to call me?” but then realizes what “probably” happened and starts to say something sarcastic but stops.
What is the socially appropriate thing to say in this situation?
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Mar 7, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
A Facebook secret.
Facebook is a place where millions of people seemingly give advice to millions of other people daily but are really just using others as an excuse to give—and hopefully take—their own advice.
And I think that’s a very good thing.
The advice is communicated in status updates containing inspirational quotes, wise advice, clever slogans, and touching stories. Which seems lately to be on the rise.
We are telling ourselves that we need to adopt that particular thought or this mindset or take that action. It’s always easier to take advice ourselves if we can do so under the guise of giving that advice to others. It’s easier to hear, to accept, and ultimately to take. And FB gives us that always ready third-party, i.e. the FB world.
So, maybe, through all the status updates where we are seemingly nudging the world to become a little bit better place is actually working. By allowing us more often to nudge ourselves to each become a little bit better person.
And so maybe that isn’t so much a Facebook secret as much as it is the secret to Facebook.
Deep morning thought. Don’t get jiggy. Just yet.
