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Bits and Pieces
Jump the Gun
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Published: November 15, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama isn't prone to make snap judgments. But on one issue, the Journal's solemn advice is to jump the gun, by all means.
That issue would be the fact that Winston-Salem's Maya Angelou told The Associated Press that she feels a poem welling up in her about the nation's first black president. She doesn't expect to be asked to read at his inauguration, as she was at Bill Clinton's first swearing-in, but she feels the poem coming on all the same.
Sign her up for the inauguration, poem unseen, Mr. President-elect. You can't go wrong with Maya Angelou.
The Name Game
And speaking of Obama, people nationwide are already starting to name their babies after him. And an Irish village, Moneygall, claims one of his ancestors came from there. If the president-elect visits, they can call him Barry O'Bama.
Woops
And there's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, who called our president-elect "young, handsome and suntanned."
Anybody that good at gaffes should enter American politics.
Not That Bad?
The latest Newsweek gives former presidential candidate John Edwards the worst possible score in its "Dignity Index" for having that affair while his wife was battling cancer.
But in a riveting look inside the Obama campaign in the same issue, the magazine notes that when Edwards was still in the running for the Democratic presidential nomination, he took time out to advise Obama, then his competitor. According to the magazine, Obama "seemed so distracted in one debate that … Edwards came up to him during a break and scolded him, ‘Barack … you've got to focus.' "
Maybe the magazine's tidbit will help Edwards along what will surely be a long road toward regaining public trust -- or at least help balance off his placement in "The Dignity Index."
Opie Uplifts Nixon
Anybody who saw Ron "Opie" Howard's video for Obama, the one in which he appeared with Andy Griffith, knows he's got a certain political bent. He reveals more of that in a brief interview in this week's New York Times Magazine.
And this time he really goes off the deep end.
After the interviewer states that "there's no Richard Nixon in Mayberry," Howard says, "If there had been, Andy would have taken him fishing and talked to him logically and made him feel so badly about what he'd done that when they got back to town, Nixon would have locked himself into the town jail."
Locked himself up? Like Otis Campbell, the saintly town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show?
It's downright un-American to even try to suggest that Nixon could ever be half as noble as Otis.
Money Talk
Who really knows the solutions to our myriad economic problems? You have to wonder if the so-called experts do.
As you do that wondering and worrying, it's easy to feel powerless. And that's all the more reason to tell the Winston-Salem City Council your thoughts about issues such as incentives and the kinds of businesses that the city should be recruiting.
You can do that at a special council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Joel Coliseum. City officials will hear from the public, and they'll make presentations about how they plan to keep businesses and jobs here, and attract more of the same. They'll also make a presentation about the city's financial health, which officials say is stable -- at least for now.
This free event could be the cheapest, if not the most fun, time you've ever had at the coliseum. Talk is the one thing that is still cheap.
Survey It
On its Web site, the village of Clemmons is asking residents to take a survey "to let us know your willingness to participate in future surveys."
Shouldn't Clemmons first take a survey to see if the people want to be surveyed about their willingness to be surveyed?
Give Her a Cheerwine
In lashing out at critics questioning campaign expenditures on her clothes, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said last week that "I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr. Pepper once in a while."
No wonder she and John McCain didn't carry North Carolina: She should have been drinking our Diet Cheerwine.
Birds and Bees
At the University of California, Irvine, a biologist was facing unpaid leave for refusing to take sexual-harassment prevention training. He called the state-mandated training "a naked political act," according to USA Today.
The guy's all wrong. Naked political acts are what some politicians do at the no-tell motel when they're supposed to be helping the people.
Heads or Tails
We demand an end to the way some local governments in this country decide tied elections: with a coin toss.
We don't have enough extra coins any more for such foolishness. In these tight times, when there's no clear winner it would be better just to limit the feeding at the public trough -- as well as costly recounts -- by eliminating political seats with races too close to call.
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