More on Cyphers

If you are a fan of Donald Cyphers and the Montana News Association (and who isn't?), you will enjoy this.

Coulter on Tester

Wandering through The Western Word, I found this link to an Ann Coulter column. Sifting out the crap in an Ann Coulter column is like cleaning the Augean stables (the best example here: "It is beyond outrageous for liberals to complain about the practice of linking Democrats to the national party when their calculated strategy in race after race in the red states has been to run Democratic candidates who appear to be Americans. They're not Americans. They're liberals! I don't care how much hay is sticking out of their straw hats.")

It's impossible to respond adequately to that level of mendacity. If she were smart enough to understand why that is bad punditry, she would be smart enough not to write such garbage. But underlying the nonsense is a common mindset about rural America that I find infinitely more offensive than Barack Obama's throwaway line about clinging to guns and religion.

The mindset blares through what Coulter says about Jon Tester:

One of the Democrats' paragons of regular guy-ness that year was Jon Tester of Montana, who wore cowboy boots and had a buzz cut. The crew cut absolutely transfixed liberals in places like Manhattan. Search "Jon Tester and crew cut" on Google, and you'll get more than 200,000 hits. Even this tonsorial affectation was a liberal fake-out, inasmuch as Tester has no military service.

After campaigning throughout Montana in a pickup truck, Tester got to Washington and compiled a voting record more liberal than Chuck Schumer's, according to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (Tester: 95 percent; Schumer: 90 percent). Tester also has a 100 percent rating from the pro-abortion group NARAL. There's your truck driving, gun-totin' Democrat.

Look at the range of unexamined assumptions:
1. Liberals can't be "regular guys."
2. Tester was popular only in East Coast liberal havens (I'm guessing she didn't mean Manhattan, Montana).
3. Only soldiers wear crew cuts.
4. "Truck driving, gun-toting" Westerners are all conservatives.
5. Either that, or they are faking it (as if nobody here knew Tester favored abortion rights).

One reason I like living in small towns and in places like Billings (and, for similar reasons, conservative strongholds like Bryan and Palestine, Texas) is that life there forces you to confront people on their own terms. City folk are all but obligated to lump people together in handy categories or they risk being overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of it all.

But people in conservative-leaning towns lack the luxury of willful ignorance. That's why it no longer surprises me to play pool against a Texan in cowboy boots and checkered shirt and learn that he is an artist and a college professor. Or to find a cowboy poet rancher who worries about global warming. Or to find scholars who get together to play fiddle, guitar and harmonica on weekends. Or to find a truck-driving, gun-toting air conditioner repairman who harbors socialist leanings and a weakness for Dostoevsky. Or a buttoned-down, libertarian copy editor who once dressed as a nun and played in an anarchist band that wrote songs celebrating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Wake up, Ann. It's a much more interesting world out there than you have ever suspected.

Thursday talk radio update

This is a bit late because I took off for Butte on Friday with Gary Svee to see Tom McGuane talk at the Butte Press Club. A good time was had by all, so far as I could tell, although I may have had a beer or two more than was strictly necessary. A highlight was that I won the annual raffle of a chance to sign a bottle of Auld Malcolm, whiskey so bad, apparently, that even old-time Butte newsmen wouldn't drink it when it was donated for a press party. So every year a signature is added to the bottle, including, now, my own. Now no one can say that I haven't made a difference in Montana journalism.

On Thursday, Sean Hannity had pretty much nailed the presidential election down to four issues: Jeremiah Wright, Michelle Obama, William Ayers and "clinging" to guns and religion. That's pretty much it. No war in Iraq, no economy, no global warming, no rising gasoline prices. Just the Big Four issues.

Hannity also has said repeatedly now that race isn't a big factor in presidential elections. Ninety percent of Americans aren't racists, he says. I don't know where he got that number -- I'm pretty sure he made it up -- and I suspect it overstates how well Americans have gotten over racism. But even if it doesn't, that means that Obama starts out 10 points down with white voters. So when is the last time 10 percentage points wouldn't have swung the results of a presidential election? In 1984, when Reagan swamped Mondale.

Yet Hannity can't figure out why guys like Jeremiah Wright still obsess over racism. In 1960, black Americans weren't even allowed at the starting line. Now they are allowed to compete, so long as they start 10 yards behind. That's progress, of a sort, but it ain't equal.

Unrelated note: I mentioned earlier how impressive all the Democratic candidates for attorney general sounded at the Truman Dinner. Dave Rye had Tim Fox, a Republican attorney general candidate, on the radio Thursday morning, and he sounded awfully impressive, too. Voters may just have to close their eyes when they vote for attorney general this year. At least that's better than holding their noses.

The death of Alma Snell

I neglected to mention this the other, so I hope it's not too late to mention the death of Alma Snell.

I didn't really know her, but I read her book "Grandmother's Grandchild" about her life and especially her upbringing by Pretty Shield.

"Pretty Shield" was Frank Linderman's worthy successor to his classic biography of Plenty Coups. My review of "Grandmother's Grandchild" apparently isn't on line, and I couldn't find it at home. But I remember it as a very worthy successor to both of Linderman's books. Anyone who reads all three has about as readable a history of the Crow Tribe as it is possible to obtain.

Truman update

My story on last week's Democratic doings will be in Thursday's Outpost, but as always a few observations didn't make the paper. Among them:

1. The Democrats have an impressive-looking batch of attorney general candidates. Steve Bullock, John Parker and Mike Wheat all used their two-minute slots to make fairly convincing cases for themselves. I particularly liked it when Parker said that he had won his first election in Billings: as president of his fourth-grade class at Sandstone Elementary School. I don't know the Republican candidates, so I'm not saying that these guys are better, but I have to think that Democrats will feel good about their chances no matter how the primary turns out.

2. This was my first time to see Jim Hunt, the Democratic candidate for Denny Rehberg's U.S. House seat. Nobody thinks Hunt can win, including me, but he made a stronger case for himself than I would have expected. Both the rhetoric ("I'm the guy who's going to beat Denny Rehberg") and the jokes ("Anybody who thinks I'm going to be intimidated in this race better think again because I have two teenage daughters") were pretty predictable. But he had a more forceful manner than I would have expected, and he seemed ready to take Rehberg on in the areas where I think the incumbent is most vulnerable: his failure to take a stand against President Bush on issues of civil liberties, executive authority and war-making power.

3. The only candidate who got cut off in mid-speech was Robert Candee, the other Democrat running for Rehberg's House seat. I didn't have a timer, so I'm not sure whether he really took a lot more time than other speakers, but Democrats definitely didn't appear to have much interest in hearing him out. He used part of his time to talk about a 1987 lawsuit he filed against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I didn't quite see the point. Apparently, neither did the Democrats.

4. One of the first times Brian Schweitzer made an impression on me was at a Truman Dinner here before he was elected governor. He donned an apron and walked from table to table, refilling coffee cups. He still seems to enjoy himself in public about as much as anybody I have ever seen. When he saw me taking notes, he hollered, "Write something nice about me."

"No," I hollered back.

"Then write something unusual about me," he said.

I'm afraid I failed him on both counts.

5. It was fun listening to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar polish their pitches before a small crowd at Barack Obama headquarters before Saturday night's main event. Freudenthal seemed profoundly comfortable in front of the small group: funny, self-effacing, articulate. After listening to him for a couple of minutes, I realized that I would never again have to wonder how a Democrat gets elected to high office in a conservative stronghold like Wyoming: You just have to be Dave Freudenthal.

I thought he outshone Klobuchar in front of the small group, but she came into her own at the evening event: full of anecdotes, passionate, sharply on target. Dems loved her, and no wonder. I also enjoyed seeing how she honed her material: I heard her tell one anecdote three times, once to me and the governor, once to the Obama staffers and volunteers and once at the Truman Dinner. It was new material, apparently, that she had come up with on the airplane flight, and she was working to nail it down.

6. People wonder what's wrong with Hillary Clinton, but it isn't hard to figure. The two most gifted politicians I have seen in my adult life have been Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She married one and has to run against the other. To hold up as well as she has is quite an achievement.

Word on the campaign trail has been that Bill Clinton is slipping and may be hurting his wife's candidacy. None of that was on display Saturday night. The guy is a master. He started by talking about his last visit to Billings, including the name of the horse he rode when he was here ("Phirepower") and his visit to the Kit-Kat Cafe. He even knew that the Kit-Kat was no longer around -- a tribute to great staff work, or a great memory, or both.

Then he said that speaking last at the four-hour Truman dinner reminded him of the first political speech he ever gave, when he was the last speaker on a long list.

"They introduced everybody in that hall but three people," he said, "and they went home mad."

Then he launched into a 25-minute talk that covered Democratic policies from one of the spectrum to the other, piled high with detail and examples, but never too dry or arcane. Love him or hate him, the guy is a master at what he does.

7. I've been to a couple of Truman Dinners in the past, but none like this. The crowd, the arrangement, the speakers all topped anything I have seen. Most importantly, a sense of confidence seemed to fill the room. Democrats are famous for making the worst of a good situation, and they may manage to do it again. But the mood on Saturday night suggested that they have all the cards in their hands.

Calling Bill Gates

One thing I hate about Microsoft: Its computer programs keep updating themselves in the middle of the night. I don't particularly like my computer updating itself without me knowing about it -- who's in charge here? -- but that's not what gets me.

What gets me is when I'm cranking out the weekly Outpost at four in the morning and the computer sends me a message telling me it will restart in five minutes unless I tell it to go away. Then when I tell it to go away, it's right back in five minutes warning me again that it will restart.

When I am four hours from deadline and have eight pages to go, which is often the case, there are few things I want less than a computer update. But it always gets me. This morning, I had been fighting off reboot warnings for a couple of hours, and I was a third of the way through my story on the Democrats when the 19 hours I had been on the job finally started to get to me. I slumped back in my chair and closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I awoke, the computer had shut down all my programs and restarted.

No major damage, but the incident raised a couple of questions:

1. Is there any way to turn these reminders off?

2. If I were to call up Bill Gates, would he come over and show me how to do it?

3. If I spent all the money to buy this machine, why does Bill Gates seem to own it?

Schweitzer for veep?

At least one political reporter puts Brian Schweitzer in the top tier of possible choices for Barack Obama's vice presidential pick.

One for Obama

Here's another reason to like Obama. Imagine what it would be like to have a president who believes that Americans and their state governments have the right to make the laws that govern them.

I pledge obesiance

This is a free country, by God, and those who don't agree will be punished.

Is it OK to lie?

Like me, Kevin Drum doesn't like retail loyalty cards. Without rehashing that argument, I was struck in the comments by how many people say that those who dislike giving up private information should just lie to get the cards.

That's always seemed wrong to me because it's so much like, you know, lying. Are my ethical standards just hopelessly out of date in the internet age? Is it morally correct to lie to large, impersonal, heartless corporations?

Biddie tickets

Because of a late cancellation, we unexpectedly have two free tickets available for the Lascivious Biddies concert at the Alberta Bair Theater at 7:30 p.m. today (Sunday). If you are interested, give me a holler right away by responding here or calling the Outpost at 248-1616. My wife and I have been listening to the Biddies' CD for the last couple of weeks and are really looking forward to the show.

A humble superman

Bolts of lightning may strike me, but I have to disagree with something that Ed Kemmick, my esteemed former colleague (or is it former esteemed colleague?) wrote in his City Lights column today. He writes that Democratic super delegates "have become so important they no longer speak like mere mortals."

I can't speak for most of them, but super delegate and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who spoke here on Saturday, still sounded pretty mortal. Until this year, he said, he had always considered super delegate status just a way to get really good credentials to the Democratic national convention. In fact, he made the mistake of telling a newspaper reporter this year that he might not even go to the convention.

When his wife read that in the paper, he said, she informed him that he would, in fact, be going to the convention, which is only 90 miles away in Denver. He said he held a press conference that day to announce that he had had "a vision" and would be going.

Freudenthal also noted that after he complained that neither major presidential candidate had visited Wyoming or Montana, both showed up. But he declined to take credit. "I have delusions of grandeur," he said, "but not that grand."

I'll save most of what happened for next week's Outpost, but Freudenthal did also have the best defense I've heard yet of Obama's infamous remark that rural voters "cling" to guns and religion because of other things that have gone wrong in their lives. Freudenthal, who is from Thermopolis, which is about as rural as it gets, said his church held an inaugural service after he was elected and allowed him to pick the songs for the service. One he chose was a song we used to sing in church, "The Old Rugged Cross," whose refrain goes in part: "I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown."

He said it took him a few days to figure out that he was supposed to be offended by what Obama said.

Thursday talk show update

Even among conservative radio talk show hosts, it's possible to believe there are multiple American universes, with no overlap. On O'Reilly yesterday, the Democratic primary was all over, and O'Reilly had no interest in hearing from anyone who thought otherwise. He just wanted to talk about what questions he should ask John McCain in last night's TV interview. Sounds tedious, but it actually is interesting to hear O'Reilly parse questions and give his philosophy of political interviewing.

In Sean Hannity's world, where creating Democratic chaos is the overriding goal, the primary was anything but over. He devoted at least two full hours to thrashing out the possibilities: a brokered convention, seating the Florida and Michigan delegations, a shared ticket, more attacks on Obama. About the only possibility he didn't cover was Hillary kidnapping Obama and locking him in a hotel room until the convention is over. Perhaps that will come today.

Michael Savage was trying to make hay with Clinton's remark that she does better among "hard-working Americans, white Americans." Interesting language, since it seems to exclude the possibility that black people might be hardworking Americans. I'm not really sure who these hardworking Americans are, but I always suspect that I am not included either, even though I hold down four jobs and work upwards of a hundred hours a week (if you call this working). I also always wonder why there is no candidate out there running for the votes of lazy Americans. No candidate would have a broader (in all senses of the word) constituency.

I'm not sure how O'Reilly's interview with McCain went, since I saw only a couple of minutes of it. But I did see McCain on Jon Stewart's show last night. Stewart, for all his clowning, is a remarkably adept interviewer, and he nailed McCain pretty hard on what McCain has said about Hamas endorsing Obama. Stewart set up the question to make it work on several levels: as a rebuttal to McCain's promise to run a respectful campaign, as a commentary on what a Hamas endorsement really means and as a gloss on the failings of Bush's anti-terrorist policies. McCain stumbled a bit before coming up with the observation that he sees himself as Al Quaida's worst nightmare.

Obama, meanwhile, was answering Brian Williams' question about his bowling prowess. It was a dumb question, but Obama gave a deft answer. He said he tried not to "over think" such matters: He was at a bowling alley looking for votes, somebody offered him a ball, and he gave it a few rolls. A more calculating candidate, he pointed out, would have gone in private to a bowling alley in advance to brush up. But he thinks Americans are too smart to need that kind of pandering.

It's not the first time he's said that Americans are too smart to fall for the dumbest aspects of American political campaigns. I sure hope he's right.

Why did it fail?

So why did the Billings School District 2 mill levy fail? A few possibilities, all of them unsullied by any actual evidence:

1. People are really scared of the economy. They're afraid to spend anything.

2. People fail to see a connection between the money they vote for schools and what actually happens in schools. Ever since the teachers' strike, I think there has been a uneasy sense that everything we vote for goes to pay raises and none of it to kids. People do want to support schools, but they don't want to be played for suckers.

3. Bad PR campaign. We at The Outpost never heard a word from the pro-levy forces. I have a natural inclination to exaggerate the Outpost's influence, but it still always strikes me as a pretty good bellwether for the competence of a PR campaign. Yes, we're small and don't have a lot of resources to devote to school coverage, but our readers also are disproportionately more literate, more involved and more likely to vote than the average citizen. We also draw more readers every week than, for example, ever go to a Billings Outlaws football game. Would school supporters have passed up an opportunity to make a pitch to a full house at MetraPark? Then why overlook a larger audience that is even more likely to be listening?

4. All-day kindergarten. That's not my argument, but Montana Headlines makes a good case for it.

5. Mail-in ballots. Have I mentioned that I hate them? I also predict that if their use becomes permanent and widespread, then mill levies will continue to have a hard time passing. Live elections force people to take a bit of notice of the world around them and pay attention to what is really going on. When you go to vote, you are functioning as a part of a community, and you are more aware of your role in the community.

As Americans become increasingly cocooned, they find it harder to look past their own noses. The only thing they know for sure about a mill levy is that it will cost them money, so they vote it down. Fewer people may vote in live elections, but those who do vote tend to be people who really care and want to make a difference. Those are the opinions that ought to matter most.

UPDATE: The Montana Headlines post linked above also makes useful points about the nature of school mill levies in Montana. It does seem to me a preposterous way to do business. As a voter, I don't really want to make decisions about how much money is needed to carry on everyday operations at the schools. I just want to be able to fire the people who do make those decisions.

The prevalence of absentee balloting and mail-in ballots, plus the growing tendency of having voters cast ballots directly on fairly routine legislative and policy matters, seems to lead toward the worst of all worlds: Voting keeps getting easier while the decisions keep getting harder. Less accountability, more responsibility: That's an odd formula for good government.