The Other Brooks Brothers and Their Sister, Too. — “Suddenly-relevant”

According to Men’s Health magazine, which I obviously don’t pay attention to usually, pork rinds are good for you.

You know what I’m talking about. I mean those varying sized slices of deep-fried pig skin that are packaged in vacuum-sealed bags for sale at the local convenience store.

Mmmmm. Deep-fried pig skin.

According to the article:

Why you think they’re bad: These puffy snacks are literally cut from pigskin. Then they’re deep-fried.

Why they’re not: A 1-ounce serving contains zero carbohydrates, 17 grams (g) of protein, and 9 g fat. That’s nine times the protein and less fat than you’ll find in a serving of carb-packed potato chips. Even better, 43 percent of a pork rind’s fat is unsaturated, and most of that is oleic acid — the same healthy fat found in olive oil. Another 13 percent of its fat content is stearic acid, a type of saturated fat that’s considered harmless, because it doesn’t raise cholesterol levels.

In equally exciting news, the same article also endorses alcohol consumption citing a Harvard study of 18,000 men which indicated that those who had a couple of drinks a day had the lowest risk of heart attack while another study showed that men drinking the same amount also had lower ratios of abdominal fat.

Oh, happy Friday.

– Bo Burdette

The National Enquirer may not publish plagiarism like the New York Times, but it’s never been considered the bastion of reliable journalism, either.

Nevertheless, according to the Enquirer, this past Monday night (July 21) former Senator John Edwards allegedly went to the Beverly Hilton to meet with his alleged mistress and alleged love child following an alleged press event with the alleged mayor of Los Angeles about addressing the alleged homeless problem…allegedly.

It’s a good thing nothing like that would EVER happen to a South Carolina politician. Man, that would be embarrassing, huh?

– Bo Burdette

UPDATE 7/25/08 : According to Fox News, the alleged encounter was allegedly corroborated by an alleged hotel guard who allegedly witnessed an alleged enounter with the former Senator and alleged paparazzi.

Get over it.

Senator Kevin Bryant posted a picture knocking the slight spelling differences between “Osama” and “Obama.”

As the kids say, “BFD.”

In what must have been the slowest news week ever, the national media actually picked that up as a story and let it go for three days.

See examples HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE of media outlets with no sense of parody or who didn’t have enough advertisers to fill column inches.

With all of the fuss, you’d think Senator Bryant wrote that Senator Obama was a terrorist plotting to crash planes in to skyscrapers or that he’s sold this campaign button at the Texas GOP Convention.

THAT would have been cause for debate.

Instead, the Democrats took this opportunity to create a story where there wasn’t one. They worked to frame a picture forwarded in an e-mail that everybody had already seen to the issue du jour of a national election.

The press took the bait and ran with it.

It’s a parody picture that no one with a functional mental capacity could take as literal.

Get over yourselves and shut up already. We have real issues to address.

– Bo Burdette

UPDATE: As we usually expect from Senator Bryant, he holds his own as he tells opponents “I refuse to cower to the cultural police who evermore seek to censor our political discussion.” To take a quote from Coming to America, “That boy’s good.”

OK, I’m not quite sure what Representative Jeff Duncan (R-Laurens) is measuring in this picture while he was talking to Representative Dan Cooper (R-Piedmont), but it’s a funny visual.

Anyway, Dan Hoover from The Greenville News wrote another piece about the Upstate’s diminishing political influence.

NOTE: I’m really getting tired of reporters/columnists/pundits using the Upstate’s lower rate of elected officials in committee and legislative leadership positions. Folks, shouldn’t the ultimate goal be to elect the best candidates we can? Why should incumbent legislators be sacred cows that shouldn’t be challenged?

I just can’t believe that nobody picked up on one of the comments in Hoover’s piece. I’m sure this means something.

“Thank goodness for Dan Cooper; if not for him the Upstate would have very little clout right now,” says Kevin Mertens, the Greenville County Democratic chairman.”

– Bo Burdette

UPDATE: It seems I’m not the only one fired up by this attitude. One of the House’s resident rockstars agrees. Representative Nathan Ballentine (who believes a little differently than a bunch of other incumbents) wrote that power by a long-time officeholder isn’t the answer for moving “our state forward.” That’s right.

Back in college, I remember hearing a story about a little bump up ABC’s Sam Donaldson had when South Carolina’s former US Senator Fritz Hollings was a guest on This Week with David Brinkley.

Sure. I’m guessing the story has changed a little over the years, but I was glad to at least see it confirmed by Senator Hollings himself.

In his new book Making Government Work, the senator chronicles what became his last appearance on the Sunday morning show on September 16, 1990

“Senator,” Donaldson asked me, “you’re from the great textile-producing state of South Carolina. Is it true you have a Korean tailor?”

Before I could respond, Donaldson interjected: “Let’s see the label in there. What is the label in there?”

“I bought it,” I replied, “the same place right down the street where, if you want to personalize this thing, where you got that wig, Sam.”

From Chapter 12: Missed Opportunities

Now, that’s funny.

No matter what you think of Senator Hollings’ politics, he can always be counted on for big laughs.

– Bo Burdette

Maybe it’s me, but it seems like members of South Carolina’s press corps don’t like anyone that disagrees with them.

At least The State newspaper’s contempt for anything conservative is blatant and rests in the pages of the editorial section.

The folks at the Spartanburg Herald-Journal have taken it a step further introducing something I’ve decided to call an editoriport which is defined as “a printed, broadcast, or otherwise published story initially disguised as a factual news report but is mixed with opinions of the story’s author so as to provide a biased, slanted view of the subject material.”

I was originally going to go with reportitorial, but that was already taken.

Anyway, it seems that some of the team in the political department of Spartanburg’s New York Times Company property are playing fast and loose with the facts.

In a post Wednesday the Truthies pointed out that two recent stories in Spartanburg’s major daily newspaper, authored by Trevor Anderson and Robert Dalton wage false accusations about support for Lee Bright in his runoff against Scott Talley.

The Truthies even posted the contents of an e-mail that was sent to Anderson who wrote the first editoriport and copied Talley on it. The e-mail denied support of any candidate in that race, denied putting in any resources “educate” in that race, and denied that the group was in any way involved in the Beaufort County race between Catherine Ceips and Tom Davis. The e-mail then asked for a clarification to the newspaper’s readers.

Well, the Truthies updated their original post. The reporter hasn’t responded to the e-mail, and nobody from the paper offered an explanation to the story or a retraction about the “facts” in the piece.

It’s good to see hack reporting alive and well.

Not that the company that gives America “All The News That’s Fit To Print” should be expected to be completely without bias, but even its South Carolina operation should be more professional that to prop up hacks better suited for one of those free newspapers they hand out at bars.

Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s perfectly happy to allow reporters to forward their own agendas through their editoriports.

These guys are hired to report the news — not the news and how they feel, and it stinks that their corporate bosses allow this kind of editorialized factless reporting to stand as news.

If you want allow these people to continue writing for the newspaper, fine. Just have them do it from an editorial bullpen instead.

You’re lying to your readers if you accept anything less.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, I know I’m a hack banging out this garbage, but I don’t try to pass myself off as a reporter.

– Bo Burdette

NOTE: The term “editoriport” is now officially copyrighted by The Other Brooks Brothers 2008. All rights reserved. First use of “editoriport” on June 20, 2008.

I hope you bought your liquor and lottery tickets yesterday, because today is a statewide election which means the unprepared among us will stay sober and broke.

So, tonight at 7:00 it begins. There will be second guessing and a lot of shoulda-coulda-woulda reflection. There will be others who say, “We did what we needed to do.”

It won’t be over until the end, though. We’re already seeing last minute battles being waged.

The folks who first introduced us to the B. R. Skelton “dumb@$$” video noted a couple of items worth passing along today.

The first came from an e-mail they reportedly received where an unhappy voter wanted them to figuratively pull the covers off of a legislator participating in (wait for the pun) additional “polling.”

We don’t know if this post was referring to a him or a her, but the “Truthies” opted to be the McDLT of political blogging — keeping the hot side hot and the cool side cool to let someone else pick from the number of affairs to expose while they stick with issue and advertising exposure.

Another post from late yesterday highlights an Anderson Independent Mail article claiming that an owner of the Daily Journal and Daily Messenger newspapers in Seneca voted absentee yesterday in Oconee County even though he lives in Pickens County.

According to his own newspaper today, this was not a mixup. He’s apparently been using his business address as his home address and voting from there for years.

That’s a no-no.

It doesn’t give his newspaper much credibility either.

With an owner who seems to be playing fast and loose with the state’s election laws, why should anyone believe any of his paper’s editorials?

I wonder if the conversations around there go something like this, “Hey. Tell you what. You buy a full page spread so our little paper can generate some ad revenue, and I’ll make sure there are some nice false claims against your opponent. Don’t worry. By the time I publish the endorsements, it’ll be too late for them to to do anything about it.”

The response? “Sure thing. It’s a bargain at twice the price.”

I guess if you’re in Pickens and/or Oconee, and you’re basing your vote off of the paper’s endorsements, know that there’s the distinct possibility that campaigns were greasing those wheels for endorsements.

It’ll all be over at 7:00 — unless there’s a runoff. Then we get to watch this silliness all over again.

– Bo Burdette

I hope Joe doesn’t get mad that I’m hijacking a food post, but I just had to throw this out there.

Baseball is the national past time, but the Sunday past time at the Burdette house involves combing through the newspaper for the restaurant inspection scores.

I started getting in to this several years ago after attending a wedding weekend in Charleston. We were at some brewhouse grabbing a bite when we noticed a couple of “palmetto bugs” walking through the restaurant. Then, I saw IT as we were walking out the door. I don’t know how I missed IT going in, but there was a certificate on the door with a big red “C” that might as well have been in flashing neon surrounded by dancing girls. I wished for the rest of the weekend I hadn’t seen the door like that.

So now, there’s just something satisfying (in a “Let’s watch ‘em clean up the blood off the highway” kind of way) to see what local eatery, shall we say, “underperformed,” at its most recent inspection. It also helps decide where not to go and provides an unexpected conversation starter at parties.

You can go online to DHEC’s web site and look these up for yourself, but the site requires you to be pretty specific. That’s not fun — especially of you just want to see who really messed up in your little corner of the world.

That’s why I’m now actually thanking a newspaper. This doesn’t do me any good because of the coverage area, but the Spartanburg Herald-Journal now has restaurant inspections online. They’re updated monthly from DHEC reports, but unlike the difficult state site the Herald-Journal lets people sort through scores by city.

The site covers Union, Cherokee, Spartanburg, and Greenville Counties and is more fun than poking a beached jellyfish with a stick.

– Bo Burdette

No, I wasn’t looking for something to show that I’m secretly excited about the new X Files movie opening on July 25. It’s just that the show’s tagline fit here.

SC Hotline brought a new blog to my attention today. It’s called the “Carolina Truth Coalition.” While there’s nothing suspicious (Note: Sarcasm) about a site like this popping up a week before a primary with a bunch of contested races, I kinda like what they’re doing.

Their mission or “About Us” page says:

The Carolina Truth Coalition represents a fresh voice in the hall of political participation.

We believe in free speech. We believe that your right to it means you can speak as loudly or as softly as you want. That’s all a part of what makes speech free.

We also believe that truth isn’t always concrete. In fact, there are other groups out there that CLAIM they advocate truth, when they won’t tell you about the bloggers on their payroll, that they have clients out there who only advocate so-called campaign finance to protect their elected positions.

Their brand of “free speech” isn’t free, and their brand of “truth” isn’t true. We’re watching to provide another side to the story.

We’re tearing down the 4th wall so you can see what’s really happening in South Carolina’s political world.

Now all of us here have thumped our chests in defense of free speech — well everybody except Mary Claire. She’d hurt herself if she did it if you know what I mean, but the free speech idea is important around here. It’s what allows us to write what we want and you to read what we write or go to another blog more along your taste.

Anyway, while their free speech philosophy was one thing I liked about them, the other is that they’re calling Bravo Sierra on claims about various campaigns, third party groups, advertising, and media reports.

Hopefully, the “Carolina Truth Coalition” will stick around for a while and not fizzle out after the primary. I guarantee there will be some garbage pulled during the general election, and there are a bunch of opportunities to call out elected officials in this state on almost a daily basis.

Some of the things this “coalition” reported on in its first week were:

• The B.R. Skelton video calling voters “dumb@$$es” which I thought was especially funny considering some of the things we’ve given him a hard time for here (like increasing the state’s gas tax by a nickel per gallon or introducing a bill to legalize ticket scalping).
• Challenging B.R. Skelton’s mailer claiming that his challenger was controlled by special interest money even though Skelton’s ethics reports show 90% special interest contributions.
• Offering visual proof that a recent article in the Spartanburg newspaper made false claims as an associate justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court said that he was being used in a mailpiece because of his race when the mailer itself has no picture of the justice or mention of the justice’s skin color.
• Questioning one candidate’s endorsement while pulling back the curtain to explain several others.

Good for these guys. They claim that there are other “truth” groups working who are less than truthful and that they plan to call out those groups when they try to pull a fast one.

Like I said, I like what they’re doing, and I hope they stick around for a while.

– Bo Burdette

OK, so the movie shouldn’t have been made, but the quote still stands the test of time.

We thought the idea of spending limits was dead in the legislature this year, but apparently, we were wrong.

With all of the attention we gave the subject over the past two weeks, none of us honestly felt there would be another post about it before the June 10 primary. Like I said, we were wrong.

Somebody threw a wrench in the works.

The folks over at the Coalition Against Unlimited Spending posted a video of Governor Sanford’s news conference from a business in Greer earlier today.

During his remarks, he discussed state government’s irresponsible growth rate and called for South Carolinians to personally call their House and Senate members and as the CAUS video noted, “urge them to uphold the majority of his vetoes to bring the upcoming budget in line with sustainable levels.”

“South Carolina was number one in the entire Southeast over the last two years in the growth here on the spending side,” Sanford said.

You have to give the guy credit. The legislative session is taking its last breaths for the year, the primary election is a week away, and the governor is still telling South Carolinians they can make a difference.

I wonder if anybody will buy it or if they’ll continue accepting the status quo.

– Bo Burdette