Something stinks in South Carolina

In this map of South Carolina, the counties highlighted in blue indicate where a majority of voters cast their ballots for Democratic Senatorial candidate Vic Rawl in Tuesday's primary. There are only four; from the northernmost heading south, they are Lancaster, Lexington, Charleston and Jasper. The remaining 42 counties went for the ultimate winner, Rawl's opponent, the virtually unknown Alvin Greene.

Virtually unknown, indeed. Somehow, Greene managed to garner exactly 100,362 votes in his favor. His opponent, who ran a standard campaign, collected only 69,853 votes. Greene is the victor in the race.

Automatically, right there, without any other evidence, you can tell something is hinky. Never mind that Greene is an unemployed military discharge with a felony charge.

Greene's post-victory interviews are noteworthy for more than just revealing his obtuse demeanor, jerky tenor, and uninspiring visions. He's also revealed that the only way he campaigned was by knocking on doors, not by running a formal campaign.

Have you ever gone door to door? I've already flyers on household doorknobs and in letter slots in nice neighborhoods and faced the protective citizens who have a right to be suspicious of a stranger encroaching on their property. I was just dropping off reading materials and moseying on, not even sticking around to engage them in conversation. Even so, I felt the unwelcoming, suspicious eye of people in their living rooms upon me a time or three over the course of a few afternoon hours one day.

As somebody who's been in that uncomfortable situation, I can only imagine what it must be like for an aspiring politician who has the burden of engaging people in the luxury of their own homes in enough political conversation to vote for him. Compounding to Alvin Greene's burden is the fact that his face did not share the benefit of being as recognized as that of his opponent.

Greene was not merely underdog. Make no mistake: He was a complete unknown. Vic Rawl, on the other hand, was a career politician whose name and face had been prevalent in South Carolina for years. Newspapers knew him. Televisions knew him. Constituents knew him. This Greene guy? Nobody could have known him.

One hundred thousand three hundred sixty-two votes in his favor. There must be some mistake.

I've seen it suggested that the only mistake here is that people thought they were voting for Rev. Al Green, the singer. Granted, I too would blindly support a senatorial candidate named Jim E. Page or Raw Buttplant, so maybe there's something to that argument.

But when you start considering that knocking on doors was Greene's only method of campaigning, you can't deny the significant hardships that must be overcome to convert strangers into voters. Here are just a few of the obstacles I can think of, from the candidate's approach to the house to the day of the primary.

• Nobody's home.
• People don't want to open the door to a stranger.
• People don't want to open the door to a black man. (I'm not condoning this behavior, just laying out the possibility. Sounds fathomable though.)
• People open the door. Greene announces he's running for office, and the door shuts in his face.
• People open the door. Greene says he's a Democrat, and the door shuts in his face.
• They get through the conversation, and Greene hasn't made a good impression. This is not impossible to imagine based on how he speaks in his interviews.
• They get through the conversation, and Greene made a good impression. However, the person isn't a registered voter. Does Greene have his voter registration forms on him to remedy the situation on the spot? Probably not. This is a guy who, when he finally admitted to printing up some materials, couldn't conjure an accurate ballpark estimate of how many he'd had printed. It was somewhere between 100 and "thousands," he said. And I'm piecing together about four of his sentences in a row to summarize his estimate succinctly.
• They get through the conversation, and while Greene made a good impression on this registered voter and received firm assurance of a vote for him on Tuesday, the person didn't vote for him on Tuesday for any possible reason. The person didn't realize the primary was on June 8. The person forgot to cast the ballot. The person had better things to do. Any other reason.

Those are the obstacles as I see them. What remains from his door-to-door pitches is that small remaining percentage of those he successfully converted into votes in his favor on Tuesday.

Given the significant challenges, his success rate can't even be 1 in 10. But, for the sake of argument, if it was 1 in 10, for him to have gotten 100,000 votes means he had to have knocked on 1 million doors.

A million doors, this guy? No way. He's breathless 30 seconds into an interview where all he's doing is giving yes or no answers.

Let's be real here. If he got 58.96 percent of 170,215 votes on Tuesday, then there's something wrong with the vote. I want a recount. I live in South Florida, and I know all about recounts.

Good luck with your investigation into what's wrong because something clearly is.

If it ain't broke

"That's low," I heard a voice behind me say.

At first blush, no. To me, it didn't come across as low at all. Not low, just pointed. And well deserved.

I first saw Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Guess I was 13 or 14. I remember wandering into the "office" room on the second floor at home where Mom and Dad sat at desks every evening while they shuffled through mounds of paperwork that never seemed to diminish in size.

There was a TV in the room, and as long as one of them was there, the TV was always on. Whenever they got some sort of a special deal from the cable company on some premium channels, they had to get their money's worth. So I walked in, it was HBO. Which meant more swearing than usual. Deal was, you can hear it, but you dare not repeat it.

So it's Falling Down. As I walk in, the movie's ending. I'd missed the whole lead-up to Michael Douglas having the worst day of his life and snapping. All I see is the standoff with the cop and the guy takes a plunge. Oh, was I supposed to say "spoiler alert" first?

And his young daughter's standing nearby. She sees her dad in distress. She's too young to understand what's wrong. Her mother, on the other hand, is old enough, but doesn't realize why her ex-husband has gone so far off the handle. She never will.

Me, I never had to worry about my parents breaking up. They were basically joined at the hip my whole life. In that office, they had desks across the room from each other. They went to church together. They went on religious retreats together. They had separate jobs, but I can scarcely think of an evening spent apart except when my mom and uncle would go visit Grandpa for three days and come back home.

Man, I guess I always had that stable home life. Instability was the product of fiction, or something I'd hear about from my friends at school. And most of the rest of the world. I got older and found out most people's parents break up. Some people's parents go nuts. Most people do repeat the curse words they hear on HBO. Most people aren't my parents.

So, I just came from seeing Michael Douglas in another movie. He's now playing New York used car salesman Ben Kalmen in Solitary Man. He starts off as this smooth-talking -- well, you know -- used car salesman who tarnishes every last shred of his good name. The viewer is taken headfirst into his current indiscretions. His past indiscretions? We learn about those in hindsight too.

Ben is one of those protagonists that's halfway between likable and despicable. Whether or not you pity him is your call.

That's the conversation starter. Do you pity him?

Take, for example, when he goes to visit the wife he up and left, who still inhabits the house they shared. Old Ben's there because even though the rest of the world has turned his back on him, he knows he can count on Nancy.

She pours him a drink without asking. Dewar's on the rocks. She knows. He sits down on the couch. He's there for sympathy, and he's there for a favor, and right off the bat he gets his favorite drink handed to him.

Now Nancy, she's no fool. He may have walked out on her, but she'll never let him walk all over her. Which is why she says what she says.

It starts off when Ben says to Nancy, and I'm paraphrasing, "You never moved. You never changed this place at all. Never rearranged the furniture, never even replaced this old couch. Look, even the cushions are the same. Are you just keeping this place the same for the day I'll come marching back home?"

She's too cool to say yes. And maybe the answer really is yes, but Nancy has other plans for him. I admire her handling of the question, her steering of the conversation -- this conversation she's having with a used car salesman, mind you.

She deadpans, "Well, do you like the couch?"

"It's only the absolute most comfortable couch in the world," he spits out without hesitation.

"Then why would I get rid of something that's working? That's only something you would do."

Ben is left there, his mouth ajar, sitting on the most comfortable couch in the world, his Dewar's on the rocks in front of him on a familiar coffee table he used to kick his feet up onto, in that same position for years and years, back in the days their love for each other was never questioned, back in the days before he ever needed to borrow cash from his wife and daughter, back in the days when his love for his grandson was never questioned, back in the days when he was a known success and a respected celebrity in town, not a complete and utter known failure and embarrassment, now mulling over his immediate options, namely whether to take another sip of the drink his ex-wife has made for him or to attempt sending a rapid-fire remark back her way.

With no good decision apparent to him, Ben does nothing but sit and look straight ahead, Nancy's jab at him echoing in his mind.

"That's low," I heard a voice behind me say.

Low? Come on, Ben deserved it. In more ways than one. First, he set her up to make the comment. He should have known it was coming.

Second, when you walk out and do stupid things, you deserve to be told how stupid the things you're doing are. Hell, she was being nice. Nancy has been nothing but reliable. Dependable. She never did anything that would have split them apart. They would have been like my parents, together forever, if not for him.

Whether or not this guy deserved pity, he definitely deserved that jab. I say good for her!

WaPo: Cat Stabs Stephen Strasburg; MLB Debut Postponed Indefinitely

Washington Nationals | BREAKING NEWS

Cat Stabs Stephen Strasburg Hours Before Slated MLB Debut 

By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 8, 2010

WASHINGTON -- This afternoon's stabbing of first-round draft pick Stephen Strasburg will preempt the 2009 first-round draft pick's Major League Baseball debut indefinitely, the Washington Nationals front office announced in a statement.

Strasburg is in "good condition" following the five stab wounds to his ankles received early this afternoon, team manager Jim Riggleman told reporters at an impromptu press conference assembled to brief reporters on the situation. 

District police say a small cat wandering inside the Washington Nationals clubhouse stabbed the would-be Nationals pitcher in his ankles five times at around 3:30 p.m. Police identified Strasburg's assailant as Betzy Macaroni of Arlington, Va. 

Believed to be 10 years old, Macaroni resides in Arlington, Va., with her owner, Jim Macaroni.

The black-and-white cat works as an assistant coach for the men's basketball team at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, public records show.

A photograph believed to have been taken minutes before the attack show Macaroni sitting on a Washington Nationals blanket next to a plastic knife. Police said they are investigating whether the knife shown in the picture is the same plastic knife that punctured Strasburg's ankles five times this afternoon. 

The right-handed pitcher's 100+ mph fastball has been the talk of national sports media over the past several weeks and months, leading up to what would have been his first start tonight. The 21-year-old prospect's long-anticipated debut was slated for this evening's Nationals home game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

Strasburg could not be immediately reached for comment. The 21-year-old was treated for his injuries at the clubhouse by a team physician and will not be admitted into a hospital, said Riggleman. 

He said Strasburg's injuries were not major. "Thank goodness it was just a cat and she couldn't reach anything higher than his ankles," the manager told reporters.

A police report says that one eyewitness to the stabbing said he heard a cat exclaim, "Hi! Go Penguins! Sure!" 

"I think the cat meant to say 'Pirates' instead of 'Penguins,' but I'm not sure," said Riggleman. "I'm told she was hanging out with a penguin, like, as in an actual penguin. You know, the aquatic bird. I'm not sure what he was doing up here in the Northern Hemisphere." 

This cat, which unlike most domesticated animals, is known for speaking English. She appears frequently as a guest caller on cable news programs such as "Larry King Live" and "Rick's List" with Rick Sanchez, and even on some programs that as a rule do not take calls from viewers.

See related coverage:

• Thomas Boswell: A Cat Stabbed Stephen Strasburg? On Today of All Days
• Eugene Robinson: Black, White? Who Cares What Colors This Cat Is?
• Tom Shales: Only a Female Would Be Stupid Enough to Stab Stephen Strasburg
• Courtland Milloy: Go Ahead, Pick on the Cat Because She's Black, 'Sure!'
• Gene Weingarten: Seriously? A Cat? You Can't Make This Stuff Up
• Fareed Zakaria: Um, Hi, North Korea Just Dropped a Bomb; Is Anybody Else Following This?