Otterblog

OK. So I’m back from a week at the beach. Sort of like Nixon. Tanned, rested and ready. A week largely unplugged. Got my news from the Wilmington paper. It is strange being at the beach and reading the local paper. All this news about school boards and road construction. And all I’m concerned about is the next high tide and the price of bait shrimp…

One of the things that I found pretty interesting is how quickly Jesse Helms’ death vanished from the front and center. It was huge news. Then it was big news. And now, it’s gone. Our staff did an exceptional job on July 4, covering the breaking news of his death. And you don’t realize what a team of dedicated folks you have until you start trying to get them to come in on a paid holiday to report and write a big piece. Even now, with all the turmoil in our industry, that is something to be proud of.

When I returned to North Carolina in 1990 as a political reporter, I was thrown into covering the Senate race between Helms and Harvey Gantt. My sense is that Helms was past his political prime, even though he had 12 years left in the Senate. He could still give a good speech, still had great political antenna, but not the lion/tiger/bear he once was. I don’t know if he hated the press as much as people said he did. My guess is that he understood us better than he let on, and he loved to use reporters as foils for what he was doing or not doing. And for a reporter, there was no bigger thrill than for your paper being singled out in one of his speeches as an example of what was wrong with the world. What I also remember is just how incredibly polite he was when you got him one on one. He understood that politics was about relationships.

One of the questions that keeps getting circulated in the aftermath of his obituaries is whether the press, which was so hard on him when he was in the Senate, gave him a pass in his obituaries in recounting the very raw and ugly side of his political career. There’s some credence to that. I think it is harder to speak ill of the departing than the staying, and of the dead rather than the living. At this point it doesn’t change anything.

Beach reads: The Great Gatsby. Somehow, this classic evaded me during high school. It’s one of OTTERBLOG Jr.’s favorites, and the writing and pacing is incredible. Like Twain, it is timeless. Also, Stiff, by Mary Roach. Perhaps more than anybody needs to know about the cadaver business. Entertaining and amusing.