Hi, everyone. Happy Labor Day! I spent my time today relocating the July archives over here, in lieu of a new post today. Another one-day vacation for you loyal readers.

Speaking of readers, I'm thinking of coming up with a new collective term for describing you folks. I was leaning toward "Fredheads," but I'd prefer to leave it up to you. Leave me a comment and let me know your preference, if any.

Tomorrow, Uncle Millie and Aunt Beatrice will be making an appearance. See you then!

Posted by: Fred at 05:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Today's Musical Selection: "Bright Future in Sales" by Fountains of Wayne

Hi, everybody. Today I want to take some time and a few column inches to note the passing of Herbert Haft. Those of you outside the Fedroplex probably have no idea who I'm talking about. Those of you in the Fedroplex probably can't forget him. But I want to make the world aware of Haft, because he's a notable figure, a true giant (though he only stood five feet tall). Herb Haft is a symbol of a Washington not long gone, but irretrievably so. And though it may not be well-known, Haft was the godfather of the modern retail industry. He reaped the benefits for a while, but in the end he was swallowed up by his own creation, as well as the ugly family feud he sparked. Herb Haft was one of a kind, and we'll never see his like again. I'll miss him.

So who was Haft? He was a tough urban kid, born in Baltimore and raised in Washington, who graduated witha pharmacy from George Washington University but claimed that none of his classes taught him as much as the bridge game in the student union. In 1955, he and his wife Gloria, who was working as an Avon lady, opened up a drugstore in Adams Morgan. They called it Dart Drug. Working on the primciple of underselling the competition, Herb and Gloria turned Dart Drug from that one store into a chain of 100 stores from Baltimore to Richmond. And anyone who grew up or lived in Washington in the '70s and '80s knows all about Dart Drug. Dart was where the Fedroplex went to get basic stuff for cheap.

Like a lot of families, mine went to Dart from time to time. They ran circulars in the Sunday paper about their latest deep discounts, and every so often Mom would see something she liked and off we'd go. Dart had a low-class reputation, and deserveredly so; competitors grumbled that Dart stores were dirty and the shelves were always empty, and they were right. Even as a little kid, I remember noticing that Dart was grubbier than other stores, and that they were far more likely to be out of things than other stores. But I didn't care, because to me, Dart was Hot Wheels central.

As a kid, I was a car nut. I had car sheets, car curtains, car posters on the wall, and toy cars all over the floor. I had a subscription to Motor Trend at the age of 4. Every year, I'd beg and wheedle my parents to take me to the auto show downtown. Since it tended to fall right around my birthday, they usually said okay. I'd come home with bags and bags of information, pictures of wild concept cars and brochures on current models, which I read with religious fervor.

Given my obsession, it's little surprise that I tended to spend my weekly allowance on toy cars. And Dart was a prime place for a 7-year-old on a budget. Why? Because everywhere else, cars cost a dollar each. Didn't matter where you went, everywhere it was a dollar. But at Dart, they were 79 cents apiece. For a kid pulling down a dollar a week, this was a significant savings. It meant approximately one extra car per month. Sure, Dart's selection was pretty weak, and they only carried Hot Wheels and not the better-constructed Matchbox cars, but 79 cents is 79 cents. I knew a deal when I saw one.

But Dart Drug was only the beginning of the Haft empire. When Herb's son Robert graduated college, he joined the family business and founded Crown Books, the Dart Drug of bookstores. Actually, Crown was generally cleaner and better-stocked than Dart, but the principle was the same. The literati sniffed that Crown was a plebian store, stocking the best-sellers and ignoring classic works, and again the critics were right. But the Hafts didn't care, and neither did most of their customers. Crown did a booming business, eventually growing to over 250 stores. But what I, and no doubt many others, remember best are the commercials.

Dart didn't do TV commercials, but Crown did. And the Crown commercials were all roughly the same: They featured Robert Haft standing against a plain white background, and complaining in his high-pitched voice, "Books cost too much!" He then went on to extol Crown's latest bargain, and then wrapped the whole thing up with the tagline, "If you paid full price, you didn't buy it at Crown Books." And my family shopped at Crown, too. I was still young enough not to have developed my taste for literary works, so Crown's bestseller-oriented stocking philosophy didn't bother me.

And a couple years after founding Crown, the Hafts came up with their next innovation: Trak Auto. Ironically for a man accused of running a dirty drugstore, Herb realized that many existing auto-parts stores seemed grimy and forbidding to the typical consumer. So he designed an auto-parts store that catered to the typical motorist, rather than the professional mechanic. Predictably, it worked like a charm. Trak expanded to nearly 300 stores at its height, and the Hafts had another hit on their hands.

And in between these successful business ventures, the Hafts made even more money through a bold if ethically iffy tactic. They attempted hostile takeovers of retail giants like Safeway, Stop and Shop and Eckerd Drugs. In no case did they succeed, but they made a handsome profit for trying. (A brief primer for non-economics types who are wondering how this works: Hostile takeover bids begin with someone buying up a chunk of a company's stock. The takeover attempt increases the value of the company and drives up the price of the stock. If the bid fails, the company has to buy the stock back at the inflated price from the person who bought it, leaving the failed bidder with a tidy profit.) Retailers grumbled that the Hafts' practices amounted to piracy, and left the companies they tried to take over saddled with debt. But it was good business for them.

So what happened to Haft's empire? Why are Dart, Crown and Trak all gone? Well, there are a lot of reasons, particularly well-heeled and more nimble competitors like Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes and Noble and Borders. But one major reason is the blowup that Washingtonian will never forget, when Herb Haft tried to fire his family.

The year was 1993. The Haft empire was starting to slip, but it was still a major player in Washington. Herb had ceded control of day-to-day operations for the most part, but he was still the primary stockholder. And he evidently decided he wanted to get back in the game. So he kicked his wife off the board of directors and fired his son as president of Crown. This set off a chain of lawsuits and ugly accusations that kept the notoriously media-shy Herb and his family on the front pages for the better part of a decade.

By the time it was done, Herb and Gloria's 45-year marriage was over, Herb was out of the company with a $50 million buyout, and the company was crippled by the massive bills from the legal wrangle and never recovered.

Very little remains of Herb Haft's empire. The last retail enterprise he founded, Total Beverage, still survives. His real-estate company still holds two shopping centers in Fairfax. And Shoppers Food Warehouse, a grocery chain not founded by Haft but very much in line with his principles and which he bought out in the '90s, is thriving. But the man who once dominated the Washington retail scene left behind little more than memories.

That's one reason I'll miss Herb. A lot of the Washington of my childhood had his stamp on it somewhere. I'll always remember the Crown commercials, Trak's radio spots and the Dart circulars. Plus, he was such a character, with his ruthless ways, his wonderful white pompadour, and his bickering family. He's a legend of the Fedroplex scene, the last true Washington retail giant. We'll never see his like again, not with the chain-choked nationalized state of the retail industry.

Although it's not well-remembered, Haft's legacy extends beyond his own businesses. The giants that eventually ran Haft's companies out of the game owe a great deal to him, whether they realize it or not. It was Haft that made the Wal-Marts and Targets possible.

How is that? Well, way back in the '50s, when Haft was getting started in Adams Morgan, he knew that he'd have a hard time beating the local drugstore titans of the era, like Peoples and Drug Fair (also gone, now). His strategy was to undercut his competitor's pricing, getting good deals from wholesalers and shrinking his own profit margins. Unsurprisingly, this worked.

Problem was, at the time, it was illegal. At the time, fair-trade laws actually prohibited retailers from selling goods below the manufacturer's retail price. Haft's competitors complained to the suppliers, and his suppliers refused to sell to him unless he raised his prices. Haft was repeatedly sued for his practices. At least until the government got involved.

In 1958, Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings on drug prices, and invited Haft to testify. After that, Kefauver got Haft in touch with the Justice Department, and in 1960 the government sued drug maker Parke, Davis for price-fixing. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the government (and Haft) ultimately won, paving the way for discount retailers everywhere.

Haft was, in a way, a champion of the common man. Robert said his father viewed discount retailing as a social good as well as good business, and he was right. After all, Dart Drug (and Haft's lawsuit against Parke, Davis) was based on the idea that retail price-fixing was bad for the customer. And Crown Books was a bookstore for the average man; they didn't carry Proust, but a lot of people would rather save money on the latest Grisham potboiler than pay extra for a store that also carries Proust. And Trak was designed for the do-it-yourself motorist, who wanted to do basic car fixes himself but was intimidated by other auto-parts stores. Haft's retail empire was built on serving the needs of the working-class customers, something that drugstores, bookstores and auto-parts stores didn't do before his. So Haft not only made discount retailing legal, he pioneered its ethos.

Wal-Mart and Target owe a great debt to Haft. And in Target's case, I'm not even talking about the logo, which looks remarkably like Dart Drug's. As with many innovators, those who followed in Haft's footsteps ultimately reaped much more than he did. But at the least, we can honor Haft's memory. And I hope that I've done my part in that regard. Farewell, Herb. Washington is a poorer city for your loss.

That's all for today. See you later!

Posted by: Fred at 04:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Today's Musical Selection: "In the Navy" by the Village People

Hi there, everyone! Today I wanted to talk about this disgraceful Ed Shrock business. Even you political junkies might not have noticed this, having been distracted by the convention, but it deserves some attention. Shrock's story gathered little national notice, but it could very well presage the latest ugly chapter in political gamesmanship. And any activists who think this is a good way to get attention or create pressure for a cause should be ashamed of themselves.

Let's begin at the beginning. Ed Shrock is a Republican Congressman from the southeastern corner of Virginia. Shrock was a loyal and highly-regarded (if fairly obscure) Republican who did good things for his district, and was cruising toward re-election to a third term in Washington. All that changed when a Web log dedicated to outing anti-gay-rights politicians had a taped conversation of someone, allegedly Shrock, soliciting sex from other men. That's it. There was no testimony from anyone claiming to be Shrock's lover, no correspondence, nothing other than that one conversation. And no one came along to back up the accusation. But that was enough for Shrock. He announced this week that he was ending his re-election campaign, saying that he didn't want to drag his family through the mess (Shrock is married with children), and that he didn't want to deal with a campaign centered around the accusation.

Why did this blogger do it? The man behind the blog, a fellow named Michael Rogers, believes that it's the height of hypocrisy for politicians who engage in clandestine homosexual behavior to endorse anti-gay legislation. This hypocrisy, per Rogers, is grounds enough for outing these politicians, and damn the cost to their lives and livelihoods. After all, they deserve it, right? (I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get more than a little sick of this modern school of thought suggesting that the only real sin in life is hypocrisy. I'm no moral absolutist, but relativism has to have its limits. Doesn't it?)

Now, Shrock has not admitted homosexuality, and no conclusive proof has emerged. Significant circumstantial evidence, perhaps (what Congressmen would abandon re-election under such faint pressure if it weren't true?), but nothing conclusive. And frankly, I don't care whether Shrock is straight, gay, or bisexual. I'm sorry that I have to bring his name up in connection with his story. I'd be happy if Shrock led the rest of his life in peace and no one ever brought him up in public again.

But the particulars of Shrock's case are a lot less important than the precendent it sets. If anyone out there is naive enough to think that Shrock was merely an isolated case, they haven't been paying attention.

Periodically, Washington goes through these little spasms of revelation where a number of similar scandals are brought to light at the same time. These charges catch on like wildfire, as the expose of one scandal seems to trigger others, like moths flying toward a light. Some of you might remember the string of sex scandals in the mid-'70s (Wilbur Mills, Wayne Hays, &c.), or at least remember the stripper jumping into the Tidal Basin. Others may recall the set of ethics scandals in the late '80s and the early '90s (Jim Wright, the Keating Five, and so forth). Although I doubt many of you remember that, because then everyone might remember that the sainted John McCain was one of the ones caught with his hand in the cookie jar during the S&L scandal. Oops. And I'm sure you remember the wave of infidelity revelations in the wake of the Clinton impeachment hearings (Henry Hyde, Robert Livingston, Newt Gingrich and on and on).

Does this mean that Congress was experience greater venality and corruption during those periods? Of course not. It's just that one high-profile case tends to send enterprising reporters and partisans scrambling for evidence of similar cases elsewhere. One high-profile sex scandal brings a hundred mistresses and call girls out of the woodwork, looking for headlines, fame and money. In truth, corruption and infidelity happens all the time. It's just that we care about it more sometimes, under the guise of high-minded moral outrage. Really, though, we just love a juicy story.

So Shrock isn't going to be the end of this. There will be others. More outings of closeted Congressmen are sure to follow. So are we happy with ourselves? Are we? Personally, I'm sick.

Now, some activists may defend the outing of Shrock as fitting punishment for his hypocrisy, as I suggested. If they're feeling particularly righteous, they might add that they personally don't have any problem with homosexuality, and it's only the closeted politicians' embarrassment that makes it a problem. If they'd just out themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. It sounds like a principled stand, but in truth it's just hogwash.

If (and I stress"if") Ed Shrock is homosexual or bisexual, that doesn't make him a bad person. And if Shrock is homosexual and in the closet and nonetheless supports anti-gay legislation, that doesn't make him a moral monster either. I simply feel sad for him if he feels forced by social pressure or his upbringing or whatever to feel ashamed of himself for having natural human inclinations. It's always unfortunate when people feel compelled to deny and condemn who they are.

None of this justifies outing him, especially not with a sneer of perfect righteousness. Ed Shrock is just as entitled to a private life as you or I. Shrock's choice in sexual partner is a matter of discussion for him, his family, and his God. That's it. The public doesn't factor into it anywhere. It's not our business. And Shrock's policy positions don't make it our business. No dice.

And no, comparisons to the Jim McGreevey situation aren't valid. For one thing, McGreevey outed himself (under pressure or not, who can say). For another, McGreevey had plenty of other problems that contributed to his resignation, whether or not he chose to admit it. And most importantly, McGreevey stood accused of elevating his lover to a post for which he was unqualified. Thus, his relationship directly compromised his governing, and his private life was no longer purely private. Only in such a case do politicians' private shenanigans become a matter of legitimate interest in the public sphere. Shrock's relations (if he had any) did not affect his governing at all.

And while I didn't particularly enjoy the parade of infidelity revelations around the time of the Clinton trial, those had more public validity than this. In those cases, the exposed Republicans had been arguing that Clinton deserved to be removed from office because of his extramarital affair. (And yes, Republicans, that's what the argument was. You can admit it now.) If you take a stand that infidelity makes you unfit for office, then your own infidelity is fair game.

How is that different from Shrock's case? He never said that being gay makes you unfit for public office. If he had, then the outing would have been justified. But this doesn't rise to the level of tit-for-tat; this is just political blackmail.

There's only one case I can think of that's similar to Shrock's is Strom Thurmond and his bi-racial daughter. Like Shrock, Thurmond practiced privately what he denounced publicly. Like Shrock, Thurmond was a hypocrite. Should his daughter have become a public issue while he was in office?

I think it's good that she didn't. As with Shrock, I think it's just sad and pathetic that Thurmond felt it necessary to make a public issue of something he himself practiced. It's especially sad because it kept Strom from being as good a father as he might have been. I feel sorry for his daughter. But I think that it was a matter for them, not for us.

The Washington Post ran an editorial this morning that was right on the mark. Here's what it had to say about Shrock's anti-gay stance:

Not only is [Shrock] a co-sponsor of the federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he also opposed President Bill Clinton's far-too-modest relaxation of the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military, the same military in which he served for many years. "You're in the showers with them, you're in the bunk room with them, you're in staterooms with them," he told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot in 2000. "You just hope no harm would come by folks who are of that persuasion. It's a discipline thing."

Our view is that such comments are repugnant regardless of Mr. Schrock's private life or "persuasion." Whatever the truth of the allegations, Mr. Schrock has been part of the problem -- that is, a political leader who used his position to retard the acceptance of gays and lesbians in American life.

And that's just it. Shrock is wrong on gay rights. No question about it. But it's his stances and anti-gay remarks are what deserve public scorn, not whatever he chooses to do privately. Gay-rights activists would be far better served encouraging the public to reject Shrock for remarks like that, rather than examining his bedsheets. Using the threat of exposure as an offensive weapon only serves to further the public perception that homosexuality is something that deserves to be stigmatized.

That's all for today. Until tomorrow!

Posted by: Fred at 04:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Hello, fans! Today I spent my usual blogging time transferring my August archives to my new home. Newcomers to the Mediocre Fred Experience, I encourage you to check it out. Everyone else, enjoy the day off.

Posted by: Fred at 06:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the Republican convention.

I just saw a commercial for a CD called "Symphonic Rock." It is, appallingly, just what it sounds like: some symphony orchestra (described in the commercial as "one of the world's finest," but never actually named or anything) playing a variety of recognizable rock standards, such as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Bohemian Rhapsody." Oh yes.

How does this sound? It sounds just like you'd imagine: like rock hits played by a symphony orchestra, which is to say pretty awful in most cases. What bilge this is! There aren't words enough to describe the awfulness of this CD. Now, I like symphonic music. And I like rock. I even like "Bohemian Rhapsody." But the very concept of this CD makes me feel like jamming a pencil into my ear.

Now, don't get me wrong: this is not a dyspeptic curmudgeon's rant against modernity. (Not that I'm not capable of such a thing.) I'm well aware that our country has a long history of adapting high culture into pop culture. You're probably aware that "10 Things I Hate About You" is based on a Shakespeare play, but did you know that in the old West, playhouses used to adapt Shakespeare for rural audiences, including such gems as having Hamlet say to Ophelia, "Get thee to a brewery"? "Symphonic Rock" is very much in the American tradition. It just happens that the tradition stinks.

America is a culture based on newness, on dumping old traditions with glee and forging a new way. We've always been unapologetic about this, and we tend to sneer at the culture snobs of old Europe. At least on one level. On another level, though, we feel they have a point. We hate to admit it, but when the culture snobs look at us like a bunch of rubes and poor relations, we make a big show of defiance, but underneath it we feel insecure. We hear the voices of our parents and teachers telling us we'll never amount to anything if we don't study the classics. Even though we find the classics musty and dull and lifeless, we believe there must be something to them, because the culture snobs say so.

Now, don't get me wrong; I think the culture snobs are right about that. I think that the classics have a lot to say, and they're as powerful today as they were then. And done properly, modern interpretations of old classics can be quite clever and worthwhile in our own right. (I enjoyed "10 Things," for instance.) But done wrong, our attempts to merge high culture and pop culture are the equivalent of putting a tuxedo on a dog: it just makes everyone look foolish for trying. Painting a velvet Elvis with Mona Lisa's face doesn't make it any classier.

Rock music has been around long enough that it deserves respect as an established art form. We shouldn't be ashamed of our love of rock music. I'm not ashamed of mine. But trying to dress it up in symphonic clothes cheapens both symphonic music and rock. And the fact that this idea in all likelihood sprang from some orchestra's attempt to play recognizable music in the hopes of selling tickets doesn't impress me at all. This country's dismal funding for the arts is another rant for another day, but doing "Stairway to Heaven" to put butts in the seats isn't the answer.

Is there a point here? I don't know. It's late and I'm tired. Anyone who thinks they discern a point, feel free to leave it in the comments. Everyone else, thanks for reading. See you later!

Posted by: Fred at 12:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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