Instead of the exception, Eastwood proved the rule.

But that doesn’t mean Clint Eastwood was a complete disaster. He was entertainment, although I’ll admit to feeling uncomfortable when he put obscene words in the president’s mouth, even through implication.

Reaction to this performance has been all over the lot. This New York Times blog by Jonathan D. Moreno at the University of Pennsylvania takes itself way too seriously. I prefer either this piece by Verne Gay of Newsday or this one by Nick Wing of Huffington Post, which examines some funny ways Eastwood could have been even more of a disaster. (My personal favorite: “Eastwood could have told invisible Obama/empty chair that he actually supported his reelection.” Hey, when you let an old guy onstage without a script, you take your chances.)

As Verne Gay wrote, a lot of people, especially in my profession, complain about how scripted and predictable political conventions have become. For 12 minutes Thursday night, Clint Eastwood was onstage unhinged, and even if a lot people, including myself, were uneasy or even cringing, it is bound to endure as the most memorable moment of either political convention.

I doubt anyone will change his or her opinion as to how to vote in November based on it, but it gives us all a reason to tune in again in 2016.

There was considerable confusion in 1956 about exactly how many people were watching. Trendex and Sindlinger, two research companies, were giving different figures. But in a story published Aug. 28, 1956, CBS calculated “the average audience watching the politicians at any given moment constituted about one-fourth or one-fifth of all TV homes,” which was roughly 30 million viewers.

Remember, in those days networks covered hour upon hour of the conventions, starting in early afternoon and going through the evening hours.

Interestingly, Broadcast Magazine in 1956 said the public didn’t want that much coverage. “The ratings of both convention prove this,” it said. “Important keynote addresses, yes, Balloting on nominations, yes. But the sameness of artificially stimulated demonstrations and dull-as-dishwater speeches drives audiences away.”

My guess is people today feel about the same as their parents or grandparents did then, despite how popular it is to complain that networks ought to provide more coverage.

This week, news services reported that Nielsen Media Research found 20 million Americans watched on Tuesday night when Ann Romney spoke. Following the advice of Broadcast Week in 1956, networks are providing only one hour of coverage a night.

But that’s an old-fashioned way of looking at it. Americans have many more choices today. People are following on Twitter, Facebook and on YouTube channels, including the GOP’s own live-streaming channel, which Reuters says attracted 292,000 views from Monday through Wednesday this week. The Twitter Political Index can measure how people feel about speakers as they speak. Cable news networks are providing their own coverage with their own political slants.

Certainly, 20 million regular TV viewers today is far less than 30 million in 1956, when fewer Americans walked the continent. But it’s much harder to know exactly how many people today are tuned in using various Information Age devices. Back then you had only a few station choices, or you could do yard work or read a book.

A much better question is whether the viewing audience today is more or less politically open-minded than in the past — or are people tuning into the channels and connecting on social media only with those who are guaranteed to reinforce their own biases?

That, perhaps more than apathy, may be the biggest challenge for the republic in this age.

Because Catholic schools are religious schools, the city wouldn’t allow any direct vouchers to students. So a group of private philanthropists stepped in and offered to cover a portion of private school tuition for eligible students for three years. The students had to qualify as low-income and either be entering first grade or be in grade 1-4. Then they were placed in a lottery from which scholarship winners were chosen.

The researchers followed the scholarship winners and the losers, comparing the two through the years. By 2011, those students all were at least 21 years old. Of the African American students who attended private schools, college enrollment was 24 percent higher than among those who didn’t.

That’s pretty clear evidence that politicians everywhere ought to begin looking seriously at voucher programs to help disadvantaged students have a chance in life.

The study found no similar improvements among any other racial group. Hispanic students saw a slight increase in college enrollment among voucher recipients, but it was statistically insignificant.

Plenty of theories exist as to why the outcome was most dramatic among African Americans. At the least, however, winning a voucher did not harm the education of any student, and it also saved public money.

Tuition in New York City’s Catholic schools was estimated to be $1,728. That was 72 percent of the total cost per pupil of $2,400 at these schools. The total cost at public schools, meanwhile, was more than $5,000 per student.

The voucher provided $1,400 in tuition, which means poor families had to make up the rest. Despite this, 77 percent of the recipients were able to do so at least part of the time.

Despite the study, keepers of the public school monopoly continue to refuse to give an inch toward the proponents of allowing poor people real education choices. National School Boards Association executive director Anne L. Bryant told CNN the study didn’t account for how much parents get involved with their students.

The type of parent who would enroll a child in a voucher program probably is the kind who would be most involved in helping that student, she said.

Clearly, she hadn’t read the study. Researchers compared the voucher recipients with those who had applied for, and not received, vouchers in a random lottery. They also compared it to those who received, but didn’t accept, the voucher.

The real story here is that African American students with, as Bryant called them, dedicated parents, were significantly less able to get their students into college as long as they were relegated to public schools. That is an inexcusable betrayal of people who want better for their kids.

Rich kids get all the advantages. Poor kids have to take what the state offers them.

Utah rejected a voucher system because of intense pressure from public school advocates. It’s time to rethink that decision, especially as budgetary pressures continue to mount on an overcrowded school system.

Clearly, vouchers don’t offer a quick fix to declining educational performance, and they may not help everyone. However they ought to be available, alongside public charter schools, as choices for concerned parents. There is no discernable downside. 

The New York Times suggested he would find plenty of company among Christians in the Big Apple, but added that, “the city is a far cry from Provo, Utah.”

The comparison is apt. Provo is home to Brigham Young University, one of the few campuses left that emphasizes, and even demands, old-fashioned virtue and chastity.

Remember how things used to be? If not, let me quote from a New York Times story from June 18, 1952. The subject is a new booklet on marriage that was to be distributed by the social hygiene division of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association.

Titled, “Preparing for Marriage,” it was intended for girls and boys in their late teens — college age, in other words.

“The importance of a wise choice of marriage partner both to the individual and to society is stressed in the new booklet,” the article said. “A happy choice, it says, strengthens the entire community. But a poor one may send society through the courts, hospitals or children’s institutions ‘to correct the end results of a mistake which might have been avoided.’

“’Love at first sight’ comes in for the de-emphasis usual in such pamphlets for young people. The booklet says, too much emphasis on emotional attraction may be a sign of immaturity and a hindrance in helping to establish a happy and permanent marriage.”

It sounds quaint and old-fashioned today, much like those old films on dating and hygiene that teachers threaded through projectors and showed to students in the black-and-white era.

But it’s hard to argue with the truth of those words, just as it’s painful to note that they take for granted the goal of marriage and family.

We don’t have pamphlets like these today from public entities. Instead, we have popular media that sell a very different set of unspoken assumptions.

As a result, places like Provo and people like Tebow are treated as oddballs, even though they stand for values with obvious benefits.

Watch the video below. It’s from an MSNBC broadcast last spring of an interview with The New York Times‘ Frank Bruni concerning pornography and the hookup culture.

We may not want to reclaim everything about 1952, but shouldn’t we be telling kids the truth?

I could not have been more wrong. At Christmas, I was lucky to get a morsel more than was owed for the actual service, and it generally came wrapped in a complaint or two about the way I did my job.

My parents and friends assured me this was to be expected. The rich did not get that way by being overly generous, they said.

As it turns out, that was a well-meaning but milder form of the sort of prejudice that fuels the “Occupy” movement, anarchists and other groups anxious to tear down the more fortunate. People with less can feel empowered by a sense of moral superiority over those who have more, but, as I’ve learned later in life, it’s a false pride. It’s every bit as damaging as the character flaws the poor accuse the wealthy of possessing.

But wait, you say, hasn’t study after study shown that poor people give more generously than the rich?

Yes, they have. In recent days, the Chronicle of Philanthropy released a study of charitable giving based on the itemized deductions on tax forms in 2008. The results were clear. Households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year gave an average of 7.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity nationwide. Those making more than $100,000 gave only 4.2 percent.

That’s similar to a study by McClatchy Newspapers in 2009 showing the poor giving 4.3 percent to charity compared to 2.1 percent from the rich. Methodologies and definitions obviously differed between the two studies, but the message was the same. The more you make, the less you share.

However, there was an interesting twist to the Chronicle of Philanthropy study. It found that wealthy people who live in zip codes with people less fortunate than themselves give a larger percentage to charity than those who live among the wealthy.

We are all human beings, after all, with the same motivations and desires. Rich people are not jerks — not necessarily, anyway. Some of them just act that way because they don’t know better.

Paul Piff, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied this phenomenon. He observed that the rich do indeed tend to be more rude and uncaring as a natural part of their behavior. When he placed them in a situation with someone of lesser means, the wealthy would avoid eye contact, check their cell phones and look otherwise disengaged, while the poorer people were smiling, nodding and happy to communicate.

However, his research also found that poor people began to act liked just like the rich as they perceived they had achieved a higher status.

On the other hand, people who work for philanthropic organizations say the rich can become suddenly generous when made aware of suffering around them. I’ve personally known some extremely generous wealthy people.

 John Wesley may have said it best way back in the 18th century: “One great reason why the rich in general have so little sympathy for the poor is because they so seldom visit them. Hence it is that, according to the common observation, one part of the world does not know what the other suffers.”

We can change this, but only by removing the borders between those two worlds. In philanthropy, as in politics, class divisions tend to reinforce prejudices and give everyone a stronger foothold on ignorance.

Human interaction is an antidote that can work wonders.

If I had known this years ago in that Country Club neighborhood, I would have invited my customers to ride around on my bicycle for a while.

A story in the Deseret News this week once again raised the question of whether it would be wise for local governments to subsidies an anchor convention hotel. Isn’t a new issue. I first wrote about it 17 years ago, right after the Salt Palace Convention Center was finished. The arguments, and the facts, haven’t changed much since then.

Last week, I enjoyed seeing people from all over the world walk downtown streets as part of the USANA International Convention. Delegates had to spread out among several downtown hotels. That was evident as they rode TRAX trains to the EnergySolutions Arena and asked people for directions. This may have been a frustration to organizers.

However, a tax subsidy to help construct a big convention hotel would naturally take business away from some of the existing hotels that housed these delegates. It also would put downward pressure on room rates because of the increase in supply.

This would be unfair, even if the inconvenience of spreading delegates around the city keeps some large groups from coming.

That being said, it would be naïve for me to simply say the private sector will take care of building such a hotel. The Deseret News this week made it clear why it doesn’t make business sense for a developer to do so.

Clint Ensign, senior vice president of government relations for the Sinclair Companies, owners of the Grand America and Little America downtown hotels, said a developer could build a $300 million hotel only if he could charge about $300 a night for a room.

But the competitive rate in Salt Lake City is about $200 a night or less. Unless someone can make up the $100 difference, it won’t work.

In the 17 years since I began writing about this, one of the problems has been that the market has responded to increased demand by building more 100-room hotels all over downtown. Without that, conditions might be right for a private group to build a convention facility.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m also not sure if the problem is as big as some suggest.

Any benefit from a public subsidy would have to be weighed against the money brought in by new conventions.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to keep up with all the magazines and surveys that rank Utah as a fantastic place to do business. Forbes recently ranked the state No. 1. CNBC ranked it No. 2, and Business Insider magazine put Salt Lake City 15th on the list of hottest American cities for the future.

Convention business is important. Real economic development is far more important. Keep things in perspective. Smart taxing policies allow local economies to thrive.

This is interesting stuff, but the angle a lot folks are missing has to do with the major outlier among the 50 states — Utah.

In the Beehive State, residents were found to have given 10.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity. Mississippi was way behind in second place with 7.2 percent.

While wealthy people in Utah still give less than those of modest means, the differences are not as stark. In Utah, people earning $200,000 and more gave 8.8 percent, compared with 11.6 percent for those in the $50,000 to $99,999 range.

Yes, most of that money likely goes to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some reporting in recent weeks has been critical of the church for how it uses its funds, but charity comes in many forms, including spiritual. The Mormon Church relies mostly on volunteer leadership, so salaries are not a big factor.

The church's charity for the poor goes to non-Mormons as well as church members.

And if you know anything about church members (I am one), you understand that many of them give much more in personal service and time than they would ever claim on a tax form.

With so much attention on the church right now because of Mitt Romney’s campaign, this is a relevant topic. Contrary to how it is often portrayed, church contributions are voluntary — no one compares donations to earnings or attempts to enforce tithing. Church members are asked at the end of the year to meet with their bishop and declare whether their donations constitute a full tithe.

If they don’t want to have this meeting, that is their choice.

In Utah, it’s hard to tell whether a Republican-Democrat divide exists. Salt Lake City residents, who tend to be Democrats and non-Mormon, gave at an 8 percent clip.

I'm guessing most charitable people would rather not call attention to their giving. But if the nation is intent on studying Mormons and how they live, this is an aspect that ought to be included.

As for that spin — well, conservatives and religious folks nationwide seem to be saying they walk the walk, while liberals talk about the needs of the poor but are in reality stone-hearted.

Liberals, on the other hand, say the difference lies in basic philosophies. They say they are willing to pay higher taxes so the government can conduct charity more effectively.

Those arguments aren’t heard much in Utah.

Of course, neither figures takes into account the Internet, which often provides the cheapest route to quality merchandise. You can’t eat out online, but you can get just about anything else that way.

And you can quickly find out which restaurant, locally owned or otherwise, offers the best food at the best price.

And isn’t that really what commerce is all about?

Economic illiteracy abounds. In this case, the principle of comparative advantage would be a good one to study. (Click here for a good essay explaining how it works.) It’s the reason protectionism doesn’t work.

People in one place can produce something comparatively better than people in another place. Through trade, consumers in both places benefit.

Look at it this way: My wife and I decided long ago that if we were to make our own clothes or raise our own chickens for eggs, it would be only because we derive some unrivaled pleasure from doing so. We don’t. Doing these things certainly wouldn’t save us money. We can buy those items for much less than it would cost us in time, materials, labor, feed and various frustrations to produce them ourselves, and we can buy them at better quality. Others have learned how to produce these things efficiently, and they do it in a volume that greatly reduces costs.

If I buy an item from a local store that is more expensive than it would be from a chain, I am rewarding wasteful practices and actually keeping myself from spending elsewhere the money I would save.

And if I refuse to buy from Walmart, believing the money would go to Arkansas or some other corporate center, I would have to expect people in those places to not buy products made here.

A couple of professors, Jayson L. Lusk and F. Bailey Norwood, explain it better than I can in their essay, “The Locavore's Dilemma: Why Pineapples Shouldn't Be Grown in North Dakota.”

I recommend reading the entire thing. Even though it concerns locally grown food only, it applies broadly to all buy-local movements.

Among other things, they say, “… a shopper involved in the global food chain is part of a much larger community—one that requires a great deal more trust than one is required to muster at the farmers' market. If we want to foster the civic virtues of trust, trustworthiness, and community, the local-food movement is a move in the wrong direction—it is little more than nativism.”

Early Utah pioneers, as resourceful as they were, couldn’t really build a thriving self-contained economy. But their leaders understood they had to spread far and wide across a large geographic area to try to create as many comparative advantage situations as possible. When the railroad came along, the economies of far-flung Western towns along those routes improved rapidly.

Buying local isn’t necessarily bad. I do it, but only if it meets my needs.

Would you ride a slow-moving trolley car on a shopping trip?

Perhaps more importantly, do you believe such a car, coming by on a regular basis, could be a catalyst to economic development?

I’ll admit to being a romantic when it comes to trains. When Salt Lake Mayor Ralph Becker came to the Deseret News editorial board the other day to talk about the new trolley line under construction into the Sugar House district, my mind wandered to visions of the early 20th century, with guys in stiff collars and bowler hats running gingerly to hop onto a passing car.

I ride the light rail to work and home again every day, even though I have to change trains in the process and the whole trip takes longer than it would in a car (provided the freeways are clear). I enjoy the time to relax, read or answer emails.

I probably will ride the trolley to Sugar House occasionally, to go to lunch or do some shopping.

But I’m a skeptic when it comes to the claims that rail leads to economic development.

I haven’t seen it with light rail, despite hearing lots of bureaucrats predict it for 13 years now. And as for the trolley line — Sugar House already is a vibrant shopping area, but there are lots of spaces between there and where the line will begin, at the TRAX station on 2100 South, that aren’t so pedestrian friendly.

Becker and his staff say I’ll need to be patient, but that economic development will come to those areas, too, with walkable shops, restaurants and homes. I’ll remain a skeptic until I see it, albeit a hopeful one.

The first phase of the new trolley line will cost $55 million. Only $11 million will come from Salt Lake City, with the same coming from South Salt Lake, through which the line will go. The rest comes from the feds. Becker said nine private-sector projects already are underway in Sugar House worth about a combined $400 million, and that South Salt Lake has some of its own.

Meanwhile, look at this old map of Salt Lake City trolley lines during their heyday, probably about 100 years ago. Virtually every home in the city was no more than a block or two from a line.

Then look at this report I found from 1977, by the Utah Economic and Business Review, about why that heyday disappeared. Simply put, the automobile came along and got popular. The report concludes that transit programs in the future should avoid “Fixed operating systems which do not provide operating flexibility.” These, it said, would cost a lot of money “without meeting the service needs of the public.”

Times change, and 35-year-old conclusions can look wrong in a hurry. As I said, I’m a fan of rail. I think trolleys could add value to an already popular district.

But until I see some real rail-specific economic development pop up in other areas, I remain a skeptic of those claims.