Larry Got It Half-Right

I used to think Larry Peterson, the Savannah Morning News' political columnist, was about as crazy as my idea to produce "The Tony Bourdain-Paula Deen Variety Show", complete with their weekly culinary rendition of "She's A Little Bit Country, and He's a Little Bit of a M@%#@&$ing Piece of Spoiled Foie Gras."  But when Larry out-predicted me in the 2008 elections by the victory margin of a Florida-Savannah State football game, it turns out I was the crazy one.  Mr. Peterson, I confessed publicly, was very intuitive, which makes his latest column puzzling.  His premise on the future of Georgia Democrats is, I think, spot on, but his history on how we got here is severely lacking in perspective and accuracy.

There is no doubt that Democrats in Georgia and across the South have been in a downward spiral for a couple decades.  But to say, as Mr. Peterson wrote, "Decades ago, Republicans exploited white southerners’ angst over civil rights to erode their longtime Democratic loyalties," is too simplistic and, on many levels, inaccurate.  That's a nice way of writing what only a handful of the most yellow of the Yellow Dog Democrats still believe these days; a Democrat in the White House passed civil rights legislation, so all the racist Southern Democrats immediately became Republicans.  No matter how you write it, it simply isn't true.

To be sure, it is true that one of the biggest names in past racial bigotry, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, lent a huge Southern hand to Richard Nixon when the ex-Dixiecrat became a Republican.  But Thurmond actually started riding the elephant in 1964, helping Barry Goldwater carry Thurmond's home state.  A lot of good that did Goldwater during his blowout loss to LBJ.  Sure, four years later South Carolina's electoral votes went to Nixon, but Nixon didn't need those eight votes to beat a very weak Democratic nominee in Hubert Humphrey.

Any one with any sense of history knows two things: first, a large percentage of South Carolinians back than would have jumped off the old Cooper River Bridge clothed only in a Confederate Flag if Strom Thurmond told them to.  Secondly, Strom, as was his wont, was doing nothing more than looking out for number one - he was playing his cards in an effort to be a long-term influence in Washington, and he won.

There are those who believe Ronald Reagan continued the GOP's surreptitious bigotry, beginning with his "state's rights" speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi early in the 1980 campaign.  However, the so-called "racial code" of the speech has been discredited repeatedly (he campaigned for the African-American vote before the National Urban League immediately after the speech).

Regardless of whether one believes Reagan was a closet racist, the fact is that Democrats continued to dominate Southern politics throughout the 1980's, holding most of the governorships and state legislatures.  This did not start to change until 1994 when Republicans won control of Congress over issues that had nothing to do with race.  A host of Southern Democrats, including Congressman (and now Governor) Nathan Deal and his predecessor as governor, Sonny Perdue, switched parties to jump on the GOP gravy train.

While Mr. Peterson was wrong to imply that white bigots were the main reason for Republican ascendancy in the South, he was absolutely right about what will likely happen to Democrats in Georgia via redistricting.  There will still be black-majority districts mandated by civil rights legislation, but this will come at a price for white Democrats like Congressman John Barrow.  Thus Mr. Peterson's opening sentence, "Redistricting likely will make the Georgia Democratic Party blacker — and to the extent that it’s possible — the Republicans whiter," will most likely come true.

Mr. Peterson again gets a little too simplistic with his reasoning.  "Blacks mostly see it (big government) — especially at the federal level — as benign. White Southerners are apt to view it as an obstacle."  If this were completely true, Republicans would have taken control of the South 50 years ago.  Perhaps that is true in 2011, but it is only one of many issues that helped turn the South Red over time.  Still, Peterson is correct that the way the districts are drawn will be a huge obstacle for Democrats, regardless of their color, to overcome in the near future.

Ironically, the saving grace for Georgia Democrats may turn out to be the man who used to be one of them.  Governor Deal may be the least-inspiring political figure since, well, Governor Perdue.  With Georgia's unemployment rate higher than the already-high national average, Democrats could have an opening to exploit in a few years.  This is especially true if Deal gets too busy taking cheap flights on the airline to which he gave a massive tax break and if Deal's lackeys keep blaming the feds for the jobs problem rather than promoting policies that help businesses hire people.  (Oh, is that what that Delta tax break was supposed to do?  My bad.)  Democrats won't exploit that opening, however, if they again make the mistake of nominating someone who already dropped the ball in the governor's office as their standard bearer, as they did last year with Roy Barnes.

Democrats may be down in Georgia right now, but it is not because of racial politics.  Racial politics will also not matter at all when the party makes a comeback, as all political parties do.  The politics of jobs and the economy, always first on the minds of most voters these days, will be the main driver in determining those future winners and losers.

Dang it, Adam. You beat me to defending Rev. Lewis.

Actually, Adam Van Brimmer of the Savannah Morning News didn't beat me to the topic.  I actually didn't know about it until reading his column today.  Adam may not know diddly about college football, but his piece on The Old Savannah City Mission's plans for an emergency homeless shelter for women and children drop-kicked hypocrisy through the goal posts of reality.

(Yes, I know Adam used to vote on the AP college football poll when he was thumping the sports beat.  He knows I'm kidding.  Maybe.)

The Mission wants to build a shelter near the old Derst Baking Company warehouse on Mills B. Lane Boulevard.  OSCM is already using the warehouse to sell donated furniture and other goods to raise money for the marvelous work they do.  There isn't enough room on the web to adequately describe the impact the Rev. Jim Lewis, Connell Stiles, and all the other folks at The Mission have made on the lives of so many people.  Apparently, the fine folks who live near Derst fully support The Mission, too.  That is, as long as they keep their work and their people downtown or just feed a bunch of folks once a year at Forsyth Park.

You might think some of the concerns of the folks who would live near the shelter - safety, proximity to schools, property values - are legitimate, and taken at face value they sound as much.  But subject any of those arguments to a thimble's worth of scrutiny, and it's difficult to conclude anything other than Rev. Lewis's assertion: it's NIMBY as he called it, meaning not in my back yard.  Having seen some of those back yards, they need all the neighborly help they can get, but we'll save that argument for last.

Safety: Most images of the homeless are of one stereotype; disheveled, alcoholic, perhaps mentally ill men.  That would legitimately present a safety concern - that is if those men were to make use of the shelter.  But unless I am missing something, the shelter would be exclusively for homeless women and children, hardly a threat to the well being of one's person or anything else.

The shelter would be close to three public schools:  Because we wouldn't want homeless kids to be close to a school, now would we?  Oh, the horror.  Even if you think the public schools are ineffective when it comes to education, it's better than no schooling at all.

Property values would go down:  No offense to anyone who lives in that neighborhood, all very fine, mostly working class people, but come one, what property values?  Is someone about to pull a Native American burial ground or an oil well out of their rear end?  Perhaps the residents should trust the tents and tarps that many of the homeless use for shelter near Savannah-Ogeechee canal to take care of those property values for them.

In the interest of disclosure, Rev. Lewis has been a dear friend for almost four years, and I fully support him and The Mission.  That said, the opponents of this shelter, many of whom have shockingly been silent when given the chance to air their grievances in public, aren't even trying to make a serious argument if those issues are all they have to offer.  Perhaps in their world it's better to preserve the dingy, yellowish tone of their graying neighborhood than to have a sparkling new building that would, in all likelihood, boost the precious value of their own homes.  I suppose that means it's also better to look a homeless child in the eye and tell them no, you can't sleep here.

The future of Lady And Sons; Organic Bean Sprouts and Pomegrante Mineral Water

Sure the title is supposed to sound stupid, as ludicrous as the thought of Bob Barker donning wrestling tights for Vince McMahon, though that reality was perilously close to occurring a week ago. However, just as insane as the thought of Paula Deen doing a yoga headstand while Jelly Roll walks out of the kitchen with a plate of fat-free bean curd, rice and watercress hoecakes was a headline in the Savannah Morning News Exchange section Sunday: "The future of car buying in the U.S.: Don't supersize me." Please, don't make me choke on my bag of cracklins.

To be fair to the Morning News, the article was not penned by one of its scribes. It was written by Tom Krisher of what has rapidly deteriorated into one of the sloppiest news organizations in the world, the Associated Press. No, that is not a commentary on (cue the timpani and deeper- than-whale-dung voice guy) "liberal media bias", so please, the "Obama is Josef Stalin in black face" crowd should refrain from commentary. The A.P. has, like many traditional news organizations, simply become lazy, and Mr. Krisher was too lazy to even make a cursory glance at history and human nature.

The gist of Mr. Krisher's argument is that "American car-buying habits have changed forever. Scarred by the worst financial crisis since the 1930's and still leery of high gas prices, people are walking into showrooms intent on spending less." While Mr. Krisher acknowledges the exact same thing happened in the 1970's, which is when the actual last "worst financial crisis" occurred, this time things are different thanks to the biggest group of self-serving individuals outside of Members of Congress and the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990's; the Baby Boomers.

The Boomers, who all of a sudden are as young as 44 according to Mr. Krisher (which would also make them eligible to be Young Democrats and Young Republicans, at least in Chatham County!), make up one quarter of the population. They drove the economy out of recession in the 1980's, but now Mr. Krisher says the poor babies are too "scarred" by what happened a year ago, so they aren't spending money this time around. If they are spending money, they are buying smaller, more fuel efficient cars and aren't going back to the muscle cars and SUV's of the past because this time, Mr. Krisher assures us, gas prices are staying high (cue the kid with the glasses from "The Sandlot") FOR-EV-ER!

If Mr. Krisher had told us that South Carolina would never, ever win a mythical national championship in football, that we could believe, but to say that gas prices will never again be low, relative to inflation, is absurd. It might never be 89-cents a gallon, but just as economic highs and lows are as sure a thing as Kanye West going ballistic because he was accidentally served a vanilla milk shake at a McDonald's drive-thru, gas in the next few years will be affordable enough for most of us to go out and get that BMW 5 Series with the 4.8 liter V-8 cranking out 360 horsepower.

"But but but", you stutter, "surveys show we all want 'green' cars now, cars that get 87 miles to the gallon and run on cow farts and distilled water." You would be correct but for one cruicial fact; we lie. We lie and we like doing it. "Sure, I'd LOVE a hybrid car." "Oh, yes, more public transportation is a GREAT idea." "I LOVE going to non-Thirsty Thursday Sand Gnats games. No I wasn't disguised as an empty seat!" Those phrases are among the many that should bring forth the fire extinguisher for your trousers. We like lying so much that we elect people to public office who lie, then we re-elect them until they die and, at their funeral, we forget about their pathological career and hail them as the greatest thing since sliced white bread...oops, sorry Kanye...and ice cream. We tell people what we think they want to hear because we are terrified of causing offense.

The truth is that we Americans love our cars, and we love driving them even if it takes us three hours to travel down Bay Street and five hours to find a parking space. Guys also love fast cars and, yes, so do gals. "Oh, come on Ray, the stereotype of the woman from 'Grease' who loves a guy because of his fast car died 50 years ago." Um-hmmm. And super dentist Brad Durham's next trendy creation will be permanent installation of "Bubba" teeth. You put any woman behind the wheel of a Bugatti Veyron that goes zero to 60 in two-and-a-half seconds and they'll sound like they're on their honeymoon with Brad Pitt. Yes, outgoing Chief Berkow, too much speed kills. But it is also sexy, and we love it as well as the gallons upon gallons of gas it burns.

We could make life easier by telling the truth so writers like Mr. Krisher wouldn't embarass themselves, but since we won't cooperate, get ready for more "news" stories telling us how much we love our hybrids even though they aren't being bought in great quantities, how much we long for the days of the AMC Pacer, and how we Americans are "green for good." Just remind me to tell you I told you so when, in a few years, the same news writers are "shocked" and "stunned" at the enormously successful comeback...of the Hummer.