Stick to the comics, Mister Newspaperman
J. Todd Foster/Bristol Herald Courier
Published: November 10, 2007
Updated: November 11, 2007
Click here for audioPublished: November 10, 2007
Updated: November 11, 2007
How dare this newspaper try to tell you good citizens of Washington County how to vote. You showed us by rejecting four of the six candidates we endorsed for local office.
That’s what we get for trying to foist upon you a college boy who’s not even from around here.
I hear what you’re saying, people. Amen. And Mark Graham is ... gasp ... a lawyer to boot. Why would we want him as our Circuit Court clerk? He’s from Wise County originally and has only been in Abingdon for 18 years. Some of us have pickups and Springer Spaniels older than that.
And while Graham had the temerity to spend seven years gettin’ that higher education, including that uppity juris doctor degree, our new Circuit Court clerk was taking her high school diploma and working for a living ... in the very clerk’s office she now runs. Experience matters.
What’s a lawyer want with a clerk’s job anyways? It only pays $100,457 a year. That’s just a quarter of what our president makes.
And so what if there are misspellings in hundreds of documents in the clerk’s office? Typos don’t matter unless they’re in the newspaper.
Besides, how many Washington County voters will ever use the clerk’s office anyway? Let some poor sucker of a homebuyer roll the dice on getting a clear deed – that’s his problem. It’s the old saw about the tree falling in the forest: If I don’t hear it fall, then as far as I’m concerned, there was no tree to begin with.
Audits? We voters of Washington County could not care less that the clerk’s books have a habit of not balancing and failing state audits. Who among us hasn’t tried to reconcile our personal checkbook and said, screw it, “Deal or No Deal’s” on the tube? Seventy dollars and sixty cents ain’t no big thing; we’ll just write ADJ in the checkbook register here. (ADJ, by the way, is personal financespeak for “adjustment.”)
Now what channel is “Deal or No Deal” on? Man, that Howie Mandel is a strange dude! But those ladies opening those silver briefcases, now that’s what I’m talking about!
But back to my pinko commie rag of a newspaper. Washington County voters know the Herald Courier is to the left of Lenin: Hell, we endorsed three Democrats out of eight candidates for county and state office. We don’t need Mark Graham’s advanced degree to know that’s nearly 50 percent.
And that kind of political bias by our newspaper is why we voters of Washington County re-elected School Board member Dayton Owens. We could not care less about crumbling buildings in his district or the fact that Meadowview Elementary had to turn a janitor’s closet into a classroom. That’s pure ingenuity. Fiscal responsibility. Making do with less.
We voters are more interested in Mr. Owens’ moral fortitude. We want him telling us which books to read and banning the rest. And if Mr. Owens decides we need a big bonfire some day, we’ll get this party started with some questionable books from our school libraries. Maybe “Fahrenheit 451,” for example, since 451 degrees is the exact temperature at which paper starts to burn.
We trust Mr. Owens to red-flag obscenity when he sees it. He’s just like the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: Ol’ Dayton can’t define obscenity, but he knows it when he sees or reads it.
The arrogance of this newspaper boggles the mind. We publish a few candidate questionnaires, shadow the candidates with reporters and then have our editorial board spend 15 hours interviewing 12 of them, and then we think we know it all.
This newspaper needs to spend less time opining and more time figuring out a way to get Snuffy Smith back on the regular comics page.
If we voters of Washington County want answers from our Board of Supervisors, we might attend one of their meetings. We won’t get to talk out loud, of course, because of the board’s prohibition against public comment. But we can still call in advance and try to convince some bureaucrat that we got a convincin’ case that deserves inclusion on the agenda. That’s called choice, and we like it. And besides, don’t those supervisors meet on the same night as “Deal or No Deal” anyway?
Click here for audio
J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and a Washington County resident who no longer has access to the family checkbook. He may be reached at (276) 645-2513 or . But not unless you have a sense of humor.
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