Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, February 3, 2021/Page 6A
(51?e Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quotes for our Times:
Louie Verrecchio, Renew America:
MISSING: The seasonal flu.
Even in cases where a patient may test
positive for both the flu and the COVIDS,
guess which one is being reported as the
cause for their hospitalization?
Before you answer, bear in mind that the
$2 trillion CARES Act passed by Congress
in March increases per-patient Medicaid
reimbursements to hospitals by 20% for pa
tients listed with a "principal or secondary
diagnosis of COVID-19."
CONCLUSION: Barring new evidence,
I'd say this case has been solved.
Monica Showalter, American Thinker
Journalist: Another Democrat indignity for
the National Guard: Toddler snack meals.
First it was the questioning of Guard loy
alty and professionalism. Then it was the ga
rage floor. Now it's the toddler snacks. They
wanted a show of troops as a means to
falsely claim that they are in danger from
"terrorist" conservatives, yet they managed
only to show their contempt for the mili
tary. All for their own self-aggrandizement,
no less.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., physician and
freelance writer: Right on schedule, COVID
pivots for Biden.
Would anyone be surprised, now that
Trump is out of office, if hydroxychloroquine
is given a second look? Or ultraviolet light?
We'll see. A new president means new rules.
Watch the numbers now drop, cases
and deaths, all because of the brilliance
of Joe Biden compared to the buffoonery
of Donald Trump. COVID guidelines are
changing right before our eyes, just as the
news reporting has morphed from orange
man bad to senile man good. Was it ever
about the virus or just about the election?
Christopher Paslay, Philadelphia public
schoolteacher, counselor, and coach: An
ti-white racism pervades major academic
publisher's teacher resources.
That's how identity politics and Criti
cal Race Theory work. Divide good peo
ple up by race, religion, sex, and sexual
ity, and then polarize them against each
other. And the ones who share your politi
cal agenda? Gloss over all of their egre
gious behavior and pretend it doesn't mat
ter. And for those who demand equal
treatment and colorblindness? Brand them
all as white supremacists, and discredit their
worldview as evidence of domestic terror
ism.
Eddie Zipperer, freelance journalist:
Chuck Schumer urges Biden to grab power
and shred the Constitution.
The fact that Schumer's interpretation
of the Constitution is dependent upon who
lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue provides
a lot of insight into the four-year temper
tantrum that we were all witness to. Those
things that were existential threats to our
entire way of life are simply good govern
ment in the Biden era. Nothing to do now
but sit back and discover what else is only
dangerous when Republicans do it.
Write Us A
Letter
Have you a gripe? How about a compliment
for someone for a job well done? Let us
know about it with a letter to the editor. We
urge anyone to write us about any subject of
general public interest. Please limit all letters to
250 words double spaced.
All letters must by signed, but we may withhold
the writer's name upon request.
Please write to us at The Advance, P.O. Box 669,
Vidalia, GA 30475 or email: theadvancenews@
gmail.com (Subject Line: Letter to the Editor).
‘Free Speech for
Me, But Not for Thee’
Long a stalwart defender of
the First Amendment, the
American media is now having
second thoughts.
For decades, it was a
commonplace sentiment
among journalists that freedom
of the press was one of the
glories of our system. It helped
to make the government
accountable and to air diverse
points of view — even
unpopular ones — to be tested
in the marketplace of ideas.
Media organizations were
at the forefront of the fight to
vindicate First Amendment
rights, with The New York Times
involved in two landmark
Supreme Court decisions (New
York Times Co. v. Sullivan and
the Pentagon Papers case) and
tended to rise as one against
any perceived threat to their
prerogatives and freedoms.
This advocacy has been
sincere, although, if nothing
else, journalists should be First
Amendment purists out of a
sense of self-interest. In a 2018
essay in The Atlantic
representing the bygone
conventional wisdom, titled
“Why a Free Press Matters,” the
longtime newscaster Dan
Rather noted, “As a working
journalist, I know I have a stake
in this concept.”
One would think so.
Yet, now journalists have
lurched from finding a threat to
freedom to the press in every
criticism of reporters and news
outlets by former President
Donald Trump to themselves
calling for unwelcome media
organizations to be shut down.
They’ve become the thing
they profess to hate — closed-
minded censors who want to
stifle free expression, First
Amendment be damned.
Perversely, the TV program
and email newsletter of the top
media analyst at CNN, Brian
Stelter, has been a clearinghouse
for such advocacy, whether it is
demands to get right-wingers
removed from social media or
— more astonishingly — to
keep conservative cable
networks off the airwaves.
Stelter’s colleague, media
reporter Oliver Darcy, tweeted
about his effort to get cable
companies to answer why they
carry pro-Trump channels like
Newsmax and One America
News Network. “Do they have
any second thoughts about
distributing these channels
given their election denialism
content?” he asked on Twitter.
“They won’t say.”
In the same vein,
Washington Post columnist Max
Boot drew a direct line between
how we deal with foreign terror
groups and how we should treat
right-wing media organizations.
“We need,” he wrote, “to shut
down the influencers who
radicalize people and set them
on the path toward violence
and sedition.”
Boot noted, approvingly,
that the U.K. doesn’t have the
equivalent of Fox News because
regulators won’t allow it. The
U.K. also doesn’t have a First
Amendment, a small detail that
might be worth considering if
the point is to protect our
freedoms rather than destroy
them in a fit of ideological
vengeance.
A writer at the progressive
publication Mother Jones argued
for an advertiser boycott instead
of regulatory action in a post
called, charmingly, “It’s Time to
Crush Fox News.”
A boycott wouldn’t violate
the First Amendment like a
direct crackdown on Fox and
others. Still, it would be private
action undertaken in the service
of a profoundly illiberal goal,
running counter to the
country’s culture of free speech.
All of this would be bad
enough if it weren’t people who
write and comment on TV for a
living advocating it. But
journalists have been moving in
this direction for a while now,
Please see Lowry page 1OA
GRITTY
Bathing
(Circa 1900 —
From a May 31,1945,
newspaper column
written by my
Granddaddy about his
boyhood days around
1900.)
“We assume that
since the time when
Pharaoh’s daughter
took that record bath
in a convenient natural stream of water, that
women have been doing likewise. But,
during my earliest recollection, if they did it
in our section of the country, it was without
the knowledge and supervision of the men
folks.
A neighbor built the first fish pond in
our area and his boys cleared a big portion
of it for a swimming hole. I had been there
and it was a splendid place to swim. A few
years after it was built, and about the time I
began to recognize the desirability of the
opposite sex, the news leaked into our
school community that girls were
swimming in the pond in it in broad open
daytime and sometimes with boys and
men.
We talked about it in whispers, until it
was confirmed by eyewitnesses, and then
we began to plan to get up there and see it
and maybe participate without the
knowledge of our parents. Our plan was to
meet at a certain place and sneak up there
and back without our parents knowing
anything about it.
When we got there — we saw a number
in swimming, but could not tell if any were
girls. We agreed that all of us, except two,
would remain in hiding, until the two had
investigated to see if there were any girls
among the bunch in the water. This chore
fell on another boy and me. We casually
sauntered toward the pond, intent on
observing the identity of the swimmers.
There were girls bathing, and our
minds were so centered on them until we
did not discover at first that three daddies
of the boys in our crowd were among the
spectators. Their presence, we thought,
meant that they would lose no time in
Please see Nitty page 8A
Women
By Bennie Harbin
ni jp^t
COMMENTARY
Biden’s Anti-
Unity Agenda
President
Joe Biden
focused on the
theme of unity
in his inaugural
address.
“Today, on
this January
day, my whole
By Star Parker soul j s j n ^his;
bringing
America together, uniting our people
and uniting our nation,” he said.
It sounds so nice. But only a
career politician can be this
disingenuous and speak the words as
if he were so, so sincere.
If Biden’s top priority were really
unity, would he really have allowed a
trial of former President Donald
Trump to move forward in the
Senate? Or immediately signed 30
executive orders in his first three days
in the Oval Office, many of which
focused on undoing and dismantling
Trump’s policies?
Such actions immediately
alienate the 74 million Americans
who voted for Donald Trump.
Appreciating that if you want to
know what someone is about, pay
attention to what they do, not what
they say, it is obvious that Biden’s
concern is advancing the left-wing
agenda of his party, not unity.
On the other hand, there
probably wouldn’t be much
difference with a Republican
president. Republicans would be
pushing for the president to advance
their agenda. The game is to defeat
the opposition, not unity.
So, what about unity? Is unity
something we should care about?
After all, this is the United States
ofAmerica, so named by the founders
in 1776.
Eleven years later, in 1787, the
Constitution was adopted, the
preamble of which explains its
purpose to “form a more perfect
Union.”
The glue holding together what
the founders called the United States
is adherence to the principles upon
which the country was founded. We
can read them clearly in the
Declaration of Independence: “(A) 11
men are created equal ... they are
endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. ... That to
secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men.”
The country is about individual
freedom and the purpose of
government to protect that freedom.
The Constitution was designed to
define more clearly legitimate tasks
of the federal government, and to
keep government within those
boundaries. This is what makes us
the United States.
Unity broke down and led to
civil war because one of the core
principles — protecting the rights of
all men — was violated by the
presence of slavery.
When we all accept the core
principles that enable us to be free
and the limited role of the federal
Please see Guest page 12A