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The ADVANCE, October 6, 2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
To Boldly Go
The news broke
earlier this week
— the intergalactic
news, that is. An en
tertainment media
group reported Wil
liam Shatner will
soon travel to space aboard Blue Origins New
Shepard rocket. Shatner, who portrayed Cap
tain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek
series, is a youthful 90 years old.
It’s hard to explain, but the news that
Shatner may be on his way to space filled me
with instant happiness. Perhaps it’s because
I’m a diehard Trekkie, but there was more
to it than that. In a world filled with the 24-
hour news cycle showcasing everything that’s
wrong in the world, sometimes I need a bit of
a silly distraction to get my mind off of all the
bad stuff.
As a child of the Sixties and Seventies, I
grew up with my face planted about twenty
inches from the television set absorbing each
minute of those early Star Trek episodes.
Aside from the short, tight uniforms, Mr.
Spock’s pointy ears, and Captain Kirk’s never-
ending romantic exploits with alien women,
the show opened my mind to the infinite
possibilities of space. It personified the very
notion of living in a peaceful universe and
how scientific research and space explora
tion should always trump conquering other
worlds and planets. Its crew introduced me to
the Prime Directive — a policy that prevent
ed the crew from interfering with the develop
ment of civilizations that were less advanced
than our own. It showed me that women were
just as intelligent as men and had a place in
leadership roles, as did minorities.
Before I could tie my own shoes, I could
part the fingers of my right hand to form a “V,”
like Mr. Spock, who was a Vulcan. “Live long
and prosper,” I’d say to my sister and brother.
Before I could recite the Pledge of Allegiance,
I could recite the opening monologue.
“Space: the final frontier. These are the
voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-
year mission: to explore strange new worlds.
Please see Amber page 9A
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
National Newspaper Week: October 3-9
The Relevance Project
When it comes to saving local news
papers, the solutions won’t be found in
web metrics, ad rates or shrinking news
holes. The solution, seemingly simple yet
terrifyingly complicated, is for newspa
pers to reconnect with the people they’re
supposed to be serving.
That’s the purpose of The Relevance
Project, a national effort intended to
make local journalism so relevant to peo
ple’s lives that papers will once again be
come an essential purchase. The Newspa
per Association Managers, a coalition of
trade associations serving daily and
weekly newspapers and new websites in
North America, is coordinating the proj
ect, which was launched during National
Newspaper Week last year.
The focus on local newspapers was
prompted in part by frustration that in
dustry leaders were too focused on the
major players - the papers run by corpo
rations and big chains. That approach
overlooks the more than 8,600 local
newspapers covering the parades, the
school board meetings and the soccer
games of small-town America and Can
ada.
The problems local papers face mir
ror those of the bigger players: Declining
revenues and rising costs that sometimes
force closings. But for independent local
papers with shoestring budgets, the finan
cial burdens fall proportionately harder:
Cutting a position from a four-person
newsroom, for example, is a lot more dif
ficult than cutting one from a newsroom
of 40.
Newspaper association managers
across the United States and Canada think
the public is paying so much attention to
media companies such as The New York
Times, The Washington Post and Sinclair
[Broadcasting] that they’re forgetting
that there are vital, committed newspa
pers in their local communities. As a re-
Please see Newspaper page 9A
No Daddy At Home
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
What's missing?
I read an opinion
piece in the newspa
per about crime and
why young people
are, at this writing,
killing each other in
Chicago, carjacking
and assaulting people
on the streets.
The writer suggested poverty, lack of
education, yadda-yadda this and that.
Pardon me, if you will, but many people
were bom into poverty and stayed there un
til they worked their way out of it. They tried
to encourage each generation to, if not be
smarter, then act smarter. They didn't resort
to crime.
I believe that a woman who claims to
love her children, but didn't bother to pro
vide a father for them, is lying.
Today there is no longer social stigma
attached to getting knocked up.
The term “single mother” replaced “un
married mother” to soften the description of
a woman or girl who became pregnant hav
ing unprotected, recreational sex.
The government has become the daddy
to generations of kids who grew up without
a father in the house. We can thank federal
social programs for making fathers irrele
vant.
Not all men are good fathers. Many
didn't have a role model to emulate.
If the government made this mess, it
should clean it up and start by holding fa
thers accountable. Some unmarried mothers
don't want their children's fathers around
because they are toxic.
It is unfortunate that wasn't discovered
earlier. The children pay for it.
Single women who have children are not
doing those kids any favors. According to the
Census Bureau, 44% of children in homes
headed by single mothers were living in pov
erty, while just 12% of children in married-
couple families lived in poverty.
I believe that at the core of youthful
crime is having no father in the home. When
a kid has to stand before a judge, the father,
whether he lives in the home or not, should
have to stand with him.
According to Fulton County, 85% of
youth currently in prison grew up in a father
less home.
It is easy for a female to claim that having
children is her choice, but the effect on the
children has to be considered. NPR found
that girls who live in a fatherless home have a
100% higher risk of suffering from obesity
than girls who have their father present. The
same study found that teen girls from father
less homes are four times more likely to be
come pregnant before the age of twenty.
Of teenagers who become pregnant,
71% lack a father at home (Health and Hu
man Services).
The effect upon children in fatherless
homes is profound. The CDC found that
85% of all children who show behavior dis
orders came from fatherless homes.
It is going to take courage for politicians
to clean up the mess, but can we afford to
lose the core family?
Or is it already too late?
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Fractious Republicans need
to heedIsakson’s example
Class, like
beauty, is in the
eye of the be
holder — hard
to define, but
we know it
when we see it.
I thought
about that as
two events oc
curred in our
state last week
featuring prominent Republicans.
In Atlanta, hundreds of friends and
supporters gathered to honor a quiet
man who epitomizes class, former U.S.
Senator and lifelong Republican
Johnny Isakson. The event raised nearly
$1 million for the Isakson Initiative, a
nonprofit named for the senator who
suffers from Parkinson’s. The new orga
nization will be devoted to funding re
search on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and
other neurological diseases. In atten
dance were most all of the state’s major
political lights — Republicans and
Democrats. This was beyond partisan
politics.
Two days earlier, former Pres.
Donald Trump flew into the Georgia
National Fairgrounds in Perry and con
tinued his relentless barrage of insults
on Gov. Brian Kemp, (“A total disaster
on election integrity”); Lt. Gov. Geoff
Duncan (“Terrible”) and Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger, (“A very
strange guy”) — all of whom he blames
for costing him his reelection.
There is no question Trump has
created a deep schism in the Republi
can Party that Johnny Isakson helped
to build. My mail over the past year has
taken two forms. Many longtime con
servative voters say they are tired of
Trump’s hyperbole and personal insults
and would not vote for him next time,
assuming he runs. And then there are
those who tell me they will sit out next
year’s election rather than vote to re
elect Brian Kemp. How this helps the
Republicans’ chances in Georgia in the
2022 election is beyond me.
Call Democrats whatever you
choose — liberals, socialists, radicals
— just don’t call them divided because
they are not. Remember, Stacey
Abrams lost the 2018 governor’s race to
Brian Kemp by only 55,000 votes out
of almost 4 million cast. That is just
over one percent. Her case for 2022
hasn’t been hurt by Trump’s weird com
ments at Perry.
Referring to Kemp, Trump said of
Abrams, “Stacey, would you like to take
his place? It’s OK with me. Of course,
having her, I think, might be better than
having your existing governor, if you
want to know the truth. Might very well
be better.” That might very well hap
pen, thanks to remarks like that.
Johnny Isakson was a Republican
when you could fit the party in a phone-
booth. He was elected to the Georgia
House of Representatives in 1976. At
that time, there were four Republicans
in the State Senate out of 56 members
and 23 in the House along with 157
Democrats.
Isakson was named minority leader
in 1983. He ran for governor against
Democrat Zell Miller in 1990 and lost.
In 1992, he was elected to the Georgia
state senate and in 1996, the highly-
partisan and education-oriented Miller
appointed his former gubernatorial foe
as head the State School Board of Edu
cation. It was a stunner at the time.
Isakson remembers, “Georgia
turned around. Scores got better,
schools got better, people got better.
Just because somebody is your oppo
nent today doesn’t mean they can’t be
your biggest friend tomorrow.” The
state’s interests first, party politics sec
ond? Imagine that.
Isakson succeeded Newt Gingrich
as U.S. Rep. in Georgia’s 6th District
after the volatile speaker flamed out in
1998 and resigned. Then it was two
terms in the U.S. House and two terms
and a partial third in the United States
Senate until health issues caught up
with him in 2019.
From his first day in politics until
his last, Johnny Isakson was a highly
effective legislator who could reach
across the aisle and get things accom
plished. And he did so without shoot
ing off his mouth or compromising his
convictions.
He was one of the few people in
Washington to call out Trump on his
disparagement of the late senator and
former POW, John McCain. “It’s de
plorable what he said,” Isakson re
marked at the time. “ It will be deplor
able seven months from now if he con
tinues to say it and I will continue to
speak out.” Trump never came back at
Isakson. He knew better. That was one
battle he was not going to win.
We will never see the likes of
Johnny Isakson again and we are poorer
for it. The Republican Party that he
helped build into the majority party in
Georgia is today rife with finger-point
ing, insults, threats and headline-seek
ing showboats. As far as I am con
cerned, the whole crowd is just a bunch
of RINOS. Johnny Isakson was and is
the real deal.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, At
lanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook at www.
face boo k. co m/d icky arb.
^Ainianre
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