Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, December 8, 2021/Page 6A
(Tl?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:
Spencer Brown, managing editor for
Townhall: NBC News admits to trailing Rit-
tenhouse jury in police body cam foot
age.
So basically NBC News admitted they
got caught "near" the jury van without
including the important note that NBC
News staff had instructed an NBC free
lancer to follow the jury, But because the
freelancer was caught in the act the full
scope of NBC News' plan and what the
network intended to do with information
about jurors' movements remains un
known. That said, it's unlikely any identi
fying information would have been used
to send them fruit baskets for a job well
done or encourage the public to per
sonally thank them for their verdict.
London Mion, Web Editor at Townhall.
com: 'Meaningless': ABC producer who
accused Chris Cuomo of sexual harass
ment responds to CNN anchor's suspen
sion.
"There is more to accountability than
a suspension," (former ABC News pro
ducer Shelly Ross, who previously ac
cused Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing
her), told Fox News. "Chris Cuomo has al
ways maintained he was not an adviser,
he was a brother. He lied to CNN and his
viewers. He needs to publicly acknowl
edge his wrongdoing to women, to vic
tims of sexual harassment, assault and
gender bias, to his colleagues, to the
other journalists he compromised or tried
to, and to the viewers he misled."
Betsy McCaughey, a former lieuten
ant governor of New York and author:
Fauci puts us at risk.
To defend against omicron and fu
ture variants, the United States needs
to improve its capacity to spot and
track them with genomic sequencing,
the technique used in Africa last week.
America ranks 28th in the world in its
tracking ability. Thank Fauci for that, too.
It will take time to determine how
dangerous the new omicron variant is,
but the proof is already in on Fauci. He's
got to go.
Greg Gutfeld, host of Gutfeld! and
co-host of The Five: / can't quit Chris
Cuomo.
So, what am I getting at? The scuttle
butt in this high school cafeteria, called
the media, is that Chris is what you find
nextto your ham and eggs at IHOP: toast.
It's either toast, or a Lee press-on nail. But
he's like the Greeks — ancient history.
He's like peaches at the supermarket —
canned. He's like a loaded gun on an
Alec Baldwin set — discharged.
But why should he be fired? What did
he do wrong? Besides help a corrupt
politician smear an accuser by using his
network connections.
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Please write to us at The Advance, P.O. Box 669,
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gmail.com (Subject Line: Letter to the Editor).
The King of Hypocrisy
Nike’s latest TV ad is
another slickpaean to individual
empowerment and prevailing
despite the naysayers.
Centered around Memphis
Grizzlies star Ja Morant, the
commercial features various
people doubting that Morant
can keep up his stellar play to
which someone always cheekily
replies, “Says who?”
Yes, Nike believes anything
is possible — so long as it
doesn’t involve doing anything
to cross one of the world’s most
hideously repressive regimes.
The grotesque hypocrisy of
the Nike-NBA industrial
complex and its biggest star,
Lebron James, has been
underlined in recent weeks by
Boston Celtics player Enes
Kanter, who has been on a one-
man crusade against the
Chinese Communist Party and
those too cowardly or greedy to
call it out.
James — the owner of four
NBA championship rings who
has appeared in a jaw-dropping
10 NBA finals — has views on
all sorts of public controversies
and doesn’t hesitate to air them
so long as they are comfortably
within the fashionable woke
consensus.
On China, though, he’s
mute. So are his employers.
They all portray themselves as
champions of social justice and
of courage and striving, but
their commitment to these
causes and values stops at the
water’s edge — and at their
bottom line.
When a couple of years
ago, the Houston Rockets
general manager got thrown
under the bus by the NBA for
tweeting in support of pro
democracy protestors in Hong
Kong, King James pronounced
him “not educated on the
situation.”
The Lakers forward
affirmed a right to free speech
— thanks, GOAT! — but said
we have to be careful what we
say. “So many people,” he
warned, “could have been
harmed, not only financially
but physically, emotionally,
spiritually.”
Never has so much harm
been attributed to a small
message of public support for
plucky idealists about to be
steamrolled by a totalitarian
government.
During the Kyle
Rittenhouse trial, by the way,
James mocked Rittenhouse’s
tears on the stand, doubting
they were real — apparently
because he’s an expert on what
constitutes genuine signs of
post-traumatic stress.
If Rittenhouse had control
over whether a vast market
would be open to James and the
corporations he’s affiliated
with, the Lakers star surely
would have stayed silent.
When Kanter tweeted,
“Money over Morals for the
‘King,’” and wore sneakers
portraying James bowing down
to get crowned by Chinese
dictator Xi Jinping for a Celtics-
Lakers game, James brushed it
off. He accused Kanter of
“trying to use my name to
create an opportunity for
himself.”
Actually, Ranter’s activism,
calling out his league and a
massively influential
corporation, is what everyone
says they value — a lonely,
unwelcome campaign against
well-heeled interests too
compromised to defy a
powerful entity perpetrating
rank injustices.
After Nike got blowback in
China for a relatively anodyne
statement expressing concern
about forced labor in Xinjiang
— the epicenter of the regime’s
repression of the Uyghurs —
the company’s CEO said Nike
is “a brand of China and for
China.”
Nike lobbied Congress to
weaken an anti-forced-labor
bill, lest a measure aimed at
crimping a vast human-rights
abuse discomfit the corporate
giant too greatly.
“Says who?” the new Nike
ad asks. Clearly, the Chinese
regime.
Please see Lowry page 7A
GRITTY
Abortion Is
About Our Core
National Values
The Supreme
Court will hear this
week Dobbs v. Jack-
son Women’s Health
Organization.
At issue is the
law in Mississippi
that bans abortion
after 15 weeks of
pregnancy.
A decision find
ing the Mississippi law constitutional will
fundamentally change the abortion re
gime in our country, defined by Roe v.
Wade since 1973.
Roe said the mother has a right to
abort her child as long as that unborn
child cannot survive — is viable — out
side the womb. Generally accepted is 22-
24 weeks as the time when viability oc
curs.
Mississippi’s abortion law says that
the defining issue should not be viability
but when the child first feels pain. Their
claim is that this occurs at 15 weeks.
Surveys show the nation evenly split
in attitudes toward abortion.
Per the most recent poll from Gallup,
47% say abortion is morally acceptable
and 46% say it is morally wrong.
Forty-nine percent self-identify as
“pro-choice” and 47% as “pro-life.”
However, if we break down the aver
ages into components, we see a deeply
polarized nation.
Sixty-four percent of Democrats say
abortion is morally acceptable, and 70%
self-identify as pro-choice.
Only 26% of Republicans say abor
tion is morally acceptable, and 74% self-
identify as “pro-life.”
Abortion is really a bellwether issue
that shows the profound split in the na
tion regarding worldview.
Are we a nation of moral absolutes,
that sees our culture grounded in tradi
tional, biblically sourced standards of
Please see Parker page 8A
By Star Parker
There is
hardly any
thing home
made anymore.
Everything,
for the most
part, is store
bought unless
you are into
internet shop
ping which can
bring to your
doorstep a milkshake if you like.
Everything we need today pretty
much comes in a box or a can. We
can do wonders with that mouse on
our computer, but we would be hard
pressed to fashion something func
tional with a handsaw and a hammer,
which our grandfather would do. Or
our grandmother with a needle and
thread or a rolling pin.
What will life be like for our
great-grandchildren? Will artisans,
technicians and craftsmen become
extinct? My guess is that gardening
will survive and flourish. Nonethe
less, I fear what technology will bring
about. The reason we hark back to
the past, the reason we reminisce
with such affection is that life was
simpler then.
Recently, I read a story in a
regional magazine about a long
standing tradition, now extinct, with
which I was very familiar — hog-kill
ing. This time of the year was for hog
killing, which brought several fami
lies together for this ritual which was
critical for helping feed everybody in
the coming months.
Hog-killing days came about
before refrigeration, which makes
you aware of the impact of that old
saw, “necessity is the mother of in
vention.” Meat, to be put up for the
subsequent months, had to be cured.
There were a few refrigerators. Rural
folk couldn’t afford such appliances
anyway. Freezers would become
standard with the passing of time,
but hog-killing remained a way of life
into the fifties.
When you killed hogs, it was of
ten a community affair. Neighbors
and families joined hands to butcher
and dissect the pig, finding use for ev
erything including the old boy’s feet.
Pickled pig’s feet were considered a
delicacy with many. “Many” did not
include this farm boy.
I did not care for chitterlings ei
ther. Maybe you have never heard
of chitterlings, but “chitlins,” the
colloquial expression or to be more
graphic — the hog’s intestines. Blood
pudding? Forget that. I didn’t even
care for eggs scrambled with the pig’s
brains, worrying that I might wake
up one morning and start rooting
around the flower bed.
Even the women folk enjoyed
brains and eggs. I took a lot of good-
natured ribbing but was happy being
a finicky eater when it came to pork
products unless it were sausage, ba
con, ham and pork chops.
The hams were smoked, rubbed
down with salt and hung in a smoke
house to cure. Simple enough, but
you had to worry about the skip
per fly which could infest and ruin
a whole shed full of hams. Farmers
have always had to worry about some
natural nemesis. There was the boll
weevil which destroyed their cotton,
there was the chestnut blight which
killed off the chestnut trees. Chest
nuts once fatted their hogs better ‘n
any food known to exist. Skippers
often invaded a cured ham, which
would go a long way toward feeding
your family when the crop was laid
by. The infected hams were thrown
out to the birds because a dastardly
insect found its way into your smoke
house.
Today we don’t have to worry
about most of the insects which
threatened our way of life back in
the old days, but as the coronavi-
rus heavy-handedly made us aware,
some things are worse than fighting
an uphill battle with crop and food
threatening insects.
At the time, I didn’t realize it, but
now appreciate what those family
and community exercises did for the
rural society. When we came togeth
er to build a neighbor and his family a
house, via a log rolling (forerunner of
Please see Loran page 8A
By Loran Smith
