Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, May 17, 2023/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
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
How CNNJust Boosted Trump
Ol
ife
By Ben Shapiro
This week, for
mer President Don
ald Trump appeared
on a CNN town hall.
That day, he trum
peted the upcoming
event on his social
media platforms. “I’ll
be doing CNN to
night live from the
great state of New
Hampshire because
CNN is rightfully desperate to get those
Trump ratings back,” Trump said with a
wry grin. “They were ratings like none
other, and they want them back. They
made me a deal they couldn’t refuse. It
could be the beginning of a new and vi
brant CNN with no more fake news, or it
could be a total disaster for all, including
me. Let’s see what happens, tonight at 8
o’clock!”
Trump pitched the event like a WWE
Monday Night Raw.
And it was.
It was kayfabe of the highest order. And
it helped Trump immensely.
CNN pitched the event as a kickoff to
primary season. In that spirit, they invited
Republican primary voters from New
Hampshire to fill the auditorium. Modera
tor Kaitlin Collins, presumably, would ask
questions that Republican voters cared
about. They would then be able to use
Trump’s answers to gauge whether to vote
for him.
That’s not what happened.
Instead, Collins asked a series of ques
tions only Democrats care about. She asked
about Jan. 6. She asked about Trump’s elec
tion denial. She asked about classified doc
uments. She asked about E. Jean Carroll. In
short, Collins provided Trump with pre
cisely what he wanted: an adversarial CNN
foe he could absolutely pummel, to the de
light of the friendly crowd. The entire event
played to Trump’s strengths: he was aggres
sive; he was funny, and transgressively
funny at that (of E. Jean Carroll, he noted
disbelievingly, “her cat was named Va
gina!”); and he refused to give an inch on
any of his positions.
Trump under fire from the Left draws
nothing but admiration from most Repub
licans, who constantly feel that they are
scurrilously attacked but rarely see a de
fender willing to go dirty to defend them.
Trump defending himself deploys the
methodologies they wish Republican poli
ticians would use to defend them. And so,
CNN boosted Trump.
CNN found itself on the wrong end of
the outrage machine from the liberal com-
mentariat. The irrepressibly insipid Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, tweeted,
“CNN should be ashamed of themselves...
Everyone here saw exactly what was going
to happen.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough
likened the event to Jan. 6. The Daily
Beast’s Justin Baragona related that a CNN
on-air personality couldn’t stop lamenting
the “Trump infomercial.”
But was the event bad for CNN? Not
really. As Trump — who always says the
quiet part out loud, for good and ill —
stated, CNN brought in the ratings. What’s
more, CNN wants Trump to be the nominee,
for both fiscal and political reasons. Trump
does indeed mean eyeballs, and eyeballs
mean cash. And coincidentally, top Demo
crats want Trump to be the nominee; Presi
dent Joe Biden tweeted minutes after the
town hall, “It’s simple, folks. Do you want
four more years of that?”
For now, Trump is the clear front-run
ner among the Republican candidates. Per
haps his star will dim as he focuses consis
tently on his own personal Festivus griev
ances. Or perhaps the media will continue
to boost him, providing him with just the
adversarial opposition he needs in order to
appeal to his base. If the past is any guide,
the latter seems far more likely. And then
we’ll find out whether the Republican base,
which apparently believes in Trump’s elec
toral invulnerability despite the elections of
2018 and 2020, is correct — or whether
the Democratic base and the media, who
apparently believe Trump can’t possibly
win despite the election of 2016, are mis
taken.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author; his
latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How
The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM.
Perfectly
WhatVrhis? 1
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
The Kansas
Woman held a small
canning jar to the
light trying to de
code the date.
It was from the
1990's, the last digit
obscure.
Once opened the
indecorous dark jell
revealed itself as the bouquet of feral grapes
escaped.
The aroma whistled up an image of
picking muscadines.
A mother was doing a show and tell
with her toddler while the grandma filled
her basket with the dark grapes. The kid
mimicked his grandmother by picking a
grape and popping it in his mouth.
The mother had a fit. She made the kid
spit it out and swept out his mouth with
her finger.
I hope that is not what he remembers
about picking grapes, but it might be.
We have a generation of people who
are wary of any food that didn't come from
a store.
I watched the early blooms of black
berry canes along the highway, knowing
there are so few people who bother that I'll
probably have the spot to myself.
Little Miss Phillips took a Passion
Flower and turned it into a tiny ballerina. In
a few weeks it would have become a pas
sion fruit, the size of a hen egg. Its common
name is “maypop.”
In older days the brown and fuzzy may-
pops would have been consumed in situ
while walking to the mail box or along a
fence line.
Good Food
My mother's family made an annual
huckleberry picking excursion across Tay
lor's Ridge before the road was paved. The
berries grew in clusters along the banks of
the dirt road to Villanow.
Each child had a small bucket which
was emptied into a wash tub in the back of
the wagon.
While near the top of the mountain, a
summer storm came up. The family took
shelter under the wagon, but thunder
spooked the mule who took off running for
home with the wagon bouncing and ber
ries spilling along the way. Everybody got
soaked.
In August the kudzu blooms. Known as
the “vine that ate the south,” kudzu was
imported to stop soil erosion, which it did
but also made thousands of acres useless.
All of the kudzu plant is usable. Some
people cook the new tender leaves as
greens, and the fragrant flower can be used
to make jelly.
I'm told the tall cat tail plants growing
in ditches and low, wet places are also
emergency food. The roots can substitute
for potatoes.
There is perfectly good food growing
wild, such as dandelion greens, elderber
ries, hickory nuts and water cress in flowing
streams. Queen Anne's Lace grows in fields
and roadsides, but our ancestors cultivated
and knew it as “wild carrot.”
Sassafras roots make a refreshing hot or
cold tea, mushrooms abound in the woods
if you are wise enough to know the differ
ence, and yards are full of wild onions.
As usual don't take the word for any
man without verifying. Do your research
then enjoy.
joenphillips@yahoo.com
A choice of Biden or Trump
not much of a choice
A recent
poll from As
sociated Press
and the Uni
versity of Chi
cago’s research
center NORC
found that 70
percent of
Americans, in
cluding 44 per
cent of Repub
licans and 63 percent of independents,
do not want Donald Trump to run for
president in 2024. The same poll
found only 26 percent of Americans
want to see Joe Biden run again in
2024, including 77 percent who say
they are independents.
So, who are we likely to see as the
two candidates in the 2024 presiden
tial election? Donald Trump and Joe
Biden, of course. Is this a great country
or what? As for me, I am like the late
baseball great Billy Martin in those old
beer commercials: I feel strongly both
ways. I don’t like Donald Trump and I
don’t like Joe Biden. And if my mail is
any indication, most of you agree with
me.
When I write about politics, which
is difficult for me because it requires
holding my nose while doing so, reader
response comes in three predictable
categories. First are the left-leaning
liberals who tell me I am a rightwing
rant. Second are the rightwing rants
who tell me I am a left-leaning liberal.
The third, and by far the largest group
of respondents, are smack in the mid
dle as the above polls seem to indicate.
I had a reader recently inquire
about my political leanings. I told him
I was a Ronald Reagan/Johnny Isak-
son/Carl Sanders/Sam Nunn political
partisan. He wrote back and said those
were yesterday’s politicians. What
LETTER TO
THE EDITOR...
about now? I referred him back to my
original response.
A few columns ago, I quoted con
servative New York Times columnist
David French saying he sees no per
son, organization or institution that
can bring us together as Americans. I
would include Joe Biden and certainly
Donald Trump in that conversation.
Joe Biden is clearly the most unin
spiring president since Jimmy Carter.
Like Carter, he presides over a sour
economy that shows no signs of get
ting better and is perceived as weak by
those countries that would do us harm.
And I haven’t even mentioned the fi
asco on the border or Hunter Biden’s
laptop.
Since he and I are of the same gen
eration, I don’t fret about Biden’s age. I
fret about his mental acuity. In his
State of the Union speech he declared,
“Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but
he’ll never gain the hearts and souls of
the Iranian people.” I am sure Ukraini
ans were heartened by that fact. Since
becoming leader of the free world,
Biden has twice introduced Vice Presi
dent Kamala Harris as “president.”
And at a White House conference, he
asked where an Indiana congress-
woman was seated so he could recog
nize her. No can do, sir. She is dead.
Claiming Republicans were trying
to get rid of the Affordable Care Act,
Biden say they had failed in 2018 be
cause “we went to all 54 states” to de
feat it. My personal favorite was when
he told reporters that in his home state
of Delaware, “there have not been
many of the senators from Delaware.
It’s a small state. As a matter of fact,
there has never been one.” And we
trust this guy with the nuclear codes?
Can we trust him to even find the door
to the Oval Office?
Donald Trump, on the other hand,
is an arrogant, mean-spirited, narcis
sistic, misogynist bully. A man who
brags publicly about grabbing a wom-
Please see Yarbrough page 9A
By Dick Yarbrough
The Advance:
Newspaper of
Excellence
TO THE EDITOR:
I want to thank you for publish
ing an excellent paper, particularly
the editorial section. I subscribe to
3 local papers, and yours is the only
one with an editorial section of ex
cellent reporting. I particularly like
Star Parker, Mr. Phillips, and the
whole page of editorials.
I also enjoy reading about the
schools and their programs.
God bless you and your paper,
and God bless America.
Sincerely,
Betty Collins, Twin City, GA
P.S. I am 97 years old and still like
to keep up with the news, especial
ly our government.
0l,t A&uance
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