Newspaper Page Text
4A
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 2006
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OPINION
Daniel F. Evans
Editor and Publisher
Julie B. Evans
Vice President
Don Moncrief
Managing Editor
New coaches are valuable
A high school diploma is more than a piece of parch
ment. It is a ticket to a better paying job and a
better way of life.
Statistics show that a high school diploma has mon
etary value, just as a college degree does.
Students who drop out of school before graduation
from high school are giving up, most of the time, the
opportunity to get a decent paying job.
That is why Gov. Sonny Perdue has championed - and
is putting into place - a new strategy for helping students
continue high
school through
graduation, rather
than dropping out.
Students will
have coaches, just
as athletes do, and
these coaches will
be there to help
keep students
in school until
they receive their
diplomas, which
can give them the
opportunity to
earn more money
and the benefits
that go with it.
Of course, the
object of gradu
ating from high
school should not,
necessarily, be a
goal in itself. For
many students
the high school
diploma should
be their passports
into college, where
a degree can result
in even higher pay
ing jobs.
It is all about
helping students
live up to their
potential. The
coaches - one in
every high school - will face a daunting challenge, but
they are being prepared to take on this new, unique
responsibility.
We can only imagine how rewarding it will be for these
graduation coaches when they see students who might
have dropped out of school walk across the stage and
receive diplomas at graduation exercises.
In our opinion, it would beat winning a sports champi
onship by a mile.
Metal thieves are expensive
Thieves are finding scrap metal valuable. Stealing it
beats buying it.
The city of Warner Robins experienced an expen
sive loss to thieves recently when SSO worth of scrap
metal was taken out of an air conditioner. It cost the city
SIO,OOO to repair the damage.
Contractors throughout Houston County have com
plained for years that copper and other building materi
als are being stolen regularly from construction sites.
One of the most egregious examples of theft from a
construction site occurred in Centerville several months
ago when two men drove up in front of a house that was
under construction and took off with all the new appli
ances in the house during broad daylight.
Workers in the area who saw the thieves in action said
they were not suspicious because it “looked like” the men
taking the appliances belonged there.
Building materials are known to disappear during the
night from construction sites and there really is no way to
know who took the items or where they went unless the
thieves were observed in action.
Warner Robins is going to make it more difficult to sell
scrap metal with regulations pertaining to the disposal
of it. However, as Mayor Donald Walker pointed out, a
crackdown in Warner Robins will not prevent thieves
from disposing of their ill-gotten gains elsewhere.
Worth Repeating
“This is the Middle East. None of the people who were
involved with this will be allowed to live.”
Golda Meir, 1898-1978
Prime Minister, Israel (Labor)
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Foy S. Evans
Editor Emeritus
Of course, the object
of graduating from
high school should
not, necessarily, be a
goal in itself. For many
students the high school
diploma should be their
passports into college,
where a degree can ,
result in even higher
paying jobs. It is all
about helping students
live up to their poten
tial. Tim coaches - one
in every high school
- will face a daunting
challenge, but they are
being prepared to take
on this new, unique
responsibility.
'Dogpatclf no mope; city grows up
I remember when people in Bibb
County referred to Warner Robins
as “Dogpatch”. It wasn’t said in a
complimentary way, either. The real
Dogpatch was a fictional place inhab
ited by hillbillies in the popular comic
strip “Li’l Abner”.
Most readers of this column probably
are too young to have ever heard of the
comic strip or Li’l Abner.
Actually, Warner Robins was not the
kind of place that you would not select
to live.
Families moved here during and after
World War II for one reason - to earn
a living. When wives saw the scrubby
little town they weren’t at all pleased.
I knew many women who cried them
selves to sleep after moving here from
other cities.
It was my idea of a town in an old
Wild West movie. There were only a
few privately owned homes. Alcohol
sales were restricted to “Front Street”,
where things could get pretty rough.
Yet the only indoor movie theater in
town was located there.
A few stores were scattered along
Watson Blvd. from the railroad tracks
to Commercial Circle, where there were
a few businesses. North Commercial
Circle was owned by the federal gov
ernment, which rented space to a drug
store, hardware store, appliance store
and a barbershop. Unpaved South
Commercial Circle was half filled with
privately owned businesses.
There was nothing attractive about
any of the storefronts. Watson Blvd.
was a narrow strip of paving to the
edge of town at Pleasant Hill Road.
There was little reason to believe it
[ - mE inc fil gS/QnaM
The Reuterization of war journalism
« What’s the big deal over a little
faked smoke?” That seems to be
the prevailing attitude among
media pooh-bahs irked by bloggers
who exposed the crude Photoshoppery
of a Reuters photographer over the
weekend. The cameraman, prolific
Lebanese stringer and chronicler of
Hizballah Adnan Hajj, was fired.
But the black cloud of truth-distort
ing photo fakery, jihadi-sympathizing
news staging and sloppy photo cap
tioning in the Middle East hangs over
American journalism thicker than any
thing Hajj could conjure.
Charles Johnson of littlegreenfoot
balls.com, who was instrumental in
debunking the faked National Guard
memos that disgraced CBS News and
Dan Rather during the 2004 presi
dential election, led an Army of Myth
Busters who exposed Hajj’s digital
cloning of smoke clouds over a Beirut
bombing scene. The Jawa Report
(mypetjawa.mu.nu), another War on
Terror blog, dissected a second Hajj
photo of cloned flare smoke in an
image of an Israeli F-16 fighter jet over
the skies of Lebanon. A Reuters cap
tion falsely identified the manipulated
flares as “missiles during an air strike
on Nabatiyeh.” My video news site,
HotAir.com, continues to track the lat
est developments.
The Internet graphics expert brigade
zeroed in on an obvious Photoshop
technique used in the billows of Hajj’s
smoke known as the clone stamp tool.
It’s also known as the rubber stamp
tool, fitting for a news service that
seems to have made its mark rubber
stamping pro-Hizballah propaganda.
Indeed, the day after Reuters ‘fessed
OPINION
EFFECTIVE fOUTICM. A 0 CAMPAIGNS
Columnist
loyevansl9@cox.net HRk
ever would be more than a bump in
the road, surviving off jobs created by
Robins Air Force Base.
To be honest, it was an ugly town
that was supposed to dry up and go
away at the end of World War 11. It was
saved from extinction by work the base
was called on to perform during the
Korean War.
Only a few stubborn individuals,
with nowhere else to go, believed the
town would survive.
But it did.
One of my aunts in Macon asked
me on numerous occasions why I was
wasting my time in Dogpatch. I had
just started a little weekly newspaper
- The Warner Robins Sun - and I clung
to the hope that I had made a good
choice. There were many times when I
wasn’t sure.
People made their homes here only
as a last resort.
Most workers on the Base commuted
from Macon or several other towns
around Middle Georgia.
Macon was the hub. Even base com
manders identified with Macon and
more or less ignored the fact there was
a town called Warner Robins.
Now, half a century later, look
what has happened. Houston County
Michelle
Columnist
matkin@comcast.net 'J7Z.
up to the doctored photos, the wire ser
vice falsely blamed the Israeli Defense
Forces for bombing a funeral proces
sion, according to Arutz Sheva.
Hajj provided perhaps the lamest
excuse in photojournalistic history
for his image manipulation since Dan
Rather’s “fake but accurate” rational
ization telling his bosses that he was
quote trying to “remove dust marks
and that he made mistakes due to the
bad lighting conditions he was working
under.”
Among his many other dubious shots:
several Hizballah-embedded images, an
artfully burning Koran and an iconic
photo of a dead child paraded around
Qana by unknown handlers.
Watch now for braying, rationaliz
ing and messenger-shooting from the
journalistic elite. You will hear them
complain about the bloodthirsty blog
mob. You will see MSM editors rally
around Reuters and dismiss this deba
cle as a lone event. Adnan Hajj, the
new international Jayson Blair/Mike
Barnicle/Janet Cooke/Mary Mapes/
Walter Duranty, will end up with a
book contract and a job at A 1 Jazeera.
Media veterans will hope that their
professional apathy will snuff out prob
ing questions like baking soda on a pan
fire. After all, it’s “old news” already.
HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL
has become the place where there is
remarkable growth. Bibb County is los
ing residents to Houston County.
We look on Bibb County today the
way they looked on us long ago. It isn’t
a place we would want to live.
The latest census figures show Bibb
County’s population outstrips ours by
less than 30,000.
Bibb County has less than 20,000
more housing units than Houston.
Median income in Houston is $46,242
per household, compared with $35,169
in Bibb.
The pendulum has swung this way.
And continues everyday.
However, Bibb County still is the
hub. We are a spoke. No getting around
it, no matter who we try to coat the
picture. Bibb has major industries and
much more commercial development
and shopping facilities.
Here’s something interesting,
though. Houston County schools have
almost the identical number of stu
dents as Bibb County schools. That’s
a statistic that I am having trouble
digesting.
I haven’t heard anyone call Warner
Robins “Dogpatch” in a long time. The
image has been replaced with a pro
gressive city and a modem, progressive
county.
Having been here through the trans
formation of Macon and Warner Robins
I find it fascinating to see people who
can afford it turning their eyes toward
Houston County, bringing with them
high incomes and dreams of a better
life.
As they used to say. “Who woulda
thunk it?”
In a sense, they are right. Whether
from sloppiness, laziness, incompetence
or ideological bias, American journal
ists have played dupes or worse to
jihadi propagandists for decades. Just a
few weeks ago, a New York Times pho
tography editor raved over her photog
rapher Joao Silva’s image of an al-Sadr
army sniper posing in a window firing
at U.S. troops. “Incredible courage,”
she panted. It’s not clear whether she
was talking about the photographer or
the terrorist. The Associated Press has
failed to respond to my repeated ques
tions about one of its Iraqi stringers,
Bilal Hussein, who was detained by
the U.S. military in April after being
captured in a Ramadi building with
a cache of weapons, according to my
sources. Hussein was part of a Pulitzer
Prize-winning AP photography team.
From the fake “massacre” in Jenin,
to the false accusations against Israel
in the shooting of Palestinian boy
Mohammed al-Dura, to the dissemina
tion of “Pallywood” terrorist video pro
ductions, to the false labeling of execut
ed Shiite fishermen in a Haditha sports
stadium as victims of U.S. Marines, the
Reuterization of war journalism goes
far beyond Reuters.
Reuters can kill a few pictures, but
it does not kill persistent doubts about
the American media’s ability to cover
this war through anything but a dis
torted lens. The blogosphere can help
clear the bogus smoke. Only the Old
Media itself can stamp out the toxic
fire.
Michelle Malkin is author of the new
book “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals
Gone Wild.” Her e-mail address is
malkin@comcast.net