Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

PAGE 4A BARROW JOURNAL • BARROW COUNTY NEWS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2016 Opinions “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. ~ Thomas Jefferson ~ Georgia Press Association, first place, Best Editorial Page; first place, Best Serious Column Memories of past summers Despite the seemingly oppressive heat we’ve dealt with in recent weeks, there is, and always will be, something unique about summer. It probably stretches back to our child hood. Summer as an adult is just like any other time of the year. We wake up in the morning, go to work, come home and prepare to do it all again the next day. It can become like a record stuck on the turntable at times. However, sum mer as a kid always seemed to be so much more meaningful. Even for someone who enjoyed school (or at least parts of it) summer was always welcomed with open arms. The reason: It allowed for more time to do the things you enjoyed most. For me, those things included swim ming, riding motorcycles, attending 4-H camps and having friends stay at my house overnight or, in turn, staying at their place. Admittedly, there was still plenty of time to watch some favorite television shows of the era. The morning often meant game shows which lasted until noon. It was time to venture outside at this point as nothing better than soap operas was available. (My house didn’t have cable at the time so the number of stations was limited.) Trips to the local swimming pool was also a social event as many schoolmates were there as well. Swimming for two or three hours had a way of zapping your energy, even when you were young. Once we made it back home it was more time outside. Riding my motorcycle was a favorite hobby in those days. The hot Georgia summer days made ideal riding conditions, which I often would do until there was literally no daylight left. When I was a small child, my paternal grandparents still lived on their massive farm and it wasn’t uncommon to make week-long visits to stay with them. Being less than 10 years old at the time, their farm was like a world unto itself. This was a time when I really was outside most of the day. My grandparents didn’t have a TV so my eyes had a break from watching the big box I often was glued to at home. It didn’t take a television though for a youngster to be entertained, however. Their farm provided such a large area that there was always plenty to explore. From walking through a shallow creek to trying not to get lost in the massive rows of corn which towered over me, the only time during the week we would leave the farm would be to go to church. My grandparents retired from farming in 1980 and moved from the place they had worked and lived for decades. Still, more than three decades later, those summer memories are still just as vivid as the days I enjoyed them. While work marches on for me today, even during the summer, it’s still nice to get home on many days when there is still plenty of sunlight left. Recently I noticed it was still clearly daylight even at 9:15 in the evening. The humid air remained as thick as it was hours earlier, but the slowly fading sun did cause it to drop a degree or two. This week we entered August and while that used to mean another month of sum mer vacation for students, a new school year began locally on Monday. Certainly, Aug. 1 seems mighty early to start a new school year, but students today do have the benefit of winter breaks and such that did not exist once upon a time. Unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t allow for much swimming these days, at least not for recreation. Most of my swim ming is spent at the Winder YMCA, used as part of my exercise program. I haven’t been on a motorcycle in years and I don’t want to think about how long it’s been since I attended a week of 4-H camp. (Reading about the activities of our local 4-H students today, however, does help keep those memories alive.) Yes, it is definitely too hot and my mind is looking ahead to fall, which probably won’t be felt until late October. However, there will always be a special place for summer. If nothing else, summer has the power to take us back to a simpler, less hectic time. We can’t truly go back, but we can reminisce. Winder resident Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.com. 1 LIVE IN A HOUSE BUILT BY SLAVES. I LIVE IN A HOUSE BUILT BY JILTED CONTRACTORS a MELANIA What color will your state be? As the last of the two conventions finished its business of nominating a presidential candidate last week, the Clinton and Trump campaigns were quickly shifting into high gear. Before all of the balloons in Philadelphia had been picked up, Donald Trump supporters were already chanting “Lock her up, lock her up” at a campaign event. Meanwhile, the Hillary Clinton campaign was embarking on a bus tour of the key states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. As the nominees fight their way through a grinding, nasty campaign, the question we’ve heard so much in recent years is again being raised: Is this the year when Georgia makes the transition from red to purple and becomes a battleground state? The answer to that question since 1992 has been no. That was when Bill Clinton became the last Democratic presidential candi date to take Georgia’s electoral votes. Clinton lost the state in 1996, finishing 27,000 votes behind Bob Dole, and Republicans have had a tight lock on Georgia ever since. Georgia Democrats have been like Chicago Cubs fans, responding to their long title drought with, “Wait ‘til next year.” Democrats are expecting things to be a little more competitive this year and kept making that point through out their convention. Jason Carter opened his introduction of his grand father, Jimmy Carter, with these words: “Greetings from the battleground state of Georgia!” Several recent polls also suggest that the race between Trump and Clinton is close enough that the state could be considered a tossup. Republican pollster Mark Rountree made the same observation as other political analysts when he noted: “Georgia has a larger minority vote than almost anywhere else.” As with California, Texas, and Florida, Georgia’s population is steadi ly becoming more diverse because of a growing black population and a steady influx of Asian and Latino residents. It was not so long ago that Georgia’s pool of registered voters was more than 80 percent white; today, it’s barely above 58 percent and keeps drop ping. Basically, the state’s percentage of white voters declines by about a percentage point each year while the portion of non-white voters increases by a point. “Georgia demographics continue to change,” Rountree said. “But so many GOP activists are blind to this and sim ply assume that since the GOP has run things here for a decade that they are a lock to continue to do so. No.” Voter registration statistics and poll numbers are obviously indications that a state could be more competitive, but they are not a guarantee that it will be. The real marker of a state that has attained “battleground” status is that both of the pres idential nominees are battling for it. That isn’t happening here just yet. When Trump and his aides met with GOP congressmen in Washington prior to the national convention, they disclosed that the Trump campaign would be targeting a total of 17 states this fall. The remaining 33 states were con sidered to be either so Republican in their political leanings (like Utah and Oklahoma) or so Democratic (like California and New York) that there was no point in devoting campaign resources to them. One of the states on Trump’s list was Georgia. After going Republican in five consecutive presidential elections, you would think that Georgia was one state a GOP candidate could safely assume would be in the red column again. The fact that Georgia is on Trump’s list tells us that his campaign is con cerned about the state’s growing diver sity, or has seen polling numbers that show it really could be up for grabs. Otherwise, why spend a penny of scarce campaign money here when there are so many other competitive states? Hillary Clinton’s campaign, on the other hand, has not yet committed to the possibility that Georgia could be in play. If that were the case, they would be dispatching campaign operatives here and opening up field offices to work on get-out-the-vote efforts. So far, that hasn’t happened. The Trump campaign is planning to go to war over Georgia, but the Clinton campaign is holding back. Since you can’t have a battle unless there are two sides to fight it out, Georgia is still not quite a battleground state. Perhaps that will change in a few weeks. Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news ser vice at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He can be reached at tcrawford@gareport. com. Barrow Journal Winder, Barrow County, Ga. Merged with The Barrow County News, 2016 Mike Buffington Scott Buffington Chris Bridges Susan Treadwell Jessica Brown Legal Organ of Barrow County SUBSCRIPTIONS: $25.00/yr. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Barrow Journal 77 East May Street Winder, Georgia 30680 Co-Publisher/Co-Owner Co-Publisher/Co-Owner Editor/Sports Editor Advertising Manager Staff Photographer Published 52 times per year by Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Winder, Georgia 30680 (USPS 025-132) Email: news@barrowjournal.com Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397) Fax: 706-621-4115 What banning Milo means Feuds have been breaking out across social media platforms as of late. None are more import ant than the battle between Leslie Jones, Twitter and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. The petty internet feuds between reality stars and singers matter very little in the world, however Milo’s per manent Twitter ban is a discussion worth having. Recently, actress and comedian Leslie Jones was hounded on Twitter with racist and offensive tweets for hours. The messages ranged from anger over the Ghostbusters remake (in which she was a lead) to horrible racial slurs. Jones engaged with the internet trolls who sent her these tweets. She responded to them, and she retweeted (or re-posted) the messages to her account so her follow ers could see them. Several hours go by and then Milo his review of the Ghostbusters film. The result? Milo gets permanently banned from the popular platform. Now, of course there is more to the story. Milo didn’t just write a review of this film; he wrote a negative review. For those who might not know about Milo, he is British, gay, and a conservative. Though he is ostentatious, he does not fit the homosexual mold. He does not pander to the leftists and social justice warriors who base their “arguments” on nothing but hurt feelings. Milo is interested in rational debates with facts and reason. So, when he reviewed Ghostbusters July 18, he had much to say about it. In his lengthy article he briefly discusses each lead character (just a sentence or two) then moves on to his larger argu ments. His commentary on Leslie Jones’ charac ter Patty was “Patty is a two dimensional racist ste reotype by even the most forgiving measure. Patty is the worst of the lot. The actress is spectacularly unappealing, even relative to the rest of the odious cast. But it’s her flat-as-a-pancake black stylings that ought to have irritated the SJWs.” While Jones fought with “the haters” for several hours, here comes Milo posting this review and gets on Jones’ radar. She asked who this Milo guy was, and a fan responded. She retweeted that response which is what caused most of this mess. “He’s basically the Uncle Tom of Gay [people]. Huge Trump/alt-right fanboy who is gay,” she retweeted. Milo responded, albeit, with a tweet calling Leslie Jones a man. Then he was permanently banned after having received several warnings in the past. Twitter released the statement: “People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to tar geted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforce ment actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.” This opens a can of worms because Milo was presumably banned for “inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse of harassment of others” but there were no tweets posted by Milo inciting his fans to go after Leslie Jones. He posted his review hours after her battle with angry Twitter users began. But, by this statement released by Twitter, Leslie Jones has violated it as well. In an interview with Seth Myers that was posted on YouTube May 12, 2015 she stated: “Yes, if you call me a name I’m going to call you a name back. 1 don’t care how famous I am or how popular I am, if you call me a gorilla I’m going to call your mama one. And I’ll blow you up, too, so if you tweet me and you’re thinking I’m the only one who is going to get it, 1 retweet it so all my followers can see it and get on your punk.” Stating that you retweet offensive messages for the sole purpose of having your followers go after the original poster is inciting harassment, is it not? That’s what many Milo supporters are asking. How can Milo get permanently banned with no evidence he ever stated to his followers to flock Jones’ with offensive tweets when she has stated on record she is guilty of the same crime? Jones is still on Twitter and Milo is banned. Milo isn’t too broken up about it though because this incident has made him a martyr for free speech. Whether one agrees with him or not, Milo rep resents a fight for free speech on the internet. His silencing only draws more attention to his cause. He was banned right before the Republican National Convention where he had media in his face ready to call out Twitter for banning a gay conservative journalist. For those who support Milo and free speech, Twitter has made a huge mistake as this now opens many debates on what free speech on their platform entails. Though Twitter wanted to shut down the massive amount of racist tweets direct ed to Jones, they failed to act upon the Twitter accounts run by Islamic terrorists who are recruit ing for ISIS. They failed to act upon the accounts praising the deaths of police officers in Dallas. According to Milo, Twitter is not a place for con servatives. Unless Twitter acts to curb all of these sects of harassment and hate, then Milo is right. Winder resident Jessica Brown is the staff pho tographer for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at picsbyjessical@gmail.com. jessica brown Tiannopoulos posts