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BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 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
Here’s a lesson for politicians
Quality photos
vital for any
newspaper
The feedback this paper receives is wide
and varied.
We hear compliments. We receive com
plaints. Some people have told me they
like certain aspects of this publication but
not others.
One area in
which we have
always received
positive feedback
has been our pho
tography sports
and news alike.
We have been
fortunate since our
first issue way back
in October 2008 to
have Jessica Brown
handling our pho
tographic duties.
She was just a high
school student then
but her work was an immediate asset for
us.
Almost nine years in, Jessica continues
to be with us and I can only hope that will
continue for a long time. She is currently
a college student and continues to take
photos for us around her busy schedule of
school and other non-paper activities.
An email was sent earlier this week to
co-publisher Mike Buffington concerning
the high quality of Jessica’s photos in our
annual high school football preview sec
tion. Jessica works hard to get great feature
pictures of local players and coaches and
I always enjoy seeing her photography
talent on display with our cover design of
that section each August.
Even though I am on the writing side
of things, I have always understood the
importance of quality pictures in a newspa
per. The reason is simple. A newspaper is
a visual item. You hold it in your hands and
look at it. Great pictures make a newspaper
great. Bad pictures have the exact opposite
impact, of course.
Her feature photo work, including a great
one on page 1A this week from a scene in
Auburn, is something which has made one
of the best papers in our division since we
began.
Often working alongside her, I have seen
Jessica cover events when she was sick
or tired or had just finished a long day
of school. This past Friday she ventured
to Athens for the Winder-Barrow High
School football debut for the 2016 season.
She made the trip despite troubling-looking
weather that arrived late in the afternoon
and continued to be a threat throughout
the game. When her pictures arrive in my
email, I enjoy looking through them as I
always do knowing we have such a talent
in our ranks.
Her pictures have often pushed this
paper’s sports section to first place in its
division and she has won national awards
for her work that has been printed in
this paper. Believe me, winning national
awards in any category is tough to do but
Jessica has done just that along with too
many to count from the Georgia Press
Association and Georgia Sports Writers
Association. Her awards line the walls in
all areas of our office in Winder.
It’s true anyone can hold a camera and
press a button. However, if you think that’s
all it takes to have quality photographs you
are mistaken. Try shooting at night at a
football game with it raining or try getting a
great action picture from a basketball game
that is in focus from inside a dark gym.
With Jessica, I never have to worry about
any of that.
As this paper moves on into a new fall
sports season and something of a new
era, we still have Jessica Brown handling
our photography work (her column also
appears on this page). For anyone inter
ested in obtaining some of the pictures
you see printed here, email Jessica at pics-
byjessical @gmail.com.
• • •
On the political front, it appears the
Green Party will not be on the Georgia
presidential ballot in November. Word
from the Secretary of State’s office is that
the party’s ballot access drive was short
of the necessary signatures to gain a place
on the ballot. The Constitution Party of
Georgia also fell short in its attempt.
Less choices on the ballot is never a
good thing for voters or our country. We
should welcome more candidates, more
choices and more non-partisianship from
our Secretary of State. Personally, I would
not have voted for either the Green Party
candidate or the Constitution Party nom
inee. However, they both deserve equal
treatment on the ballot.
Winder resident Chris Bridges is editor
of the Barrow News-Journal. You can
reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.
com.
It’s generally considered impolite to
take pleasure in other people’s mis
fortunes, but sometimes you have to
make an exception.
One such exception could be grant
ed in the case of Tim Lee, the chair
man of the Cobb County Commission
for the past six years.
I have seen quite a few arro
gant, egotistical politicians in
my years of reporting, but Lee
could very well be the most
pig-headed of them all.
You may remember that three
years ago, Lee secretly negotiat
ed a deal in which he gave the
owners of the Atlanta Braves
$400 million in public funds to
persuade them to build a new
stadium in Cobb County. His
colleagues on the commission
were kept in the dark through
out these negotiations.
That money belonged to the Cobb
taxpayers, but neither the people nor
their representatives on the county
commission had any say in the matter.
Lee presented his deal to the county
commission and demanded that they
approve it quickly without having an
extended discussion. The commis
sioners had little time to study the
matter and citizens had no chance to
vote on the proposal in a referendum.
At the lone commission meeting
where the stadium deal was on the
agenda, Lee treated critics of the trans
action with such undisguised con
tempt you would have thought they
were a bunch of terrorists.
When some local residents tried to
express their opposition to the pro
posal, Lee not only refused to let them
speak, he ordered police officers to
remove them from the meeting.
At that point, there was no danger
that Lee’s secret stadium deal was
going to be stopped. A smart politi
cian would have had the decency to
allow 15 minutes for critics to have
their say before the commission rub-
berstamped the proposal. But it wasn’t
enough for Lee to win — he had to rub
his opponents’ noses in the dirt while
doing it.
You would look a long time before
finding an elected official who treated
his constituents so shamefully. If ever
there was a politician who deserved
to be booted out of office, it was Lee.
Earlier this year, Lee geared up for
a reelection race against one of the
candidates he had easily defeated in
2012, a retired Marine officer named
Mike Boyce.
Lee had lots of campaign cash and
friends in the business community
who appreciated how he poured pub
lic money into a stadium project for
private interests. I’m sure Lee thought
that Cobb residents would be so
grateful for his bringing in the Atlanta
Braves that they would overwhelming-
Write a Letter to the Editor:
Let us know your thoughts: Send
Letters to Editor, The Barrow
News-Journal, 77 E. May Street,
Winder, Ga. 30680. Letters can also
be emailed to cbridges@barrowjour-
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tor” in the subject line. Please include
the city of the writer.
ly reelect him.
The voters, as it turned out, had
other ideas.
In the Republican primary, Boyce
worked hard to turn out his support
ers, who were mindful of Lee’s lack of
transparency in finagling that stadium
deal. Lee finished second in the pri
mary and it wasn’t even
a close second — he
had only 40 percent of
the vote. Boyce nearly
won the race outright
with close to 50 percent
support.
It was a shocking
result for a politician
who was used to snap
ping his fingers and
producing $400 million
in tax money for his
favorite corporate exec
utives. Lee tried to make up the differ
ence in the runoff, but the embarrass
ment was even worse. He attracted
only 36 percent of the vote in the
runoff as Boyce crushed him.
It’s clear that Cobb voters were eager
to kick Lee off the commission. In
most Georgia elections, voter turnout
decreases dramatically from the pri
mary to the runoff. That didn’t happen
here, as there were actually more
ballots cast in the runoff than in the
primary. Cobb residents wanted to
make sure Lee got the message.
There’s a lesson to be learned from
all this: dollars don’t vote, people do.
The lesson, unfortunately, is lost on
some politicians. On the night of the
runoff, when it was clear that voters
had rejected him, Lee told a local
reporter: “I’ve been asked many times
tonight if I would have done anything
differently, and the answer is no.”
The lesson is for voters. If you really
don’t like what fatheaded politicians
are doing, you do have a way to pay
them back at the ballot box — but it
only works if you make the effort to
vote.
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.
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJournal.com
Mike Buffington
Co-Publisher
Scott Buffington
Co-Publisher
Chris Bridges
Editor
Jessica Brown
Photographer
Susan Treadwell
Advertising
Sharon Hoaan
Office & Reoorter
Also covering beats are Alex Pace and Scott Thompson
POSTMASTER:
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The Barrow News-Journal
77 East May Street
Winder, Georgia 30680
Published 52 times per year by
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Email: chris@mainstreetnews.com
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I have R.A.,
sorry, not sorry
I recently read a wonderful article written
by a woman with a chronic illness in which
she expressed why she would not apologize
for having fun. Her words resonated with me
because for the past five years I’ve struggled
with allowing myself to
judgment.
It’s incredibly frustrat
ing to have an invisi
ble illness strapped on
your back all day every
day. There is no relief.
Sometimes the weight of
it is crushing. No one else
around you can see the
pain you’re carrying on
your shoulders because
you don’t look sick. If you
had your leg in a cast,
arm in a sling or green
mucus gushing from your
nose, it’d be easy. Everyone can see the thing
that’s hurting, and they sympathize with what
they can see.
We, on the other hand, are more difficult
to understand. Even after explanation, we
get the judgmental and questioning looks.
At times, we’re even accused of faking our
illness and we feel compelled to apologize
for our condition.
In all honesty, why do we constantly feel
the need to apologize or over-explain our
state of health? It should be enough to state
“I have a chronic/invisible illness” and move
on with our lives. We have little control over
how our bodies feel day to day. It’s stressful
enough living in our skin 24/7 so why are we
just adding more guilt and frustration to our
already frustrating situation?
I went to the gym with a good friend the
other day because I really felt like I could
start doing more exercise. He tried to show
me various weight lifting exercises, and I kept
failing. My wrists and elbows were too weak
to hold the weights let alone bend the joints
appropriately. He told me to straighten out
my arm, and it was as straight as it could go.
I felt embarrassed and insecure because I
couldn’t do even the simplest of workouts,
and every time I couldn’t do something
I immediately said “I’m sorry, it’s just my
joints...”
He probably saw I was getting more and
more frustrated with myself because I saw
myself as a failure and I felt that I had to
apologize for my shortcomings. He said, “It’s
cool. I understand. We’ll just find something
that you’re good at and stick with that.”
That simple reassurance made me realize
that, sure there are things I won’t be able to
do for awhile, but I can find something that
works for me. More importantly, I realized
how silly it sounded to apologize for some
thing I had no control over. I can’t control the
fact that I have arthritis. I shouldn’t apologize
for it.
I try to make sense of why we are com
pelled to apologize for our illnesses. Maybe
it’s the lack of validation and support from
our fellow man. Perhaps we feel a need
to apologize because we are somehow an
inconvenience or our invisible pain is invalid.
We shouldn’t apologize and others shouldn’t
make us feel like we have to.
The author of the article went on to say
she felt the need to apologize for having fun
despite her illness because others made her
feel like she was a fraud. Because she was
having fun in her life, that somehow meant
she wasn’t sick. She was “faking” her illness
because she tries to have joy in her life. It
hurts me that we are accused of faking our
pain because we don’t act miserable all of
the time.
It’s a no-win situation. Either we talk con
stantly of our daily pain and apologize for
“complaining” nonstop or we try to make
the best of a bad (and lifelong) situation by
having fun every once in awhile and have to
apologize for not acting sick.
To my fellow chronic/invisible illness war
riors, you do not need to apologize for a
disease you never asked for nor one you can
control. You do not need to apologize for
feeling ill and explaining your pain to others.
You do not need to apologize for the things
you cannot do. You do not need to apologize
for making the best of your situation by hav
ing some fun.
We can’t walk around being sick and miser
able all the time. We’re allowed to go out and
live our lives. I won’t be apologizing for my
arthritis. I never asked to have this disease
for the rest of my life, and I won’t apologize
for living my life. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis;
sorry, not sorry.
Winder resident Jessica Brown is the staff
photographer for the Barrow News-Journal.
You can reach her at picsbyjessica 1 @gmail.
com.
have fun without