About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 2000)
Remember all those RV's that piled into the lot from years past with grills smoking, beer flowing and people laughing? The folk' who have been there for 20 years that show up on Thursday night to ensure that they get a parking spot? Those DEDICATED to UGA and it's success? HAH! Not any more baby. Not unless you've got SHOO to help support "the cause." Come on... can anybody really tell me how in the hell this benefits anybody or anything but UGA's wallet? Oh yeah, I suppose it benefits those folks surrounding the stadium too. Let me tell you, there was NO shortage of S25 parking spots this weekend. In the same places, mind you, that were no more than S10 last yeai... nell some were even free at that point. Not any more. So to all those who might think about going to a UGA home game this year, take this all into account. Be patient, have lots of money to throw away, swallow your pride, and bend over and take one for the team. See you all on September 23 for the New Mexico State game. Bent over, greased and begging for more... Bryan Miller Atlanta DOGGONE GOOD PLAN On behalf of Athens residents who don't care much for UGA football, thanks tc the university and city-county officials who implemented and enforced the saner tailgating and parking plan this past weekend. It was still a pain in the ass to leave my house on Saturday, but it was much less a pain in the ass than usual. The permanent residents shouldn’t feel like prisoners in their own 'hoods just because it's a game day. As for the various tailgaters' complaints regarding the new plan, perhaps tailgaters could, God forbid, communicate with each other before swarming into Athens for the weekend and, say, decide with their friends on a meeting place. Wow! An actual reason to have those cell phone attached to their hips! Such forethought might help ease the emotional and psychological scarring they must endure as a result of the horribly oppres sive new plan. Kathryn Morgan Athens SAVE THE TRAIL The Appalachian Trail, which starts just 70 miles west of Athens, is in serious peril. Some greedy businessmen in Maine want to convert a 3.5 mile section of the world famous nature trek into a ski lodge. This, in effect, would cut off the passage and destroy the ancient land- shed surrounding Saddleback Ridge in an area Maine voters and lawmakers ought to be pro tecting. The Appalachian Trial Conference(AIC) has raised the funds to purchase and protect all but this one section of the 2,172 mile-long trail. An intense letter writing campaign has been started to convince our national government that enough Americans value the trail, and that Saddleback Ridge (the endangered area) is worthy of federal protection. If saving this area is worth 10 minutes of your time, please check out "Save Saddleback Ridge" on "trailplace.com" for a quick and easy guide on writing your own statement. Concerned AT hiker & downtown bartender... Nate 0. Athens PUBLISHER'} ROTES . by PETE McCOMMONS IS GOD A REPUBLICAN? Before the current political campaign goes any further, somebody should try to determine for sure whether G^d is a Republican. One would think, fiom the ways He's always been described to us, that God certainly is a Republican. At the same time this should not be taken as an admission that every' tinhorn tele vangelist preacher-politician who wraps himself in God, the flag and the Republican Party is on the right track. God's Republicanism goes a lot deeper than that. He is not the mascot of some movement; He is the Prime Mover. You just naturally tend to associate God with things like big earth-moving projects, migrations of peoples, the rearrangement cf oceans, plagues, fire and brimstone, floods, mighty battles, divine retribution — all the stuff that would just make a liberal wince. Since it has been clearly estab lished that Republicans are con servative and Democrats are lib eral, God by definition has got to be a Republican. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,'' and there's no way you can imagine Heaven running on an unbalanced budget, not, at least, in the prevailing, official Disney World vision of heaven. There's little wonder, then, that many voters in the Bible Belt have seen the political light and switched from Democrat to Republican. What more would it take tc put the couiage to change into politicians, too, than the assurance that it's God’s will — and he's got the votes. Given tins rationale, one can easily see, too, why conseivotive Republicans look upon Democrats as tools of the Devil. If you're not on the side of the Lord, who else can you be working for? And, to tell the tiuth, liberals carry a pietty heavy burden of guilt as the price of then apostasy, cut off as they are fiom ;he cer tainty that they aie right which is the leward of CITY PAGES the Republican. If it is tine, then, that deep down in some fundamental sense we must acknowledge that God is a Republican, how car. anyone justify' affiliation with any party but the GOP — God's Own Party? Maybe because, by tire same logic, Jesus has got to be a Democrat. Think about it. If tiie conservative Republicans are modeled after a stein, avenging God, by the same token liberal Democrats have a lot in common with a loving and understanding Jesus. "Fathei forgive them for they know not what they do." "Suffer the little children to come unto me." "Love thy neighbor as thy self." This is the very model of what has come to be called liberalism. If Democrats are indeed liberals, then surely Christians cannot help but be Democrats. This is not some cheap cam paign trick to make Teddy Kennedy look good. It's a funda mental attempt to come to grips with the religious paradigms that govern our thinking. Would Jesus be more concerned with an anti missile defense system or with pro viding health care for the working poor? Would Jesus balance the budget on the backs of the hungry? Maybe the truth is that those brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition cannot help but be influenced by both standards as they stand in line for the voting booth. If God is a Republican and Jesus is a Democrat, then voters must still confront the questions of right and wrong and translate that search into a vote and a pobtical stance. Anyway, where does all this leave Ralph Nader? This coIl "v; was written four years ago as a commentary on WUOG-FM and was later published in Flagpole. It has been slightly updated. SEPTEMBER 13, 200C FLAGPOLE □
