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COWARDLY CLOUN
My colleague across the way at the Banner-Herald, Jim
Thompson, the hardest working journalist in Athens, in a mas
terful editorial last week called our Congressman Paul Broun a
"coward" for declining to face Athens voters in a health care
"Town Meeting" here. I myself have called Broun "Congressman
Cloun," among other things. Jim and I are both irrelevant to
the congressman's career path, and we may be just plain wrong.
There is no such thing as cowardice in politics: only votes.
You get the votes by doing what the majority of your constitu
ents want you to do. If a clear majority of your constituents
want something, you want it, too. And if you and the majority
of your constituents want something, you can afford to ignore
those who don't want it. There's no such thing as a politi
cal coward, and there's nothing wrong with being a cloun. If
you've got the votes, you can be anything you want to be, and
you can hold your "Town Meetings" in the safest towns where
everybody agrees with you.
What's more, you can say the most outlandish things you
want to say, if everybody already agrees with you. You can
call the President of the United States a Hitler, a Nazi or a
Communist. You can say the President of the United States has
a blueprint to impose a dictatorship on our country. You can
say the President of the United States is planning to infect our
citizens with the swine flu as an excuse for imposing his dicta
torship. You can say anything you want to say. Everybody has
freedom of speech, of course, because we're Americans. A con
gressman with a safe majority just has a better quality freedom
of speech, like his health
insurance.
Does all that mean
you're a coward? Of
course not. It just means
that you've got the votes
in your pocket and that
you know what frightens those voters and what makes tnem
mad and what they're already mad about. Why, once you've got
that kind of majority, you can take the fact that your constitu
ents can't get health insurance and whip them into a frenzy
against the idea of the government doing anything at all to
help them get health insurance.
With a majority like that, you're golden. You are above both
cowardice and courage. You're up there with the great Eugene
Talmadge. OT Gene was governor of Georgia back there during
the first New Deal, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was
trying to save the economy and using the government to do
it. Gene saw right off that if the socialist government off there
in Washington D.C. came down here to Georgia with a lot of
money to spend, he might lose some of his complete political
control. He knew for a fact that the communist federal govern
ment would make people, including Gene's state government,
pay black folks the same wage as white folks, and just like 01'
Paul, 01' Gene knew what made his constituents mad, and he
knew how to play them like a pipe organ. Back then the whole
state of Georgia was divided up into the county unit system, so
that all the counties with sparse population got two votes and
Fulton County (Atlanta) got six county unit votes.
OT Gene was a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Georgia,
and he could see real quick that the most populous counties
among them couldn't add up enough votes to elect the dog
catcher in Taliaferro County, not that they had one. So, OT
Gene was fond of saying that he didn't want no votes from no
county where no streetcar ran. See? Like Atlanta and Athens
and Augusta 'n them. And OT Gene didn't need none of them
votes, because he had all those little bitty counties in his hip
pocket, and he could say anything he wanted to about the
federal government, and they ate it up. OT Gene could say his
Georgians did not need or want Social Security or minimum
wage or public works projects or none of that Yankeefied stuff.
He put a cow out to graze on the lawn at the governor's man
sion, and they loved that, too. OT Gene might be a cloun, but
he sure knew how to make them laugh and forget their troubles
caused by the boll weevil and the stock market crash and the
Depression. A cow! Ain't that funny!,
Our Congressman Cowardly Cloun is following right along in
OT Gene's footsteps, and we can call him anything we want,
'cause it's meaningless. He's got the votes, and we don't,
because we live in a county where a streetcar used to run.
Pete McCommons editor@flagpofe.com
There is no such thing
as cowardice in politics:
only votes.
THIS WEEK’S ISSUE:
NEWS & FEATURES
City Dope 5
Athens News and Views
As we deplore Paul Broun, Jr.’s phobia of Athens-Clarke County, let us turn to another week...
Holy Land Sojourn 11
Back in Athens, Remembering the Holy Land
The trip taught him more about politics, people and place than he’d counted on.
ARTS & EVENTS
Art Notes 13
Angels and Demons
"Lord Love You” is a sampling of 83 works from R. A. Miller's prolific output.
Film Notebook 16
News of Athens' Cinema Scene
The ICE series at Lamar Dodd continues with Werner Herzog’s Stosiek.
MUSIC
Bulls on Parade 19
Meet the Boys and Men of Pride Parade
We’ve gone all teenybopper over the band’s new album Dose.
The Tenant 21
Ex-Summerbirds Frontman Debuts New Band
Brad Register teams up with Andy LeMaster to pick up where his old band left off.
LETTERS 4
CITY DOPE 5
CITY PAGES 6
CAPITOL IMPACT 7
ATHENS RISING ...8
AVID BOOKSTORE.. 9
COMMENT 10
HOLY LAND SOJOURN 11
BOOK REVIEW 12
ART NOTES 13
MOVIE DOPE 14
MOVIE PICK 15
FILM NOTEBOOK 16
THREATS & PROMISES 17
RECORD REVIEWS 18
PRIDE PARADE 19
THE TENANT 21
UPSTART ROUNDUP 23
THE CALENDAR! 24
BULLETIN BOARD ..32
ART AROUND TOWN 32
COMICS 34
REALITY CHECK 35
CLASSIFIEDS 36
EVERYDAY PEOPLE 39
EOITOR l PUBLISHER Pete McCommons
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR l PUBLISHER Alicia Nickles
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Larry Tenner
MANA6ING EOITOR Christina Cotter
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John Huie, Coy King, Gordon Lamb, Bao Le-Huu, Dave Marr, Jim McHugh, Matt Pulver. Julia Reidy, John Seay,
Katherine Shell, Jeff Tobias, Jeff Webber, Orew Wheeler, Kevan Williams
CIRCULATION Charles Greenleaf, Harper Bridgers, Jimmy Courson, Swen Froemke, Anthony Gentilles
WEB DESIGNER Ian
ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Maggie Summers
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Erin Cork
EDITORIAL INTERN Fabian Poth ,
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COVER DESIGN by Kelly Ruberto
featuring a painting by Carlos Solis on
display at the Lyndon House Arts Center
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VOLUME 23
ISSUE NUMBER 36
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SEPTEMBER 9,2009 • FLAGP0LE.COM
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