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Thursday, August 7, 2008
An arborist, attitudes and a bad bet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• A high school in Gonzales, Texas, requires inappropriately dressed students to don navy blue coveralls — prison jumpsuits of a sort. Some parents object. What’s wrong with public education? These three things, among others: 1) parents who object to efforts to maintain discipline; 2) students who disregard simple instructions; 3) parents who don’t parent before the child hits school.
• Financing a car for six years, as Chrysler proposes, appeals to those who buy based on the monthly payment. It’s the kind of thinking that prepares people for payday loans and subprime mortgages.
• Now that Hillary is out and has no use for them, Barack Obama — in the spirit of party unity — asks that all the delegates from Florida and Michigan be allowed to vote at the convention.
• At a federal reimbursement rate of 58.5 cents per mile, parents and the DeKalb school system both win by transporting their own children to new schools from those that are nonperforming, as parents of 2,300 request. Car pools. Vans. All are preferred to buying more under-filled buses in rush-hour traffic.
• Atlanta fired a popular arborist, arousing concern among some that the city will be too lax in enforcing tree ordinances. I love trees. But right now I’m all worried-up. Global warming. Whether we’re executing people who are too fat. Whether Paris Hilton has a better energy policy than Barack Obama. The arborist firing is on my list, though. It’s due for serious worry time at 9:16 a.m. on April 16, 2011.
• First Starbucks and now Whole Foods Market announces lower earnings and plans to curtail expansion. Can the trendy among us live another day? Yes, if we assure them that all’s well with IKEA and itsy-bitsy cars are here to stay.
• When Gwinnett’s minorities become the majority — minorities had reached 48.3 percent a year ago — can the world stop ascribing all the convenient “suburban” stereotypes to the place, specifically related to MARTA and to how Republicans think? Comparing attitudes about MARTA today, for example, to those of decades ago reflects ignorance of the changes that have taken place. It’s ignorant, too, to assume that all Republicans think alike because they represent districts usually identified as “suburban” or that Democrats do who represent “rural” areas.
• Like Jim Martin, I declare myself a friend of the working people. And if his guy wins the White House, my friends are going to get hosed by the tax man.
• Sure as shootin’ when state revenues dip, the casino-gambling/ horse-racing crowd emerges to push their agenda. The president of the Georgia-South Carolina Horse Racing Committee wants you to know he is very distressed about education funding in Georgia and the tax burden on old folks. Just guessing, but might he have a solution to propose? Coincidentally, yes. But no thanks. We’ll get by without giving poor people even more ways to lose the butter and egg money.
• See, these folks being held at Guantanamo are enemy combatants captured on the battlefield. They didn’t shop-lift at Wal-Mart. They’re not U.S. citizens with constitutional rights. When The Associated Press account notes in the first sentence of its report of the split verdict on Osama bin Laden’s driver that “A jury of six military officers … ” and at the start of the second paragraph that “The Pentagon-selected jury … ” one gets the distinct impression that the reporter is trying to tell us that the driver could not get a fair trial. But he did. Then we’re told that defense lawyers “feared a guilty verdict was inevitable” because “the tribunal system’s rules seemed designed to achieve convictions.” That observation was attributed to the driver’s “Pentagon-appointed attorney.”
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Do you suffer Obama fatigue?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Are you suffering Obama Fatigue?
It’s barely August and, according to the Pew Research Center for People & the Press 48 percent of the country thinks Obama is over-exposed. Among Republicans, it’s 67 percent; among Democrats, 34. Only 10 percent of Republicans think the same of John McCain — that we’re hearing too much about him — while 35 percent of Democrats think McCain’s over-exposed.
No question, Obama is the dominant attention-getter in the campaign so far. Many of the commentators and much of the campaign media is caught up in the narrative of the Obama story and of the possibility of being part of a historic moment. We can, at times, appear to be groupies. That’s what Republicans are picking up. That’s why two-thirds of them believe he’s over-exposed.
Clearly, their response is not an indication that they’re tired of reading and hearing about him. Much of my daily e-mail consists of forwarded or original commentary related to Obama and to the campaign.
On the whole, according to Pew, the media is providing coverage of the campaigns that generally tracks the level of public interest. Where there’s a disconnect is with the economy. About 30 percent of the poll participants say they are closely interested in stories related to the economy, and those are about 5 percent of news content.
Question of the day: Are you suffering Obama fatigue? What aspect of the campaign coverage do you think is over-exposed?
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