I was late stumbling into the Breakfast Club this morning because I didn’t want to get out of bed. It was warm and cozy and the weather is full of wet. The time that I normally get up passes by and Goddess rams her body into the bed. I’ve disrupted her routine and it is time for her morning belly rub she gets as I stumble from the bed to the shower.
Now that I think about it I seem to stumble a lot in the morning.
Backing out of the drive way I open the door and grab the “Savannah Morning Blues” at 5 miles per hour. At the Club everyone except Johnny O and Whitley are asleep. Whitley made the coffee this morning because nobody else seemed capable. This is probably a good thing as Whitley can now introduce coffee to his bicycle which is notorious for leaving him behind and getting my bicycle drunk.
I grab my coffee and open the paper. Then I sigh. Politics is the headline. Recently Savannah made racism front page news again in the hiring of a City Manager who is black by a black majority council with a vote split among racial lines. I know all of the players and shut the paper and handed it to Ryan so that he could do the crossword puzzle. Nothing else was worth reading.
“Same old…?” Johnny O asked and I nodded before he finished.
Most of my career I worked the political circuits…city, county, state and federal. They are all the same with the only real difference being the size and scope of the number of people who are impacted by their decisions. Politics have changed over the past few decades.
It used to be about balancing the budget, providing for the national defense, paving roads and keeping church separate from state. That’s pretty much all that we really need.
But politicians became pompous and starting believing that they know what’s best. So they started making rules which is the domain of religion so the separation of church and state went out of the window.
Let’s be honest. We got enough rules. The other day in paper I read that one of the members of the elect (a Biblical term) in the Georgia General Assembly introduced legislation that mandates children be kept in car seats until they are 8 years old!
Really?
Of course my first thought is that this member of the elect has serious personal investments in the manufacturing of car seats. You going to have to double the size of car seats and they will cost more and somebody’s profit margin is going to go up time.
And that seems to be what politics has become!
Oh I know, some good things happen because of a handful of good people in elected office but let’s again be honest. They’re the exception rather than the rule!
Members of the elect now define their constituents as the people who give them money and vote for them…not everybody that they represent. In other words, for the most part they represent people who look and think just like them. It doesn’t matter which party … Republican, Democrat or Tea! They’re all the same! A handful of individuals are different but they forever being voted down.
I have lots of stupid political stories in my 30 year career but one of my favorites occurred right here on Tybee Island (second only to “Camp Locklear” which also occurred on Tybee Island … you can search my old stuff to find it).
What is now the Rock House on the corner of Butler Avenue and Tybrisa Stree (which is between 15th and 17th but for some reason members of the elect thought it best that it no longer be 16th Street but Tybrisa …I should stop here as this is a silly enough example of what politicians do for a living …but I won’t).
Back then it was called “Kitten’s Korner” and one day my son Jeremy, my dear friend Bruce and I literally drove through the front door but that’s another story.
Kitten’s Korner had dancers and word got out that they were stripping after certain hour of night. Exposing nipples and stuff! So the entire Tybee Island City Council (all men at the time but on Tybee that really doesn’t matter) showed up to see them. This was a public investigation so the drinks were paid for with tax payer’s dollars. Everyone enjoyed the show but Kitten’s Korner was shut down a few weeks later for violation of moral codes (again the domain of the church not the government).
Then there was the rumor that there was prostitution occurring on Tybee Island. This was also discussed at a city council meeting. After heated debate, City Councilman Jack Youman uttered what is one of the all-time great political lines ever uttered.
“There ain’t no prostitution on Tybee. You can get for free!”
Ah…politics!
And the higher up the chain you go, the worse it gets.
I will not waste a day thinking about this stuff. I used to get paid to think about it but I don’t anymore. I want to do something productive. I’m going to dance in the rain.
