It’s been a busy news week, and one that made me roll my eyes more than once.
I’m sure that’s true for many of us. But we don’t usually have the buffet offerings we’ve had in recent days – everything from more Hamilton County commission and school board redistricting drama (the Democratic Party is throwing down the gauntlet) to TVA giving its CEO a tidy $2.6 million a year raise instead of reaching toward the sun with the kind of boldness for which the Tennessee Valley Authority was created.
At the same time, we witnessed more fallout over our Tennessee lawmakers and leaders trying to undo carefully crafted COVID-19 preventions, and Gov. Bill Lee invited more anti-vaxers to our state to serve in the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Meanwhile some of our more rabid Republican lawmakers are again attacking shelters for unaccompanied migrant children.
Along the way, we saw the Build Back Better vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to give President Joe Biden another win for leadership. Even moderate New York Times Columnist David Brooks saw it as another sign that Biden is succeeding.
Add to that, U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty is going on a rage about electric vehicle incentives. Spoiler alert, it’s only partly about incentives. It’s also about unions and about fossil fuel profits.
We also saw the U.S. House of Representatives appropriately censure one of their own for starring in a video enactment of murdering a fellow representative and assaulting the president. The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts asks “Are we not entertained?”
My answer is no. I’m not entertained. My eyes are tired. But I know, as you do, it’s important to our cities, counties, states and nation to stay up to date and involved.
We’ll roll our eyes, but we’ll also keep up the good work. And keep smiling.
– Pam Sohn, Times Opinion Editor, psohn@timesfreepress.com