Greeson: Political bickering hurts all efforts to solve our problems

Jay Greeson
Jay Greeson
We live in a pretty cool place. Heck, some places on the Interweb claim we're the best town ever.

Yay us.

But amid the high fives and mouse clicks that have punctuated our superiority, we have recently been rendered powerless to the process that has paralyzed a large chunk of our country.

Hello, politics, welcome back to the best town ever.

Our two biggest areas that need to be addressed - a violent gang problem and struggling schools - have been compounded by the political agendas of far too many of the folks elected to work to solve them.

Want to know when the political process has hijacked almost any effort? When the finger-pointing becomes more noticeable than the hand-raising, that's when.

And for several Chattanooga and Hamilton County leaders, that clock struck midnight about 10 days ago.

(And you know what may be even worse? Each political side of the fight against gangs and all sides of the school system mess will think this is about someone on the other side.)

I-75 connection?

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has recently come under fire for making inappropriate comments to a female staffer.

Bentley, you may recall, campaigned on a hard-core religious platform and vowed to correct the state's ills, be they political or moral.

Well, so much for that.

Maybe Bentley has passed through Bradley County and learned the behavior from some recent (un)civil servants in Cleveland.

That Bentley has denied having an affair with the woman who worked for him means he obviously did not have a lengthy stay in Bradley.

Presidential craziness

Want to know some characteristics that make this the strangest election process of our lifetime? Consider the following:

Business Insider has a hair surgeon discussion about what's wrong with The Donald's hair.

The discourse now between the GOP front-runners has switched to wives. What's next, "My dad can whip your dad" rhetoric?

The Democrats are picking between a socialist and someone who could be dancing between convention appearances and possible federal indictments this summer.

The Twitter hashtags have ranged from #Never Trump and #CruzSex Scandal - and those are from mainly GOP supporters. (Side question: While Trump is certainly polarizing, shouldn't the Republicans be coming up with #NeverHillary ideas first?)

This will be a political race that will be studied for generations.

In fact, if/when the aliens come - and if we've learned anything from the factual biopics Will Smith stars in such as "Concussion" and "Independence Day," the aliens are coming, it's just a matter of when (ask Randy Quaid) - they will look back at this election for the leader of the free world and think, "maybe we should eliminate the monkeys and dolphins first since that's the intelligent life forms on this planet."

Cheers Finley

TFP all-around sports ace David Paschall had the skinny from the very start on the news that Finley Stadium is adding beer to the west plaza for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football games.

We're in favor of this.

We're also in favor of the way Paul Smith and his folks are continuing to look for and find ways to make the Finley experience more enjoyable and attractive to potential fans.

Let's face it, there is a strong core - that strength is in passion more than numbers - of UTC football fans who would show up if they played Tuesday morning in 12-degree weather. That number likely is around 5,000.

For the Mocs, who have had better attendance in the recent championship run Russ Huesman and Co. have steered, to get noticeably more fans, they have to attract the casual fan and students.

Beer options certainly can help the appeal to those outside the core.

Also of note, most of the Mocs' home kickoffs next year will be right around 2 p.m., a time that either directly or inadvertently will slide between the noon kickoffs and the 3:30 kick of the biggest SEC game of the week.

So it goes, but score one for the home team with Tuesday's decision to add a beer option beyond the luxury boxes and the stadium club.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays on A2.

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