Jay GreesonHappy birthday, America. Yes, I'm late, but I've been out of town.
One of the bedrocks of the freedom that makes us great is what you are reading today.
This is not about back-slapping. This is about being proud of my colleagues. I hope you took time to read the profiles on the major candidates running for Tennessee governor and U.S. Senate as well as the five-part "Issues and Answers" series produced by the Tennessee Press Association that gave these candidates even more opportunity to outline their positions on everything from health care and public education to the opioid crisis.
Being informed about the candidates - who they are, what they believe, what they propose - cannot be overstated. Especially now, in these times when the mantra of "fake news" is a convenient cover for anyone who does not like this story or that one.
Hopefully you kept those candidate profiles and will refer back to them as you are flooded with political ads and online messages. And look for a 48-page Voter Guide in Sunday's paper that offers surveys of 65 candidates.
And here's one more thing: Ask anyone - the president, your pastor or your cousin Paul - who uses the "fake news" cop-out to provide you with real examples of fake news.
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Speaking of journalism
More reasons that reporting - from newspapers, TV stations, online outlets or radio stations - is forever important come from TFP staff writer Tyler Jett's continued work on the Walker County, Georgia school board public comment policy fiasco.
According to court papers and Jett's details, Damon Raines, the Walker County Schools superintendent, is continuing some sort of cloak-and-dagger buffoonery with the age-old and completely nonsensical response that translates to, "We've done it this way for 30 years." Ask Blockbuster how that that turned out. Or folks who sold albums. Or doctors using leeches to cure illness. Or, well, you get the idea.
Now that he lost the most recent appeal - and Raines said he was going to release a statement on Friday, and here's betting he's going to try to find a way to blame or deflect or "fake news" his way out of this one - Raines and his lawyers are saying the other side spent too much time on this case.
Really? That's the best you got, now that the chips fell, and you realize that you and your strapped school system are on the hook for more than a quarter of a million dollars in opposing legal fees?
And please keep that "insurance will cover it" mumbo-jumbo to yourself, Damon. Everyone knows how insurance works. If you call on them to pay for those fees, do you really expect us to believe the insurance costs for your district are not going to go up to cover that cost? Seriously?
Maybe you should just keep pushing that "That's how it was in the good ol' days" line of thinking. And folks in and around Chattanooga wonder why there are waiting lists at almost every private school in town.
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Sad times
It's impossible to ignore the disconnect between the political extremes and how that disconnect completely ignores everything decent and human that we hope is in each of us.
Take for example the story of the 30-year-old man ripping a "Make America Great Again" hat off the head of a San Antonio teenager and throwing a soft drink in the boy's face.
I refuse to do the "What if " corollary, because that is fruitless.
Kino Jimenez, 30, was taken into custody for the incident, according to the San Antonio News Express, and allegedly told the teenager, "You ain't supporting [bleep] [N-word]."
Hunter Richard, the 16-year-old, has since posted that he had a great Fourth of July despite the incident and offered this to local San Antonio news station WOAI: "I support my president, and if you don't, let's have a conversation about it instead of ripping my hat off. I just think a conversation about politics is more productive for the entire whole rather than taking my hat and yelling subjective words to me."
Tell me again who is the high schooler and who is the adult?
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343.