A new book about the Jeffrey MacDonald case is sure to generate some keen interest here in North Carolina. Based on this review at Head Butler it sounds like a fascinating read.
A Wilderness of Error
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Category Archives: North Carolina
When in Rome
There's a backyard game that is very popular and involves two boards with holes cut in them and bean bags. The game requires tossing the beanbags into the holes and is played much like horseshoes. When I was growing up in Northern Virginia that game was called Bean Bag Toss, but here in North Carolina people call it, um, Cornhole.
Now, I've heard the term cornhole before, but it was always in reference to a decidedly unpleasant act perpetrated on certain parts of the anatomy found on a person's posterior side where the sun don't shine. And of course those of us who are of a certain age remember Beavis & Butthead's Cornholio.
Until moving to North Carolina I'd never once heard Bean Bag Toss called Cornhole, but one day at a picnic a seemingly normal guy sidled up to me and asked me if I'd "like to Cornhole." I was slightly taken aback, to say the least, and before slugging the guy I decided it would be prudent to find out exactly what he meant so I replied by saying, "Huh?" He figured I didn't hear him, and luckily when he repeated himself he added the verb "play" to his sentence and pointed at what I thought of as a Bean Bag Toss game set up in the yard. Greatly relieved I proceeded to play a smashing game of Bean Ba-, uh, Cornhole.
Years later I was still uncomfortable calling the game Cornhole and at work I'd insisted on referring to the game as Bean Bag Toss since I thought other people might make the same mistake I had. Slowly it dawned on me that I was probably the only person in the Piedmont Triad who had a problem with "Cornhole" so I caved and started calling it that at work functions.
*Side note: You'd be amazed how often people play Cornhole at work functions.*
Unfortunately while I was attending a trade show in Boston earlier this summer I referred to a bean bag game in someone's booth as Cornhole; if I'd had a camera I could show you how people must look at flashers.
BTW, I think this confusion is quickly becoming a thing of the past, especially since there's now an American Cornhole Organization. Still if you're at all unsure of your audience I'd highly recommend the eminently more accurate moniker of Bean Bag Toss.
Comedic Carolina
In a Slate piece written by Evan Smith Rackoff, a product of UNCG, we learn why North Carolina seems to be a breeding ground for comics, and the role that the School of the Arts plays in that development:
The Andy Griffith Show is not the only product of the early ’60s that has proven essential to the new wave of North Carolina comedy. In that same era, a Winston-Salem-born novelist, John Ehle, accepted a position on the staff of North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford. The two men devised a plan to create a new, publicly funded school, an arts conservatory, rooted in performance, rather than the academy, and taught by working artists. In 1963, the North Carolina School of the Arts was chartered. It’s a high school as well as an arts college, and it’s part of the 16 colleges in the UNC system. It’s one of the reasons that more North Carolina comedians have found their way out of the state in recent years, venturing away from small foothill towns and broadcasting their particular sensibilities to the wider world.
Among its graduates is the entire creative team behind Eastbound & Down, a show that, in Scott Jacobson’s words, is “North Carolina to the core.” Jody Hill would be pleased at the description, I think; he told me that when he and his fellow creators looked to the movies and television, “We really didn’t see the South we knew represented.” Kenny Powers, the central character of Eastbound & Down, is a modern-day Jack, of the Appalachian Jack Tales—which people have been retelling in North Carolina for centuries. Jack is a weak and shiftless character but clever and quick-witted. In the end he’s often taught an instructive lesson, though it doesn’t necessarily stick. This is part of the mystique of Kenny Powers. And like Griffith, Danny McBride knows not to play his character for laughs. He plays him with utter sincerity, and the laughs follow.
Hat tip to John Robinson, former editor of the Greensboro News & Record, who shared this on his excellent blog Media, Disrupted.
Armed and Witless
A gun rights group here in North Carolina is upset that a reporter with WRAL did a story about gun owners with concealed carry permits and put a searchable database of the owners' street locations online. Never mind the fact that its public information and anyone can get it from the state, or the fact that the database doesn't provide permit holders' names or address – it simply shows the street the permit holder lives on. So how did the organization react to what they feel is an invasion of its members' privacy rights? It published the name and address of the reporter AND the names of his wife and children:
When their effort to have the site taken down failed, Valone turned to his organization’s email alert network, urging more than 50,000 people on the list to deliver a message to Mark Binker, the multimedia investigative reporter who posted the information, his bosses and the station’s advertisers.
“In an apparent attempt to shame gun owners, some media outlets have a history of publishing the names of gun purchasers.” Valone said in one alert. “But that was many years ago, before the advent of the Internet. Things are now far more reciprocal. So let’s talk a bit about reporter Mark Binker, the apparent engineer of the piece to reveal concealed handgun permit-holders.”
Valone posted lots of information about Binker culled from websites and social media sites, including photos of the reporter’s wife and children.
Valone cautioned people not to harass Binker. “BE POLITE, DO NOT THREATEN, and CALL OR EMAIL ONLY ONCE!” the alert states with capital letters for emphasis.
Surely it's comforting to Binker that capital letters were used to emphasize the need to be polite to people who are armed, but are apparently too chicken to let the world know it. He's also probably comforted by this quote from the organization's leader:
Valone said, “GRNC has uniformly instructed respondents to be civil and nonthreatening to all WRAL representatives. With respect to reporter Mark Binker, however, I would note that if you shake the hornets’ nest, you should expect to get stung.”
The fact that these people have chosen a leader who appears to have the intellectual bandwidth of the average six year old is truly frightening.
App’s Distinguished Alum
Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, is an alum of Appalachian State University and has been recognized by the school with a Distinguished Alumnus Award. Here's a video the school produced for the occassion.
Bizarro Legislature
If you're a member of the NC House and make a mistake with your vote, and want to change it, you can do so only if changing your vote doesn't change the result. That sounds like something out of a Seinfeld episode.
The 10-year veteran lawmaker hit the wrong button on her desk. Carney punched the thumbnail-sized green button that says “AYE” just above the red one that says “NO.”
“Oh, my God,” she said on the floor. “It won’t let me change my vote.”
For all the maneuvering, arm-twisting and political horse-trading Republicans employed to get a handful of Democrats to void their party leader’s veto just before 11:30 p.m. Monday, it came down to a mistake.
“You ever see my golf game?” said state Sen. Bob Rucho, a bill sponsor, after the vote. “It’s based on luck, not on skill.”…
The vote took her by surprise. Republicans limited debate on the fracking legislation – Senate bill 820 – and called the vote. Green button to override. Red button to sustain.
Carney hit the button and looked to the board above the chamber that shows the results: 72 to 46. The color next to Carney’s name matched the Republicans.
She panicked. She hit a different button to turn on her microphone and called to the House speaker on the dais. He didn’t recognize her. So she rushed to the front, 20 steps from her seat in the eighth row down the red-carpeted middle aisle.
Carney asked the clerk to check her vote. Green. Override.
She then asked Tillis if she could change her vote. Tillis said House rules prevented it.
Lawmakers mistakenly vote all the time but they are not permitted to change a vote if it affects the outcome.
Is this really how we want our town/county/state/federal government to run? Wouldn't a time limit on changing your vote be adequate, whether or not it affects the outcome? Even Microsoft products ask you if you're sure you want to undelete something, so you have to ask yourself if we want to be governed by a system that's actually buggier than Word. Sometimes I think I've fallen asleep and been awakened in Bizarro World.
Lewisville and North Wilkesboro Acting Like Two NBA Teams
What if the rest of the world functioned like pro sports? Think you have a talent gap in marketing and have too much talent in accounting, then why not trade your accountant for a marketing whiz from the company down the street?
That question is prompted by the news that recently-retired Lewisville town manager Cecil Wood has agreed to become the interim town manager in North Wilkesboro. You see North Wilkesboro recently lost their town manager, Hank Perkins, when he resigned to become town manager of…Lewisville.
In truth this isn't that surprising. Cecil Wood used to be the Wilkes county manager and has some pretty deep roots there, but it's still kind of interesting to think of towns (or companies) trading talent the way pro teams do.
Voting in Churches
It was only a matter of time until some group questioned the North Carolina practice of allowing polling places in churches:
The Appignani Humanist Legal Center says it has "serious legal concerns" with the use of churches as polling places and says the state violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause that outlines the separation between church and state.
The group stops short of threatening legal action, but a spokesman says he hopes for a change in state policy.
A spokesman for the State Board of Elections said Monday it would be up to legislators to make any changes to polling locations, but that the use of churches is completely legal. Previous appellate court rulings have backed the practice of using places of worship.
The practice of voting in church is strange to someone who may be new to the area – in fact in all the places I lived in Northern Virginia I always voted in the nearest school. Upon moving to Lewisville I was stunned to find out my polling place was the church right down the street. Voting in church doesn't bother me, but I try to imagine how non-religious people feel about it by thinking about what it would be like to vote in a building being used for something I find mysterious or spooky like seances or girl talk. It would be off-putting to say the least.
With the current political environment in North Carolina this group's request will likely fall on deaf ears, but it's something state leaders will eventually have to consider as the state's demographics continue to shift away from its traditional "Bible-belt" roots.
Tolerance and Prosperity
Fred Wilson has a post titled Tolerance and Prosperity on his AVC blog that directly addresses one of the concerns with Amendment One here in North Carolina – the impact it might have on the state's economy:
I thought of my friend Bob Young's blog post about North Carolina's Amendment One, which seeks to ban same sex marriages…
Bob's argument is as much an economic one as a social one. Bob says:
This proposed amendment to our state constitution is specifically telling them we don’t want their friends and fellow Americans to come here. We need these talented, intelligent young Americans to come to North Carolina to help our technology industries succeed, but they have choices. They can go to states with mottos like “Live Free or Die” instead of states that attempt to tell them how to live their lives, such as this Amendment One does. And trust me, these bright young Americans can and will chose to join my competitors in Seattle, or San Jose, or New York.
North Carolina has enjoyed a vibrant tech/startup economy and Bob's Red Hat and Lulu.com are two of its best known successes.
The ultimate impact of Amendment One's passage is yet to be known, and probably won't be known for years to come. It will take time for the courts to sort things out after the inevitable lawsuits are filed, for our communities to determine exactly how many of their members have moved to greener pastures, and for companies in our increasingly complex industries to assess the impact on their ability to recruit a talented workforce.
Earlier in his post Fred referenced a discussion he and the partners at his firm had just had with economist Paul Romer, who referenced the impact William Penn's policy on religious liberty had on Pennsyvlania and the reaction of its neighboring colonies:
William Penn was a Quaker and when King Charles II gave him a large piece of his land holdings in America, Penn created the colony of Pennsylvania and grounded it in the notions of tolerance and religious freedom. Instead of limiting Pennsylvania to Quakers, they welcomed all comers. And the result was that Philadelphia became the fastest growing city in America with a vibrant economy and lifestyle.
The neighboring colonies, which were initially centered around a single religion, reacted to Pennsylvania's and Philadelphia's economic success by opening up their cultural norms and becoming more tolerant as well.
It has been pointed out that until the passage of Amendment One North Carolina was the exception in the Southeast. Now, in a reversal of William Penn's approach, North Carolina has decided to join the less tolerant crowd and in the process has given away a competitive advantage it had on its regional economic competition. That's not likely to lead to greater prosperity for North Carolinians, and that's just more salt in the wound that the amendment inflicts on its citizens.
Of course that's the opinion of one person who was among a significant minority of the voters yesterday (only 39% voted against the amendment). The voters of NC have spoken, and now all of us will have to live with the consequences, whatever those might be.
How Will Amendment One Affect Primary Voting?
If you live in North Carolina and aren't living in utter seclusion, you're aware that the "Marriage Amendment" is on the ballot in today's primary. Normally a primary held after the presidential nominees have alreay been determined would draw only the hard core party faithful, but because of the amendment there's been an extraordinary amount of attention paid to this year's primary and it will be interesting to see how that affects the results.
Some questions to ponder:
- In a state where 25% of the voters are independent how many of those unaffiliated voters will be drawn to the primaries because of the amendment?
- Democrats make up 43%, and Republicans 31%, of registered voters. If independents decide to participate more heavily in the Republican primaries will they affect the outcome of some close races for NC Senate/House, city councils, county commissions, etc.?
- With either the Democratic or Republican primaries will the participation of independents skew the votes towards more centrist candidates?
- If the independents participate more heavily in the Republican primary they will likely have a greater impact since there's a smaller pool of Republican voters. Assuming the independents will lean more towards the center will their participation hurt the more conservative candidates? If so, will the conservative Republicans' strategy of putting the Amendment on the primary ballot end up being viewed as a mistake in hindsight, even if it passes?
The 2008 primary was dramatic on the Democratic ticket because the presidential nomination was still up in the air at the time, but this year's primaries are dramatic all the way around due to the amendment. The debate about the direct consequences of the amendment has been well documented, but there hasn't been much exploration of the potential collateral damage the amendment might incur politically, and it will be fascinating to see how it shakes out.
Befuddled 