Jesse Helms has won another one!

Back in the 1980s, when I was just a young reporter in Lenoir, North Carolina, Jesse Helms had taken after Dan Rather. It was 1985 and Helms called on conservatives to buy CBS stock and in sufficient numbers to gain control of the company.
Helms, our notorious “Senator No,” was upset with Rather. The CBS news hound, if you remember, had been anchor for a few years after replacing Walter Cronkite and Helms wanted Rather fired. Rather had made a habit of confronting Republicans in Washington. If you remember, Rather famously, or infamously depending on your point of view, confronted Richard Nixon at a press conference with a belligerent response to a quip by Nixon. But Jesse’s efforts failed to get CBS brass to send Rather packing.
Well, that was funny at the time and I had some fun writing opinion columns supporting the freedom of the press and getting stinging letters to the editor back from Carter Wrenn, one of Jesse’s more right-wing minions in the Congressional Club. That was Helm’s keep me in Washington organization that searched for money across the nation and even, some have said, from some foreign donors.
Rather wasn’t fired, and neither was I. All seemed safe in the world of journalism. Even a guy as powerful as Jesse Helms couldn’t crash the First Amendment.
I have come to the conclusion, however, that Jesse Helms actually won that war. While I might have won a small skirmish in that great campaign to cripple the independent press in America, Helms and his minions, like Wrenn and Tom Ellis were able to keep Helms in power by defeating the most powerful Democrat of his generation, Jim Hunt. They were able to get Republicans, and not just country club Republicans like Jim Broyhill, elected to state office. They got conservative, really off the wall right-wing Republicans elected even at the expense of more moderate Republicans office holders. Helm’s cry for conservatives to buy stock and own a network and fire its top anchor proved farsighted.
What’s going on today in our world of media? Newspapers are sloughing off newsroom employees about as fast as an Ebola victim sheds blood. Our broadcast news organizations are weak shadows of the broadcast newsrooms of the past. And we did it to ourselves. One thing you could say about Jesse Helms, there was no hubris there. He always knew that it could end for him if he ever let his guard down. But we in the news media were only too content to sit on our powerful perches and believe the First Amendment was the only protection we needed from the likes of Jesse Helms, Carter Wrenn and Tom Ellis and the others who have spent the past two decades attacking the press at every opportunity.

Where is the sin?

Elliot Spitzer has been the top story this week. As the former governor
of New York twisted in a whirlwind of his own making, we discussed
almost every aspect of his life. We asked how a supposedly intelligent
man like Spitzer could think in this day and age he could practice adultery without it becoming public knowledge. I have chosen to use that word purposely.

Spitzer apparently used the services of high-priced prostitutes for years. He was a married man, so it seems adultery is the appropriate word to use. I don't recall hearing or reading that word in the press accounts this week. For me that is revealing. One might think that by only referring to Spitzer using prostitutes, we
avoid the issue of sin. That's understandable. We realize our media isn't in the sin business, and in fact seeks to avoid discussions of sin as that places them in a religious discussion. Sin is part of religion.

Christians and Jews both look at the Ten Commandments as important building blocks of human society. Thou shall not commit adultery is the seventh commandment. Thus, it is a sin, but our media chose not to refer to it as such, because we have lately tended to view it as a personal foible.

And that is at the heart of our conundrum. We don't want to talk about sin. To do so would force us to accept that we all sin, and Spitzer is someone who should be forgiven by us for it is up to our God to deal with Spitzer.
But we are not content to do that. Instead, we want to watch his
humiliation. And we want to punish him by forcing him, at the least, to
give up his position as governor.

As this week has passed, the Spitzer
story has tended to reveal much more about us than about him. In all
the TV footage I saw, one telling moment revealed so much about this
tragedy. When he was announcing his resignation, he made some reference
to leaving the public spotlight to work at restoring the trust of his
family. When he said that Spitzer's wife, Silda, with her sad and humiliated eyes looked up and swiveled to look into Spitzer's face. One wonders what she was thinking at that time. Perhaps she thought: "Now you worry about our trust?" Who knows? I think I saw a steely glint emerge from the pain, and if I were Elliot Spitzer, I'd be afraid of her.

46 Years: What a difference!

Walking by the theater in the student union today I noticed a double feature is being promoted: "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger." Now, I realize I'm really telling my age, but a peculiar thought swept through my mind. OK. I know, it's just a crazily misdirected brain fart, but it went through my mind.

"Dr. No" was released in 1962. That's at least 25 years before this crop of college students was born. Forty-six years ago for me. Wow! That's almost a lifetime. So, my mind immediately thought, if I go back 46 years before 1962, what was going on?

Well, for those of you who might be a little more challenged than I am mathematically, that takes us back to 1918.

That was a big year for the United States. World War I ended after the Doughboys whipped the Hun over there. But Americans were also just beginning to appreciate a somewhat new medium--the movies.

In 1918 we could watch the first film stud, Elmo Lincoln--Elmo! Lincoln!--you shout. Who the heck is that? Well, Elmo was our first movie Tarzan. The movie was made just four years after Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the first Tarzan book.

Other treats included Tom Mix in "A Child of the Prarie." Tom Mix was our first cowboy star. Mary Pickford starred in "Stella Maris" (I wonder if Stella was related to Roger?), and Gloria Swanson starred in "Shifting Sands."

Other than the Tarzan movie I can't tell you much about the movies above, except that Tom Mix created a genre, the Western, that dominated American movies for the next half century. Mary Pickford later married Douglas Fairbanks (Senior, not Junior) and started a movie studio with several of her fellow actors. She was our first SUPER STAR. And, Gloria Swanson, well her last film was "Airport 1975" which was released in 1974.

All of those movies in 1918 were silent films. So, those 92 years have seen us go from crude black and white films to color films, from silent movies to talkies, to Doby sound systems, to digital mastering and projection.

Now, you notice I have nothing to say about quality. Those films were state of the art for their day. The actors have survived in our memories because of the images we have of them from film. And what about "Dr. NO"? Well, that one started another successful genre, the spy story and in particular the James Bond series. I've lost track of how many men have played James Bond. But in that 1962 classic, it was Sean Connery. Let's see if I can remember: Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and now Daniel Craig. Oh, and let's not forget Barry Nelson who played the first James Bond in a TV version of "Casino Royale," or David Niven, Woody Allen and all the others who were Bond in the first movie version of "Casino Royale." It's enough to make your head spin, almost as much as trying to remember all the men who played Tarzan over the years, all basically playing the same character created by Elmo Lincoln in that 1918 film.

What is Alpha?

Do you know about Alpha?

That question was asked of me four years ago and my answer was, "Why no. What is it?"

It turned out it was a 10-week program designed to answer questions about christianity for people who either don't believe but have questions, or nominal believers who really don't know what to do with their lives.

That seemed to describe me at the time. I was raised since childhood in the Methodist church. It started for me with Bible School in the early 1950s at East Marion Methodist Church. The church had existed since the teens on Baldwin Avenue, and the chairs were so old they were still stamped with the old Methodist Episcopal South legend. Now that was before my time. And, just a few years later the Methodist church merged with the another denomination and that's where the "United" in the modern name for the denomination came from.

That's where my faith walk began, as it did for many children of the Baby Boom. Our parents had come through World War II and the Great Depression, so their faith had been tested and they had survived. Now it was time for them to start families and careers, and for most it was a time to go to the neighborhood church.

East Marion Methodist Church was located in the East Marion community, just outside the corporate limits of Marion, North Carolina. My mother would drag me, my sister, and my baby brother to church. My father would remain at home. He had been raised in some mountain church community, but after what he had seen in the war he wasn't too interested in going to church. I guess one might say he had lost his faith. I don't know what to think of that as he died just a short time later from a stroke. That was 1953. He was 49 years old (we think, there was always some mystery about when my Dad had actually been born), and I was 6 years old, getting ready to start school.

Life in the mill village took on a different look for us when my Dad died. This was still a time when textile companies owned the houses and land and the workers rented from the mill. In 1953, the company was selling the properties to the renters, but not to my mother. It was still a time when women were discriminated against, and as a result we had to move. That took us just a short distance away, to an area between the mill villages of East Marion and Clinchfield. East Marion was a J.P. Stevens factory and Clinchfield was Burlington Industries. But the area we moved into was called Stump Town.

Stump Town got its name from the clear-cutting that went on there during the 1920s, when all the trees were cut and only stumps were left. It was an area where union organizers and those who signed on to be union workers would gather to avoid being seen in the mill villages. East Marion was the scene in 1929 of one of the more notorius shootings at the mill gate. It actually resulted in the deaths of several workers and organizers, and the village was locked down by the National Guard send in by the governor to protect the mill owners and their property. It just happened to happen at the same time strikes were underway in Gastonia and other more notorius locations. But Stump Town became my home for the next decade as I grew up.

Church remained the place we went on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and at mid-week with Wednesday prayer meetings. Unlike today, we didn't feel unusual by going. Everyone, it seemed, went to church. The Methodist church was usually filled for Sunday School and church, and the Baptist church up the street was filled much more than we were. Most of my friends and school mates through the years went to one of four churches, either East Marion Methodist or Baptist, or Clinchfield Methodist or Baptist. It wasn't until I got to high school that I saw anyone who went to other churchs. Certainly the Episcopalians were viewed like strangers in a strange land. The Presbyterians were off by themselves and we didn't know many of them there were. It wasn't until years later that I found out my barber was a Presbyterian. Certainly we knew no one at First Baptist or Methodist. Those were townies and townies kind of looked down on the mill workers who enriched their bank accounts.

But I've kind of gotten away from my original question and train of thought. Alpha, devised in Great Britain and now utilized around the world to reconnect people with God, or to connect those who haven't a clue about God with Him, brought me back to the church. It hasn't answered all my questions, but it certainly has me asking and looking for answers. Before Alpha I wasn't asking. I certainly wasn't looking. But now I am.

Remembering six years of lost hope

Today has been slightly off kilter. It’s the sixth anniversary of 9-11, but I’ve not heard one person mention it today. My students have been in and out of the newspaper office, but no mention of this most somber of days. Do you suppose they have decided to not think about it? After all, the media has been covering it, but for them to think about something this tragic would only remind them of the danger we face in this 21^st century world of ours.

I wear a copper bracelet on my right wrist most days. This bracelet honors a young man, the son of friends from church and work, who has been in Iraq for more than a year. He’s with the 82^nd Airborne Division. He has followed his father into the Army. His dad was a career officer, but retired before this latest military adventure began. The combination of this bracelet, and my own memories of the sixties, the USMC, and personal feelings about duty, honor and that seemingly out-of-date belief that one owes his country something more than the taxes one complains of every April has me deeply concerned about where we as a nation are heading.

Yesterday and today, General David H. Petraeus and the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, have testified before Congress. The picture they paint is of a struggle we can still win. I don’t believe that. I believe we are looking for the same escape clause we sought in Vietnam, an honorable pause that would allow us to withdraw while claiming victory. We didn’t get it. The country collapsed on us and we got to watch CBS, ABC and NBC film of helicopters lifting off from the American Embassy compound in Saigon, and finally from the rooftop of the embassy as North Vietnamese units stood just outside the city ready to take over.

The soldiers and marines and airmen who fought that war for Uncle Sam took a lot of guff from citizens and officers who wanted to blame a soft country for the failure, while refusing to learn that most basic of lessons. Some wars just shouldn’t be fought. If you don’t have a dog in the fight, leave it alone. So, thirty years later we’re watching an unfolding horror story. Insurgents, I guess that’s the new name for guerillas, blow us up every day and we blow a part villages and towns in retaliation. It seems such a waste of money, material, men and lives.

The question of a draft swirls around the periphery of any discussion about Iraq, but the military doesn’t want to think about it. They point, and rightfully so, to the strength, honor and ability of the modern volunteer military. They are right to do so, but it is my contention they miss the point. Iraq, while demonstrating the vast superiority in military firepower and maneuver of our modern army and Marine Corps, demonstrates the failure of our small volunteer army to fight a major war.

I seem to remember that during the 1970s, when the concept of the volunteer army was being debated in Congress, it was part of the plan that the reserves and the National Guard were there to handle the short-term need for manpower until the nation could reactivate the draft and bring in the numbers necessary for fighting a war. In the first Gulf War, we escaped and the concept wasn’t tested too severely. In fact, Iraq’s inability to fight a modern war of maneuver hid the fault lines that are so evident today. After six years, and continuing to fight two wars while our leaders slavishly try to justify a third, we have a broken National Guard, wounded reserve system, and a so tightly wound regular army and Marine Corps that in just a few months it will begin to unravel. We are at the bottom of the barrel and unless we are able to entice even more volunteers to join the fight, our military will be broken.

It took the military a generation to overcome the failure of Vietnam. This one will be decades in recovery, if our enemies, and there are so many of them, are willing to give us time to recover. Strategically we are facing a catastrophe unless we stop this incessant “Stay the Course” and “Withdraw Now” argument. No one offers strategy. We only hear tactics. And of course, the tactics are too little and too late. We face a future in which all our institutions have failed us. Congress is too cowardly to confront an executive that is out of control. The executive acts more like a manic depressive, up or down, it doesn’t matter which, it’s crashing beyond repair. Our business world chases the almighty dollar while bankrupting the country. Our educational institutions seem to graduate students unwilling to sacrifice for a common good.

That’s what this anniversary of 9-11 brings to mind for me. I remember that morning when a young co-worker stuck her head in our conference room to tell our staff that the World Trade Center had been struck by an airplane. We rushed to TVs in time to watch a second plane hit, and less than an hour later collapse two buildings. It seemed so simple then. Mobilize a country that was ready to mobilize. That chance happens rarely for a president; however, instead of preparing for war, we were urged to go shopping. Is it any wonder we sit today watching a general present his views on the war, and no one believes him.

Bookends to a life in journalism

My career in journalism began with a small weekly newspaper in Red Springs, North Carolina. The town was only 16 miles from the seat of Robeson County, Lumberton, and 170 miles from my present home in Vilas, just outside Boone, North Carolina. Red Springs and Boone are at opposite ends of the state. Red Springs sits on the hot sandy soil of the coastal plain, while Boone sits high in the lush mountains at the other end of the state. Red Springs is where my life as a reporter began and where my marriage began. Red Springs also introduced me to the inequalities that exist.

In my daily trolling of news sites on the Web, I ran across this story in the Raleigh News and Observer (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/683703.html) yesterday. The story by Kristin Collins presented a tale of poverty, disease, crime and lost hopes for Robeson County. It has lost its industrial base, textiles, and its agricultural base, tobacco. Those economic mainstays haven’t been replaced. I don’t hear many people talk about retiring in Robeson County. It’s been more than 30 years since I last stopped in that small community. I imagine not much has changed since I lived there and covered a community of blacks, Indians, and whites, and wrote stories about police brutality, trapped horses, the Highland Games, held anywhere but the highlands, Robeson Country Day School, Mark Twain impersonators, and a slew of local characters that kept my wife and me chuckling the two years we lived there.

Watauga County, my present home, is like most of Western North Carolina. It has become a beacon for anyone with the money to build a second home, or a retirement villa. The number of million-dollar mansions, and one would have to use that term to describe these personal flattery palaces, has increased exponentially over the past two decades. True locals, those born in this mountain county, are a dying breed, being replaced by people with funny names from South Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama. The one determinate of status has become the size of the pocketbook and the ability to afford to pay cash for houses that cost more than I’ve made in my entire working career.

We refer to our mountains as the App-a-latch-un mountains. We never use the term Appalachia, you know the term, the one that came into vogue when East Coast liberals in the 60s discovered poverty existed in the mountain regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Don’t be fooled, we still have the poverty, we just don’t see it because we have grown blind to it. You could spit from the front porch of some of these mansions I wrote of and hit poverty. But few seem to care, and those that do are often looked upon as poor throwbacks to an earlier era when we were supposed to care for our fellow man rather than view him as a competitor for the dollars in our pockets.

I would think we need a dialogue to take place. Unfortunately, the story about Robeson County probably went unread by the vast majority of News and Observer readers yesterday. I don’t expect the dialogue to begin, as the issue will be wrapped around the various presidential campaigns underway or soon to be underway. I recall, as a young high school student, watching film on the nightly news of Lyndon Johnson shaking hands with people living in Appalachia—people who probably didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Recently we had Hillary Clinton visit the High Country, but she wasn’t here to seek out poor people and shake their hands and promise to work on their issues. Rather, she was here to greet and grin with people with the money necessary to pay for an expensive lunch and make donations to her campaign. It would be nice if our politicians once again had to shake the hands of real people with problems, rather than those with the bucks to buy influence. And, before you take this wrong, it’s just as true for the other political party.

If the title of this blog, Saturday Morning Breakfast Club, has you wondering about its origins, you’re probably as confused as I am. I attend a Saturday morning Bible study for men at Boone United Methodist Church and that has become my Saturday Morning Breakfast Club. I don’t want to get too metaphysical or anything, but this group of men has become very special and our weekly gathering has us talking about our lives and problems, much more deeply than any other group of friends that I have. In fact, most of those other groups would probably run for the hills if I brought up some of these topics. So, I’m hoping to be as honest with this blog as my Saturday morning friends are.