Tag: Tate Reeves

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trust in God Best Answer to Covid, Says Mississippi Governor

Governor Reeves talks as, among others, Commissioners Wright and Mills listen

If there is an ideal place in Shelby County for Republicans to feel at home and certain of their turf (both physical and psychological), it is surely the expansive country manse that Brent Taylor has built in suburban Eads and periodically offers as a haven for this or that visiting GOP dignity. Taylor, who has occupied several local governmental positions and is now chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission, has served many party dignitaries by offering them his home as the site for a fundraiser, as he did Thursday night. For Tate Reeves, governor of Mississippi.

Aside from the hospitality, the house itself — half of it a replica of the Governor’s Mansion of Texas, the other half a reconstruction of the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion, has its own charm.

7th District Congressman David Kustoff was an early speaker at the affair, making plain his disapproval of Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of troop evacuation from Afghanistan: “A catastrophe on Biden’s watch,” he called it. “No exit plan!”

The next GOP eminence up was Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, who told the crowd, “It’s been an interesting time to be the chief election officer in the state of Tennessee, or really the chief election officer anywhere in the country. What I want to show each and every one of you is that we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we, whenever we count the votes, you know, we count them once — no more,  no less.”

Eventually, following a gracious proclamation in his honor presented  by Shelby County Commissioners Mick Wright and Amber Mills, and read aloud by Mills, there was Governor Tate Reeves, and, though he used the word “solidarity” relative to the ongoing national emergency,  he wasted no time conveying his dispraise of Biden: “Since the election of this president, I don’t know what has been worse, the execution of the removal of our troops from Afghanistan, or the execution of our southern border. Fact is this president just doesn’t understand.”

Reeves warmed quickly to what sounded like an essential credo: “I don’t always know what the future holds. But I do know who holds the future. And when you are in an elected office, you place your confidence in our Heavenly Father, and you let him provide you the strength to make the hard decisions. And everything else is what it is.”

The governor applies this lesson of faith to the ongoing Covid crisis, which finds Mississippi among the most afflicted states, both in numbers of cases and in the percentage of citizens infected.

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle regarding Covid,” Reeves said. “You know, most of them are about Covid. And why does it seem like both in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South people are a little less — scared, shall we say. And my response is, when you believe that living on this Earth is but a blip on the screen, you don’t have to be so scared.”

Reeves would add: “Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions. And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that. And we should all do it. And I encourage everyone to do so.” 

After his formal remarks, the Governor would contend that the curve of new Covid cases in Mississippi has held steady for a week, and he reaffirmed his opposition to imposing state mandates for either masks or vaccines.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Blue Skies From Now On

Tuesday morning. I’m sitting on the deck, coffee at hand, dogs lying at my feet, alert for squirrel intruders. The sky is as blue as sky is allowed to be. Not a cloud, not a contrail. The trees are fully leafed, green as the first green. Flowers are flushed with color, birds are singing — cardinals, Carolina wrens, white-throated sparrows. The air is clear and sparkling. Spring is … magnificent.

I can’t help but think the reduced number of vehicles roaring around the city and the relative absence of jet planes overhead has given us a glimpse of what the world could be if we cleaned up our act and learned something from the current madness. What if we took climate change seriously? What if we reduced pollution in substantive ways? Not by banning air travel or cars, but by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. What if we learned to let more local goods and services be delivered to our door, instead of driving all over town for them? What if we gained some insight and perspective from this forced downtime we’re all living through?

I inhale deeply, grateful for the ability to do so, when so many are fighting to breathe — grateful I still have a job and a column to write. I say a quiet prayer for the sick and for those working to help them get better — and for those keeping our groceries stocked and our mail delivered and our city safe. I pray for the small businesses struggling to stay afloat. Including the one I work for.

The disease, this COVID-19, it seems far away on this gorgeous morning, but the numbers don’t lie: Around 45,000 people in this country have died; that’s nearly one-quarter of the deaths worldwide. The United States is ground zero, and much of the country hasn’t reached a peak or plateau of cases yet.

Still there is an understandable push to “reopen,” to get the economy back on track. On April 16th, President Trump laid out some guidelines for states to follow in order to restart their economies: “States should have seen a decline in COVID-19 cases for 14 days; reports of symptoms that might represent undiagnosed COVID-19 should have been in decline for the same period; and hospitals should have enough capacity to handle cases without operating in crisis mode and have a ‘robust testing program’ for health care workers.”

The president added that the guidelines “will allow governors to take a phased and deliberate approach to reopening their individual states. Governors will be empowered to tailor an approach that meets the diverse circumstances of their own states,” Trump said. “And some states will be able to open up sooner than others.”

Pretty sensible, actually. Good job, Mr. President.

But no. The very next morning, Trump tweeted out that residents of Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota should “LIBERATE” themselves, and encouraged protests against those states’ governors.

What the hell? Why would the president lay out specific guidelines for states, then encourage people to protest against them the very next day? It’s almost like Trump wants to get people stirred up, like he wants Americans to fight with each other, like he wants chaos and divisiveness. Surely that can’t be true. That’s like something Putin would do.

Or maybe he’s just nuts.

However we got it, there’s plenty of chaos to go around. The stock market is roller-coastering, mostly down. Oil prices have sunk to negative levels. (In a classic “Gift of the Magi” situation, gasoline prices are at rock bottom, but we can’t drive anywhere.) And now, encouraged by the president, bands of protestors, many carrying assault weapons (because the ‘Rona is scared of guns, y’all), are marching and horn-honking and megaphoning — demanding their rights to go get a haircut and eat at Olive Garden and reopen the country — now!

And you and I, my friend, as Southerners, live in the heart of “reopen country.” In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp has decreed that gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, beauty shops and salons, barbershops, body art studios, and more will be able to open this Friday, April 24th, despite that state’s still-surging infection rate.

In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves is lifting the stay-at-home decree and opening the state for business on April 27th. Reeves says he believes his state has hit a plateau. (I do not believe that word means what you think it means, Tater.)

And Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has announced that on May 1st, Tennessee businesses can begin to open up, with the exception of counties with their own health department, where the local officials will have jurisdiction. For those of us in Shelby County, that means our timetable for reopening will be controlled by our locally elected leaders. I’m cool with that.

But around the country and around our state, the human Darwinism that’s been ongoing for a few weeks will ramp up to a new level. Some businesses will open; some will open in a limited way; some will remain closed until their owners are convinced their employees and customers are entirely safe and comfortable being around others.

Some people will take the president at his word and LIBERATE themselves from wearing masks and social distancing (if they ever did either) and fearlessly go back to normal, the liberal hoax finally behind them. Others will keep an eye on the local case numbers, the rate of infections, the deaths — and the calendar — and will model their behavior accordingly.

Count me in the latter group.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Graball Landing

By the time you read this, you’ll probably know who the good citizens of Mississippi have elected as their next governor.

Judging from the commercials flooding my television screen in recent weeks, it will be either Democrat Jim Hood, the portly white guy with good hair who baits his own hook, loads his own gun, drives his own truck, and shoots bottles with his rifle. Or it will be Republican Tate Reeves, the slightly less-portly white guy with good hair who drives his own truck, shoots his own rifle, and says Hood is a liberal because he doesn’t support Donald Trump.

In Mississippi, even “liberal” politicians have to prove their truck-drivin’, gun shootin’, good-hair, white guy cred, though it doesn’t stop their opponents from insinuating they’re in a polyamorous relationship with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

I suppose it’s progress of a sort that Hood claims to be a “moderate” — which means he’ll probably lose in a state full of voters who’ve bought into the transformation of the Republican Party from the party of “conservative family values” and “law and order” to the party of “whatever Trump does is awesome.”

And I suppose it’s just coincidence that a group of white supremacists were caught filming themselves in front of the Emmett Till memorial sign at Graball Landing in Tallahatchie County last week.

Emmett Till, as you should know, was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. Money is home to the famous Tallahatchie Bridge, Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, and not much else. In 1955, Carolyn Bryant, wife of the now-deceased grocer Roy Bryant, accused Till of whistling at her, grabbing her by the waist, and “uttering obscenities.” As retribution for this alleged offense, which no one else witnessed, Roy and his half-brother, J.W. Millam, went to Emmett Till’s uncle’s house and kidnapped him. They then tied him up, pistol-whipped him, shot him, tied his body to a heavy cotton-gin fan, and threw him into the Tallahatchie River.

Not surprisingly, given the long-established rituals of the Jim Crow era, Till’s murderers were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury. It was a travesty of “justice,” though common at the time. It was made even more heinous by the admission of Carolyn Bryant in 2008 that she’d made it all up.

That same year, 2008, a marker was erected near the Tallahatchie River where Emmett Till’s body was recovered. The sign was soon vandalized and thrown into the water. Through the years, two more historical markers were erected. Both suffered similar fates; they were shot through with bullets, burned, and destroyed in one manner or another.

Last summer, several male Ole Miss students posted an image on social media of themselves posed with rifles near the bullet-riddled sign. Hotty Toddy, y’all.

It’s horrific to think about: An innocent 14-year-old boy was lynched — brutally murdered — 64 years ago, but a small, simple memorial to his brief life on this earth is somehow so offensive to some people that it cannot not be allowed to exist. In October, a new 500-pound, bulletproof marker, donated by a Brooklyn signmaker, was put in place at Graball Landing, along with security cameras and an alarm system.

Which brings us to last week, when a group of portly white men carrying the neo-Confederate flags of the League of the South gathered in front of the new sign and began making racist statements as they filmed themselves. They weren’t aware that they were also being filmed by the newly installed security camera. When the screeching alarm sounded, they scattered like cockroaches running from the light, back into their trucks — mission unaccomplished.

I don’t know if these assholes vote, but if they do, I’m pretty sure it won’t be for a “moderate.”

It’s possible Mississippi will surprise the world in Tuesday’s election and move away from the lockstep Trumpism that has infected so much of the country. It doesn’t hurt to hope, though the odds seem long. But the recurring events at Graball Landing make it clear we have a long way to go before the indelible stain of racism can be put behind us.