Greg Cravens
About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “Have Yourselves an Angry Little Christmas” …
George Bailey saved the town of Bedford Falls by being born in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. I have faith that many voters born in America will save this country from the loose cannon that is Donald Trump.
Every year, since I was 10, I have watched It’s a Wonderful Life during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I love the main characters, played by Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, but this year, the mean-spirited, greedy character, Henry Potter (the grouchy man in the wheelchair), jumped out in my mind as comparable to Trump.
As the story goes, a second-class angel working to become a first-class angel with wings reveals to George Bailey that the town Bedford Falls would have become Pottersville (named after Potter) if George had not been born. Pottersville was full of ruined lives and self-indulgent people. Just think, if by some freak of serendipity Donald Trump did become the President of the United States, his over-inflated ego might entertain the idea of changing the name of the USA to the U.S. of Trump’s World. Casinos and racism would rule the day.
Alfred Waddell
About Bianca Phillips’ cover story on Evan Hurst, “The Snarkiest Man in Memphis” …
I love this man! I first met him when he was a kid selling Cutco knives. He dropped into my Midtown business (cold call) and ended up selling me a thing or two to add to my Cutco collection.
I love his brain and his writing. It’s refreshing to read something on point and funny at the same time. He keeps me laughing! Great article. And congrats, Evan!
Theresa Andreuccetti
About Jackson Baker’s Politics column …
As much as I respect Jackson Baker, I think he has missed the story in Richard Holden’s resignation from the Shelby County Election Commission. I take personal umbrage at the statement, “There often seemed to be a good deal of overreach by Holden’s critics, and no doubt partisan motives played a role in his tribulations, as did a general need to find a scapegoat for problems and circumstances beyond the province of a single individual.”
I am a Democratic partisan, but the problems I have been involved with with the SCEC are basic voter rights issues regardless of party affiliation. Nor has there been overreach. Baker is correct in that these errors are probably beyond a single individual.
But that begs the point. That means the other individuals responsible for the abysmal performance of the SCEC are still in place. The media has not reported on the serious questions arising out of the October 18th election. We now have the Democratic commissioners saying they do not trust the results put out by the SCEC. This gives the lie to the contention that all is well because both parties watch each other. The Democratic Party representatives have said they are excluded from the process and that basically the results represent the unopposed actions of the three Republicans.
In the meantime, the SCEC investigates nothing. They have yet to explain the 2012 debacle nor the 2015 mishap. Most seriously, they have failed to address the repeated failures of their systems to detect errors before machines go out live to the voters. This failure literally means that no member of the SCEC can guarantee that we have used legitimate ballots in the last several elections.
This is not an overreach. It is the federal standard of care for election administration. We also do not run mock elections prior to the election to test the vote. Nor do they run parallel testing during elections. And they do no post-election audits. In short, we have almost no safeguards that protect the integrity of the ballot or the results. And that does not even get into the fraud involved with certifying these election machines by the state.
I intend to stay around and observe the current gang that couldn’t shoot straight — the Republican members of the SCEC.
Joseph Weinberg