By David Glenn Cox
I lived more than twenty years of my life in Alabama and so view the recent events in Tennessee with suspicion. Tennessee can’t beat the Crimson Tide in football not even on a good day! They don’t have Alabama’s sugar white sandy beaches (What we like to call Yankee fryers) or a sportsman’s paradise like the Gulf of Mexico. They don’t even have a battleship, so one can see the germ of envy stirring from afar. For generations Alabama has led the nation in ridiculous posturing and political self-immolation. Why one could say if Fort Sumpter had been in Mobile Bay, we would hold the patent outright. So, we are too guarded and too zealous of our position not to take offense at the cheap imitation transistor radio politics coming from our neighbors to the North.
Whiskey, guitar pickers and Rocky top, that is their full inventory. And there is a lot of empty spaces to fill in between, though admittedly, two out of three ain’t bad. First, the Tennessee legislature passed a Transphobic law mandating signs for which bathroom a trans person may legally use in Tennessee. Don’t think you’re fooling anyone south of Mount Eagle buddy. You’re gunning for our job and as a former citizen of the great state of Alabama I resent the intrusion. Find your own bailiwick, brew more whiskey or sing a damn country song, but stupid politics is our department!
I guess it rained the night of the big book burning and Bobby forgot to bring the charcoal starter anyway. The Ace Hardware was already closed, and the Walmart was all the way at the other end of town. So, they hatched an all-weather plan. They would attack the Health Department, that demonic center of witchery and book learnin. God Dammit, stay out of our back yard! Montgomery once proposed a bond referendum to replace the Central Air Conditioning units in some of the “older” (all of them) schools. The savings in electricity meant the bond would have paid for itself in two years. Over the Eli Whitney air conditioners burning the bearings out of the power meters that were currently in use. The bond referendum lost by a wide margin. {Alabama Proud!}
They fired the Tennessee vaccine czar, Dr. Michelle Fiscus because she issued a memo referencing a ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court of more than thirty years ago. The ruling upheld the right of minors 14-17 to obtain medical care and vaccinations without their parents’ consent. It’s July and schools will be opening back up in September, so clearly this woman is a witch and a troublemaker. A tool of Beazel Bub plain as day. As Tennessee lawmakers propose shutting down the Health Department and reconstituting it in their own image to fix the problem. Shit! Just cause theys a law, don’t mean you gotta go out flapping your God damn pie hole telling people about it!
Is this the health Department? “Yes.” I need some advice on birth control. “Have you tried prayer? Prayer works wonders you know and doesn’t cost any money!” But I’m worried about STD’s. “Just don’t have sex problem solved, next!” I would like to get my child vaccinated for school. “You’re just a troublemaker, aren’t you? I ought to have you thrown out of here for saying that. It’s because of people like you we can’t teach sex education and driver’s ed on the same day anymore. PETA says, “it’s too hard on the mule!”
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled teachers and administrators could not lead public school children in school sponsored prayer. That’s why in Alabama, we had a daily devotional every morning. It was just like a prayer only it wasn’t prayer; it was a devotional. Bow your head and lace your nicotine-stained fingers together. And thank God you attend a school without microscopes and devotional the hell out of those 1953 air conditioners to keep on running. In the words of George Bush, the elder, not “W” the lessor. “This aggression shall not stand!” I warn you Tennessee, don’t you force us to respond. You know that we have the wherewithal and the material to see your ignorant and raise you a stupid! Alabama didn’t get to be fiftieth in the nation in education through reading comprehension you know.
Alabama’s secret is now out, and the imitators multiply. Texas is offering a bounty for reporting an attempted abortion. New people and innovators make it so hard to keep up in the ignorance growth field. The Texas Governor stripped the pay from the state legislature and staff because they outsmarted him. Now stripped of pay and working for free, the governor assumes they will show up on command. “Damn it, the lights will burn late into the night in Montgomery trying to top that!” The Texas governor then threatens to have the legislature arrested! Question sir; if the legislature is arrested, won’t that mean they are in jail? Is there some Texas law to compel them to leave their jail cells and enter the Capitol and legislate?
Someone call the space center in Huntsville; we are gonna need some help. Ignorance is busting out all over like Kudzu in the Spring. George Wallace first broke the bronco of ignorance by standing in the doorway at The University of Alabama. Saying his little speech authorized and preordained by the Federal Government. “Read your little card, say your little speech, make your little pointless gesture and then make like the breeze…blow.” Building on the pointless gesture Wallace built his career complete with two Presidential runs and an assassination attempt. George Wallace hoped to be the second President from Alabama. The first being Mr. Jefferson Davis and upon this rock we stake our claim! Accept no cheap substitutes! Accept only real Alabama ignorance! My Ignorance right or wrong! Should a teenage mother in Alabama, allow her children to smoke in the house?
“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
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