Sheriff's version of 'PC' is worse
Regarding the instantly famous Harris County Un-Welcome sign, Sheriff Mike Jolley's legacy will be widely remembered not for the genuine Protect and Serve emphasis beautiful Harris County deserves, but for another Southern cliche. Over the past week, reams of electronic paper have been produced about the Un-Welcome sign's basic contradictions. The upper sign says Welcome to Harris County; the lower says XYZ, and if this offends you Leave. No matter how great FDR Park or Callaway, why visit if one is not wanted? Any residential or commercial land owner in north Harris County has reason to be upset. Business owners, directly or indirectly, dependent on tourism, have reason to worry.
What should Sheriff Jolley do? 1. Turn the double Un-Welcome sign into a single, genuine Welcome sign. 2. Apologize, and admit he made a mistake. 3. Ponder the major differences between personal, private freedoms and the mature behavior of an elected peace officer. 4. Leave new policy to the county commissioners or state, and public relations to the Chamber of Commerce. 5. Get back to basics; focus on law enforcement and justice. 6. Remember the title is Sheriff, not High Sheriff; the duty is to serve, not harass, present or future residents or much, much needed visitors.
Not being an attorney, I've not addressed the legality of the sheriff's sign. As a United Methodist minister on medical leave, neither have I addressed its theology. Sheriff Jolley appears, quite unaware, to have operated from his blind side and moved away from his area of authority.
Let's hope he begins to see clearly, and goes on to become sheriff of the whole county, not merely sheriff for people whose views he appreciates.
Tom H. Johnson Jr.
Pine Mountain
Signs of exclusion
If Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley wants to place a political advertisement on his own property, so be it. But if he wants to placea "welcoming" or "un-welcoming" sign on county property he should coordinate that message with the elected mayor, council, and perhaps the chamber of commerce for maximum effectiveness if the signage is designed to support countywide economic expansion.
His sign says to me that of all folks in beautiful Harris County only one approved conservative mindset is welcomed.
I remember driving across the mountain from Warm Springs to the Gardens perhaps 16 years ago, and was surprised to see near Warm Springs, a billboard-scale sign supporting the Sons of the Confederacy with a huge rebel flag. That sign said to me that black folks are not welcome. At that time, even the wallpaper and menus highlighted the many Old South plantations in Georgia history, as if to say plantation life was gracious and abundant and satisfying.
This red-clay Southerner believes nothing was truly gracious about plantation life. Ask any white or black Southern sharecropper still alive for an unedited version of that narrative.
There are unlimited great features about Harris County and the great state of Georgia, but looking back to an earlier time as the ideal is disallowing reality.
Walter Thorne
New York, N.Y.
More Snakes coverage
Once again I pick up a copy of the paper to see once again not a article or even a short paragraph on the Columbus Cottonmouths. You have many football fans in Columbus, college and professional and high school; those stories are a given. But why the drop in stories on the Cottonmouths?
To many hockey fans in the area this team is very important to us. The Columbus Cottonmouths spend more time and effort in our community than any organization that we have had here. Yet we have no dedicated reporter and very seldom get any mention of games or profiles on the players.
Keith Boutwell
Columbus
Specious argument
Professor John B. Quigley's argument for keeping U.S. ground combat forces out of Syria fundamentally misses the point.
He suggests that all of the ills of this region are due to our response to terrorism, predictably arguing that, "by positive policy changes, we must change the perceptions that have generated terror attacks."
Quigley's argument, however, is specious. He is not interested in solving the problem of how defeat ISIS. He is only interested in proving how right he is by describing all our past missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Graeme Wood wrote an excellent article for The Atlantic titled "What ISIS Really Wants" which noted: "We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of -- and headline player in -- the imminent end of the world."
ISIS, with its apocalyptic vision that cannot be altered, is not interested in Western overtures to address past grievances.
Professor Quigley similarly invokes Osama Bin Laden's grievances against the U.S. as evidence that U.S. policies are to blame. It's a convenient argument, but one that is also non-sequitur.
Bin Laden, like an alcoholic husband who beats his wife, simply moved the goal post of what drew his ire to suit al-Qaeda's grievance du jour: First, U.S. troops on Saudi soil in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait; next, the U.S. support for Israel over the Palestinians; and lastly the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Quigley's argument offers equal fantasy vs. other arguments that suggest the use of military force only.
Van Warren
Columbus
This story was originally published November 30, 2015 at 11:40 AM with the headline "Sheriff's version of 'PC' is worse ."