http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/ The blog of Jim Morekis, Editor-in-Chief of Connect Savannah en jim@connectsavannah.com Copyright 2008 Connect Savannah 2008-07-01T18:41:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/statts-williams-shooting-update/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/statts-williams-shooting-update/#When:18:41:01Z
Two males approached them, asked if they "needed" drugs," and when told no, accepted a few beers from Statts and Williams. They took the beers, walked off, then returned a few minutes later. One fired a single bullet, which went through Statts's neck, shattered one of his vertebrae, and lodged in Williams's neck, destroying his trachea.

Like I said, no robbery was intended, nothing was stolen. They were shot for the pleasure of seeing them shot.

If you don't think you're living in a world of good vs. evil, you haven't been paying attention.

Anyway, as of this writing, Statts has been moved to a rehab facility in Atlanta, and Williams is in a step-down ICU unit at Memorial.

A fund has been started to help pay for medical expenses (Dave was uninsured at the time). Find it here.

As I've written before, it's pathetic and inexcusable that upright citizens must resort to such panhandling to scrape up money for medical bills in this, supposedly the greatest country on earth. I know we have great medical care in this country, and that great medical care costs more, but if we're spending two billion dollars a week in Iraq -- for nothing -- surely we could have begun a decent medical subsidy by now.

Every other big business in America is subsidized by taxpayers -- oil, farms, defense contractors, the NFL. I don't know why medical care for a couple of decent guys who were in the wrong place at the wrong time should be exempt.
]]> 2008-07-01T18:41:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/regina-thomas-vs-john-barrow/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/regina-thomas-vs-john-barrow/#When:18:07:01Z here at Glenn Greenwald's excellent blog.

Apparently Mr. Fresh Start himself, Barack Obama, is openly supporting John Barrow -- basically a Democrat in name only -- over Regina Thomas, an African American who clearly shares what are assumed to be Obama's generally progressive, populist policies.

Huh?!

This is a very interesting development, and as Greenwald indicates, it says a lot about the true character of Mr. No More Politics As Usual and where his true politics lie (double entendre intended). John Barrow votes with George W. Bush nearly all the time. Obama taking Barrow's side in this fight would seem to belie any claim Obama has to the progressive mantle.

Also interesting is that it's a fight Obama most certainly did not have to wade into. So why did he? Not sure, but I'd guess money is at the center of it. Both Obama and Barrow seem to share an abiding love for the green stuff and a talent for raking it in. It can't be a quid pro quo for Barrow coming out in favor of Obama over Hillary Clinton; Barrow was hardly a profile in courage in that regard, endorsing Obama only after he got a trillion percent of the vote in Barrow's district.

A Sister Souljah moment it ain't, in any case. Regina Thomas is anything but a firebrand and is hardly someone Obama would want to distance himself from in order to be more palatable to white people. Most everybody I know, black and white, likes Regina a heck of a lot better than they do Barrow anyway.

]]> 2008-06-19T18:07:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-sadly-misnamed-rev-wright/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-sadly-misnamed-rev-wright/#When:22:01:01Z
Like one of those "groundbreaking" comedians from the late '70s, Barack Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright is now basing entire speeches on the whole "black guys do it like this, while white guys do it like that" schtick, complete with an impersonation of us uptight white people and how uptight we speak. The bit wasn't funny 30 years ago, and it's only pathetic now. I mean it's lamer than jokes about airline food.

(I leave it up to you to see if you can find the hypocrisy in a speech with the premise that "Different doesn't mean deficient" while making fun of other types of people the entire time. And I'll leave it up to you to make what you will of Wright's bizarre and offensive claim that black people use a different part of their brain to learn than white people. And I'll also leave it up to you to ascertain exactly how long a white person would remain in their job if they made a similar claim in front of a TV camera.)

I usually hesitate to complain about blanket attacks on white people, because let's face it: Most of the time when white people complain about how they're being spoken of, the subtext is nasty, i.e, they seem to be wishing that they could also get away with saying nasty things about other groups of people.

Such is not the case with me. I don't pine away for the ability to treat other groups the way I've been treated. It's a sign of weakness at best, and virulence at worst. I don't want any part of it, and I emphatically do not claim the right to respond in kind.

No, the only things that truly offend me as an American about Rev. Wright's embarrassing media tour are his totally bogus claims that A), he represents the black church and B), that an attack on him is an attack on the black church. If anyone is racist in this whole affair, it's Rev. Wright himself for trotting out a totally inflammatory image of the black church as being at all related to the kind of freak show he puts on at his own "church," which from what I've learned of it is hardly worthy of the title.

I have been in black churches, and have never witnessed anything remotely like Rev. Wright's over-the-top, self-obsessed, hyper-political screeds. Maybe things are different in Chicago, I don't know. If so, shame on them.

The only reason the media is not calling Wright out on this obvious slander is because so few people in the media know the first thing about black churches. (That, and they're also totally in the tank for Obama, but that's a side issue.)

Quite simply, Rev. Wright is a fraud, a charlatan. No more and no less. I hope his 15 minutes on the American stage is over.]]> 2008-04-28T22:01:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/that-kool-aid-must-be-sweet/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/that-kool-aid-must-be-sweet/#When:15:07:00Z here -- prompts me to sally forth in some small way.

It's like clockwork by now, as predictable as the sun rising in the east: Hillary Clinton dominates Barack Obama -- I mean crushes him, mops up the proverbial floor with him -- in another large, electoral-vote rich state, yet the mainstream media the next morning is dominated by even more feverish calls for her to drop out, and even more smug "analyses" of why she can't win the nomination.

It's become something of a phenomenon, a lesson in irrational mass hysteria akin to the great tulip mania in Holland in the 1600s. I literally have lost count of how many times the media has assured us, usually the morning after another huge Hillary win, that there's no way, no physical possibility, that she can be the nominee.

Never in my life have I seen another person, candidate, or sports team counted out so prematurely, so many times. At some point you just have to ask what gives.

I have swung from explanation to explanation. Being in the profession myself, I know how badly the media -- which is massively, hugely white -- wants to avoid even the hint of an accusation of racism. Maybe that dynamic comes into play with the mainstream media's almost desperately fawning adulation of Obama, but it cannot possibly account for all of it.

I then thought classism might be the cause, since Obama's obvious appeal to well-educated, liberal "creative class" Starbucks drinkers makes him an equally obvious fit for most journalists, who fall squarely into that niche. But that can't be all of it, either.

I know the media have hated the Clintons with a passion for a long time -- classism again, I'm pretty positive, since the Clintons have always portrayed a blue-collar image -- but not even that can explain the immense irrationality, the sheer solipsism of demanding that a candidate who is only slightly trailing to drop out, often right after said candidate wins a big primary.

In the end, I can only settle on simple misogyny. The media is not only massively, hugely white, it's also massively, hugely male. Yeah, the pretty anchorwoman is a ubiquitous stereotype, but you can almost rest assured that her producer, her boss, her boss's boss, and the owner of the company are all men.

I have said for years that misogyny and sexism are more pervasive problems in America than racism -- if not in intensity, than surely in scale. There's historical support for my position; remember that African-American men got the right to vote half a century before any American women ever did.

Surely there is much racism in this country, and none of it should be tolerated. But it's just as true that in my lifetime I have seen much more progress on racial issues than in the equal treatment of women. I'm hardly the first to say this, but I believe it's true: Sexism is the last acceptable "ism" in America.

Perhaps I'm biased on this, since I'm not African-American and I'm the father of two daughters. But we can only really speak from personal experience, eh?

In any case, if anyone else has any better explanations, I'm all ears. But clearly something really weird is going on, and the only people clueless about it are the ones dispensing the weirdness.

How weird is it? Let's put it this way: I now have to go to Fox News to get objective coverage of the Democratic primary. That's weird.




]]> 2008-04-23T15:07:00-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-trauma-of-trauma-care-in-georgia/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-trauma-of-trauma-care-in-georgia/#When:16:07:00Z
In one of the Savannah Music Festival's few boneheaded moves, state Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) was allowed to say a few words on the Lucas stage before the (great) concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Stephens, microphone in hand, proceeded to crow about how the Georgia legislature was finally going to do something about the need to fully fund adequate trauma care in south Georgia, and indeed all across the state.

What this had to do with Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky I still don't know, but I shrugged it off at the time. Stephens is on the right side of the trauma issue, after all, and has been working hard to get real legislative work done about it while idiots in his party like Sonny Perdue have been more concerned with bringing in more Chinese businesses to Georgia and more Chinese products to Georgia's already-overstuffed ports.

However, in the wake of the trauma bill's total failure at the very end of the session, Stephens's appearance at the Savannah Music Festival now looks like a particularly loathsome brand of grandstanding. No, it's not his fault the bill didn't pass, didn't even have a chance to pass. But he is tarnished by his own party's actions on this issue. It's not fair, but then again politics isn't.

Here's the thing: I don't give a flip that Stephens was on the right side of the issue, because he is simply a cog in this failed Republican leadership of Georgia. Failed, as in Bush-level failure. I mean this is possibly the most irresponsible state government in the country right now, which is really saying something.

The Democrats who ran the state for decades before them were hopelessly corrupt, to be sure. But at least the Democrats gave back some of the money they stole from us, in the form of some services.

The Republicans just steal.

Stephens, while an intelligent, well-meaning guy who would have been a solid conservative Democrat in the old days, is just another part of the whole lunkheaded posse. He and his entire crew -- Perdue, Cagle, the insane Glenn Richardson, and Savannah's own talk-tough-but-deliver-nothing Eric Johnson all need to go back to their day jobs in corporate America and let someone with an ounce of decency and integrity and most of all, real ability, take over.

Not that I have great faith in Democrats to engineer any big electoral victories, but I tell you this: Georgia is sinking and sinking fast, and it started spiraling downhill much faster when Perdue and his feckless Republicans took over. Bottom line, they all need to go and go soon.

You and your loved ones are likely going to need trauma care at some point, and I hope you all remember who killed it when they had a slam dunk opportunity to help it.]]> 2008-04-11T16:07:00-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/coffee-and-me-no-longer-hang/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/coffee-and-me-no-longer-hang/#When:18:13:00Z attachment to the divine nectar of the almighty bean. Some have called it "addiction," but that's such an ugly word, isn't it?

I like to think that I've not been a total snob about coffee, though. While I always stayed away from foul Robusta bean bilge like Folger's and Maxwell House, I never copped an attitude. I never looked down my nose at Starbucks, and I learned early on that supposedly "hip" indie coffeeshops sometimes have really bad coffee.

It was never a lifestyle thing with me, I was just a fan of the drink itself. A good cup of coffee is a good cup of coffee.

Well, for the past several months I've been fighting some weird pancreas thing. The GI doc says I may have had a bout with viral pancreatitis, which caused the various pains and discomfort I've been feeling.

He's never asked if I was a big coffee drinker -- and I never volunteered the information -- but I do have to wonder if all that coffee drinking could have had something to do with it. (Gee, ya think?)

During my various treatments for this ailment, I recently came down with a particularly nasty stomach flu. I mean nasty. So I figured, hey, since I'm basically going cold turkey from all food and drink for 48 hours -- not to mention that my system is, err, completely flushed clean -- why not take advantage of the hiatus and stop drinking coffee altogether?

Just quit, then and there, and see if that helps with the pancreas thingie? Since, you know, I can live without coffee but I can't live without a functioning pancreas.

So I did it. I just stopped drinking coffee. That was nearly two weeks ago. I haven't had a drop of coffee -- not a taste, not a sip -- since March 21.

Now, I'm not entirely crazy. I am drinking tea now, which I never did before. Some Earl Grey, a little green tea, some mate here and there. But no coffee at all.

Funny thing -- I don't miss it. Don't miss it one bit. I do feel the tiniest whiff of desire when I smell freshly ground beans, but otherwise I have no craving for coffee at all. Which is just weird, considering my total dependence on it for the past two decades. But I have to say, I do feel fantastic, and much, much healthier since quitting.

I'm not drinking coffee, but I tell you what I am doing, is eating. Eating all the time, constantly, everything I can get my hands on and wrap my mouth around.

Simply put, I have gone from being obsessed with coffee to being obsessed with food.

I've always been one of these types that can eat whatever they want, as much as they want and never gain any weight. I have to wonder if that was due less to genetics than to the fact that I was basically mainlining a heavy appetite suppressant for many years.

Hopefully this pancreas thing is behind me now -- Prevacid is also involved, and it works like a charm -- so I can get into my new incarnation as an epicurean gourmand. And hopefully my wife will still find me attractive if I end up gaining 20 pounds.

]]> 2008-04-02T18:13:00-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-latest-controversy/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-latest-controversy/#When:21:42:00Z
I've been called a communist liberal Democrat who hates America and supports the terrorists. I've been called a right-wing racist Republican and a mouthpiece for the big-money downtown elite.

I've been accused of pushing the "Gay Rights Agenda." I've been called a homophobic redneck.

I've been blamed for single-handedly wrecking mayoral bids. I've been told no one reads what I write.

Some say I have a vendetta against SCAD. Some say I'm SCAD's stooge in the media.

I've been accused of being an undercover CIA plant secretly on the federal payroll.

I've been accused of encouraging child abuse and pedophilia.

And I literally cannot remember all the times someone, somewhere has demanded that I be fired for the above imaginary transgressions.

In short, there's literally nothing you can say to me that I, a) haven't heard before, and b) will be flustered by. Go ahead. Try it. Yawn.

And so we come to the latest "outrage" I've committed, in the form of this week's "Toothpaste for Dinner" cartoon. Some guy named Jeff Dudys is mounting an all-out e-mail blast PR offensive against Connect Savannah, targeting our advertisers and enlisting the aid of City Council. Needless to say, he's demanding my immediate resignation as well.

Because I'm constantly accused of censoring criticicism -- ironic considering that I almost always publish everyone's personal attacks on me verbatim with little or no editing -- I will once again bend over backwards to give one of my detractors the benefit of the doubt. Here is one of the several e-mails I (and everybody else in town) have received from Mr. Dudys in the course of the last 12 hours, with all spelling and grammatical errors intact:


"Yesterday a free publication well know in Savannah with a very high readership sent to the streets of Savannah the instructions for our elementary students to take a step to drug abuse. How can this local business be so irresponsible

"Flyer's with this information are being given out to businesses throughout the city at this time. Also encouraging the removal the the issue if they distribute at there location

"Attached is a comic that is in the February 27Th issue of "The Connect". I do not have to make any explanation about the comic. It is step by step takes a child to possible death.

"I am calling for a boycott of this publication by the advertisers, distributors, and people of Savannah GA until the below steps are followed.

"All February 27Th copies be removed from the streets of Savannah.
An apology be printed in the local newspaper
The resignation of editor Jim Morekis and anyone else associated with comic
A refund to advertisers to that issue
That "The Connect" inform our elem entry school and middle schools of this comic
The City Council and local media have also been informed.

"If you support this boycott or just want to express your concerns, and wish to contact"The Connect" The Editor in chief is Jim Morekis. email jim@connectsavannah.com or calling 721-4384."


Yeah, that would be me. I'll be a nice guy and not include Mr. Dudys' phone number, which he appended to the e-mail.

Suffice it to say that the cartoon in question is almost unbelievably tame and inoffensive. In all candor, it's actually fairly boring and not especially funny. As someone said today, "It's just there."

Go ahead, look at it for yourself, page 12 of this week's issue. And if you agree with Mr. Dudys that I should immediately lose my job over it, hey, copy me on your angry e-mail to the whole world.

It'll be one more for my collection.







]]> 2008-02-28T21:42:00-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/my-strange-birthday/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/my-strange-birthday/#When:22:49:01Z Brain Droppings . (Also on that list: "Guys who say 'cock-a-roach,'" and "A permanently disfigured gun collector.")

Even the holiday associated with it, President's Day, is vague, amorphous, and little noted. I bet not two out of ten Americans could tell you which presidents are honored that day and why.

Here's how unremarkable a time of year it is: Under a previous ownership of this newspaper, at each monthly staff meeting the publisher insisted on serving cake and giving a shoutout to all the staffers with birthdays in that month. For example, "Hey, here's to John and Jane, our August birthday people! Yay, John and Jane!"

So check it out: Each February for three frickin' years, everyone forgot my birthday. Seriously. Three years. I kid you not. Three years running, no cake for me, not a word, nothing.

The greenest sales rep would get a mention. The meekest part-time designer would get a mention. The longtime editor of the freakin' paper? Bupkus, zip, nada, zilch.

You might be tempted to say, well, that's because no one likes you, Jim. Which could easily be true. But if I were really that unpopular one would think I'd have been let go at some point, yes? Anyway, I prefer to blame the time of year, thank you very much.

I have met one other person who shares my birthday, the young son of a friend of mine. As far as I can tell, only two famous people were born on Feb. 19: Smokey Robinson and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. Interestingly, I was a big fan of the music of both those gentlemen long before I found out their birthday, so perhaps there's something to the whole astrology thing.

Speaking of astrology, even that's all murky and weirded out on my birthday. Feb. 19 falls exactly on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, and its sun sign actually shifts over time. For example, Feb. 19 is firmly in Pisces these days, but when I was born 43 years ago it was only in Pisces by -- get this -- eight hours. Literally, I'm a Pisces by eight hours.

Perhaps my birthday and its attendant isolation and weirdness explains why I've always felt like a man without a country, a voice in the wilderness, a contrarian without a cause.

Anyway, I enjoy my birthday even if no one else does. I regard it as a character-builder.]]> 2008-02-18T22:49:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-book-is-done/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/the-book-is-done/#When:21:34:01Z
Basically what this means is that for the last six months I did my regular job here at the paper during the week and spent nights and weekends working on this book, at the exclusion of pretty much all else in my life other than occasionally eating and sleeping. This was a huge step forward for me professionally and I don't regret it for a second. But I did learn a few things along the way that I want to pass on to you:

1) Have a support network: To a certain extent, writing a travel guide lends itself to a short deadline. It's very detail-oriented, dense work, dependent less on sudden bursts of creativity than on getting into a steady, slogging groove and really working it. This means if you're a good time manager, which I am, you can crank out big chunks of copy. The flip side is, be prepared to trade away much of your personal life. Had I not had the unflinching support of my family, the thing would not have gotten done on time. Not anywhere near on time.

2) Watch your health: This may sound silly to anyone who does physical labor for a living, but writing a book can take an enormous toll on you physically. This effect was doubled because I already spent my regular work week staring at a computer monitor, only to continue staring at the computer for another several hours a day after a short dinner break. Over the last six months my vision has gone all wacky, I'm stiff all over, and just sadly out of shape. The easiest answer is to just have more time in which to write the book, but barring that, for God's sake try to work in some exercise.

3) Keep your eyes on the prize: I haven't done the math, but I fully suspect that if I factored in all the hours I've spent on this book, I wrote it for less than minimum wage. Honestly, probably far less than minimum wage. This became abundantly clear very early in the process. But what kept me going was the image of going into most any Barnes and Noble in the country one day and being able to find a couple of copies of my book on the shelves, with my little name on the cover. Bottom line: Even though Samuel Johnson said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" -- I'm telling you, write for something other than money.]]> 2008-02-05T21:34:01-05:00 http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/hey-im-bloggin-again/ http://connectsavannah.com/index.php/blogs/jimmorekis/hey-im-bloggin-again/#When:17:05:00Z
So.... what's new? I kid, I kid.

Connect Savannah has started 2008 with renewed energy. The obvious example is Jim Reed's vigorous take on the Locos/Van Johnson thing. I just got an e-mail in response from Alderman Johnson that I'll be posting shortly, and putting in the print edition next week. (Hint: He disagrees with our reporting.)

Johnson's wrong when he says we're not objective -- if two plus two equals four, then we have a duty to say it doesn't equal five. Because it just doesn't.

But Johnson's certainly right when he says it's a multilayered issue. I have heard on the QT from other food-and-bev people in town who say Locos was asking for trouble and is spoiling things for everyone else by needlessly attracting attention to the whole issue.

I've noticed two things about the City of Savannah and the way it does business. Well, actually a lot more than two things, but two that are particularly relevant to this situation:

1) There are some excellent public servants employed by the city who do great work and do not get nearly enough credit.

2) The city tends to do things in an all-or-nothing fashion, i.e., they either completely ignore you or you become their total center of attention. This of course can work in good or bad ways, depending on the motivation.

Perhaps the big-picture message out of all this is similarly twofold:

1) Pick your battles with the City of Savannah very carefully; and

2) City elected officials and staff should strive for more consistency, a broader outlook, and more even-handed treatment of citizens.]]> 2008-01-10T17:05:00-05:00