Triad Today

Photo of inmate April Barber for North Carolina Department of Corrections

Earlier this month, Governor Roy Cooper commuted the sentence of 46-year-old April Barber to time served. He did so on the recommendation of the NC Juvenile Sentencing Review Board, which he created last year. The Board’s mission is to review sentences of people who were under the age of 18 when they were tried in adult criminal court. Barber was given two life sentences at age 15, has served 30 years in prison, and now she will be set free. The media jumped on this feel-good human interest story because April had earned her GED and paralegal certification while incarcerated, and is now ready to rejoin and contribute to civilized society. The only problem is that there was nothing civilized about the crimes Ms. Barber committed.

April Barber wasn’t wrongly convicted 30 years ago. She wasn’t wrongly identified. There were no extenuating circumstances. She hadn’t been held hostage and forced to commit a crime. There was no DNA mix-up, and she didn’t act out of self-defense. The fact is that April and her 30-year-old boyfriend carefully planned, and then deliberately set fire to her grandparents’ house, killing both Lillian and Aaron Barber. Why? Because April was pregnant, and, according to her testimony, April’s grandparents had threatened to have her boyfriend charged with statutory rape if she didn’t abort the baby.

OK, suppose you believe April’s story, and she was torn between aborting her baby or sending her married-man friend to jail. Even so, there were ways to deal with the problem other than burning your grandparents alive. Roy Cooper would probably contend that April was only 15 years old, and didn’t know it was wrong to pour gasoline in a house, set fire to it, and trap two elderly people inside. Bull crap, Roy! If you’re old enough to get a driver’s permit, get pregnant, and plot a double murder, then you’re old enough to know right from wrong, and you should serve your full prison sentence. But I guess Roy didn’t hear what Jack Shepherd heard on that fateful night in 1991. Shepherd, who lived next to the Barbers, told the Greensboro News and Record that, “She [April] could hear her grandmother crying and screaming in pain and hollering for her just as well as I could.” The fire had blocked all exits to the house, so there was no escape for the loving couple who had been caring for April. Aaron died in the fire and Lillian died a few days later.

Hey, I’m all for reviewing criminal cases when evidence is in dispute or when new facts come to light. I’m all for putting murderers in rehab hospitals if a jury found them to be mentally incompetent. But April Barber confessed to and was fairly convicted of two brutal murders. She was given two life sentences with a chance of parole in ten more years. So, there was absolutely no justification for Cooper commuting her sentence to time served. But, after all, Roy is a politician who may want to run for the Senate one day, so he did what was politically correct. He heard the voices who called for leniency, but in doing so, he muted the voices and screams of two innocent victims.

I don’t know exactly what year it happened, but somewhere along the way, team sports turned into “ME sports,” and the trend toward toxic individuality has manifested itself in everything from grooming and dress code, to style of play and counterproductive regulations. Actually, this subject has been on my mind for a long time, but it all came back into focus for me while I was watching the ACC Channel’s stellar 10-part documentary on the history of the league tournament. That series dredged up a lot of feelings I had about the importance of tradition in college athletics. I’ll start with my concerns over who is playing the game and for how long.

In speaking with producers of the recent ACC documentary, legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski talked about how the new “one-and-done” era was hurting college basketball. Coach K noted that it takes two to three years to recruit a good player who used to stay in school all four years. Today, though, a coach spends the same amount of time recruiting, but the player leaves college after one year to seek fame and fortune. Team building has given way to “ME building,” which diminishes the importance of the overall mission, makes a sham out of the scholarship system, and denigrates the importance of a college degree.

The “ME first” approach to college basketball has also had an impact on the style of play. In the not-so-olden days, star players weren’t allowed to hog the ball or throw up a shot before the rest of his teammates were in position to rebound. Today many of the “one-and-dones” can routinely be seen flying down the court or running out the shot clock without giving so much as a thought to passing the ball. For those guys, every game seems to be more of an audition for the NBA than it is an opportunity to advance the school’s athletics program. And don’t get me started on the 3-point shot. Beloved sports columnist Bob Ryan believes that the 3-point rule has ruined the sport of basketball, and I agree. It was a gimmick originally invented by Harlem Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein to enhance the entertainment value of his staged contests, but today it mainly serves as an accomplice to “ME first” players, and an artificial device for putting a game out of reach.

Another contributor to the “ME first” movement in college basketball has to do with hair and grooming, but lest I be accused of having a “get off my lawn” senior moment, consider first the winningest program in college history, and how it got that way. The UCLA Bruins won 11 NCAA championships under head coach John Wooden, and those wins were buoyed by great players, great discipline, and an overriding belief that the team was more important than any one individual, even individuals like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton. To illustrate my point, what follows are comments by Wooden and Walton about what happened on the day Bill returned from summer break, and reported to practice sporting long red locks, in violation of the Coach’s rule that hair could be no longer than two inches in length.

Wooden recalled the moment: “Bill told me he had been the National Player of the Year, that we had just won a national championship, and had been undefeated, and that I didn’t have the right to tell him he couldn’t have long hair. And I said, ‘You’re right Bill. I don’t have that right, but I do have the right to determine who is going to play, and we’re going to miss you this year.’”

Walton completed the story: “So I got on my bicycle and rode as fast as I could to the barber shop in Westwood, jumped in the barber chair, and said ‘just cut it all off.’ Then I rode back to Pauley Pavilion in time for practice.”

Today’s “ME first” players wear their hair any way they wish. They sport as many tattoos as they wish. They wear rings in weird places, and often times wear different color shoes from other teammates. It’s all about personal expression, and very little about personal commitment. But hey, what do you expect when most of the coaches show up for games dressed in sweats instead of a coat and tie.

I’m not suggesting that we go back to a time when the set shot was more prevalent than the jump shot, or when a certain coach from Chapel Hill was allowed to go into an endless “Four Corners” stall. I am, however, suggesting that colleges stop letting scholarship athletes make a mockery out of education. I’m also suggesting that college coaches start acting like coaches, and that means refusing to sign any athlete who won’t commit to staying for four years. And college hoopsters themselves should be required to look, act, and play as a team, and not as five individuals.

It has been said that there is no “i” in “team”. I just wish that was true of “college basketball”.

Generally speaking, wealthy people are not supposed to be eligible for welfare, and yet many of them routinely take advantage of subsidies and tax breaks not afforded to the rest of us. And boy do they make out like bandits in a financial crisis. Take for instance when the COVID pandemic began. By March of 2020, Congress had passed the CARES Act, designed to put emergency cash into the hands of regular folk, most of whom were under lock-down orders, and unable to pay bills. But, as ProPublica reported, 18 billionaires and hundreds of millionaires received stimulus checks that they didn’t need. We may never be able to reform the corporate welfare system, but there is legislation pending that might slow down the gravy train for ex-commanders-in-chief.

With just a few exceptions, America’s presidents have either entered office wealthy, became that way after leaving, or both. Donald Trump, for example, is reportedly worth over 3 billion dollars, but George Washington was not exactly destitute. In today’s dollars, the Father of Our Country was worth nearly 600 million dollars before he became president. Others who were worth over 100 million dollars included Jefferson, Jackson, Madison, Teddy Roosevelt, and LBJ.

Bill Clinton came to Washington virtually broke, and today is worth over 90 million dollars. Of the other surviving presidents, Obama is close behind with $70 million, George W. Bush is worth $40 million, and poor Jimmy Carter brings up the rear with a net wealth of just $10 million. OK, so what does all this have to do with welfare for the wealthy? A lot as it turns out.

We all know that when a president leaves office, he is still protected by the Secret Service. He sets up and staffs an office wherever he wants. He and his family get to travel extensively. His phone bills and postage are taken care of. He pays hardly anything for his healthcare premiums, and, of course, he receives a generous pension. And while these perks are only currently afforded to five men, nevertheless, taxpayers shell out considerable funds for this elite club of multi-millionaires.

To start with, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, each of our surviving presidents are paid over $221,400 per year for the rest of their lives. They each receive up to one million dollars per year for travel, and we give them $150,000 per year for staffing an office (that drops to a paltry $96,000 annually after the first 30 months). And what about those offices? George W. Bush spends $434,000 of our money to operate his office, while Bill Clinton hits us up for $579,000 each year just for office rent. We also reimbursed Bush for his $80,000 phone bill, and Jimmy Carter for his $15,000 in postage. Meanwhile, the budget for lifetime Secret Service protection has not been published, but you can bet it’s into the millions each year.

The origin of these taxpayer-funded perks came about in 1958 when Congress decided to subsidize Harry Truman’s retirement. That’s because Truman was virtually broke when he left office, so no one squawked at easing his burden. The problem is that Truman’s financial situation would have nothing in common with any of his successors. All those who followed Harry were multi-millionaires with an unlimited capacity for making money off of their name. Bill Clinton, for example, was paid $500,000 for making one speech, and he and Hillary together have pocketed over 150 million dollars in speaking fees between 2001 and 2015. Obama once earned $400,000 for a single speech, and he and Michelle received a 65 million dollar advance for a book deal.

The point is that anyone who makes a half-million dollars for one speech is not in need of government welfare. Enter Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who, in 2016, introduced the Presidential Allowance Modernization Act which would have capped taxpayer-funded perks, and reduced them by one dollar for every dollar of gross income over $400,000. The bill as proposed garnered little support, nor did a later version, which was introduced in May 2019. Then, last month, Rep. Joni Ernst of Iowa revived the original bill, and on February 17 it was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where it is awaiting action by the Senate. But even if the bill passes, it doesn’t go far enough in limiting perks for ex-presidents. Moreover, it doesn’t extend to presidential cabinet secretaries and other high-level West Wing staff, most of whom are also wealthy and receive handsome government subsidies in retirement.

The bottom line is this. If you’re a former president worth 70 million dollars, and you make a half-million-dollar per speech, then you don’t need a hand-out from taxpayers. What you need is a reality check.

As it sometimes happens, two seemingly unrelated news stories from two different cities are reported at virtually the same time, and then, we discover that there might be some dots to connect. Such is the case with a planned housing project in High Point, and a statue in Lumberton.

Let’s begin in High Point.

For as long as anyone can remember, the name Daniel Brooks adorned a large housing complex in the City, and the recognition was well deserved. Rev. Brooks, born in 1837, was a free person of color who grew up in Cleveland County but spent most of his adult life in High Point, where he was active in the community from the late 1800s until his death in 1933. Brooks was pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church and has been described as an educator of Black children, and an influential civic leader. The housing complex that bore his name was demolished recently to make way for a more modern version. So far so good. But then the High Point Housing Authority announced that the new community would be named “Legacy Ridge”, and the name Daniel Brooks relegated to a small plaque.

Upon hearing of the HPHA’s decision late last month, Rev. Angela Roberson, pastor of the Congregational United Church of Christ, lodged a complaint and started a petition to reinstate Rev. Brooks’ name to the new development when it is completed this summer.

Speaking with the High Point Enterprise, Rev. Roberson said, “It seemed to us they (the Housing Authority) did not recognize there were people in the community who would want to retain the name. They made the decision without any input from us.”

That lack of disclosure and transparency concerns Rev. Roberson because, as she told the Enterprise, “Legacy Ridge is being developed in part with public funds.”

Meanwhile, as the Legacy Ridge controversy simmered in High Point, over in Lumberton, the NAACP made news by protesting the status of another kind of structure. Back in 1907, a statue was erected in front of the Robeson County Courthouse to honor the Confederate dead. In fact, a sculpture of a Confederate soldier sits atop the marble obelisk for all to see. The problem is that ever since the Charlottesville protests of 2017, Confederate monuments have been falling like dominos all across the nation. Not so in Lumberton.

Speaking with the Robesonian, local NAACP president Rev. Tyronne Watson, Sr., said, “How can we move as a county in the direction of equality…when we still idolize the dark history that has caused so much pain and division by allowing this statue to stand at the people’s house?”

OK, so what does the Lumberton statue have in common with High Point’s Legacy Ridge housing complex? Ostensibly nothing, except for the fact that Rev. Daniel Brooks was, you guessed it, a veteran of the Confederate army. Of course, he wasn’t the only man of color to don a gray uniform. Writing for the Harvard Gazette, professor John Stauffer noted that, “Blacks who shouldered arms for the Confederacy numbered more than 3,000, but fewer than 10,000.” However, most of those recruits were slaves. Brooks, on the other hand, was a “free man of color” who enlisted in Jeff Davis’s rebel army of his own free will. Interviewed in 1925 by Sara Alderman of the High Point Enterprise, Rev. Brooks said of his time in the army, “I didn’t use a gun the whole time. Some of the time I cooked for the officers.” Brooks said he also worked on road and bridge construction. And though he didn’t kill anyone in battle, and he never owned slaves, Brooks still wore the uniform of those who fought for slavery, and that begs the question, if America is determined to purge all things Confederate, then how can you reinstate Daniel Brooks’ name on a publicly-funded housing development?

Let’s be clear about something. I couldn’t care less about Confederate monuments, and I’m certainly not trying to provide fodder for racists who love to make straw man arguments against those who want to tear down Confederate statues. I’m just suggesting that it might be less divisive if there were consistent standards in place for determining which monuments must be removed, or which buildings should be renamed. For example, statues of Robert E. Lee have all but disappeared from the American landscape because he owned slaves, but so did Washington and Jefferson, yet monuments, buildings, and highways bearing their names are still intact. If only Rev. Brooks were alive today, he could make sense of all this. That’s the kind of man he was, and maybe that’s the very reason we should keep his name on Legacy Ridge.

The next GOP-proposed map of North Carolina congressional districts

I’m not much for modern technology so I don’t have a GPS in my car. Besides, I’m pretty adept at reading a map, or at least I thought I was until I tried to analyze the most recent congressional district map drawn up and passed by our Republican-controlled General Assembly last Thursday.

Earlier this year, the GOP’s previous attempt at re-districting had been rejected by a three-judge panel, which is now expected to rule on the revised version this week. If accepted by the Court, the new map will include a 14th district allocated to the state as a result of the 2020 Census. Still, even with the addition of a new district, the re-drawn map isn’t likely to change the overall political advantage that Republican candidates have enjoyed for years. Currently, North Carolina’s Congressional delegation includes eight Republicans and five Democrats, but the Associated Press predicts the new configuration is likely to include six, solid red districts, two as “slightly” favoring the GOP, four blue districts, and two as “likely toss-ups.” That means we could possibly end up with ten Republicans and four Democrats representing our state in the halls of Congress.

To be fair, throughout our history, both major political parties have engaged in gerrymandering, a strategy designed to protect incumbents of whichever party was in power at the time. Lately, though, the GOP’s map-drawing activities have been particularly heavy-handed and ballsy, considering that Democrats far outnumber Republicans on the voter rolls, and that district boundaries are unlikely to favor candidates of color.

But while Democrats and Blacks may find the new map hard to swallow, it’s also just hard to follow, even for us old-time map readers, and especially when it comes to how the Piedmont was carved up. For example, the city of Greensboro will be represented by two different congresspersons, one in the new 6th district, and the other in the 8th. Same thing for Thomasville. Meanwhile, residents of Reidsville will fall into the 5th and 6th districts, and Kernersville will be split between the 5th and 8th districts. And if you live in High Point, good luck figuring out who to vote for because the furniture city will fall into not one, not two, but THREE districts (the 5th, 6th, and 8th).

The new boundaries also combine geographically disparate populations. For example, folks in Davie and Yadkin counties will be thrown into the new 10th district with Burke and Lincoln, putting them near the ski slopes to the west, and close to Charlotte traffic to the south. Meanwhile, some Davidson residents will try and figure out what they have in common with Hoke and Robeson in the 9th. I’m no cartographer, but even I could have drawn up Congressional districts that make more sense than this. Nevertheless, by the time this column is published, it’s possible that the Court will have accepted the GOP map, and if that happens, a lot of folks may need a GPS before they go vote.

Maine Representative Jared Golden

Most of us learn from an early age that there are consequences to breaking the rules. Bring home failing grades, and you don’t get to play sports. Keep getting speeding tickets, and you lose your driver’s license, and so on. You’d think, then, that if anyone understood the consequences of rule breaking, it would be our elected officials who actually make the rules for everyone to follow. Truth is the rule makers are often the worst rule-breakers. Case in point, the federal STOCK Act.

Congressmen have always been allowed to own stocks, and to make financial investments, but increasingly, a number of folks on Capitol Hill have increased their wealth by having access to information that the rest of us didn’t have. That’s why in 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act, making it illegal for a representative or senator to buy or sell stocks based on insider information they had acquired from classified or confidential briefings. All but two senators voted for the Act (one of the hold-outs was Richard Burr, and we now have a good idea why), but the bi-partisan effort proved to be largely cosmetic.

According to a recent investigation by Insider, “at least 54 current members of Congress and almost 200 congressional staffers have violated the law by failing to disclose their transactions on time.” The investigation also concluded that “the law’s enforcement is uneven and inconsistent.” Moreover, that same report found that congressmen had violated the STOCK Act hundreds of times just in the past two years, primarily related to the pandemic. Insider reported that at least “75 federal lawmakers held shares of Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, or Pfizer in 2020” as they were preparing to vote to authorize more than $10 billion “to help drug companies develop and distribute vaccines.”

Not surprisingly, a move is now afoot by some of our more ethical representatives to pass legislation that would ban congressmen, senators, their family members, and staff from even owning stocks. On January 24, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, urging them to bring to the House floor either the “Ban Conflicted Trading Act”, or the “TRUST in Congress Act”.

Meanwhile, some in the upper chamber are not only urging support for Golden’s proposal but want to make sure it has teeth. Just last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, said she supports a hefty consequence to rule breaking. Her idea is to fine elected officials $50,000 for every violation of the new law.

Thus far over two dozen House members have already signed off on Golden’s proposal, but there hasn’t exactly been a stampede of support. Speaking with Yahoo Finance, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained the obvious. “It’s not really a mystery to me why it’s difficult to pass. […] I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a majority of members of Congress [who] hold and trade individual stock.”

Nevertheless, Representative Golden is adamant about the need for reform. In his letter to Pelosi, Golden wrote, “Perhaps this means some of our colleagues will miss out on lucrative investment opportunities. We don’t care. We came to Congress to serve our country, not turn a quick buck.”

There’s no doubt that if Golden’s bill passes, and if the law is properly enforced, we might be able to curb corruption in the halls of Congress, but those are big “ifs”. Until then, we must hope that our elected officials spend more time making rules than breaking them.

On Monday, January 31, a fire broke out in the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant located at 4440 North Cherry Street in Winston-Salem, but it was no ordinary industrial blaze. That’s because the flames were dangerously close to nearly 600 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used for making fertilizer. To put this into perspective, when radical right-wing nut job Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, he needed only 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to make a bomb that killed 168 people. It’s no wonder, then, why Winston-Salem Fire Chief Trey Mayo initially said there was enough ammonium nitrate on hand at the Weaver plant to “be one of the worst explosions in U.S. history.”

In addition to the threat of explosion, the spread of potentially toxic fumes led Mayo to order mass evacuations from the area, which included over 2,500 homes. As of this writing, nearly 7,000 people have been evacuated, including Valerie Cope and her two daughters. By Friday, the evacuation area was reduced from a one-mile radius to one-eighth of a mile, but Valerie was hesitant to return, telling the Winston-Salem Journal she was concerned about, “the remaining quantity of ammonium nitrate at the plant.” Said Ms. Cope, “You don’t know when an explosion will happen.” Fortunately, none of Weaver’s 36 employees or nearby residents were injured as a result of the fire, but that’s a miracle in itself considering the lack of safety measures at the facility.

According to Deputy Fire Marshal Angela Sowell, the Winston Weaver plant “did not have alarms or sprinklers.” But how could that be?

“They were not required to. The code depends on the year it was actually built,” said Sowell. Unbelievably, she’s right. As Scott Sexton reported in the Journal, state codes requiring sprinklers didn’t go into effect until 1953, and the Winston Weaver plant was built in 1939. Sure, the North Carolina Building Code Council can create new regs, but, due to its age, the Weaver building was grandfathered in, and therefore exempt from having to install fire safety equipment. At this point, the General Assembly and Attorney General could challenge such grandfathered policies as they apply to the health and safety of a community, but don’t hold your breath, because that would put them in direct conflict with every business and industry which owns a pre-code building. At the very least, however, the state should put a cap on the amounts of ammonium nitrate that an individual or business can store.

In any event, there’s also the little matter of liability and responsibility. Winston Weaver’s right not to install sprinklers and alarms may have been protected by an archaic loophole, but that doesn’t let them off the hook for the monies expended by taxpayers who were either affected by or had to deal with the fire. First of all, the company should be made to compensate every resident who was displaced because of the fire. Then, they should also reimburse every public agency that took part in fighting, containing, and investigating the fire. According to Governor Roy Cooper who visited the site, over 25 local, state, and federal agencies have been involved thus far, including the SBI, ATF, State Police, and regional hazardous materials teams.

It’s only by the grace of God that there’s not a huge chunk of Winston-Salem missing today, and all because a company hid behind its “grandfather,” who gave it permission to put profit over safety.

Late last month Thomasville police discovered the bodies of two elderly people, but what makes this story so tragic is that the victims were not found in an alleyway or on a park bench. Instead, they were lying dead inside of a state-licensed nursing home.

The saga began when some family members repeatedly called Pine Ridge Health & Rehabilitation Center to check on their loved ones, but couldn’t get any staff to answer the phone. Police were then called in to conduct a welfare check, assisted by personnel from the fire department and county EMS. In addition to finding two deceased residents, the team also rescued two patients who were in need of critical emergency care and transported them to area hospitals.

The question is, how could this level of neglect have happened? When Thomasville police arrived, they found the answer. There were 98 patients residing at Pine Ridge, and only three people to care for them. Those included one Licensed Practical Nurse and two nursing assistants.

Pine Ridge is owned by Kinston-based Principle LTC, which, according to their website, operates 56 centers in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia. In other words, it’s a big company that should know how to staff and operate a skilled nursing facility, even in the face of a snowstorm and a pandemic, both of which Principle LTC blamed for the “disruptions to our staffing,” including 13 Pine Ridge employees out sick with COVID. But it should also be noted that Pine Ridge has had its share of problems even before the pandemic. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Pine Ridge has a one-star overall health inspections rating, and there have been numerous complaints lodged against that facility, including 12 in the past three years alone, resulting in fines of over $120,000.

As of this writing, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the deaths of the two Pine Ridge residents is the result of inadequate staffing, but the fact remains that it took a police welfare check to discover two other patients who were in need of emergency care, something Pine Ridge and its parent company must still answer for. And while Governor Cooper seems outraged at what happened last month, both he and the General Assembly don’t exactly have clean hands either. That’s because the state should have exercised more control over nursing facilities in the first place. Sure, DHHS can strip Pine Ridge of its license, but that doesn’t solve the long-term problem affecting hundreds of assisted living and skilled nursing communities throughout North Carolina. That problem is staffing, and DHHS knows it. In fact, here’s their official response to a question about the Pine Ridge incident:

“Neither federal nor state law prescribe a minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes.” Nursing homes are only required to “have sufficient staff with the appropriate competencies and skills sets to provide nursing and related services to assure resident safety and well-being.”

Are you kidding me? North Carolina requires no minimum staffing ratio for nursing facilities that care for elderly people, some of whom pay as much as $8,000 per month for that care? It’s unconscionable, and our state legislators must address this problem immediately. I’m not very good in math, but even I know that three people cannot adequately monitor and care for 98 patients. What happened at Pine Ridge is a tragedy. Unfortunately, it’s probably not a crime.

It is both surprising and shameful that Peter Bogdanovich doesn’t have a star along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and yet, a single star wouldn’t do him justice anyway. Truth be told, it would take at least a dozen stars to properly honor Peter. That’s because he was a director, writer, producer, editor, cinematographer, film preservationist, actor, casting agent, documentarian, author, voice-over talent, and film historian. And, oh yes, he was a college professor who taught directing at the UNC School of the Arts for a while. It was during that period of time that I caught up with Peter the Great for a series of conversations about his career. He was generous with his time and loved talking about filmmaking, of which he was both a fan and an expert. Peter Bogdanovich passed away on January 6. He was 82.

I wrote a series of columns about Peter back in 2011, one of which dealt with his directorial debut (Targets), and the other about his signature masterpiece, The Last Picture Show, which, at the time, was celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Targets, produced in 1968, is the story of an average American man who goes off his nut and turns into a mass-murdering sniper. One of the killer’s targets is a retired Hollywood horror icon, played by Boris Karloff. I asked Peter if he had hoped the film would bring about better gun laws in America.

“I thought it would raise a little bit of controversy. It didn’t raise much. The thing that’s awful about the film is that it’s not dated. Unfortunately, that story (a guy gets a gun and starts killing people) is still very much alive.”

And while there’s a message in all of Bogdanovich’s films, they are not, per se, message films. Most were made for the pure enjoyment of the audience, whether period pieces, slapstick comedies, or musicals. Targets was the exception, and, for the most part, so was The Last Picture Show, which portrayed life in a dying Texas town. The film won Oscars for character actor Ben Johnson, as well as for Cloris Leachman in one of her few dramatic roles. I asked Peter if he shot Picture Show in black-and-white in order to save money.

“That had nothing to do with it. In fact, it was probably a little more expensive to do it in black-and-white because the labs weren’t used to it. The period of the film was early fifties, which was still a black-and-white period. The other reason is Orson Welles told me, ‘Every performance looks better in black-and-white,’ and he was right.”

Peter was also a master at spotting talent and assembling a cast. In addition to tapping Johnson and Leachman for The Last Picture Show, he also hired Ellen Burstyn, and two young unknowns, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd, to co-star in the dark drama. He also launched the career of Tatum O’Neil in Paper Moon, for which she won an Oscar. Given his expertise at casting, I was surprised to learn that he has a disdain for the auditioning process.

“Auditioning is humiliating, and not a fair way to judge talent. You get one actor in the room and he’s very nervous, then there are other actors who are very good at reading, but when they get to performance it isn’t as good as it promised to be in the reading. That’s why I would often cast people by just sitting and talking with them for a half-hour or forty-five minutes.”

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Peter is not his film credits, but rather it was his unmistakable voice, and how he used it to keep Hollywood alive, whether lecturing, narrating a documentary, providing commentary on DVDs, doing podcasts, or just having a private conversation. That voice will be missed.

When I was ten years old, my parents put me on a Piedmont Airlines turbo prop and sent me to visit my sister in Florida. Prior to that, my only flying experience had been when I imitated Superman and leaped off the back of the living room sofa, but the flight to Florida lasted much longer. In those days everyone got dressed up to fly, so the plane was filled with people who looked like they were on their way to church. Male passengers had on ties and jackets, and the ladies all wore dresses. Everyone was well-behaved, and it was a wonderful experience except that the cabin was filled with cigarette smoke. That’s because back then, passengers were allowed to light up. Later that year, though, the Surgeon General issued his first warning about the dangers of smoking and, before long, frequent flyers could no longer be frequent smokers. Smoking and non-smoking sections were designated in planes beginning in 1973, and four years later, the Civil Aeronautics Board banned cigars and pipes on planes. In 1995, Delta became the first airline to ban smoking altogether, and in 2000, President Clinton signed an order banning smoking on all commercial flights.

I mention all this because there is another airline industry-related ban in the works. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey wants to ban the sale of alcohol in airport bars and restaurants. Why? Because in 2021 there were nearly 6,000 cases of unruly passengers, leading Markey to describe the problem as, “an epidemic of violent behavior on planes.” And while pandemic tempers and anti-maskers account for many of the scuffles, alcohol is believed to be the catalyst to most. Commenting to YahooFinance.com, Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, said the following:

The problem with aviation right now is the violence toward flight attendants and other aviation workers…Alcohol is absolutely a contributor. I don’t want to say that alcohol is always the cause for these events, but alcohol is the biggest contributor to them.

But does Senator Markey’s proposed ban go far enough to prevent violent in-flight behavior? Sadly, no. What if, for example, someone had two drinks before leaving home, never patronized an airport bar, and went straight to boarding?

In that case, he might not seem impaired to the boarding agent, nor to the flight attendants who would have no reason not to serve him two more drinks after take-off. That’s why in addition to supporting Markey’s airport bar ban, I also support banning alcoholic beverages during the flight. Absent that, then all boarding agents should be required to administer a breathalyzer test to every adult passenger, the same way many pandemic-era offices and hospitals once required an infrared temperature check to be administered before someone could enter the premises.

I wish these bans and preventive measures weren’t necessary, but today’s airline passengers are not as well behaved as they were when I was a child. Back then, those well-dressed folks were served mixed drinks, but they didn’t get into fights with the crew or other passengers. The fact is we’re living in troubled and unprecedented times, and if banning alcohol, even temporarily, will help mitigate in-flight violence, then so be it. It is disconcerting to know that there are a lot of idiotic, inconsiderate, and violent people roaming around free, but it’s downright scary to think I might be trapped 30,000 feet in the air with one of them. Banning alcohol in airports and planes is a small price to pay for protecting the health and safety of everyone who flies.

This past summer I excoriated NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent for not insisting that his players get vaccinated. As a result of his lack of leadership, a number of Wolfpack players contracted COVID, and the team was disqualified from post-season competition just one game shy of the World Series finals. Asked why he had not mandated vaccinations, Avent said, “My job is to teach them baseball, but I don’t try to indoctrinate my kids with my values or my opinions…These are young men that can make their own decisions, and that’s what they did.”

Avent’s head-in-the-sand attitude and the selfishness of several players cost NCSU a national championship. It also helped to further facilitate the spread of a deadly disease. State’s self-made disaster should have been a warning to all college athletes and coaches, yet exactly six months later, NC State was at the center of another major COVID controversy. This time, the Wolfpack football squad was denied a major bowl victory when a number of unvaccinated UCLA players tested positive, and the Bruins pulled out of the big game. As Yogi Berra said, it was déjà vu all over again, except that this was more egregious than the World Series fiasco.

The Wolfpack had arrived in San Diego five days ahead of the Holiday Bowl and, according to State coach Dave Doeren, his team was fully vaccinated and fully prepared. Not so UCLA, who pulled out of the bowl game four hours before kick-off, with Bruin coach Chip Kelly saying a number of his unvaccinated players had tested positive, and that his defensive unit was “decimated.” But Doeren and others have since suggested that Kelly knew days earlier of his team’s dilemma, and should have said something to Holiday Bowl officials and to State’s athletic director. If that’s true, and if Kelly had been more transparent, then there would have been time for the Holiday Bowl committee to secure another opponent for NC State. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. It’s all moot now. Sort of.

One important point lingers from this mess. Why in the hell didn’t UCLA mandate vaccinations for its players? By now, all of the Bruin squad should have been fully vaccinated, including having received a booster to help protect against the effects of two different COVID variants. Failure to do so falls on the chancellor, athletic director, and coach, all of whom should be fired. Short of that, the NCAA should put UCLA football on probation, and ban them from bowl competition for three years. The one consolation for State is that the NCAA eventually declared the game a forfeit, and awarded a victory and the trophy to the Wolfpack.

I don’t usually write about sports, but this incident has broader implications regarding the health and safety of all Americans.

The unvaccinated UCLA players are arrogant and reckless, and most likely also buy into some of the popular conspiracy theories, for example, that the government has embedded microchips into the vaccines so it can track our every movement. But I don’t need a microchip to tell me where the Bruins and other selfish anti-vaxxers are located. They’re all living in fantasy land, in the state of denial, and along Q Street, just to the right of all reason.

Off-year elections are not usually ripe with drama, but 2022 is already proving the exception. For one thing, there is still the lingering specter of Donald Trump, and how he and his false claims of voter fraud may affect turnout. There’s Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers and a razor-thin Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, which have Republicans salivating. And then there’s gerrymandering and the courts. Here in North Carolina, congressional candidates have tried to position themselves to run in districts that may or may not exist, and a primary that has been rescheduled more times than a pandemic football game. And that brings us to the race for United States Senate, and to the folks who want to replace Richard Burr, who is retiring to count his money.

Only a few weeks ago, there were six leading contenders for Burr’s seat. Among the Democratic candidates were state Senator Jeff Jackson, Erica Smith, and Judge Cheri Beasley, while former Governor Pat McCrory, congressman Ted Budd, and former congressman Mark Walker were vying for the Republican nomination. However, shortly after the GOP map was drawn, Smith and Walker dropped out of their respective Senate races and announced bids to run for Congress. Then Jackson folded his tent while Walker dipped one toe back into the Senate race until the final maps were ratified.

In an attempt to give voters an objective look at the remaining Senate field, I featured Judge Beasley on the December 25th/26th edition of Triad Today, and I interviewed Budd and McCrory for the following episode. Among the questions I put to Pat and Ted were: How is Trump’s endorsement going to affect the primary and general elections? What can you do as Senator to help stem the tide of gun violence in America? Which of your accomplishments are you most proud of? And, Who had the most impact on your decision to go into politics?

I also asked both men why they wanted to serve in Washington, a place where there was so much partisan bickering and vitriol.

Pat: The main reason I’m running for the Senate is because Washington is broken. Just look at when the federal and state government started paying people more not to work than to work. That’s when I said, “I’m running.” It reminded me of when I became Governor in 2013, and I had all these protesters because I had reduced unemployment compensation at a time when there were plenty of job openings. There were “help wanted” signs all over North Carolina, and no one was taking them. And a lot of employers told me the reason those folks aren’t taking the jobs is because they make more on unemployment than they do coming to work for us. I reduced unemployment compensation equal to what South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia were paying, and three months later, North Carolina had the largest drop in unemployment in the country.

Ted: I think about where I came from in Davie County, about 35 minutes west of here, and the people out there and all over the state, just want someone to stand up for them. They feel like Washington D.C. has largely forgotten them, and the Beltway has. And so they need people that they elect to remember them, remember who sent them there, and that they’re standing up for the forgotten men and women of America. I’ve never been one to stand on the sidelines. I’m not a complainer, I’m a doer. I threw my hat in the ring back in 2016 when there was a 17-way primary, and it worked out, and I’ve had the privilege of serving since then, and now I’m trying for the U.S. Senate.”