Triad Today

Most people know Popeye as the cartoon sailor who ate spinach when he needed super strength to fight a bad guy. But I’ll always remember Popeye for the phrase he uttered just prior to consuming those leafy greens. Frustrated with the situation at hand, Popeye would say, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more.” It meant that he had reached his breaking point, something we all do from time to time, and when that happens, we say, “This is the last straw”. It’s a phrase which, in its complete form references, an Old World observation for what happens when you break a camel’s back by loading too much straw on it. According to the American Heritage dictionary, however, the modern connotation means, “The last of a series of annoyances that leads one to a final loss of patience, temper, trust, or hope.” Regardless, no matter how you say it, the last straw is what I’ve reached with Donald Trump.

Truth is, there have been a lot of last straws with Trump, beginning with his childish behavior during the 2016 Republican debates, in which he assigned nicknames to other candidates, like “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, and “Low Energy Jeb”, and while doing so, made outlandish and false claims about his opponents, such as accusing Cruz’s father of having been involved in the Kennedy assassination.

Then there was the Access Hollywood tape on which he could be heard bragging to Billy Bush that he could do anything he wanted to with women. “I can kiss them and grab them by the p***y.” Trump’s defense was that his words were just locker room talk, but I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms, and I’ve never heard any one brag about sexual assault. Speaking of which, during the campaign and throughout his first term in office, nearly two dozen women have come forward with credible claims of sexual harassment and assault against the Donald.  For most Americans, Trump’s misogyny and various offenses against women should have been the last straw.

In the run up to the 2016 election, Trump and his fixer, Michael Cohen, arranged for the National Enquirer to kill a story about his sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels, a hotel romp that occurred while Melania was pregnant with their son Barron. He also authorized hush money be paid to Daniels. Taken in tandem,  the “catch and kill” and payment smacked of an illegal campaign donation.  That should have been the last straw.

After taking office, Trump surrounded himself with a bunch of misfits, a half-dozen of whom have since been convicted of federal crimes. Meanwhile he has fired or run off the handful of competent advisors who tried to keep his erratic behavior in check, while retaining folks like Steven Miller, whose radical views on immigration and acceptance of white supremacist groups has shaped Trump’s racist rhetoric, which has included referring to the Charlottesville Nazis as “very fine people.” That should have been another last straw.

Trump has used his bully pulpit to demean, defame, or embarrass American citizens. At one rally he pointed to the lone African American in the crowd and said, “Where’s my black? Where is he? There he is.” At another rally Trump mocked a disabled reporter by flailing his arms around as if to simulate spasms. And then there’s his recent bizarre dramatization of how he imagined a romantic encounter transpired between two FBI investigators, complete with orgasmic inflections. He insulted a gold star family, made fun of John McCain’s military service, and berated one of our nation’s most capable and distinguished ambassadors. Any of those things should have been the last straw.

Donald Trump is functionally illiterate, and hands-down the most uninformed president in history. He can’t string two coherent sentences together, refuses to read briefing books, thinks Colorado borders Mexico, and has shown time and again that he has no working knowledge of our constitution, a document which he swore to uphold. In addition, according to several fact checking organizations, Trump has told over 12,000 lies since taking office, and those lies sometimes affect or are the basis for setting public policy. Serial lying is not presidential, and it should be the last straw.

According to 27 noted mental health experts who studied Trump’s actual words and behavior (see “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”), our president suffers from clinically documented narcissism. They cite his “displays of instability”, and his disregard for the consequences of his actions. They observed his willingness to “say or do anything at any time for purposes of self-aggrandizement”, as well as his propensity to “dehumanize others”. They wrote of his lack of “foresight and compassion”, his bullying and paranoia, his misogyny, and his inability “to recognize other people’s emotions and feelings”. And they referred to his behavior as immature and incompetent. Any of those findings should have been the last straw.

Finally, there’s Trump’s demand for the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation of the Bidens in return for our releasing to him some congressionally approved military aid that he needs to defend against Russian aggression. That, combined with multiple counts of obstruction should be the last straw.

Not to diminish the other straws, but I came to my Popeye moment last week when I witnessed the president of France scolding Trump for making an uninformed remark about ISIS, then watched as four European leaders were overheard making fun of Trump. That was MY president those men were scolding and scoffing at, and it was as if they were laughing at me and our entire nation. In a way, their lack of respect and contempt for Trump was derivative of all the other straws and flaws. And so, too, was it for me. Trump needs to go, whether by impeachment or election, but he’s got to go. He has broken the camel’s back.

 
 

Back in May I wrote about Senator Kamala Harris’ proposed “Equal Pay Certification” program, which, if adopted, would make it illegal for companies to pay their female employees less than males doing the same job. Said Harris, “Under our plan, for the first time in American history, companies will be held responsible for demonstrating they are not engaging in pay discrimination.”

Harris’ plan follows other attempts to legislate away pay disparities, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a year when women were paid 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. But JFK’s act fell short for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it initially only applied to women in blue collar jobs. For another, any woman with a claim had to file a sex discrimination complaint, and then argue her case before a supervisor who was almost always a male. In 1972, the EPA was finally amended to include women in white collar jobs, but the pay disparity levels only improved slightly, as was the case in 2009 when President Obama signed the Fair Pay Act into law.

So just how bad is the pay gap today? The American Association of University Women conducted a study in 2018, which concluded that white women are paid about 80 cents for every dollar paid to a man doing the same job. That number falls to 61 cents for black women, and 53 cents for Latina women. Here in North Carolina, women earn about 84 cents for every dollar paid to a man, but that’s only an improvement of one penny from four years ago. Even worse, the pay gap isn’t expected to close until the year 2060.

I believe that one reason the gender pay gap hasn’t improved is because most corporations are still run by men. In fact, according to a 2015 report by Thinkprogress.org, there are only 48 female CEOs heading up the top 1,000 companies. I can’t prove that closing the pay gap isn’t a priority for most male executives, but the lack of progress made over the past decade in that regard is a good indicator. That means the problem is coming from the top. The California legislature must agree with me because they recently passed the first-ever law that would require publicly held corporations to put women on their boards of directors.

The new law would require those companies to place at least one woman on their boards by the end of this year. Companies with at least five board members must have two women on the board by 2021, and boards of six or more members, must include at least three women by that same deadline. The penalties for non compliance will be severe. According to the Associated Press, companies who fail to “report their board compositions” to the state face a $100,000 fine, and if they fail to meet the deadlines for inclusion, they will pay $100,000 for the first violation and “$300,000 for subsequent violations.”

The bad news is that the California law is being challenged in court by two different organizations who claim that it violates provisions in both the state and federal constitutions. The good news is that California lawmakers are on the right side of the pay disparity issue, and judges will be hard pressed to rule against a substantive effort to reform a corporate culture that discriminates against the majority of its workforce. Beyond that, we here in North Carolina should push our own General Assembly to embrace and adopt California’s new law, because putting more women in the board room can lead to a change in corporate priorities, among them to close the pay gap now instead of waiting until 2060. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Women shouldn’t have to wait forty more years for something they should have had in the first place.

 
 

When I was in high school a hundred years ago, it was not unusual for two guys to get into a fist fight over one thing or another. I had one of those encounters myself, and afterward, ended up in the principal’s office. The principal, a former coach, read me the riot act, told me it better not happen again, then sent me back to class. It was the last time I engaged in fisticuffs during my high school career. I realize that, today, too many school fights involve weapons, and when that happens, suspensions and expulsions may be warranted. But my point is that sometimes, student misbehavior should not warrant anything more than a warning, and that brings me to the Guilford School Board, and their recent decision to allow parents to appeal their child’s short-term suspension.

In the past, it has been up to the school principal to sign off on short-term suspensions, and his or her word was pretty much final. However, earlier this month, the Board voted 6-to-3 to implement a new, two-step policy for appealing suspensions of 10 days or less. First, parents can take their case to the principal’s direct supervisor, and if not satisfied, they can then appeal directly to the superintendent. Reaction to the new policy has been mixed. Most educators I have spoken with, including former superintendents, are opposed to adding another layer of red tape to the process. Said one former administrator, “I am totally against allowing appeals of short-term suspensions because it creates way too much due process and is cumbersome.” Current Guilford School Board members Darlene Garrett and Pat Tillman also have a problem with the new policy. Speaking with the Greensboro News & Record, Tillman said, “This is a solution without a problem,” while Garrett remarked that it would, “undermine principals as well as safety in schools.” Parent Steve Mitchell told the GNR that the new appeals process would, “embolden student misbehavior and bog down schools in paperwork.”

On the flip side, Board chair Deena Hayes-Greene and many other parents welcome any policy that would help further clarify the rationale for a short-term suspension, which, if let stand, would be reflected on the student’s permanent record. I’ve never been a parent, but I’ve been a student, and from that perspective I support any process that could lessen or avoid a suspension for a minor violation. My problem with this matter, however, lies not so much with the new policy, as it does with how short-term suspensions are identified in the first place.

According to the Guilford County Schools’ Code of Conduct, there are over a dozen categories of violations which could warrant a short-term suspension, among them: using insulting or harassing language; inappropriate or lewd behavior; fighting with another student; cheating; non-compliance with direction of teachers; gambling; use of tobacco products; and, misbehaving on a school bus.

But here’s the fly in the ointment. After reading through Guilford’s entire Code of Conduct section, I couldn’t find a table or chart that specified the exact number of days suspension that are issued for a specific violation. As one former superintendent told me, “Some level of discretion is provided to principals for certain acts.” That means if Johnny punches Sam in the stomach, the number of days he will be suspended can vary from school to school, and that’s no way to run a railroad. Public schools need to codify the exact number of days your child will be suspended if he or she commits a particular offense. Doing so would give parents and students an advance warning about consequences, and perhaps eliminate the need for modified policies regarding an appeals process.

I learned early on that warnings can be an effective method for improving student behavior, and preventing suspensions altogether. I just hope our area school boards can learn that same lesson.

Presidents are only human, so they make mistakes. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s claim that Colorado borders Mexico, or George Bush’s decision to invade the wrong country after 9/11. I’m talking about John Kennedy, and how he misread history, unintentionally insulted the Commonwealth of Virginia, and was compelled to make amends.

The story begins on Wednesday December 4, 1619. That’s the day 38 English settlers from the London Company, navigated their ship down the James River and onto Berkeley Hundred (Harrison’s Landing), in what is now Charles City, Virginia, just 20 miles upstream from Jamestown, which had been settled twelve years prior. The landing party was led by Captain John Woodlief, who, as prescribed in the company charter, ordered a day of Thanksgiving to be observed upon their arrival, and every December 4th thereafter.

Over time, Berkeley became known for its historic firsts. The first bourbon whiskey was made there in 1621 (by a preacher no less). “Taps” was played for the first time while the Union army was encamped at Berkeley in 1862. And, of course, it was the site of America’s first Thanksgiving. But more on that in a moment.

In 1907 Berkeley was purchased by John Jamieson who had served as a Union drummer boy during the army’s encampment at the plantation. Ownership later fell to his son (and my friend) Malcolm, who passed away in 1997. Mac loved Berkeley and was aggressive in marketing the historic site, including through the use of promotional videos and commercials which I helped to produce. He invited the public to tour the house and grounds, sold Berkeley boxwoods and bourbon, and held an annual Thanksgiving pageant which attracted tourists from across the country. But the celebration wasn’t always widely recognized.

One hundred years after his father beat the Yankee drums at Berkeley, Mac was upset by something another Yankee did. In the fall of 1962, President Kennedy issued his yearly Thanksgiving Proclamation in which he recognized his home state of Massachusetts as the site of America’s first Thanksgiving. And so, on November 9th of that year, Virginia state Senator John Wicker was prompted by Mac to write to the President, and point out Kennedy’s faux pas. In his telegram, Wicker referenced historical records about Berkeley’s celebration, which took place one full year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620.

Later that year, Kennedy confidant and noted historian Arthur Schlesinger sent a reply to Wicker with a tongue-in-cheek apology from the President. According to Berkeley records, Schlesinger “attributed the error to unconquerable New England bias on the part of the White House staff.”

The following year, on November 5, 1963, President Kennedy had to eat crow during his annual Thanksgiving proclamation, saying, “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home, in a lonely wilderness, set aside a day of thanksgiving.” Kennedy’s New England bias wouldn’t allow him to disavow Plymouth entirely, but Mac was happy that Berkeley finally gained official recognition for holding the first Thanksgiving, even if it was a shared honor. Sadly, it was to be Kennedy’s last proclamation. He was assassinated seventeen days later in Dallas.

The holiday season is now upon us, and it’s a time for celebrating with friends and family, and for remembering fondly those who are no longer with us. In this season of giving thanks, perhaps we would all do well to emulate those weary English settlers, and just be thankful for surviving another day of our long journey. So here’s a Berkeley bourbon toast to Captain Woodlief, a little drummer boy, old Mac, and to that Yankee president who finally set the record straight.
 
 

Although many of us East-Coasters like to make jokes about the “Left Coast”, and its liberal tree huggers, the fact is that California is a forward-thinking trendsetter when it comes to taking a stand on social and environmental issues. In the past 20 years alone, the Golden State was the first to oppose federal restrictions on stem cell research, the first to pass a restrictive law on greenhouse gas emissions, the first State to mandate prescription drug discounts, and the first to de-criminalize the recreational use of marijuana. Earlier this fall, Governor Gavin Newsom pushed through legislation that will allow college athletes to be compensated for the use of their name and image, a move which prompted the NCAA to follow suit. And last month, California became the first state in the nation to ban the sale of animal fur products.

According to CNN, the bill, which goes into effect on January 1, 2023, will make it illegal to sell, donate, or manufacture new fur products, and that will apply to “all new clothing, handbags, shoes, and other items made with fur.” In addition to signing the fur bill (#AB44), Newsom also signed into law several other bills designed to prevent animal cruelty. Those laws will include a ban on the use of elephants and tigers by any circus that does business in the state. It also protects horses from slaughter, and bans the trapping and killing of bobcats. However, depending upon your point of view, the recent legislation isn’t exactly comprehensive. For example, according to the Associated Press, the new laws do not apply to “products used for religious or tribal purposes…and they exclude the sale of leather, cowhides, deer, sheep and goat skin, and anything preserved by taxidermy.” Despite those perplexing loopholes, the new protections are a welcome sight to those of us who abhor mistreatment of animals.

Not surprisingly, companies that make products from animals, are furious. According to the Fur Information Council, the retail fur industry brought in $1.5 billion dollars in sales in 2014. FIC spokesperson Keith Kaplan told the Associated Press, “The ban is part of a radical vegan agenda using fur as the first step to other bans on what we wear and eat.” In contrast, a number of design houses including Versace, Gucci, and Giorgio Armani, are fine with the new laws, and according to Recordnet.com, say they have either already stopped, or plan to stop using fur. And in somewhat of a surprise move, even Queen Elizabeth got into the spirit of things, coincidentally announcing last week that she will no longer wear fur.

Obviously people disagree about what should and shouldn’t be banned, but we cannot ignore the disturbing facts. According to the Humane Society of the United States, every year, over 40 million animals are killed for fur worldwide, 30 million of which are raised on fur farms, then slaughtered. The other 10 million are trapped and killed in the wild. However, a group called Last Chance for Animals puts the numbers even higher. According to their website, more than one billion animals are killed for their pelts each year. So kudos to Governor Newsom and the California legislature for recognizing a wrong, and then righting it. I just wish our North Carolina lawmakers would follow California’s example. After all, Berger and company should at least be more concerned with protecting animals than they are with protecting gerrymandered districts.

The Dalai Lama might have said it with more eloquence, but it was Rocky Balboa, in the movie Creed, who said it best: “You can’t learn anything when you’re talking.” That bit of wisdom should be inscribed on a large plaque at the entrance to every hearing room in the United States Capitol.

According to the website GovInfo.gov, a congressional hearing is a meeting of a special committee to obtain information. Yet, when it comes to public hearings where cameras are rolling, obtaining information takes a back seat to political grandstanding. Instead of asking concise questions designed to elicit information, most congressmen and senators use their allotted time to make speeches and badger witnesses. Last week, Ken Cuccinelli, President Trump’s acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, was summoned to Congress for a hearing about the administration’s policy of denying illegal immigrants with serious medical conditions the ability to remain in the United States for treatment. Cuccinelli, the former Republican attorney general of Virginia, is known for his homophobic views and blind loyalty to the GOP, but no one should be subjected to the kinds of attacks he endured at the hands of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Schultz, you recall, is the woman who came under fire for using her position at the DNC to give Hillary an unfair advantage over Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries. Here’s an excerpt from her exchange with Cuccinelli.

DWS: You and Mr. Trump don’t want anyone who looks or talks differently from Caucasians, to be allowed into this country.

KC: That’s false.

DWS: Please don’t interrupt…you will pursue this heinous, white supremacist ideology at all cost.

KC: That’s defamatory.

DWS: There’s nothing defamatory about it.

Again, I’m no fan of the narrow-minded Cuccinelli, but Schultz’s calling him a xenophobe and a white supremacist was inappropriate. Unfortunately, this kind of grandstanding by Schultz is all too common, and both political parties are guilty. The website OneCitizenSpeaking.com refers to these made for TV hearings as “Kabuki Theatre, a stage-managed chance for members of Congress to play to their constituent audience and sound articulate, tough, or compassionate depending on the political climate. This is the primary reason why most hearings feature long and complicated questions that are more like miniature campaign speeches and a regurgitation of the party’s talking points.”

We’ve seen this “Kabuki Theatre” play out time and again over the past ten years, including with Republican hypocrites like Mike Pompeo grilling Hillary at the Benghazi hearings, and Lindsay Graham screaming at other members while attempting to discredit Christine Blasey Ford at the Kavanaugh hearings. And then there’s wild man Jim Jordan, who went off on Michael Cohen during the Mueller hearings. It is sad that our elected officials are allowed to lie about, defame, and accuse witnesses without fear of retribution or legal consequence. Not so for us regular folks. If we lie at a congressional hearing, it’s a federal crime, that could land us in jail alongside Felicity Huffman and Aunt Becky. Not only that, but neither a witness nor a committee member can even call out another member for lying. It’s a pretty good double standard for congressmen, kind of like when the government shuts down and elected officials still get paid while common civil servants are SOL.

But perhaps the worst part of these televised hearings, is that when congressmen spew unfounded and false information (what Kellyanne Conway calls “alternative facts”), millions of people accept their lies as the truth, and that can lead to an uninformed and misinformed electorate. Or, as playwrite George Bernard Shaw put it, “Beware of false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

Republican congressmen have been complaining of late that the House impeachment hearings are unfair because they have been held in private, which is yet another “alternative fact”, because Republicans have been included in every hearing. Ironically that hollow complaint and the grandstanding that goes on during televised hearings, do nothing but strengthen the case for closed-door hearings, where members of congress actually ask questions instead of making political speeches. It bears repeating: “You can’t learn anything when you’re talking.”

Over the past few months, public discourse in America has been hijacked by talk of impeachment and scandal. That’s why when 13^th district Congressman Ted Budd and 6^th district Congressman Mark Walker agreed to sit down for a half-hour discussion, we focused on a number of issues that have taken a back seat to partisan politics. On October 9, while on break from their duties in D.C., Budd and Walker stopped by the studio to tape a special edition of Triad Today, which will air this weekend. The following are excerpts from our unrehearsed conversation.

GUN VIOLENCE

Jim: Just since the two of you appeared on this program in March, there have been another 260 people killed in mass shootings. Is Congress doing anything to address this problem?

Ted: There are a couple of bills I’ve co-sponsored, one of which is the TAPS Act. It trains law enforcement personnel to make behavioral threat assessments, and to look for problems before they happen.

Mark: We’ve passed multiple pieces of legislation, including the Stop School Violence Act. We’ve also got the Fix/Nix Act that cleans up some of the background checks. And, just recently, in Guilford and Rockingham counties we saw a $500,000 grant go to protecting schools.

SECURING ELECTIONS

Jim: Are you doing anything to secure our 2020 elections?

Ted: One bill that’s already passed the Senate is the Deter Act, and it would deport anyone who is a non-US citizen who’s here trying to infiltrate or overturn our elections. There are also other measures related to “Blockchain” security, which is the future in terms of preventing cyber hacking.

Mark: We’ve designated $380 million dollars back to the electoral commission system to make sure that older voting machines are not vulnerable, like maybe they have been in the past.

CONGRESSIONAL RE-DISTRICTING

Jim: Who should be responsible for drawing up Congressional maps?

Ted: The state legislature. That’s what it’s been historically, and that’s what it should be in the future.

Mark: The state legislature should be able to draw those lines because they are the representatives of the people of that state.

CAMPAIGN DONATIONS

Jim: Both of you and many other elected officials have been touched in some way by the case involving former Congressman Robin Hayes. What do you do with campaign donations which you later discover to be tainted in some way?

Ted: In cases like that, the best practice is to give the money to a charity, and let them benefit from that, and just distance yourself from it.

Mark: The maximum somebody can give to both campaigns is $5,800. With the gentleman involved in that case, we gave the money to charity.

HEALTHCARE

Jim: It doesn’t seem as though we have a cohesive healthcare plan. So where do we stand?

Ted: One of the things I’ve done is introduce the Flex Act, which codifies some of the administration’s efforts to allow associations to offer healthcare plans to small businesses.

Mark: Obamacare is still the law of the land, but evidently it isn’t good enough. The bottom line for me, is it about choice for the individual? Or, is it about more control? If it’s about more choice, then let’s go down that path as opposed to more government involvement.

During the half hour discussion, Budd and Walker also talked about how to curb illegal immigration, what kinds of legislation they are proposing to strengthen education and workforce development, and whether we’d be better off without the Electoral College. I also asked them if they were afraid to criticize Donald Trump for fear that he would campaign against their re-election. This special edition of Triad Today airs Saturday at 7:30am on abc45, and Sunday at 11am on MY48.

This past weekend, Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines appeared on Triad Today to share his thoughts on a wide range of topics affecting the City that he has presided over since 2001. We began by talking about job growth.

JL: What’s the current state of the City’s economy?

AJ: Well Jim, last year we created more jobs in our community than we have in decades. We’ve got a goal of creating 5,400 net new jobs per year for five years in a row, and if we do that, we’ll be one of the top 50 metro areas in the country. Last year we created 5,300 new jobs, so we’re feeling good about that. Also, unemployment is low, and we’re making progress in our entrepreneurial development programs, so I feel like we’re moving in the right direction.

JL: Let’s talk about Renfro, a sock manufacturing company with headquarters in Mt. Airy. Both the City and Forsyth County have offered Renfro hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives to relocate over 200 jobs to Winston-Salem, but, to be clear, you didn’t recruit them.

AJ: That’s a good point, Jim. We don’t fish in other people’s pond around us here. But they indicated to me that they needed to move. They said where they are now they can’t attract the talent they need for a growing corporate headquarters, and they were going to move to one place or another. So I said, “We’d love to have you in Winston-Salem.”

JL: So, are they coming to Winston-Salem?

AJ: They haven’t made a final decision, but I think it will come fairly quickly, and I’m feeling very positive about it.

JL: Bring us up to speed on what’s going on with the Whitaker Park site.

AJ: As you know, R.J. Reynolds donated 1.7 million square feet of space to a non-profit we created. We’re making great progress there, for example, we were able to keep Cook Medical here in the community, and they’re going to invest about $55 million dollars, and probably grow their workforce from 650 to 1000 jobs. We also just announced that Chris Harrison, a developer from Baltimore, is going to do about an $80 million dollar project, with residential, hotel, and retail going in there.

JL: It was on this program last year that you announced a new program to reduce poverty in the City. How’s that going?

AJ: We’ve seen poverty rates come down from 26% to 21%, and I won’t take credit for that because we’ve only been in business for about a year, but we’re moving in the right direction. And, we’ve got a lot of other really neat programs that we’re going to make some major announcements about in the next two to three weeks, one which will help with young people graduating from high school, and being able to go to college, hopefully for free.

JL: Your friend, Mayor Nancy Vaughan is having a problem with gun violence in Greensboro, so now, her city council is allocating a half-million dollars to an anti-violence program. In the wake of similar violence in Winston-Salem, is that something you’re looking into, or have you done so already?

AJ: We’re looking at a number of things. We’ve got a task force that we’re operating within the police department, and we just received a large federal grant for something called a “shot locator”, in which we’ll be locating monitors all around various parts of the community, so that if a shot is fired, it triangulates where it was, and we can get immediate response to it. There are also some other things we’re looking at in terms of social programs as well.

JL: It sounds like Winston-Salem is doing pretty well, so what challenges still lay ahead?

AJ: As always you can’t ever let up. We need to keep pushing hard because the worst thing you can do is to sit on your laurels.

Syndicated media critic R.D. Heldenfels once proclaimed that 1954 was television’s greatest year, in part because of its literate, live dramas and innovative comedies. But 1954 was great for another reason. It was the year that 19-year-old Diahann Carroll made her TV debut, winning first prize by singing on the talent show, Chance of a Lifetime. That led to a supporting role in her first motion picture, Carmen Jones, and a starring turn in the Broadway musical, No Strings, for which she won a Tony Award. In 1974, Diahann snagged an Oscar nomination for her dramatic performance in Claudine. Along the way she would also become a Vegas headliner, author of two books, and founder of a group that helped disadvantaged women. But Diahann was best known for her role as a single mom and registered nurse in 1968’s groundbreaking Julia. It was the first primetime program to star a woman of color in a professional career, and it won her a Golden Globe. In 1976, she starred in her own variety series, and in 1984 she joined the cast of Dynasty. Diahann also appeared as Jasmine Guy’s mother in A Different World, and her last regular series role was in support of Matt Bomer on White Collar, from 2008-2014. In 1997, Diahann was diagnosed with breast cancer, but stayed free of the disease for 22 years until it returned several months ago, and took her life on October 4. Diahann was 84. She is survived by her daughter Suzanne and two grandchildren.

I first met Diahann Carroll in 2008 when she participated in my “Salute to TV Moms” event at the Television Academy. Our discussion that night was wide ranging, and began with Diahann talking about her parents.

Diahann: My parents were very middle class, and very old fashioned, and anything having to do with show business was out of the question. They said that was for ‘racy ladies’. I even did the thing my father hated most, I performed in nightclubs, where he said, “They even pluck their eyebrows!” This man was really old fashioned.

I also asked Diahann about how she shaped her character and the scripts on Julia, including the time when producer Hal Kanter wanted Julia’s son Corey (played by Marc Copage) to idolize John Wayne.

Diahann: I said, “Hal, are you crazy? You can’t do that with this little black child. Do you know any black people, Hal?” And he said, ‘I know you now’, and I said, “then you see what a pain in the ass I am.”

On that evening, I surprised each TV Mom by reuniting them with some of their co-stars. Appearing for Diahann were Marc Copage and Jasmine Guy.

Jasmine: You are so elegant, warm, and down to earth, and you’ve taught me a lot about growing up as a woman, a woman in this business, a mother, an actress. Thank you for having my back in so many ways.

Copage: Miss Carroll, I’m very lucky to have had the opportunity to play your son for three years. Having grown up without a real mother, you filled that void.

The day after Diahann passed away, I reached out to some of our friends who had worked with the great lady, among them was Marc, who echoed his thoughts from that evening 11 years ago. “Diahann was the only maternal figure I knew, and during that first season on Julia, I would beg her to take me home with her at the end of the day’s shooting. I took to her as if she was my real mother…I will greatly miss her.”

Joan Collins, Diahann’s diva rival on Dynasty, emailed me, and wrote, “I’m shocked and saddened to hear of Diahann’s passing. We had such fun filming Dynasty, and I have great memories of our time together.” And Linda Evans said, “Diahann was a powerful woman with the tenacity to follow her dreams. I admired her, and enjoyed working with her.”

And my friend Matt Bomer, star of White Collar, told me, “We were all so blessed to know and love Diahann. She possessed a grace and elegance that you just don’t see very often anymore. She was wickedly funny, self-deprecating, and lovely in every way. She was also a profound inspiration to me, and helped to give me the courage to be my most authentic self.”

Truth is, it was easy to be inspired by Diahann Carroll because she excelled at everything she did, and because she did those things on her terms. She even answered questions on her terms. During the “TV Moms” event, I asked all of the ladies if they had ever been asked to pose nude. After several of the actresses responded, I started to move on to another topic, when Diahann, said, “Jim, you didn’t ask if I had ever been asked to pose nude.”

“Were you asked?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Well what happened?” I asked.

“That’s all I’m going to say about it,” Diahann said with a mischievous smile on her face. I’ll always remember that smile.

Recently, PBS aired an eight-part, 16-hour documentary by Ken Burns, titled Country Music. For those of you who loved the mini-series and want to own it, you can purchase a DVD set for $66, or buy the Blu Ray for $86. For those of you who didn’t get to watch Country Music., I advise you to save your money.

In addition to getting some of his facts wrong, Burns was also guilty of omitting a number of country music pioneers who made a significant contribution to the industry. Instead, he used his time to expound on how country music is a blended art form which derives its roots from Europe and Africa, and how the country sound has inspired a number of rock bands and folk singers. That’s OK, and I get that Bob Dylan was friends with Johnny Cash, but the time spent on those kinds of anecdotes would have been better spent recognizing giants of country music who Burns left out, like Carl Perkins, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Glen Campbell.

Carl Perkins is widely recognized as the King of Rockabilly, but you’d never know it from Burns’ film, in which Perkins received just two quick mentions as a guitar player for Johnny Cash. In truth, Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Perkins were part of the original Sun Records gang, but it was Carl who was the master songwriter and picker of the four. Carl wrote and recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1955 which sold millions of copies, and when he and Elvis went on tour together it was Perkins who the audiences screamed for, not Presley. If you want to talk about people who shaped and influenced country music in the latter half of the 20^th century, and had an influence on other musical genres, just ask Paul McCartney who said, “Without Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.” How did Burns miss that?

Fourteen years before Loretta Lynn sang about being a “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded “16 Tons”, a ballad about being a coal miner. It was the number one hit song in the nation in 1955, and sold over two million records in its first two months. A year later, his first album of country gospel hymns hit the Billboard charts, and stayed there for 300 consecutive weeks. Ford has three different stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in addition to having a rich baritone voice, he was also an accomplished comedic actor, who went on to host his own primetime network show from 1956-1961. The Ford Show was must-see TV, and, despite blowback from his sponsors, Ernie insisted on ending each show with a gospel tune. In Country Music, Ken Burns led viewers to believe that Johnny Cash was the first country star to host a primetime series, and that the Man in Black insisted upon including gospel songs on each show. Sorry Ken, but Ford was the groundbreaker, not Cash, whose short-lived TV show didn’t premiere until 1969.

Speaking of getting the facts wrong, Burns failed to mention Glen Campbell, whose variety series bowed a year before Cash’s, and whose hit songs, (like “Gentle on My Mind”) made him the most successful country crossover artist of the modern era. Waylon Jennings once paid tribute to Campbell during a CMT special, in which he thanked Glen for always offering a spot on his show to country western singers whose careers were in a lull. Campbell is also acknowledged as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, so I am baffled by the Burns snub.

There are many other stars who should have merited at least a mention in Burns’ film, among them, Arthur Smith, whose “Guitar Boogie” sold 3 million records in 1945, and whose Charlotte recording studio was the first of its kind in the Southeast. But Smith is also famous for his groundbreaking lawsuit against Warner Brothers, who stole his “Feudin’ Banjos” and retitled it “Dueling Banjos”, which became a number one hit from the movie Deliverance. It was bluegrass music’s first major intellectual property fight, and Smith won big.

For me, Ken Burns’ Country Music was more notable for who it left out than for who it included, and, to quote a Barbara Mandrell song, that’s a crying shame.

When the CEO of a company resigns, it doesn’t usually make the front page. But it’s a different story when that resignation involves the state’s largest health insurer, serious criminal charges, and corporate cover-ups. Thus is the saga of Patrick Conway, who had served as president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina since October 2017, before stepping down last week amidst a flurry of troubling developments.

On June 22 of this year, Conway reportedly became intoxicated, then loaded his two children into the family car, and went for a drive. After being pulled over by police for side-swiping a tractor trailer along Interstate 85 in Randolph County, Conway refused to take a breathalyzer test, so he was arrested for reckless driving and driving while impaired. He was also charged with two counts of child abuse, and his license was revoked for 30 days.

Early last week, after sitting on this information for over three months, the Blue Cross board finally decided to go public. Did they fire Conway? No. Did they dock Conway’s pay? No. Instead, the BCBS board issued a statement in which it praised Conway’s service to the company, saying, “Patrick’s strong leadership will continue to be an asset, and he will remain as president and CEO.” Are you kidding me? What leadership? You mean the kind of leadership in which a father endangers the lives of his own daughters and puts other motorists at risk? More likely, the board was referring to the kind of leadership in which a man spends his days figuring out how to increase our healthcare premiums, raise our deductibles, and deny our claims, so that he can improve the company’s bottom line.

In response to the Blue Cross board’s announcement, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey sent a letter to BCBS Board Chair Frank Holding, in which, according to Tribune News Service, he called the charges against Conway, “alarming.” Causey also wrote, “What is even more alarming is the appearance that the board and executive team worked to hide the arrest from the public’s attention…then was almost dismissive of the troubling charges when reported in the news media. One would expect the board and executive team to be much more accountable, responsible, and transparent to their policyholders and to the public at large.”

But Causey’s outrage grew when he began to learn even more details about the June arrest, which had been withheld from him by Big Blue’s board. For one thing, he wasn’t told of the accident, only the charges. Then came disclosure by WRAL-TV of the actual police report in which Conway told the arresting officer, “You had a choice. You could have let me go. You don’t know who I am. I am a doctor, a CO of a company. I’ll call Governor Cooper and get you in trouble.”

Causey then issued a new statement, saying “the Blue Cross board misrepresented to the Department of Insurance the actual arrest – telling me that [the arrest] was without incident, and was a routine arrest…the arrest was anything but routine…I cannot move forward with any type of trust and confidence in the CEO at BCBS NC.” Causey’s words were handwriting on the wall for Conway, who announced his resignation that same day.

Perhaps if Patrick Conway had worked in the mail room at Blue Cross, instead of the executive suite, then the charges against him wouldn’t have had as much public relevance. But the CEO of a health insurance company who endangers the health and lives of others, doesn’t deserve a second chance. Neither, by the way, does the Blue Cross board, who, along with Conway violated the company’s own Code of Conduct. According to the Blue Cross website, that Code requires “ethical and lawful conduct for every employee and member of our Board of Trustees.” So much for honoring a code.

Conway should have been fired three months ago and now he’s finally gone. But the Blue Cross board, who Commissioner Causey accused of a “cover-up”, is still operating, and that should be of great concern to every policyholder in the state.

There’s a particularly tense scene from the movie, Goldfinger, in which James Bond is strapped to a table, and about to have his genitals (and various innards) removed by a giant laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?”, Bond asks the title character. “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!”, Goldfinger replies. As a boy of 10, I learned two things from that scary scene. First, I never wanted to have my genitals severed by a giant laser beam unless the situation was absolutely hopeless. And second, only a man can play the part of agent 007, James Bond. At least that’s what I thought until recent reports surfaced regarding an impending gender switch of Her Majesty’s top agent.

Call me silly, but I tend to believe that a writer’s intentions and specifications should be honored when it comes to the big screen portrayal of his or her protagonist. Certainly, there’s such a thing as artistic or dramatic license when adapting a novel into a movie, but that should only apply to things like condensation of plot points in order to accommodate time constraints. It does not, however, give a film producer the right to change things just for the sake of change. Can you imagine, for example, changing Moby Dick’s name to Moby Denise? Or, casting Tom Cruise to portray Lara Croft?

For some time now, there’s been talk that the next James Bond will be played by a man of color. In fact, ldris Elba’s name has been mentioned in that regard, and that’s fine with my wife Pam who met with the actor in L.A., and thinks he’s hot. But rumor has it that in the upcoming Bond flick, No Time to Die, Daniel Craig is called out of retirement for one last job, and he is introduced to a woman who is identified as “007”. She is played by British actress Lashana Lynch, who also happens to be black. This raises the question, “Is Lynch going to be the next Bond, or just the next 007, or both?” I’m now officially both gender and racially confused. Author Ian Fleming, on the other hand, was never confused about who James Bond is.

The character Fleming created is a white male, born in Scotland, approximately 6 feet tall, who achieved the rank of Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. Despite the fact that six different actors have portrayed Bond on film, the producers have, thus far, selected “men” who generally fit the Fleming bill, but that may be about to change. The late Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli must be spinning in his grave at the thought of a female James Bond. That’s because, as producer of the Bond series from its inception in 1962 until his death in 1996, Cubby had always been protective of the brand, and careful to nurture the Bond image. In later years, Broccoli began to give his daughter Barbara and stepson Michael Wilson more responsibility in the family business. That was OK so long as Cubby was alive, but after his death, the kids began to tinker with the brand, up to and including casting Craig, and turning him into Jason Bourne instead of a refined British spy. That was bad enough, but now, the Broccoli kids may be about to ruin the franchise if they cast a woman as the iconic secret agent.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m fine with a female spy in any other venue. Heck, I’m fine with just about everything having to do with the opposite sex. But if a woman is cast to play the next James Bond, then you might as well just strap me to a laser table and be done with it. I simply wouldn’t feel right about having a set of “gadgets” that are no longer available to 007.