Triad Today

Victoria Woodhull tried to do it. So did Belva Lockwood and many others. In fact, 34 women have run for president, representing a total of 17 different political parties, and while all of them tried, none were able to break the glass ceiling that has kept women out of the Oval Office for the past 230 years. All that may change next year. For one thing, the #MeToo movement has given a new momentum to the six women who have already declared for the 2020 race. Of course, there have been other movements in other eras, and this is not the first time we’ve had multiple women vie for the top spot in the same election cycle. It happened in 1972 when Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and three other women threw their hats in the ring. Five more women ran in 1992, and in 1996, eleven women tried to unseat Bill Clinton. And so, while the ladies who have announced this year are not breaking new ground, they may have the best chance to finally break that pesky old glass ceiling once and for all.

Thus far, six Democratic women have announced their intention to win their party’s nomination and send Donald Trump back to his tower. They are Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, California senator Kamala Harris, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and Marianne Williamson, who is a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey.

Tulsi Gabbard, 37, is a political anomaly. For one thing, she’s a Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. And, when it became clear that the DNC was stacking the deck in Hillary’s favor, she resigned her post as Vice Chair. She’s also a nouveau liberal who now believes in equal rights, but she’s had to apologize for her earlier anti-gay rhetoric and associations while serving in the Hawaii State House. After pulling a tour of duty in Iraq and Kuwait, she was elected to Congress, where she has since modified her more conservative positions.

Kirsten Gillibrand, 52, is the ultimate flip-flopper. While representing a mostly rural district in Congress, she was a conservative Democrat who was easy on guns (she once received an “A” rating from the NRA) and tough on immigration. But once she was appointed to fill out Hillary’s term in the Senate, Gillibrand recanted her old positions, including calling for the abolishment of ICE. She also positioned herself as a faux leader of the #MeToo movement by calling for fellow Democratic senator Al Franken to resign for having engaged in a couple of minor, non-sexual groping incidents. Her grandstanding probably cost the Dems control of the Senate.

Kamala Harris, 54, is a former prosecutor and California attorney general who was elected to the Senate in 2016. Last year she gained national attention for grilling Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Despite supporting “Medicare for All” and other liberal policies, she has come under fire from some Democrats for her conservative prosecutorial record. As the child of a mixed-race marriage, Harris would become not only the nation’s first woman president, but also the first of both Asian- and African-American heritage.

Amy Klobuchar, 58, is a former prosecutor, and now a moderate Democratic senator from Minnesota who believes she can capture the rust-belt vote that eluded Hillary in 2016. She wants to overturn Citizens United, and supports legislation that would automatically register young people to vote when they turn 18. Klobuchar has one of the highest rates of staff turnover in the Senate, a fact that has given credence to recent charges of her being verbally abusive to her employees.

Elizabeth Warren, 69, came to national prominence as an advocate for consumers who had been screwed over by banks and insurance companies during the last recession. President Obama put her considerable expertise to work by naming Warren as special adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her political positions are closely aligned with those of Bernie Sanders, including “Medicare for All” and free college education. Recently she has had to apologize for falsely claiming to be a Native American when applying to the Bar Association.

Marianne Williamson, 66, is a Los Angeles-based author, teacher, and spiritual adviser to celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, and Kim Kardashian. She wants African Americans to receive $100 billion dollars in reparations for slavery, with monies going for economic renewal. One of her slogans is, “We need to wage peace”. Another is, “Love should be our bottom line”.

There are those who believe that some of these women are only trying to raise their profile in hopes of being the VP pick if Joe Biden gets in the race. That may be true, but If he doesn’t run, my money is on Ms. Harris to get the nomination, and give Trump a run for his money. I can hear the glass starting to break already.

 
 

If you’re not from Virginia, or haven’t lived in the Old Dominion for any significant amount of time, then you’re probably wondering how a Democrat governor of that state could have once donned blackface and not understand the ramifications at the time, or even decades later. I’ll offer some possible explanations in a moment, but first, a bit of background.

In 1984, a 25-year-old Dr. Ralph Northam submitted a number of photos to be included on his personal page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. Among those photos was a man in blackface and another man standing beside him wearing a KKK hood and robe. Earlier this month, following Governor Northam’s support for a bill that would ease restrictions on late-term abortions, the conservative website, BigLeague.com released the 34-year-old racist photo, and suddenly Virginia’s chief executive found himself embroiled in the worst political scandal since Chuck Robb confessed to receiving an extra-marital massage.

Soon after the Washington Post confirmed the authenticity of BigLeague.com’s find, Northam issued a written apology for appearing in the Jim Crow photo. But the next day, the Governor called a press conference to say that he wasn’t in the photo, and didn’t know how it even got on his yearbook page. No one was buying Ralph’s reversal, especially when it was revealed that his nickname at VMI was “coon man”. But things got worse when he admitted to having donned blackface while imitating Michael Jackson for a 1984 dance competition.

Following that racially tone-deaf press conference, elected officials from both parties were calling for Northam to resign, including Virginia’s white, Democrat Attorney General Mark Herring. But several days later, in a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, Herring admitted that he too had once appeared in blackface while pretending to be a rap star. All this comes on the heels of Congressman Steve King’s defense of white nationalism, the violence in Charlottesville, and rallies to tear down Confederate monuments, including at least three of which were located here in North Carolina.

So why the burgeoning blackface epidemic among Virginia politicians? Perhaps William Elwood’s statement to WHSV-TV says it best. Elwood, who was the page designer for Northam’s medical school yearbook, said that the 1984 edition featured a number of similarly racist photos, but, “nobody thought of that as a significant problem back then.”

Back “THEN?”

We’re talking about 1984, not 1884. We’re talking about a time when the Rev. Jesse Jackson was making his first pzresidential run, and Doug Wilder was starting on his path to become Virginia’s first African-American to be elected lieutenant governor, then governor.

Northam and Herring are not stupid people, and they probably aren’t racists.

But they are, at the very least, insensitive to the feelings of people who don’t look like them. It’s an insensitivity that is borne out of centuries of racial prejudice, beginning with white slave traders in Jamestown 400 years ago, and continuing onto the Civil War, during which time, Richmond served as the capital of the Confederacy. This systematic insensitivity was memorialized in the early 20^th century when a series of statues of Confederate generals was erected along Monument Avenue, then dredged up in 1996 when whites fought against putting a statue of Arthur Ashe on that same street. Back then Wayne Byrd, president of the Heritage Preservation Association said the Ashe statue didn’t belong on Monument Avenue because it is “hallowed ground.”

To be fair, Northam and Herring are also products of our society’s historically mixed messages when it comes to race. After all, both white and black performers appeared in blackface during 19^th-century minstrel shows. In the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, a number of A-list, non-bigoted film stars like Fred Astaire and Judy Garland sang and danced in blackface. In 1976, Richard Pryor applied shoe polish to Gene Wilder in Silver Streak, and in 1993 Whoopi Goldberg, herself a social activist, had no problem when her boyfriend Ted Danson dressed in blackface during a Friar’s Roast in her honor. Spike Lee did the deed in 2000’s Bamboozled, and in 2008, Robert Downey, Jr. drew high praise from black celebrities when he donned blackface in the film Tropic Thunder. But mixed messages or not, Virginia’s governor and attorney general shouldn’t have been unprepared for the visceral reaction to their decades-old indiscretions, especially after media darling Megyn Kelley was fired last year by NBC for having appeared in blackface. What’s changed in Virginia and throughout the nation is that we are now in an era of zero tolerance when it comes to racist behavior by public figures.

It remains to be seen whether Northam and Herring will resign, or if other elected officials will start coming forward with their racially-charged past indiscretions. Time will tell. Meanwhile, if you come across a white guy who admits to having worn blackface, feel free to call him the “N” word: “Nitwit”.

 
 

I suppose at one time or another we’ve all fantasized about winning the lottery or finding a magical genie in a bottle. I’ve never won the lottery, but last week I definitely met a magical “Jeannie”. Over the years Barbara Eden has materialized in a number of venues: in film, on stage, at USO shows, and in Vegas, but she is best known for playing the title character in NBC’s I Dream of Jeannie. On March 7, she will pop into town and team with another TV icon, Hal Linden, in a production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters at the High Point Theatre.

I spoke with Barbara last week and was struck by her youthful enthusiasm, her grand sense of humor, and her total lack of ego. The fact is, the lady just doesn’t realize how beloved she really is. During our time together we talked about her first acting job (she played a princess in a grammar school radio show), her encounter with a creepy studio executive, her relation to one of our Founding Fathers, and of course, her thoughts on the continuing world wide popularity of I Dream of Jeannie But we began our conversation with her take on Love Letters, a play that features two aging characters who have had a thing for each other since childhood. Over time, the pair wrote letters to each other, and now they are reading those missives aloud.


 

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JL: This isn’t your first time around performing Love Letters. What makes it such an attractive play to you as an actor?

Eden: First of all it’s a wonderful arc for an actor, and it’s beautifully written.

JL: And there’s no song and dance number, no special effects.

Eden: No, you don’t have any help. [laughs] Just the lights.

JL: What does Hal bring to the play?

Eden: Well, he’s wonderfully talented. And he understands the role he’s playing. He understands the character, from boy to young man, to older man, and he makes it quite clear in his acting how these two people are attracted to each other, and yet are so different.

JL: Do you write a lot of letters?

Eden: No. [laughs] Although I was forced to when I was younger. My mom would always make me write thank-you notes.

JL: I understand that you are a descendant of another letter writer, the great Benjamin Franklin.

Eden: Well that’s what my grandfather always said. Grandpa was born around Philadelphia and his name was Charles Benjamin Franklin. He told me that his aunt and uncle had real memorabilia from Benjamin Franklin. I would love to have proof of that.

JL: It’s no surprise to any of your male fans that you once won a beauty contest, but when you were first starting out in show business, I heard that some idiot studio executive at Warner Brothers told you that you were not “Hollywood pretty.” How did that make you feel?

Eden: I was crushed. [laughs] I was just crushed. My uncle had driven me there because I didn’t know how to drive, and he was furious. He was going to go right back in and give the man what-for. [laughs] The executive showed me a picture of his daughter and said, “Here’s what we want, big tits.” And I had never heard that word used.

JL: Who was this guy, the original Harvey Weinstein?

Eden: Just about. I was appalled at the whole thing as I stood there holding my white gloves. [laughs] Anyway I went home, cried a lot, then I realized, I thought, ”My goodness, they can’t just have all pretty people on screen. They have to have human beings, and I can be a character actor, nothing wrong with that. So I didn’t quit.

JL: We’re all glad you didn’t.

Eden: But the coup-de-gras came a year later. I was at Warner Brothers to work with an acting coach named Cutler. I was not under contract, but he was coaching me for free. I was walking to his class one day, and I heard someone shout, “Hey you!” I ignored it. Then he shouted, “Hey you in the yellow pants.” I turned around and it was the same man I had met with before, and my heart went down to my toes. He said, “We’re going to test you.” Can you imagine? The same man. So that really validated me. [laughs]

JL: My editor will kill me if I don’t ask you at least one question about “Jeannie”. What has made that show remain so popular for so long?

Eden: I think our group of actors were wonderful and we all worked together so well, but the basic story is so classic. It’s timeless, and strangely enough you can relate to it because she’s a fish out of water. Also it was funny. It was like giving the audience a little respite from all the worries they have. I also find it interesting that I still get mail from France, Italy, and from Russia and China, which is shocking to me.

JL: Maybe we should make you a diplomat.

Eden: I know.

JL: In your autobiography, Jeannie Out of the Bottle you wrote that you are not a star, you’re an actress. You can’t possibly think that you’re not a star?

Eden: Stars are people who win Oscars, you know. [laughs] They’re stars, I’m not. I’m just lucky because my part in I Dream of Jeannie hit home with people, and they like it, but it was my job, and that’s how I thought of it.

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If you’d like to see Barbara do her job in person, you can purchase tickets to Love Letters by calling the High Point Theatre box office at 336 887-3001, or visit HighPointTheatre.com.

 
 

There aren’t too many people on the planet who have won an EMMY, a Tony, and a Golden Globe, but then, there aren’t too many people like Hal Linden. By age 15 he was playing clarinet for a major symphony orchestra. In his twenties he sang and acted his way onto the Broadway stage. And, as middle age approached, he gained worldwide fame as TV’s Barney Miller. Now at age 87, Linden’s considerable talents are still in demand, and on March 7, he will put them on display at the High Point Theatre when he teams with “I Dream of Jeannie” star Barbara Eden in a production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. I caught up with Hal last week, and we talked about the play, his co-star, television versus live theatre, and much more.

 

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Jim: Ever since Love Letters was introduced in 1989, a lot of famous actors have performed the play, including Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Taylor. What makes it such an attractive property for actors?

Hal: It’s an amazing property. The only action in the play are people reading letters aloud, and yet through the use of these personal letters between two people who have had a relationship since elementary school, you get to know how those two characters feel about each other. I suspect that’s the draw for actors because you can perform it just by reading a letter in the moment, about the moment.

Jim: Given that format, let me ask you about chemistry between you and Barbara. On television and in film, chemistry between the actors is crucial, but on stage, there’s no camera in your face. So is chemistry still important in a play like Love Letters?

Hal: It’s extremely important, but not as important as the chemistry between my character and the character that Barbara creates. That’s the person who gets to me. What she says as a character, and my memory of her when we were kids together, THAT’s what stokes the humanity and the feelings in the play.

Jim: And makes it believable.

Hal: Yes. I’ve played Love Letters with different people, and each person gives you a different dynamic when they read it. Barbara’s humanity is what’s out there. Her character’s past, her history is what I’m listening to. In other words, the past that she puts out there as opposed to any other actress. So it’s an acting challenge based on who you’re sitting next to.

Jim: Let’s digress for a moment. Do you think letter writing is a lost art these days?

Hal: Definitely. [laughs] When was the last time you wrote a letter?

Jim: I think it was to the IRS. [both laugh]

Hal: I mean, your mail box is full of bills and advertisements. Nobody writes letters. You get maybe a Christmas card or birthday card. It’s a dead art.

Jim: So you don’t write letters?

Hal: No, I was never much of a letter writer, except there was a period in my life, in my early marriage, when I had to spend extended times on the road with shows, pre-Broadway, or something that took me away for six or eight weeks. Then I wrote letters because we couldn’t afford telephone calls. [laughs]

Jim: Let’s talk about accessibility to the arts. We’re fortunate to have you and Barbara come to the Triad and perform on stage, but you can’t go everywhere. Plus, most people can’t afford to travel to New York or L.A. to see a major production. Would you like to see cable networks broadcast Broadway plays so that those productions are more accessible to more people?

Hal: I would much rather they go to their local community theatre and see the same plays. I don’t care if it’s professional or not. I would much rather have people see a live play, with performers live on stage. I think the live quality is important because that forces the audience to become part of the dynamic. I sat in the third row to see James Earl Jones play The Great White Hope, and one moment, he was furious and whipped his head around, and a bead of sweat came out and landed on my forehead. That was a long time ago, but it is as vivid to me today as it was when it happened. Those experiences of actually seeing living people BEING living people, is one you can only approximate on the screen.

Jim: I can’t let you go without asking one Barney Miller question. Why has that show held up so well?

Hal: It was a brilliantly written show. It didn’t settle for cheap jokes. Instead it was all about the frailties and humor of human behavior. We were also ahead of our time in presenting topics that are still relevant today.

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Tickets to Love Letters are still available by calling the High Point Theatre box office at (336) 887-3001, or visiting HighPointTheatre.com. You’ll get to see two great actors at work, and, if you’re lucky, maybe a bead of sweat will hit you in the forehead.

 
 

Kathy Hines is fighting an uphill battle. A resident of southwest Winston-Salem, Ms. Hines is trying to get the city/county Utilities Division to stop stinking up her life. For some time now, Hines has been complaining about sewer odors emanating from a wastewater treatment plant near her home. Just how bad is the odor? “How would you want to live in a place that smells like a dump?” she told Winston-Salem Journal reporter Fran Daniel. And the smell isn’t just an outside problem. It also permeates the inside of houses in Hines’ Griffith Park neighborhood, as well as throughout the Millhaven Landing subdivision.

Courtney Driver, director of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Utilities Division, says that the smelly gases pose no health risk. But try telling that to Ms. Hines. “My eyes burn and my nostrils burn, so I’m not sure why they think it’s not bothersome to anyone health-wise.” Hines has presented petitions to Driver’s department, but, thus far, the daily odors haven’t abated. What’s worse, it’s not an isolated problem.

On Saturday morning, April 3, 2017, my wife and I awoke to an overpowering sewer smell throughout our Kernersville home. I tried to isolate the source of the smell, but it was everywhere. I walked out onto the street to investigate further, but I was not alone. Residents from throughout the neighborhood had come outside to see if there had been a break in a natural gas line. Calls went out to fire and police departments, but none of the responders could explain the smell. I called Dave Plyler, Chairman of the County Commissioners, and Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines to see what could be done about the situation. Several hours later I received an email from one of Driver’s staff who told me they had been having trouble with odor scrubbers at a nearby pumping station, and that the equipment was scheduled to be examined by the manufacturer later in the week.

Meanwhile I learned that an identical incident had occurred on a Sunday morning two months earlier. On that day, businesses along South Main Street in Kernersville reported what they believed to be was a gas leak, and parishioners at a nearby Triad church were wondering if they should evacuate. Eventually it was discovered that the smell had come from the same pumping station that caused the problem in my neighborhood. So much for maintaining faulty scrubbers. In both cases, there were reports of people experiencing burning eyes, sore throats, and trouble breathing.

The odor problem seemed to abate after the April incident, but then on Sunday morning, September 23, 2018, it was back in full force. I called and emailed a complaint to Driver at 11:30am. I finally received a response from Utilities staffer Frank Crump at 8:32pm that night. It took nine hours for him to respond to a complaint about an odor that was having an effect on the health of residents.

In our back-and-forth correspondences, Crump first tried to blame the odor on weather and “changes in humidity”. Then he pledged to investigate the scrubbers to see if they were acting up again. The next day, Crump still had no explanation, nor a plan for preventing another smell attack. In my email exchanges with Mr. Crump I had also asked if any city/county personnel worked at the pumping station on weekends. “Unfortunately we do not have staff working during weekends or holidays at these facilities,” he replied. I asked what residents are supposed to do when an incident occurs. He advised that we should go on the internet and search for the municipal link to register a complaint. Of course not everyone has access to the internet, but it wouldn’t matter if they did, because my calls and emails resulted in a nine-hour delay in response time, and with no solution.

It has now been two years since the South Main street incident, and city/county officials are still sitting on their hands, offering the same explanations:

• The weather and humidity might be to blame;
• We have an equipment problem that is being investigated;
• The release of hydrogensulfates is at an acceptable level; and,
• The smelly gases pose no health concerns.

But never fear because Courtney Driver has a solution. She wants Ms. Hines and the rest of us to tour the wastewater treatment plants so that we can better appreciate the intricacies of sewer smells. Ms. Driver’s tone-deaf generosity, like the odors she presides over, simply takes my breath away.

 
 

The other day I spoke with my friend and pioneering legislator Larry Womble about the controversial Confederate statue that stands in front of the old Forsyth County courthouse on 4^th street. Larry, a life-long resident of Winston-Salem said, “I was never aware of what the statue represented. It wasn’t on my radar screen.” But today that statue is on everyone’s radar screen. Critics decry it as a symbol of racism and intimidation. Defenders say it’s merely a memorial to boys and men who died in the not-so Civil War. Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines says it’s a public nuisance, and Police Chief Catrina Thompson told me, “It’s a safety hazard.” That’s because the statue has already been vandalized more than once, and city officials fear more of the same. Even worse, they worry that protests could escalate into violence.

The statue was erected in 1905 and is owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Joines has given UDC until January 31^st to make plans to re-locate the statue, or else face legal action by the city. He has suggested moving the monument to Salem Cemetery. Thus far, UDC has balked at that suggestion. Meanwhile, Winston Courthouse, LLC, owners of the 4^th Street site since 2014, when the building was converted into apartments, also wants the statue removed.

Emotions are running high on both sides of the controversy, and local NAACP president, Rev. Alvin Carlisle didn’t help matters when he said, “The dead soldiers that [the statue] represents were racist traitors.” Those words, along with the city’s threat of a lawsuit, have only served to throw fuel onto the fire. Now, groups like Forsythe Rifles and Heirs to the Confederacy are vowing to stage protests and fight against removal of the statue.

This is a mess that began in earnest when white nationalists marched on Charlottesville to protest the removal of a monument to Robert E. Lee. The armed protestors drew praise from President Trump despite the fact that, during the protests, an innocent woman was killed by a crazed white supremacist motorist. That incident triggered anti-Confederate rallies around the country, including one in Chapel Hill where Silent Sam was torn down by a bunch of vandals. Now, the movement has made its way to the Triad.

A friend of mine recently wondered aloud why there were no local monuments to African Americans who fought and died in the Civil War. That’s a good question, and perhaps one day we’ll correct that oversight. In the meantime, for better or worse, the 4^th street statue needs to be re-located, and wherever it lands, it should be protected by a tall, wrought iron fence to protect against vandalism. Beyond that, white people need to stop glorifying the Confederacy, and black people need to understand that not all southerners are racist traitors. We all need to work together to fight against modern day evils, like racial profiling, voter suppression, corrupt politicians, environmental hazards, and budget-busting healthcare premiums. Those are the battles that should be on our collective radar screen.

 
 

In the two years since Donald Trump was elected, women across the country have staged some pretty impressive rallies to make their voices heard. They marched on Washington, they launched the #MeToo Movement, and this past November they elected a record number of their own gender to local, state, and federal offices. Mission accomplished, right? Not exactly. For example, last year, women’s groups spent a great deal of time shining a much-needed light on sexual harassment, and their protests netted results. Men in power who had sexually harassed or assaulted women, were identified, fired, fined, tried, convicted, and otherwise disgraced for their behavior, while the rest of us guys were schooled on what not to do or say to women, especially in the workplace. All that’s well and good, but meanwhile the most widespread abuse of women at work continues unabated… a systematic disparity in pay.

Late last year the Greensboro News & Record reported on a new study by the American Association of University Women which detailed the level of pay disparities in every state. Here in North Carolina, women fare a bit better than the national average, but they still only earn about 84 cents for every dollar a man makes for doing the same job. Even worse, that pay gap isn’t projected to close until the year 2060. This, despite a number of laws that have been enacted over the years which should have fixed the problem by now.

In 1963 President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act at a time when women were making 59 cents for every dollar a man earned. The problem is that, initially, the EPA only applied to women in blue collar jobs. In 1972, the Act was amended to cover women in white collar jobs as well. But progress was still slow, and in 2009, President Obama signed into law the Fair Pay Act, which hasn’t made a dent in the problem either. In 2015, I wrote a column about this very topic and at that time, women in North Carolina were making 83 cents to every dollar earned by men. Congratulations ladies, it’s nearly four years later, and you’ve closed the pay gap by a whole penny. So why aren’t we making more progress?

One reason pay disparity still exists is that none of the three Acts addressed the problem of how we calculate equal work. The original EPA was structured so that a woman with a grievance had to file a sex discrimination claim, and prove that she was making less money than a man who was doing the exact same work. But let’s say a man was asked to work overtime, and his female counterpart wasn’t. Their job descriptions may have been the same, yet she ended up making less money. It was a grievance she couldn’t win. On top of that, she may hold the same job as a man, but if he was reviewed by a male supervisor as having a higher level of productivity than the woman, then she was also out of luck.

The other reason that the gender pay gap still exists, is because most companies are still run by men. According to a 2015 report by ThinkProgress.org, there are only 48 female CEOs heading up the top 1,000 corporations. That means only 4.8% of the top jobs in America are held by women. And even when women head up a company, chances are their board is still dominated by men. I’m not saying that male CEOs only hire men, but, for the most part, a male executive isn’t going to be as sensitive to the problem of pay disparity as would a woman executive. Unless that dynamic changes, or the #MeToo Movement expands its mission to include salary harassment, or females take over Congress, then women in the workplace will have to endure another 41 years of “labor pains”.

 
 

With apologies to Charles Dickens, last month was the best of times and the worst of times for the town of Kernersville. Ten days before Christmas, East Forsyth High School brought home a State football championship, certainly the best of times. Then, only days later, a female teacher and a female volunteer at the high school were convicted of sexual misconduct with their male students, certainly the worst of times. The juxtaposition of these activities spins a tale of victors and victims, but identifying the former is much easier than identifying the latter.

In two unrelated cases, Rebecca Carol Swinson, a 39-year-old English teacher, and Jennifer Ann Pike, a 44-year-old school volunteer, were convicted of multiple crimes involving students. According to testimony, two 17-year-old male students pursued Ms. Swinson, then, after getting what they wanted, talked about their sexual encounters to people who then reported the incidents. Meanwhile, Ms. Pike admitted to texting a male student, saying, “If you want it, you have to come get it now.” The male student rushed over to Pike’s business apartment, had sex, then took a photo of his condom for a trophy. The student bragged to someone, and suddenly a call went out to CrimeStoppers about the incident.

Pike received a suspended sentence and is on probation for three and a half years. Swinson will serve 6 months in prison, and after her release she must register as a sex offender. Neither woman had a prior criminal record, which under the law, kept them from doing hard time. But Swinson will live in her own kind of prison forever, because being registered as a sex offender means that she will be tagged as some sort of pervert, and thought of as a child molester, which she is not.

Let’s be clear about something. It’s wrong for a teacher or adult volunteer to have sex with a student, even a high school student. Moreover, teachers who are convicted of having sex with their students should be fired, and never allowed to teach again. But it’s also wrong for the courts to treat consensual sex as a crime. In North Carolina the age of consent is 16, yet that law doesn’t apply when a teacher is involved. I’m all for holding teachers to a higher standard than the rest of us, but you can’t have one rule for teachers and one for everybody else. I’m sorry, but a teacher who has sex with a 17-year-old student is not the same as a teacher who has sex with a 14-year-old student. Unfortunately this type of selective justice is not uncommon.

A few years ago, a male teacher in North Carolina had inappropriate sexual contact with a 17-year-old female student, and he pulled a brief stretch in prison for his “crime”. Afterwards, he had to register as a sex offender, and was not allowed to come near children in public places. His son is now old enough to play high school football, so recently the former teacher asked his son’s principal if he could attend football games, so he could see his son play. The principal granted special dispensation, but as soon as the “ex offender” showed up in the stands, a parent spotted him and called the police. All this because he once had sex with a consenting 17-year-old female, which is legal if you’re anyone else but a teacher.

Despite all of the negative publicity about cougar teachers, there is much to celebrate at East Forsyth High School. There’s also a lesson to be learned:

In football, the rules apply equally. In life, not so much.

 
 

The Piedmont Triad is replete with agencies, organizations, churches, and businesses who routinely help those in need. We have food banks, homeless shelters, crisis centers, and free clinics. Our taxes go to help neighbors who lose their home to a natural disaster, and to those who lose their job through no fault of their own. We choose to lend a hand when necessary because that’s what communities do, and we do it without asking for collateral. One of our neighbors, Bennett College, could use a hand right about now. That’s because the clock is running out on Bennett, who must raise $5 million dollars by February 1, in order to regain their accreditation from SACS, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

I won’t go off on a tangent about SACS, but suffice to say that organizations like that can’t always see the forest for the trees. Bennett College is and always has been academically sound, and has contributed greatly to the community and to the nation. Earlier this year I was reminded by the Reverend Jesse Jackson that it was Bennett women who sustained the Greensboro lunch counter protest in 1960. Without them, the movement for equal access might have died. Bennett has also strengthened our nation by turning out strong women leaders. On those two counts alone I’d say Bennett has plenty of collateral and plenty of credibility, and that’s why we owe it to Bennett, and to ourselves to keep the doors open at 900 East Washington Street.

I know what you’re thinking. “Hey Jim, why can’t Bennett alum come up with the $5 million?” First of all, Bennett’s alumni base is small, and second, unlike most every other college in America, Bennett doesn’t have a cash-cow athletic program and a bunch of millionaire football boosters who can raise funds for a stadium expansion in a few hours. Money doesn’t grow on trees at Bennett because they’re not in the money business, they’re in the learning and leadership business. SACS doesn’t care about that because they have a cookie-cutter formula for how much money a college should have on hand, and to hell with what that college means and has meant to its students, to the community at large, and to the nation.

I’d like to think that, given time, individuals and groups in our area would send in enough donations to bail Bennett out. But time is what Bennett doesn’t have.

So what’s the solution? At the risk of sounding like Polyanna, I believe the best short-term solution is for college and community foundations and business foundations to come to the rescue. True, every foundation has its own specific mission, but that mission never operates in a bubble. UNCG, High Point University, GTCC, NC A&T, Guilford College, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, and others are all about improving quality of life and strengthening the community they serve, so, theoretically they could pledge enough funds to Bennett to keep the “accreditors” at bay. Once that’s done, Bennett would have some time to develop a long-term strategy for meeting and sustaining fiduciary requirements set by SACS.

Black History Month is just around the corner. So is the 59th anniversary of the lunch counter sit-in. Let’s mark those commemorations by supporting Bennett College, and contributing to the legacy of the young women who answered the call when America needed them. We all owe Bennett a debt of gratitude that’s worth a lot more than $5 million dollars. It’s payback time, folks.

 
 

In the entertainment business, a triple threat is someone who can sing, dance and act. It’s also someone who’s accomplished on stage, in film and on television. I guess that made Ken Berry a double-triple threat because he could do just about everything in any venue. I first got to know Ken some years ago when I was preparing an event for the Television Academy. We stayed in touch periodically after that, and I last spoke with Ken on November 3rd to wish him a happy birthday. He sounded a little less bubbly than usual, and confessed that he was dealing with some health issues, nevertheless, Ken was upbeat, and he thanked me for remembering his birthday. Last Monday I was headed out to the post office to mail a holiday card to Ken, when I learned that he had passed away two days earlier. Ken Berry was 85. My thoughts drifted back to a conversation we had had in February of 2015 in which Ken talked about his career.

Born in Moline, Illinois on November 3, 1933, Ken was drawn to performing at an early age. As a teenager his considerable skills as a dancer landed him a spot in the Horace Heidt Youth Opportunity Program, which performed all over America and Europe. After graduating high school, Ken enlisted in the Army, and was stationed at Fort Bragg. It was his first introduction to North Carolina but not his first connection. More on that later.

In the second year of his enlistment, Ken and other soldiers from Special Services Corps toured the country and entertained other troops. It was during that time that he won the All-Army Talent Competition. Thanks to YouTube, you can catch his winning act via The Big Picture, a weekly TV series produced by the Army in the early 1950s. If you’ve never seen an athletic dancer do his thing, then treat yourself to this video gem.

Ken’s biggest supporter in those days was Sergeant Leonard Nimoy, the future Mr. Spock, who had already dabbled in acting and knew the ropes in Hollywood.

“I was going to be on the Ed Sullivan Show because Ed put the winners of the AATC on the air every year. And Lennie said, ‘You really ought to get in touch with the heads of the talent departments at major studios, and see if you get any response.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ So Lennie said, ‘Well then I’ll do it for you, [laughs]‘ and he got two bites—one from Fox, and one from Universal. I can’t remember why, but we settled on Universal, and I went out there after I got out of the Army. I did a screen test that turned out very well I thought, and I don’t usually think that about my work.”

Despite the successful screen test, Ken’s first regular TV series work was still several years away. In the meantime, he continued to hone both his academic and artistic skills.

“I was going to school on the GI Bill. I wanted to stay in school and keep studying because I wasn’t well-rounded, and I wanted to be a better song and dance man. I didn’t have any money, so I took a job in Vegas working with Abbott and Costello. I made a whole $125 a week. They weren’t really getting along, in fact, it was the last time they ever worked together.”

By now, Ken was ready to make his move, but while his timing was perfect on stage, it couldn’t have been worse for a career in singing and dancing.

“I realized that the studios weren’t making motion picture musicals anymore. It’s like aspiring to be a basketball player and things are coming along, then you pick up the newspaper, and it says ‘Basketball canceled.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

But while musicals weren’t in demand, Ken’s acting abilities were, and he landed roles on The Ann Southern Show and Dr. Kildare. Then in 1965, Warner Brothers hired Ken to play a bumbling cavalry officer in F-Troop, a spoof of the old West. The role called for a lot of physical shtick, but Ken was up to the challenge. In fact, his pratfalls earned him high praise from his idol Buster Keaton. F Troop was ABC’s second-highest-rated comedy and an instant cult hit, outperforming such classics as Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek, the latter of which starred his old sergeant. Despite its popularity, however, F-Troop was canceled after two seasons, presumably because Warner’s new owner, 7-Arts, didn’t want to incur the high costs of producing a series in color. Fortunately for Ken, Mayberry, North Carolina came calling.

“My wife read that Dick Linke was President of the Personal Managers’ Council, so she wrote to him asking if he would watch a Carol Burnett special I was going to be on with Carol, Frank Gorshin and Rock Hudson.”

The letter worked. Linke, who was also Andy Griffith’s manager, took Ken on as a client, and before long Andy hired Ken as the lead in a spin-off series, titled Mayberry RFD.

“I always knew how lucky I was to get that job,” Berry said. “I think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, that’s how I got most of my jobs [laughs].” In the series, Ken played farmer Sam Jones, a widower who was also head of the town council. He was now the straight man for all of the old familiar Mayberry characters, and the show was an instant hit, ranking 4th in the Nielsens, with a 25 rating for the first two seasons. To put it into perspective, Seinfeld usually garnered no more than a 21 rating, and Friends averaged about a 15. If RFD aired today, CBS would have to bring in a Brinks truck to pay Ken each week. Instead, some puny-brained network executive decided to purge all of the so-called rural comedies from its line-up in 1971, and once again, a Ken Berry show was canceled at the height of its popularity.

The following season, Ken hosted his own variety series, titled, appropriately, Ken Berry’s WOW Show! The program was short-lived, but it gave audiences a glimpse of Ken’s prowess as a singer and dancer. In 1974, he appeared on an episode of The Brady Bunch in what was to be a spin-off series, with Ken playing the father of three multiracial children. But Kelly’s Kids never made it onto a network schedule. Afterward, Ken appeared in several films and a number of stage plays, before being cast as the dim bulb son of Vicki Lawrence, in the long running series Mama’s Family.

On that day almost four years ago, Ken joked about his retirement, telling me, “I don’t have anything going on until April.” “What happens in April?” I asked.

“Nothing happens in April. I was just kidding,” he said.

Before we ended our conversation, Ken said he had one more thing he wanted to tell me: “When I was stationed at Fort Bragg, I had a strange feeling of being at home in North Carolina. Not long ago I got in touch with a genealogist and learned that the Berry family settled in Orange County. One branch then went South into northern Alabama, and my branch wound up in southern Illinois. But I always did feel at home in North Carolina.”

Praise indeed from the head of the Mayberry town council. Rest in peace, Ken.

 
 

In a previous column I noted how Phil Berger and company have manipulated the system to favor Republican candidates, including making an end-run around the Supreme Court by crafting voter ID as an amendment to our state constitution. Like him or not, Berger’s feat is even more impressive in a year when Democrats won enough seats in the General Assembly to deny the GOP a veto-proof majority. In fact, the voter ID referendum was supported by 55% of North Carolina voters, and its passage brings us more in line with 30 other states, including 17 who specifically require a photo ID when voting.

Last week, senators met inside the Capitol to flesh out details of SB 824, while outside, about a hundred people gathered to protest photo voter ID. One of the speakers was former state NAACP president William Barber who at one point shouted, “If necessary, we’ll return this state to civil disobedience.” I am a liberal independent, and a proud, card-carrying member of the NAACP, but Barber’s call for civil disobedience made me angry. To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of Barber and his opportunistic bombast, but last week he went too far. There are plenty of issues and policies that deserve our anger and protest, but voter ID is not one of them. Regardless of the GOP’s original intent, SB 824 in its present form, does nothing to prevent anyone from voting. On the other hand, Barber’s threats to fight voter suppression were themselves a form of voter suppression, given that over half of the people in this state voted for the photo ID Amendment. His rhetoric was, therefore, both ironic and divisive.

Should Barber and the rest of us be angry about voter suppression? Absolutely, and Republicans have been guilty of it for years. Their past offenses have included: eliminating polling places near large blocks of black voters; limiting number of early voting days; trying to purge voter rolls of African-American Democrats who failed to vote in past elections; using HB2 to trample on civil rights; and gerrymandering districts so as to minimize the number of blacks elected to state and federal offices. But it would be inaccurate and unfair to include voter ID in this list of discriminatory practices. Here’s why:

According to a report by WRAL.com, under the new voter ID law, there are no less than eleven forms of identification that are acceptable, those being:

• a North Carolina driver’s license
• ID card issued by the NC Division of Motor Vehicles for non-drivers
• United States passport
• a tribal enrollment card
• a student ID card from a University of North Carolina college
• community college, or private college
• an employee identification card issued by a state or local government entity
• a driver’s license or ID card issued by another state if voter registration took place within 90 days of the election
• a military ID
• a veteran’s identification card issued by the department of Veteran Affairs
• a voter ID card created by the new Senate bill
• any of the aforementioned ID cards even if they have expired, so long as the voter is at least 65 years old, and the ID expired on his 65^th birthday.

The new legislation also allows several exemptions for hardships and “reasonable impediments”. And, you can even opt out if you have a religious objection to having your photograph taken. In other words, the new photo voter ID requirements make it easier for everyone to comply with the law, and restricts no one from voting. And, although we’ve never experienced widespread voter fraud, SB 824 will guard against any potential fraud, whether deliberate or accidental, and it will cut down on time spent processing so many provisional ballots.

No doubt many Republican legislators have attempted to enact a number of shameful shenanigans in order to retain their power, but it’s hard to criticize photo voter ID as being a partisan, discriminatory law, when it leaves no one behind.

Rev. Barber can scream and threaten all he wants to about voter ID, but this is not an issue that calls for civil disobedience, because SB 824 violates no one’s civil rights. Of course, Barber can always claim he has a religious objection to having his picture taken, but that’s not likely. After all, when has he ever missed an opportunity to get in front of a camera? We all need to step back, take a deep breath, and be selective about our outrage. There are plenty of things we need to fight against, but voter ID isn’t one of them.

 
 

Last week, Democratic congressional candidate Kathy Manning talked to the Associated Press about her mid-term loss to 13^th district Republican incumbent Ted Budd. Said Manning, “We did everything we could, but we just could not overcome the gerrymandering.” Were he alive today, founding father James Madison might take issue with Ms. Manning’s assessment.

In 1788, Patrick Henry persuaded the Virginia General Assembly to re-draw the 5^th Congressional district to favor his friend James Monroe, who was running against Madison, a sworn enemy of Henry’s. But despite Patrick Henry’s map manipulation, James Madison still defeated Monroe. The reason was simple. Voters who showed up at the polls simply preferred Madison over Monroe. Though it fell short initially, Patrick Henry’s plan to craft a district in favor of one party over another was the first documented case of gerrymandering in America, and served as a template for a form of voter suppression that has remained a part of the political landscape for 230 years.

Perhaps it’s not fair to compare election outcomes that are two centuries apart, or two candidates with such distinctly different resumes. After all, Madison is famous for writing the Constitution, while Manning is mainly famous for writing checks to Democrats. Still, Madison overcame a rigged system to win, and that’s no small feat. Which raises the question, if Kathy Manning only lost because of district-wide gerrymandering, then how did two local Democratic candidates defeat two GOP incumbent sheriffs? And how did Democrat Michael Garrett beat Republican incumbent Trudy Wade for a seat in the State Senate? It’s because the folks who turned out on November 6 were selectively energized. They proved that a coalition of inspired Democrats, independents, and first-time voters could thumb their noses at the architects of gerrymandering, while refusing to be a lemming for every single Democratic candidate.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not downplaying the corrupt nature of gerrymandering. In fact, I continue to call for the creation of a non-partisan commission to re-draw district lines. I’m just saying that until such time as those boundaries can be drawn without respect to party politics, that there is a way to beat back gerrymandering. How? For one thing, unaffiliated voters now constitute the second largest block of registered voters in North Carolina (2 million, compared to 2.5 million Democrats and 1.5 million Republicans) and when enough of them are energized at the same time as Democrats, then upsets can happen.

The problem is that in most gerrymandered districts, North Carolina Democrats and independents don’t all get energized at the same time over the same issues, which explains why even though Democrats accounted for nearly half of the popular vote for Congressional candidates statewide, Republicans still retained 10 of our 13 congressional seats.

Regardless of what the courts might order us to do about our gerrymandered map in the short term, we know that two years from now, the state legislature will draw up an entirely new map based on the 2020 census. Between now and then, a number of organizations, and men like former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, are focused on getting people registered to vote and keeping them energized to participate in the political process. If they are successful, then new coalitions of voters can play a significant role in thwarting the goals of gerrymandering. To paraphrase Senator Cory Booker, “the power of the people is more powerful than the people in power.” James Madison believed that to be true in 1788, and it is still true today.