Roy Exum
David Cook, who teaches flaming liberalism and advanced daffy thinking at McCallie School, is a dear friend of mine. I gave him his first job as a writer, which he does brilliantly when he’s not seven clicks to the left of Nancy Pelosi, and I delight every time I see him. He’s been awarded some spectacular national awards for his columns in every Sunday’s Times Free Press and I always google the judges because – surprise, surprise -- they, too, are almost always flaming lulus.
Every week I check his column and, more times than not, I skip it. The reasoning? GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. This week was “Warfare, Lynching and Coolidge Park” and the word that I read, “Lynching” turned me off. Again it signaled my boy was drumming up another anguished plea for the oppressed with the hanging of some black man that happened 106 years ago. Was it lost on you that one black guy was killed and three other blacks were shot by other blacks on the very day the 106-year-old lynching was conveniently remembered? Please.
Everybody knows David has a hippie’s disdain for the military, but when an American flag was flown in honor of his grandfather on Veterans Bridge, I saw his true colors (tears.) He showed them again during last summer’s terrorist attack so, please, let him go eat cream somewhere and wrestle with his inner demons because he is clearly conflicted. I believe he is most proud to live in the Land of the Freedom. But in the name of ISIS, be reminded Freedom comes at a heavy cost.
Frankly I haven’t paid much attention to the squabble over the Charles A. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center because I remember some years back when an attempt to establish a Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga ended up as an embarrassment. I’m personally for a huge statue of Mr. Coolidge where generations of hippies can gather at 4:20 every afternoon to smoke some herb under the pigeons. C’mon, everybody knows the valued “green space” at Coolidge Park is in fact a pasture of illicit drugs after nightfall.
People should accept the fact museums are no longer in vogue. An attempt to establish an actually Regional History Museum here not long ago was another painful sham. The millions that were lost in that con should have warranted a criminal investigation, but “the museum people” sure didn’t want that to happen. All it took was a couple of snappy “no comments” and somewhere near $10 million was washed.
General B.B. Bell, who I assure you would be a finalist in any “Finest Chattanoogan” contest, lobbed a “Battle Lines” letter at David, stating true facts about Coolidge Park, but if a Heritage Center cannot be built with loads of class, consider renaming the Walnut Bridge as “Coolidge Pass” or something. Don’t put a bronze bust on it – the scrap iron salesmen would hawk it within a week. But what better time to rename the walking bridge with $9 million in updates in the mill.
We’ll all agree there is nothing honorable or pleasant about war. I wish there had never been a Pearl Harbor, a Flanders Field, The Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima. Don’t get me started on Viet Nam and, if we aren’t in Afghanistan to win quickly, definitely and decisively, we sure shouldn’t be there. I hated every minute my son was a Captain in the First Rangers (he treasures his time in the military), yet I am not so naïve that I don’t recognize our country is under a worse attack right now. Do we sit around and write love letters and send peace beads to those responsible for 9/11 or do we avenge the deaths of our American brothers and sisters?
We hate war yet we adore that at the American cemetery in Normandy nobody speaks above a whisper in honor of those who rest there. For every David Cook there is a Lee Anderson, who was finally buried at our National Cemetery this summer. Lee Anderson was my uncle, and most assuredly could have been buried with my grandparents, my mother, my aunts and my brothers in our private cemetery on our family farm. But no, “Uncle Tat” was first and foremost a patriot and you needn’t ever question his love for his God, his flag, and his family. He was free to choose. That shows our greatness.
Again, I adore David Cook and, while I think he gets a little squirrelly when he tries to remove bees from his house with a vacuum cleaner or goes off on some left-field tangent that only losers talk about, I adore the fact General Bell and millions like him gave David the freedom to say or write anything he pleases. Check with the news reporters in Syria and Turkey right now … they would fight in a war to enjoy our freedoms.
David revealed local school principal LaFrederick Thirkill wants to build a memorial to the blacks who were lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge but he didn’t mention the dozens of white people who were strung up, such as those from Andrew’s Raiders after they stole “The General” locomotive in the Civil War. (One earned the Medal of Honor (see ‘museum’) and several are buried at the National Cemetery.)
But … wait … a memorial to just the blacks who were lynched, this based on local thinking, would glorify lynchings, just as the Medal of Honor would glorify warfare, according to David Cook’s connect-the-dots book. Should we have a white memorial on one side of the deadly girder and black memorial on the other, Professor Thirkill? We would be much more cost conscious to build a monument to the hundreds of blacks who have been shot and killed by other blacks in Chattanooga, this as late as two days ago. Where do people come up with such absurd thinking?
* * *
THE LATEST FROM CHICAGO – In the first week of this August, 101 have been shot with 17 homicides. This year’s total number is now up to 2,520 with 420 dead; that’s with 133 more people shot than this time last year (53 percent increase). The shot clock: a shooting every 2:06, a murder every 12:38. Black-and-black shootings are at 80 percent. Average age of victim: 25. There have been eight police-involved shootings with six killed. Estimated cost to date for taxpayers within the city limits: $133,066,200.
royexum@aol.com