The Slide from Incivility to Cowardly

A few years back I made a social media post which rankled one of my FB friends (who I had known in person long before FB),  and rather than approach me about it, she went to my boss who she knew. I was completely blindsided.  I was (and remain) supremely angry with her.

The internet has evolved…but not for the better.  A year or so ago, some other FB friend made some horrible remarks.  As a result some random person from Canada decided to make a post on my FB page. That’s pretty intrusive. I unfriended her not because of him (I blocked him) but because of her.  

Today, someone irate over another person’s social media post spent time  trolling the poster’s friends and leading a serious, threatening attack on an innocent person.  This crosses a line. You can argue , debate, even name call  (if you were raised that way), but making threats against a person, friends, family, livelihood is cowardly and thuggish.

The first lesson is one for all of us: we have too many friends on FB (and other platforms) that we just don’t really know. It is okay to say “no thanks” and not accept every request. I think LinkedIn is the world’s center of all spam now and some distorted people consider it a dating site. Social media is not a fun, little game anymore.

Second lesson, there is no right side of history if you cross the line from argument to threats; at that point you are neither progressive nor conservative, but simply a cretin.

Third, be careful about hero worshiping the activist du jour ordained by the media/social media; this one dimensional portrait will hide a sea of flaws and possibly malicious intent.

The world is full of opinions. You may or may not be proved right in the long run.  Try not to damage yourself or others in the proving. Some words and actions cannot be undone, and you may want to live in the same town for a few more years.

Adding to the reading list

Richard Grant's Dispatches From Pluto is a well written attempt to understand the South. I will add it to the stack of helpful tomes that don't exactly explain so much as examine this paradoxical land. I don't know that anyone under age 50 from here (or under 100 from elsewhere) can comprehend that William Faulkner wrote about a real-ish place that once existed on Planet Earth. The social media generation does not have time for W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South or Wm.Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee. And that's a shame.

Some years ago, I heard a person in the tourism business here mistake Lt. George W. Lee for Gen. Robert E. Lee and that is a downright tragedy. Those are two rich and wonderfully instructive life stories which warrant study, not tossing in a dustbin of history.

More recently I heard a young lady in an elevator talk about being from the Delta. I asked where she was from. She said Memphis. I sighed. Memphis is the capital of north Mississippi to be sure, but of the hill country part; we are far more rough & ready than genteel.

Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt shut down the post office in Indianola, MS? That the Klondike neighborhood was once a bastion of upper middle  class African-Americans? That Whitehaven, TN -- annexed into Memphis in 1968 -- was named for Col. Frank White, founder of the Grenada-Memphis Railroad in 1846? The first radio station in Memphis was not in Memphis but in Whitehaven in 1926. Did you know that a platform plank of the Populist Party in the 1892 presidential election was the abolition of the electoral college in favor of popular vote? That the 1927 flood sent over 100,000 Mid-South refugees to the high ground of Memphis? That Memphis was the center of the world mule trading market from 1880-1920 and British Army buyers came here to buy mules? That Memphis remains the world center for spot cotton trading? Did you know that Zion Cemetery on South Parkway was founded by former slaves in 1876 and contains between 22,000-30,000 African -American graves?

Well, I can ramble on with this for a bit and still not hold a candle to John Harkins, Perre Magness, Jimmy Ogle, and others. My point is that if you have not yet decided on your beach reading for this summer, you could do worse that Willie Morris or Richard Wright, William Styron or Shelby Foote...of course if you take on the challenge of Foote's three volume, 2,000,000 word  The Civil War, then that might be summer and winter vacation plus next spring break too. But it will worth it; Foote was a fine writer of both history and novels.

At any rate, I am glad that you moved here or if a native, did not move away permanently. This lovely pile of books is just a way to be present. Be here now. Bless your heart.

Memphis without Grit & Grind is Just Warsaw,Indiana on a Saturday night

Think of Memphis for decades throwing  heart & soul, energy, money, and kitchen sinks into drives to land a professional football team.  If you are of certain age, this recollection brings about as much angst to mind as the Cold War. We worked to put our city on a map populated by a few special other cities.  It was about our pride, our identity, our self esteem.  If you are too  young to remember this football chasing, then just try to imagine Memphis now without the Grizzlies. Ouch.  The Grizz, the Grit & Grind, the unifying force pulling  young & old, black & white, suburban & urban together.  Grizz vs . Errrybody. Now think of Memphis with the Orpheum, without the Levitt Shell, without the MIM BBQ contest. What you are left with is something resembling  Warsaw, IN  (the # 1 city in America for medical devices, Memphis is #2  but our night life is waaaay better).

Memphis without a daily newspaper is about on the same par as Memphis without the Grizzlies.  No daily makes Memphis a bush league city, no ifs ands or buts.

Clearly Gannett is doing some sort of wicked vivisection on the Commercial Appeal. Why? Because the business model is antiquated, because more people get their news from Twitter or Colbert or not at all. Because YOU do not subscribe to the paper (do you? Tell me if I’m wrong. I’m guessing that of my 3,500 Facebook friends about three of the under the age of 40 might subscribe and three might be too high a guess).

But I am not writing to chastise anyone (other than Gannett) but simply to say this: yeah, it stinks that the CA is laying off good people and good friends, but you don’t get revenge by disowning the paper and cancelling your subscription (speaking to my over age 50 friends now). That only expedites our journey toward becoming Warsaw , IN.

There is likely more to come – selling the Union building, printing in Jackson or Nashville,  a four day per week paper  instead of a seven day, and who knows what else. But we need a Commercial Appeal in  some form or fashion. Thank heaven we have the Flyer, Daily News, and MBJ, but we still need a CA.