Jackson Free Press

Orley Hood writes in the Clarion Ledger:

Out in the suburbs, races for city hall tend to come down to how many doors you can knock on, how many hands you can shake, how many potholes the incumbent filled, how many funerals and weddings and club meetings and youth baseball games you can get to, and whose back yard got flooded in the last round of thunderstorms.

In Jackson, it's nuclear war. It's artillery fire from beyond the horizon. Mortars. Shrapnel. Blood and guts. It's Ali-Frazier, Yankees-Red Sox, State-Ole Miss. Don't show up without headgear.

Full article here.

Previous Commentsshow

Orley is an odd duck. He comes across gleeful that the city elections are such a "war," as he calls them: And it's only just begun. The next three weeks, leading up to the Democratic primary, is going to be the most fun we've had since Kirk Fordice decided to make a run for the governor's mansion. They should charge admission. "Most fun"?? What a loser. This reminds of another major media guy in Northeast Jackson whom I talked to this week; he was just downright gleeful over the idea that the mayoral campaign might go negative. What the ...? These are media people -- who want to see a mayoral bloodbath. Is it because they want to see black candidates fighting with each other, or do they just glee in the idea that we can't have a good discussion about issues -- which I haven't either of them try to do, yet. They just want an ugly horse race. That's gross and offensive. And doesn't Orley live in the 'burbs? Didn't he talk about his gated community recently? Can we say: We. Don't. Care. Orley. This is also interesting: Harvey's trying to paint Frank as ó don't laugh ó the white guy, the rich Northeast Jackson insider, a closet Republican, no change from all the pushy rich white guys who used to run the city, who used to ignore poor black people. A lot of Melton supporters are trying to say that the mayor's camp is trying to paint Melton as a fake Democrat. People, Melton is the one who said that he is running as a Democrat in order to win as an AFrican American. That's not a criticism; simply fact.

DonnaLadd

Apr 13 2005