Today was the mayor forum that my class has been studying to film.  We had four cameras positioned across the two story auditorium.  Everything was going just fine for the first fifteen minutes or so.  Everyone was doing their job and no one was really interested in the candidates.  I think I counted like ten yawns from the audience.  I was pre-occupied with the title transitions and then something happened.  Something so unexpected that I quickly looked up from my computer to see the action on stage.  It was all about to go down when mayor candidate Paul Smith started to tell the audience that both current mayor Ron Littlefield and candidate Rob Healy were both rich white men that don’t care about poor people or hundreds of children dying on Chattanooga Streets.  He went on to talk about MLK and his philosophy that the rich are too rich, with both Healy and Littlefield making over 100,000 while the city goes down an economical hole and people starve.  He called Littlefield unimportant and pompous.

The audience then perked up and people looked slightly stunned as if he just broke out into a song and dance number.  Ron Littlefield then laughed and said that the city is a great place to live because he brought the Volkswagen plant.  He said he was ashamed by Mr. Smith and that he is just loud and obnoxious and people don’t need to listen to him.  He went on to say that this man doesn’t care about anyone, but himself and that this is now a disgusting campaign.  I must say that Mr. Smith was over 30 minutes late and he then just waltzed in and started calling them lazy and rich.  This was slightly amusing because Littlefield is a pillar of old man angst, he’s so bland and unhappy looking standing like a statue on the stage.  Needless to say it was easy to film him, but Haley was also making accusations saying that this “homeless shelter nonsense” is a pet project to spend millions of tax payer money.  When the men were sitting on stage Mr. Littlefield was in the center and the other men tried to lean away from him as if he just got sprayed by a skunk.  It was all sorts of uncomfortable, but the stuff that makes amazing good TV.  I was like…oh yeah…my time has arrived…It’s Springer Time!  Okay so the men didn’t start fighting as midgets came out with pies, but hey this was good stuff.  The men continued to bicker back and forth and after some shouting we went to commercial.  The People at home didn’t get to see that the guys continued to go at it and that the moderator tried to calm everyone down.  This was an old man throw down! 

I guess filming was good, but I really didn’t pay much attention, because when you have grown men looking as if they are going to call their posse and fry each other then that is amazing.  

“Too little, too late,” snarls Governor Sonny Perdue. “We want the Tennessee River’s water, and by golly gumdrops, we’re gonna have it!”

Actually, Perdue didn’t say that, but he could have, because, like the members of the Georgia legislature, he’s a shameless idiot who should be removed from office. The state’s newest solution to persistent drought and the imminent drying up of Atlanta? Why, revive a centuries’ old border dispute between the Water Hog State and Tennessee, and move Geogia’s border approximately 1-1/2 miles to the north to include a portion of the Tennessee River. This would give Georgia’s real-estate developers—the state’s true rulers—access to that flow’s prodigious waters, and would make thousands of Tennesseans instant pissed-off citizens of Georgia in the process. (This just in: Perdue has indicated that Georgia would declare Tennesseans caught up in the land grab illegal aliens and deport them.)

No really, all of that is true. Well, we made up the Perdue quote and the illegal alien stuff, but there are things that you can’t make up, no matter how much Jack Daniels you drink.

Tennesseans have responded predictably, as the linked article states, “with humor, anger and defiance.” (And, as in any beautiful spring dispute, a Southern man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of gun play: “Us good Tennesseeans (sic) will take our long rifles up to Lookout Mountain and fire when ready,” said Justin Wilson, a Nashville attorney and former deputy governor.)

Mayor Ron Littlefield of Chattanooga, now arguably America’s funniest mayor, took the humor high road and made a creative gesture of peace, conciliation, and wicked shame to Georgia by proclaiming February 27 “Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day” and delivering a truckload of bottled water to the legislators—driven mad, proclaimed Littlefield, by thirst. The proclamation follows in its entertaining entirety.

PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and

WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and

WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and

WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and

WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and

WHEREAS, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,

NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that

I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as

“Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day”