Posts by Carter Wrenn
Inclined to Devilment
The local school board has a new training program to teach teachers that all cultures are equal and to move away from the ‘belief any culture is superior to another’ – which sounds fine except the concept of cultural equality rests on a kind of moral relativism that leads to odd places. Take ISIS.…
Read MoreShuttering the Center
The fur’s flying over in Chapel Hill – Dean Boger (at the Law School) along with a cohort of professors have lit into the Board of Governors saying closing the Law School’s Anti-Poverty Center leaves them with only one conclusion: The Board is for poverty. The Dean lamented the Board was guilty of every…
Read MoreA Carolina Gentleman
I was barely eighteen when, my first night in Chapel Hill, they herded all the male freshmen into an auditorium and an aging Dean stepped up to a podium, perched his half-glasses on the end of his nose, and explained genteelly from here on – for the next four years – we were expected to…
Read MoreValentine’s Day
When the State Ethics Commission ruled that a lobbyist having sex with a legislator didn’t violate the ban on gifts to legislators because sex acts do not constitute “things of value,” it got the attention of the redoubtable Ira David Wood, who’s surely NC’s most respected artist. Woods posted the entire newspaper article on…
Read MoreBlindness
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt looked the American people in the eye and said, December 7th is a day that will live in infamy forever. After ISIS burned a hostage alive, President Obama told the American people, We’ve done some pretty bad things ourselves. Which is the proper response to…
Read MorePure Baloney
Reverend William Barber went down to the newspaper and sat down with Ned Barnett to have a chat about the state’s soul. Now the main problem with the state spiritually, according to Reverend Barber, is Republicans. He’s thundered from podiums from Asheville to Wilmington that Republicans are heartless varmints who stomp on women, children,…
Read MoreNo Saints
Once when Democratic County Commissioner Betty Lou Ward was in the hospital she asked the Republican Commissioners to allow her to participate in a board meeting by phone – but the Republicans said no. Another time, in the middle of a fight, the Republicans waited until Ward left the board room to go to…
Read MoreA Hole in the Boat?
Before the sun set, the day the legislature returned to town, the Bull Mooses in the Senate had locked horns with Pat McCrory. The Bull Mooses are a gregarious lot but they’re dangerous when crossed and, somewhere along the way, they decided there was a hole in the Governor’s boat when it came to…
Read MoreFickle
She plighted her troth not in church and not as a bride or in marriage but in town hall meetings and political forums and rallies, saying she was a fire-breathing Tea Party conservative in a Congressional District filled with small towns and flannel-shirted farmers and churches full of hymn-singing Baptists. After consummating her victory…
Read More1939
Robed in black from head to toe, a hood covering his face, with a hostage kneeling at his feet, he lifted a knife and started his litany. Know, oh Obama, he said, that we will cut off your head in the White House. He wasn’t done. This is my message to…
Read More