Posts by Gary Pearce
Silent Sam and Senator Sam
Two thoughtful readers with differing views on Confederate memorials passed along dueling viewpoints – one from the late Senator Sam Ervin and the other about Silent Sam at UNC-Chapel Hill. Reading both suggests where Confederal memorials should be and where they shouldn’t be. Senator Sam Senator Ervin spoke in August 1965 at the dedication of…
Read MoreOut-Foxed
Trump doesn’t just get his news from Fox, he’s getting his advisors from there. It’s worth reading, then, what one now-former Fox commentator says about Fox Fake News. Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who commented on military affairs, quit Fox. He fired a parting salvo calling Fox “a mere propaganda machine for a…
Read MoreWhat is the Democratic message?
State Rep. Graig Meyer posed that question to Governor Roy Cooper – and posted a video of the Governor’s response. Below is a lightly edited transcript. Meyer began by asking, “What are the values that make you a Democrat?” Cooper: “Well, I got my values growing up in eastern North Carolina. I’m a person of…
Read MoreGive now – before it’s too late!
If you ever gave a politician money – or your email address – your Inbox was flooded this weekend with desperate, pleading messages. Midnight Saturday was the end of the first-quarter fundraising period, and apparently there’s nothing like a deadline to motivate donors. Here are a few of the weekend pitches: “Big Deadline Looming: My…
Read MoreUnmitigated politics
Republicans thought they had Governor Cooper trapped on the Atlantic Pipeline mitigation fund. Now old Roy and his team are slum-dunking them – and exposing everything that’s wrong with this legislature. It started when the Governor’s Office got Duke and Dominion to put up $58 million for economic-development and environmental-protection projects in eastern North Carolina.…
Read MoreRebel Fell
As North Carolina debates the fate of Confederate monuments, ponder this perspective from Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, on why he pushed successfully to remove four Confederate monuments in his city. In “What I learned from my fight to remove Confederate monuments,” Landrieu (a potential Democratic presidential candidate) wrote: “The statues were not…
Read MoreTrump’s trysts and twists
Which is worse – that Trump hopped in bed with Stormy or that he’s still in bed with Putin? Stormy and Putin have a lot in common. Both show off their chests. Both stories involve thugs. Both might involve illegal campaign activities. And Trump hasn’t said a bad word about either Stormy or Putin. Stormy’s…
Read MorePeople, not politics
To paraphrase JFK, defeat is an orphan and victory has a thousand theorists. A thousand theories bloomed after Conor Lamb won in Pennsylvania last week. Democrats say, “There’s a 20-point anti-Trump wave. Just think of all the places we’ll win!” Or, “Lamb won because he ran away from Nancy Pelosi.” Or, “he won because he…
Read MoreGrant’s Tome
We need a break from Trump. So I’m reading and blogging about other, greater leaders. Monday, it was Nelson Mandela. Today it’s Ulysses Grant, always rated one of the worst Presidents. Until Trump. Ron Chernow’s thousand-page biography hasn’t done for Grant what Chernow did for Alexander Hamilton. Maybe Grant needs a Broadway musical. Before I…
Read MoreWhat great leaders do
Given what passes for leadership today, let’s look at what a real leader once said. This is from a speech by Nelson Mandela when he was rebuilding a country that had been torn apart by apartheid and racial hatred: “During my political career, I have discovered that in all communities, African, coloured, Indian and white,…
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