Elton G. White, My Hero

i absolutely love to read the local paper from my hometown. the central virginian serves louisa and fluvanna counties. it comes out once a week, on thursdays, and contains about 20 pages of vital information -- notices for the weekend's fundraising pancake breakfasts, scores from high school sports, instructions on how to maximize your fall fertilizing efforts and the day-to-day social calendar of mrs. kermit martin. at home, i read this paper front to back the minute it arrives, including the legal notices (which have some relevance now that i've graduated law school), the church bulletins, and the public interest stories on local llama farms. lucky me, my mom got me a subscription ! that i receive in tempe about 10 days late, but attack with the same fervor.

my absolute favorite part of the paper: the editorials. i am always either appalled or amazed at the opinions in my simple, country town... an interesting mixture of ignorance and insight that i never quite expect. right now, the county is knee deep in rabid debates over a disbarred (for lack of a better term) pee-wee football coach, funding issues for a potential new elementary school, and the best -- local elections.

if politics is dirty, local politics is mud wrestling to the death in your own backyard. the first election i ever voted in, the sheriff won by 8 votes. an early, cozy lesson in every-vote-counts. i'll admit to some apathy in presidential elections (evident by my vote for ralph nader -- an incredible person with unbelievably long fingers -- in 2004 and virtually unknown and now deceased libertarian candidate harry browne in 2000). but i cannot afford to make an uninformed decision in local politics ... this is someone i will have to hear about at least once a week every week, on fridays when the CV is delivered. or more specifically for me, 10 days after that friday.

so the point is that i am impressed with the level of attention being paid to the local elections in my hometown, and appreciate the importance of weighing a commonwealth attorney interested in social rehabilitation versus one interested in cracking down on crime in a small community. but in the true spirit of kelley, i find humor in this advocacy. elton g. white of louisa writes:

[the encumbent commonwealth attorney] has turned his office into a super wal-mart with good deals and rollback sentencing. . . . i have always heard that a dog was man's best friend. i cannot attest to the validity of that cliche, but i can say, without a doubt, that [the encumbent] is a criminal's best friend.

now those is some fightin' words... and so eloquently put in the most redneck of terms: discount shopping and hunting dogs.