RANDOM THOUGHTS ON RANDOM SUBJECTS

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” In my recent column about the civil war at UGA and what I perceive will be the aftermath, a number of readers thought I was defending President Mike Adams and reamed me out. Just as many thought I was defending Athletic Director Vince Dooley and reamed me out. One reader called me “Baghdad Bob” and said I would never win the “Profiles in Courage” award, which was a shock to me. I didn’t know I was in the running. …

Speaking of mail, the most I ever received came a few years ago when I called Arab terrorists “cowards” and said they couldn’t whip the Georgia National Guard. (They still are and they still can’t.) My recent column on Delta’s management generated almost as much mail from Delta employees — active and retired. To say the overwhelming majority are white-hot angry at their executives is an understatement. It makes me wonder if the top brass at Delta know just how bad morale is. I would hope so, because they are the reason for most of it. If not, I plan to tell them in an upcoming column. Stay tuned. …

Shame on me. I have allowed myself to judge teen-agers by what I see too often on the beaches at St. Simons — smart-mouthed kids trespassing on private property in spite of clear signage to the contrary. Recently, I had the opportunity to witness some 150 young people working in Atlanta’s inner-city neighborhoods repairing homes and interacting with disadvantaged children as a part of the Metropolitan Atlanta Project, or MAP, sponsored by the youth ministry at Northside Methodist Church in Atlanta. The week-long program, now in its fifth year, brings teen-agers together from a number of churches throughout the Atlanta area to worship, work and play. These are good, solid kids — athletes, scholars, musicians and the like. If this is our future, I like what I see. I just hope the smart-mouthed trespassers end up working for these kids. They probably will. …

Of all the people I dealt with in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, none were nicer than the folks in Gainesville, the venue for the Olympic canoe/kayak-sprint competition. Unlike many other groups holding Olympic competitions, the organizers in Hall County didn’t try to extort money from the Atlanta Olympic Committee or whine about their responsibilities. They did their job and ran a terrific venue at Lake Lanier. Now, the same people are getting ready to host the first canoe/kayak World Championships ever held in the United States and a qualifying event for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. The event, scheduled for Sept. 10-14, is expected to draw 1,250 athletes and officials from more than 75 countries. It will be a great competition in a beautiful venue, and the people in Gainesville deserve every good thing that can happen to them. …

The French never cease to amaze me. The latest example: The Ministry of Culture has banned the use of the term “email” because it isn’t (gasp) a French word. The bureaucrats who may actually get paid for worrying about these kinds of world-shattering matters have decreed that, from now on, you-know-what will be called “courier electronique.” It is time to fight back. Let’s tell Le Boneheads that we will no longer use words like “rotisserie.” Instead, we will say, “an appliance fitted with a spit on which food is rotated over heat.” Also, let’s tell them what they can do with their wine. Does the word “derrière” come to mind?

Finally, liberal weenies stay mad at me all the time, and it is clearly my fault. I want so much for them to like me, but I keep forgetting they don’t have a sense of humor. Maybe I should tell them I am rooting for their poster person, Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, to get the Democratic nomination for president. Dean promotes same-sex marriages, higher taxes and is totally opposed to our being in Iraq. I get the giggles all over thinking about him campaigning on that platform in rural Georgia. See? I can be really nice when I want to…

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