ATLANTA: THE BLOWHARD CITY WE DON’T DESERVE

How did the Great State of Georgia end up with Atlanta as its capital city? Here is a state that has been singularly blessed by You-Know-Who with beautiful mountains, the Golden Isles, Sweet Vidalia onions, corn-fried shrimp, Athens on a crisp fall afternoon, Julia Roberts and so many other good things that I fear talking about them will only encourage more Yankees to move here so they can make fun of us. And Atlanta is our capital? It is like seeing crabgrass at Augusta National or Paul Newman with a zit on his nose.

Look back through the history of the Great State of Georgia and you will find nobody ever wanted a capital city to begin with. Our founding father, General James Oglethorpe, was probably told by his meddling bosses in England that he had to have a capital like everybody else, so he put one in Savannah where he lived. Not too long after that, we went to war with England because of their bossiness. We won the war, but unfortunately the concept of having a capital stuck.

One of the first things Savannah did after the war was to give the capital to Augusta, but the folks in Augusta didn’t want it and shipped it back to Savannah. Then Savannah foisted the capital off on Louisville, which was a mistake. Lobbyists couldn’t find the place. After a few years, the capital was packed up and moved to Milledgeville. It might have stayed there and been totally forgotten, except General Sherman came through and burned the place down. After the Civil War, a Yankee general named Pope moved the capital to Atlanta without asking anybody’s opinion. Atlanta was glad to have the recognition and the Yankees who came with it. It figures.

Today, the capital city of the Great State of Georgia couldn’t manage a two-car funeral. The city is broke and everything in town is broken. Leadership is a scarce commodity. Atlanta is composed of black demagogues, a timid business community and a newspaper that seems powerless to foster positive change. The city that prides itself as “Being Too Busy to Hate” seems to have found ample time to be hateful.

The biggest issue in our dysfunctional capital city these days is not its crumbling sewer system or the pushy panhandlers who act like they own the place. It is renaming Hartsfield International Airport. There is a move on among black politicians to name the airport for former Mayor Maynard Jackson, who died this past July. Jackson was black — or to be politically correct, African-American. Currently, the airport honors former Mayor William B. Hartsfield who was white — or to be politically correct, Caucasian-American

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has put together a commission to advise the City Council on how it should remember Jackson and former Mayor Ivan Allen, who also died recently. Allen, who guided Atlanta through racial turmoil of the late ‘60s better than any other mayor in the country, has shamefully been reduced to an afterthought by racemongers like state representative  “Able” Mable Thomas and Timothy McDonald, head of the Concerned Black Clergy. They have made it clear that blacks are a majority in Atlanta and can do whatever the hell they want. What they want, of course, is to remove Hartsfield’s name from the airport and replace it with Jackson’s. They know the business leaders won’t publicly stand in the way and neither will the newspaper for fear of being labeled racists.

I hope the blacks get their way and ram the name change down everybody’s throat. Then in 50 years when Timothy McDonald is in heaven trying to figure out why he’s sharing space with white folks and “Able” Mable is trying to get her jaw in neutral, the Hispanic majority in Atlanta will adopt the same strong-arm tactics and change the name of Jackson International to the Cisco Kid International Space Port.

In the meantime, maybe some wise soul will have moved the capital to Euharlee or Hahira. If the Great State of Georgia has to have a capital, it deserves some place better than the blowhard city where it now resides.

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