Radical Georgia Moderate

If you’re not my friend on Facebook, you probably didn’t get an invite. So, consider this it. There’s booze and pool tonight at The Independent around 8 p.m. Y’all come out.

Amber is quoted several times in a Wired article about the fallout from the Elliot Spitzer story.

“Lots of people were at South by Southwest [when the Spitzer story broke] and didn’t have time to check e-mail every five minutes,” says Amber Rhea, organizer of the upcoming Sex 2.0 conference in Atlanta. “It didn’t matter. They used Twitter, text messaging — they did interviews with hardly any advance notice.”

Rhea says that for the first time, there’s a critical mass of people putting forth a concerted effort to make sure the media can’t ignore sex workers. Building on a foundation built by former sex workers of the past 30 or so years, many of whom went public with books, articles and speaking engagements after they retired, modern sex workers have the message — and the means to get it out.

Check it out!

You may not have noticed if you live outside of DeKalb County, but the blog scene has exploded there the past year or so. There are several well-written civic-oriented blogs for the disparate parts of the county, some of which are actually breaking news, and many of which are shifting online and offline discussion in their communities.

Here’s a list of what I’ve noticed, which likely isn’t comprehensive. They’re in no particular order. If you write a DeKalb-focused blog that isn’t listed here, please link to it in the comments.

• Dorablog
  www.doraville.org

  Written by Joseph G and several other contributors, Dorablog covers city politics in Doraville. Broke the story of the unethical firing of Doraville’s police chief.

  (full disclosure: Joseph is a friend of mine who also hosts the GA Politics Podcast on the Georgia Podcast Network, so I’m partial to his work)

• Decatur Metro
  www.decaturmetro.com

  Great coverage of school board and real estate issues in Decatur.

• inDECATUR
  airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/in_decatur

  Written by a long-time Decatur resident who often posts old photos and shares anecdotes comparing modern Decatur to the Decatur he knew growing up. Also has great coverage of local issues.

• Dunwoody North Civic Association
  dunwoodynorth.blogspot.com

  Covering Dunwoody, which isn’t a city yet, but may be soon in part because of the efforts of people like DNCA’s John Heneghan. There’s lot of great info on this site about Dunwoody and DeKalb in general.

  I met Heneghan at an Atlanta Press Club event last night, and contrary to opinion in some delusional corners of the Internet, he did not come off to me to be a “vile and dastardly coward.”

• Bill Floyd Decatur.com
  www.billfloyddecatur.com

  Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd recently started his own blog. There are only a couple of updates so far, but I’m looking forward to reading more.

• DeKalb Officers
  dekalbofficersspeak.blogspot.com

  This is a wonderful blog started recently by some DeKalb County police officers who remain anonymous where they voice concerns about management they might be afraid to raise if their identities were tied to the complaints.

• ONE Oakhurst
  oneoakhurst.blogspot.com

  This blog was formed to discuss the formation of an Oakhurst historic district. Hasn’t been updated in a little while, but still good for background on the OHD discussion.

• Oakhurst Historic District
  oakhursthistoricdistrict.blogspot.com

  Another blog formed to discuss the Oakhurst Historic District proposal. This one has been updated more recently than ONE Oakhurst.

• DeKalb Young Democrats
  www.dekalbyd.com

  Legislative and organizational news. Recently posted about volunteer opportunities to help tornado victims.

• Broadcast Atlanta (formerly GoDeKalb)
  www.broadcastatlanta.com

  This is kind of a hybrid between a community group blog, message board and a commercial media site. Aileen Harris, formerly a reporter for a couple of local dead tree publications, runs this along with a partner. She has a vidcast and writes a blog as well. It has recently expanded its scope to cover all of Atlanta, but still has a DeKalb-centric focus.

• State Senator David Adelman’s blog
  www.davidadelman.info/davids_blog

  Not updated terribly often, but sometimes provides some excellent insight into the Legislative process.

I chose to keep this narrowed to blogs that were created specifically to cover DeKalb County, but these aren’t the only blogs that discuss DeKalb issues of course. Many Georgia-oriented political blogs I read (and this blog) mention DeKalb issues from time-to-time.

There are also sites that technically fall outside the definition of a blog, but which utilize some of the same collaborative efforts which make these other blogs worth reading.

One good example of this is the Three Forks Heritage Alliance, which has a traditional web site but organizes and interacts using a Google group and has spread the word about its cause on blogs. Doraville also has several active email groups, and I’m sure other parts of the county do as well.

Most of the activity that I’m aware of comes from the northern and central parts of the county. I haven’t heard a lot from the southern part (Lithonia, Stone Mountain, etc.), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Please share links if you know about them.

Governor Sonny Perdue sent out a press release with an idiotic defense of a continued ban on Sunday sales meant to be used as an op-ed in newspapers. It cited a study, which must make it true, right?

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded a study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, to uncover the legislation’s long-term effects using data from the first five years that alcohol sales on Sunday were allowed.

The study found that legalizing Sunday packaged alcohol sales “exacts a significant price that is paid by crash victims and their loved ones, health care providers, insurers, law enforcement and the judicial systems.”

Just a little problem: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a neo-prohibitionist group, which makes the study about as credible as any story I’ll tell tonight at pool after about eight drinks. Which is to say, not credible at all.

Do you know anyone whose name is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial? If you’ve never checked before, there’s a web application now that lets you search the names and get information about them. A search for ‘tanton’ came up with one name:

* Title/Collection: Vietnam Veterans Memorial
* Full Name: Tanton, Charlie Thomas
* Country: South Vietnam
* Sheet Number: 1
* Rank: Staff Sergeant
* Grade: E6
* Specialty: General Vehicle Repairman (ARMY)
* Hometown: Phenix City
* Home State: AL
* Race: Caucasian
* Religion: Protestant - No Denominational Preference
* Marital Status: Married
* Gender: Male
* Date Of Birth: 07 Jan 1935
* Tour Start Date: 26 Oct 1970
* Casualty Date: 27 Jun 1971
* Death Date: 27 Jun 1971
* Age: 36
* Casualty Type: Non-Hostile, Died of Other Causes
* Died Of: Accidental Self-Destruction

My dad’s side of the family is from Alabama, so it’s not impossible we’re related, but when I asked my dad he said he didn’t know. My dad was stationed in Germany during Vietnam, fortunately.

Here’s the video we shot last night for Sex 2.0, which I think turned out great other than my camcorder not being very good at shooting anything indoors. Borderline NSFW.

The camcorder is a low end Canon ZR500. It does great outdoors or if there’s ton of light to work with, but not so much the rest of the time. I bought it basically to answer the question “do I want to make videos?” The answer is yes I do, so now I’m eying something a little higher end. The Canon HV20 looks like a good choice.

Anybody have recommendations for a high-end consumer or prosumer camcorder? Anybody have anything good or bad to say about the HV20?

Blogging will likely be light this week, as there is a lot going on, most of which I can’t blog about.

What I do know is that I probably want to do some boozing Friday night. Who’s in?

Here is my mom’s response to my post from a couple of days ago about my grandfather, which she gave me permission to post here:

Rusty,

I do agree that your grandfather and I grew up in a period where there were both overt and unspoken prejudices against the ideas related to having an integrated society. However, I strongly disagree with your portrayal of your grandfather as someone who would have brandished a pickaxe to prevent people from entering the PickRick.

My father, like most men in the South, was raised believing that there were two societies - a black society and a white society. While he had strong feelings that those societies should be separated, he never did and never would have resorted to violence to support those feelings. I remember a time when he went to one of his friend’s homes to talk him out going to a Klu Klux Klan rally.

Lester Maddox believed deeply in the concept of State’s Rights and was protesting the Federal Government’s right to force a locally owned and operated business to be forced to serve customers that he did not wish to serve. From his perspective, if he began to serve black customers, he was risking the loss of many of his longtime customers, and eventually, losing his business.

That does not make what he did right, nor does it excuse his resorting to violence to prevent having to acquiesce to government pressure. The fact that Lester was willing to do what he did should not have painted your grandfather with the same brush.

As you so eloquently stated, there was much more good about your grandfather than bad. Both his and Lester Maddox’s attitutes towards blacks and segregation mellowed over time. When Lester Maddox was Governor of Georgia, he did more towards integrating state government than any previous governor. PawPaw as well, willingly worked with black peers and on occasion welcomed black visitors to his church.

Please don’t confuse the prejudices with which PawPaw was raised with the inner goodness that made him who he was.

So, part of my recollection of family lore was off. They were friends, they were both segregationists, but they differed in that Maddox was willing to resort to violence in defense of those beliefs whereas my grandfather was not.

I stand by the majority of what I wrote, but that clarification is necessary. I apologize to my mom and anyone else who may have been hurt by that inaccurate portion of my post. I painted with too broad a brush in a couple of sentences.

From Travis Fain in a blog post about the idea of making GDOT a central permitting agent for red light cameras:

But is there anyone out there saying “Yeah, the Georgia Department of Transportation — they’ve got their act together. Let’s give them more responsibility.”

There’s a great piece of Georgia Senate lore in today’s Political Insider, which would otherwise be an unexciting column about a Senator who wore jeans on the floor to present a bill to the chagrin of another member:

The late state Sen. Culver Kidd of Milledgeville was a famous, flamboyant inebriate. Zell Miller once said he could tell the time of day by the degree to which Kidd drifted from the perpendicular.

In 1992, Kidd went to the well to speak for a measure praising Mothers Against Drunk Driving. He wore a suit made from 160 cloth bags in which bottles of Crown Royal whisky were sold.

He’d had a tailor stitch the suit together. Presumably, Kidd emptied the bottles himself.

“Go get that S.O.B. off the floor,” Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard ordered Wayne Garner, then a senator but now mayor of Carrollton.

“I already looked,” Garner replied. “The rules say jacket and tie. They do not describe make or model.”

Kidd gave his speech in his Crown Royal suit. He later said he was going for irony.