Let me begin by confessing that I have never been to Fancy Farm. When I was News Director of WKYT-TV, I began our extensive coverage of this annual event in a small Western Ky. Town; chartered planes, worked out joint coverage with the Herald-Leader and others, sent off reporters and photogs, but never went myself.
I thought it was an important news event, and my viewers needed to know
about this traditional kickoff to the fall campaign. I still do, but I never went.
Over the years, Fancy Farm has been around for more than a century, such events change. If you believe, as I do, that civic issues need civil discussion, you have to be worried about Fancy Farm. Ever since busloads of hecklers started arriving...one report has it we have our senior Senator to thank for this change... the coverage I see and read about Fancy Farm often talks about attempts to drown out the speaker. This is neither fair, nor democratic, nor right, nor what Fancy Farm should be about.
Let's kickoff our fall election campaign by starting with a thorough
discussion of the issues. There's far too little on the broadcast media
today, so we need all we can get. Let the oratory be as hot as the food and weather, but let the speakers be heard...all of them, on all sides of the issues.
Now that I'm retired I may go to the Farm someday, but not if the heckling continues as it has the past few years. Why drive all the way across state even for good barbeque, in weather often steamy, if you can’t hear the speakers? And aren’t people who may be our next governor, or senator, due this courtesy?
Let the sponsoring church, which strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, in censoring "bitch", get its priorities straight. It's a great
Tradition, and could be even greater, with civil discourse.
I’m Just Sayin’….
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