Oh, great. I have just been outed. It turns out that I am a bed-wetting liberal redneck. You were sure to find that out sooner or later, so let me explain.
A while back, I suggested that if Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta and some of his buddies with too much time on their hands were having heartburn over Alexander Stephens of Crawfordville — the former vice president of the Confederate States of America — representing the Great State of Georgia in the National Statuary Hall collection in Washington, I had a solution that I was sure everyone would find satisfactory. Replace Mr. Stephens with Ray Charles Robinson of Albany, Georgia.
I am sure Mr. Stephens did a lot of wonderful things that earned him a slot in the National Statuary Hall along with Crawford W. Long, of Danielsville, and the luminaries representing the 49 other states. But whatever it was, it did not include singing “Georgia on My Mind,” the greatest song ever written in the history of the Earth. And nobody ever sang it like the late, great Ray Charles Robinson.
I thought it was a smashing idea. Alas, those who aren’t through fighting a war that we lost 151 years ago didn’t. That included Mr. Angry White Guy, who promptly took me to the verbal woodshed and called me a “bed-wetting liberal” as well as all my friends who he was convinced had voted for Barack Obama for president. That didn’t exactly sit well with one of my friends I am reasonably sure voted for Attila the Hun and even then had some reservations about his conservative credentials.
I didn’t mind the accusation, although the bed-wetting part made me a bit uncomfortable. When attending some high-brow, black-tie soiree, I had this feeling that people were whispering to one another, “Look over there. That’s Dick Yarbrough, the modest and much-beloved columnist, munching on a broccoli canape. I understand that if you say ‘Barack Obama’, he will wet his bed. Isn’t that adorable?”
Still, being publicly identified as a liberal of any ilk had its rewards. For one thing, it increased the liberal sense of humor quotient by several light years. Liberals are a lot of things. Funny is not one of them. Liberals are too busy hectoring the masses on the benefits of big government to worry about having a sense of humor. I’ve seen tree fungus funnier than liberals.
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