Pimping for Johnny Reid Edwards
In the 1970-1971 school year Charlotte public schools began court ordered desegregation. The Feds required that each school have a student racial makeup of 70% white, 30% black.
Carmel Junior High was in its first year of operation and I was one of the students. The white kids lived in the neighborhood – blacks were bused in from the inner city. For some reason, we didn’t get along.
Early in the year a fight broke out between some black and white kids; well, actually, a riot broke out between the two races. This caused the administration to panic and send the entire student body home early.
I had started reading the local paper – The Charlotte Observer – in about the third grade. I liked to read the sports pages, but gradually branched out to the adult stuff.
When school was suspended due to the melee ,I was excited because I just knew there would be an article about this momentous event in the paper the next day. I was very proud of being personally involved in a historical event, as no local school had ever been closed in Charlotte due to student violence.
Imagine my disappointment the next morning when I snagged the paper before my Dad could get to it and discovered not only was no mention of the riot on the front page where it surely belonged, but there was nothing written about the incident in the entire paper!
The rioting continued the entire year and we probably missed at least two weeks of school in total. I heard reports from my friends who attended other schools in the system about the exact same events happening to them and the CO ignored those stories too. I personally lost a year of education; in most of my classes there was so much chaos learning was impossible.
It was then that I had my first epiphany about the way the Ruling Class Elite controlled Charlotte. I had noticed in my newspaper reading that the CO wrote many editorials extolling the glories of court ordered desegregation and lionizing Judge James McMillan, who was responsible for the unconstitutional edict.
I knew darn well the CO was aware that the public schools had exploded into violence because of McMillan’s busing plan and this had virtually brought education in the community to a halt. Everybody in Charlotte knew it.
At the tender age of 12 I realized that the CO wasn’t reporting the truth because the people who ran the paper knew doing so might generate a public backlash that would jeopardize the school system the CO had propagandized so hard to implement, not to mention tarnish the “Progressive Image” the Ruling Class Elite was even then trying to establish for this community.
But I had been taught in school that “Journalists” were supposed to report the news and let the public draw their own conclusions! Obviously the people who ran The Charlotte Observer were the worst sort of frauds. They’ve only gotten worse since then.
Case in point: Johnny Reid Edwards. In the May 29, 2011, CO, Editorial Page Editor Taylor Batten wrote about Edwards’ imminent federal indictment for criminal conspiracy relating to political campaign finances.
Batten claims to recall a meeting he and a CO reporter had with Johnny back in the summer of 1997 prior to his Senate campaign against Lauch Faircloth. The reporter thought Edwards had enough charisma to go places in politics; Johnny impressed the shrewd, worldly, hardnosed Batten as just another callow $400 haircut.
Batten wrote: “It seemed to me he was running not because of any grand vision for North Carolina or the country, but because it just seemed like a good challenge. We were both right.” Well aren’t you always, Mr. Ruling Class Elitist?
Batten neglected to mention in the rest of his article that despite his very poor impression of Johnny, he and his fellow CO hacks immediately began saturating their rag with puff pieces making Edwards out to be a combination of John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Billy Graham, and Perry Mason.
You see, Batten has never been a journalist since he took his present position at the CO. His real job has been to manipulate public opinion as best he can to perpetuate the power of, you guessed it, The Ruling Class Elite that controls our community, state, and nation. He has been incredibly successful, but I digress.
The establishment press in the rest of the state followed the CO’s lead, which along with the millions of his own cash Edwards put into the campaign, was more than enough to get him elected. Faircloth never stood a chance.
After Johnny took office the CO continued pimping for him. Almost from the day he arrived in DC they began pushing him for national office. They helped get Edwards on the Democratic ticket in 2004, and rapturously backed him for the White House in 2008, but alas his libido got the better of him. You know the rest of the pathetic story.
I believe there is eventually always justice on the earth. Edwards will never spend one second in jail, which is a pity, but I don’t think he will ever hold public office again. I do predict The Charlotte Observer is headed for the journalistic ash heap. They are going broke. Seems very few people care to read the Ruling Class Elitist propoganda they have the unmitigated gall to print. What goes around…
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