BenGarrett.net | Dispatches from the Cumberlands.

My newspaper column this week:

As a friend and I were crossing the Scott-Campbell line Sunday afternoon — where S.R. 63 reaches the top of a gap between two mountaintops on the North Cumberland WMA and spills into a grand view of the hills towards Huntsville — he made a comment that stuck with me.

“I always like seeing these mountains when I’m headed back home,” he said. “They’re just different somehow.”

We were headed back, ironically, from Pigeon Forge — gateway to the Smokies. No one will ever mistake the Cumberlands for the Smokies; they aren’t as tall, as wide or as plentiful. They aren’t as grand. But they’re pretty darned scenic in their own right, and those of us who live in this area probably take them for granted every time we drive across S.R. 63 between Huntsville and Caryville, seldom pausing to think about the scenic beauty that we have right here in our own backyard.

This week, thousands of people will trek to Scott County from across the eastern U.S. and beyond to enjoy an extended holiday weekend. They will be on ATVs, in jeeps and on horseback; in canoes, on mountain bikes and on foot.

The primary draw, of course, are the hundreds of miles of ATV trails in our mountains. Brimstone Recreation’s annual White Knuckle Event will draw close to 10,000 — maybe more for what promises to be the largest Memorial Day weekend event yet for the Huntsville company, with both Jamey Johnson and Uncle Kracker scheduled to appear in concert. Meanwhile, a similar — but unrelated — event will take place at Trail’s End Campground near Huntsville.

But it isn’t just ATVs that will draw folks to Scott County and the northern Cumberland Plateau this weekend. The campground at Bandy Creek will likely be filled to capacity and the Big South Fork sells more back-country camping permits on Memorial Day weekend than just about any other. The hiking and equestrian trails will be just a bit more crowded than usual in the BSF.

Not everyone enjoys the increased tourism, of course. There are more than a few who feel that visitors interrupt our peaceful way of life here on the northern Cumberland Plateau. But there are also more than a few folks who are as tickled as a student with a substitute teacher on test day to see an uptick in the number of tourists who visit the area. Among them are the owners of lodging establishments like Grand Vista Motel and Laurel Fork Rustic Retreat, of convenience stores and of outfitters like South Fork Tack. You won’t have to look far to see “out-of-towners” this weekend, especially in Huntsville but even in Oneida, where pickup trucks loaded with ATVs will be a common site at Walmart and various restaurants, as will pickups towing RVs across S.R. 297 towards Bandy Creek.

In a community still stifled by the impacts of double-digit unemployment, the benefits of tourism are increasingly important.

From those mountains that pop into view when you top the hill at the county line on S.R. 63 in the east to the Big South Fork river gorge in the west, Scott County has something to offer visitors, especially in the new American economy that is seeing fewer people travel to exotic vacation destinations and more people turning to “staycation” destinations they can reach in a half-day’s drive. Mosts people still have no clue where Oneida, Tenn., is located and couldn’t point to the Big South Fork NRRA on a map if their lives depended on it. But the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has undertaken a broad marketing effort and more folks are learning where we’re at . . . even if they still pronounce it “Oneeeeda.”

Not everything about an influx of visitors on a holiday weekend is peachy. There is a bit more congestion to deal with, a little more noise pollution in the neighborhoods that are in the immediate vicinity of ATV trails and some of us may even find that our favorite camping spot along the banks of the Big South Fork River has been claimed by “foreigners.”

But if tourism generates a little extra revenue for some of the businesses that are providing jobs to Scott Countians — not to mention a few extra tax dollars that can benefit everything from our schools to our law enforcement agencies — it’s well worth it.

Some of the guests are the result of government. Without Congress acting years ago to preserve the land surrounding the BSF River, the people who visit the park this weekend wouldn’t even be here.

But most of them are the result of private individuals with no government funding or incentive who took a business idea and ran with it. This weekend is an example of what happens when forward-thinking Scott Countians realize that we have something worth capitalizing upon.

Either way, Scott County should welcome its guests with open arms. Tourism may not be the answer to all the economic woes this community faces, but in the current economic climate it is the best thing we have going for us.

Is there anything prettier than fresh spring growth on a stately hemlock tree?

If there is, it might be mountain laurel, which is currently in bloom on the Cumberland Plateau.

Both of the above pictures were taken on the Leatherwood Loop Trail in the Big South Fork, a 3.3-mile hike rated moderate/difficult that travels into and out of the river gorge. The picture below, taken of fog lifting off the Big South Fork River as the sun sets in the aftermath of this evening’s severe thunderstorm, is from the Leatherwood Overlook, which is accessible via a short spur from the Leatherwood Loop Trail.

**Warning: PG-13 language below**

In this week’s Independent Herald, columnist Steve Oden had a column about how shameful the TLC reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is for exploiting southern stereotypes:

If you live in Appalachia or anywhere in the rural South, you know folks like the members of this family. How much is scripted and part of the comedy line? Probably a lot, but the show works because the reality actors don’t have to try hard. My revulsion for this show is a realization that, but for the grace of God, a loving family that valued hard work, perseverance and education, I would fit right in with Honey Boo Boo and her supporting cast.

It hurts on several levels to see this stereotypical rural family elevated to celebrity status. I’ve never objected to someone laughing with me and I value self-deprecating humor, but this Honey Boo Boo phenomenon is different. The nation is laughing at all who reside outside the glass-enclosed, high-rise downtown city centers and shopping mall-filled and freeway-laced suburban areas.

If the shoe was on the other foot and the focus was a poor and ignorant family in a Chicago public housing project, activists would cry foul over the comical portrayal, and the show would soon be taken off the air. I have no doubt this would be the case.

Steve and I don’t always agree, but we surely do on this one. If you’ve never had the misfortune of watching Honey Boo Boo, you need to see a bit of it just to grasp how pathetic and repulsive this show is on so many levels.

As Steve says, much of the show is probably scripted, but it doesn’t require much acting because all of us who live in the rural South know people who are very much like this family. TLC is not only exploiting typical Southern and rural stereotypes for profit, they’re exploiting this child (Alana) for profit. It really is disgusting in more ways than one.

Anyway, today I received feedback via our website from a gentleman who appears to be none other than Patrick McElroy, a lead editor on the Honey Boo Boo show on TLC. For full effect, it is presented as he submitted it, unedited:

I can’t tell you how many fucking reviews like this i’ve read where so guy BOASTS that he’s never seen the show and then goes on to rail about how horrific, and degrading it is.  You even put it in your title!  Grow up. The family is celebrated because they happen to be hillarious.  People love this family because they just have a great sense of humor and aren’t up tight dicks looking for something to rail against like you. Get off your soapbox, or the the very least put in a bit more time before bloviating on and on about something you EVEN ADMIT IN THE TITLE OF THE ESSAY that you haven’t even done any research on what it is your about to puke on about.  Your whats wrong with America. The kinda person who writes uninformed essays about things that don’t matter, and think that it’s worth someones time to read about. Your inflated sense of self worth is disturbing.

There are so many different things to say about that, given who the apparent author is, but I think it pretty well speaks for itself.

I say that the author “appears” to be Pat McElroy because the writer only identified himself as “JesusFnChrist.” (You don’t have to be a linguistics expert to figure out what that stands for.) Out of curiosity, because most of our readers here in our rural south community are much more intelligent than the writer of this appeared to be, I checked the origination of the IP address associated with his message (which you can do online, using one of several free websites). The message was written on a computer in Los Angeles. My curiosity was piqued by the fact that the message was submitted from the capital of the entertainment industry, so I did some checking on the author’s email address, and found that it belongs to Pat McElroy, a film editor who is identified by the New York Times as being a lead editor on the show.

TLC has much to be proud of, obviously.

My column this week:

Overweight? Homely? Unpopular? Hip clothing magnate Mike Jeffries doesn’t want you wearing his lines.

Which is a pretty cruel thing to say. But Jeffries takes it to the next level by essentially saying that if you’re overweight, you are homely . . . and/or unpopular.

Jeffries, CEO of teen clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, has never shied away from his feelings on “uncool” kids wearing his clothing. But an interview by an author to Business Insider a couple of weeks ago shed light on Jeffries’ attitude. That interview, in turn, prompted a blog post by the website Elite Daily — which bills itself as “the voice of Generation Y” — which was in turn posted on the social network Reddit and thereafter “went viral,” which is Internet slang for “pretty darned near everybody read it.”

There are plenty of things wrong with Jeffries’ attitude, but let’s start with the most obvious one. Step into just about any public school in America and it won’t take long to realize that bullying — and the prevention thereof — is a prevalent topic amongst educators. (Ann Sexton, director of the Oneida Special School District, recently said that bullying is visible in schools as early as first grade.) And much of that bullying revolves around two things: clothing and looks.

With stories of schoolchildren who were bullied into taking their own lives making headlines, most of adult America has made a conscious decision to take a stand against bullying. Jeffries is promoting it.

“He doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people,” retail author Robin Lewis told Business Insider in the interview that turned attention on A&F’s marketing tactics earlier this month. “He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”

In other words, if you aren’t wearing A&F, you aren’t one of the cool kids. If you aren’t “thin and beautiful,” you aren’t worthy of A&F. Therefore, if you aren’t “thin and beautiful,” you aren’t one of the cool kids.

This is the exact mentality that is driving bullying in our schools, and the CEO of the brand our kids revere perhaps more than any other is fostering it.

Lest anyone think Lewis was speaking out of turn, here is Jeffries’ opinion on the subject in his own words:

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong (in our clothes), and they can’t belong.”

Those words were from a 2006 interview Jeffries gave Salon.com, an interview that went largely unnoticed until the Daily Review’s post went viral.
Again, what Jeffries is saying is that you can’t be cool and popular if you’re deemed to be overweight. You can’t have a lot of friends if you’re deemed physically unattractive. And if you aren’t cool and popular you “don’t belong.” You deserve to be outcast.

That is the exact same attitude that our bullied children deal with at school day-in and day-out. When it comes from a 12-year-old, we don’t think much of it, except that we need to work on the perception and tolerance of our youth. Our youth, after all, operate with the naive thought processes and attitudes of youth.

The problem is that Mike Jeffries isn’t 12. He’s 68.

So what excuse does a guy pushing 70 years old have for selling such a childish and cruel mentality to our youth?

Our grandmothers had a saying that they applied to people like Jeffries. They would’ve said that he “needs a little more Jesus in his life.” And perhaps he does. But one thing he absolutely needs a little more of is what most of us realized by the time we had graduated high school — and certainly by the time we had begun to raise kids of our own: true beauty begins on the inside. What’s popular isn’t always what’s best. It’s attitude, not physical appearance, that matters. And, above all else, it’s okay to be different.

Jeffries has long since qualified for the senior citizen rate on a cup of coffee at McDonald’s (except he probably only buys his coffee at Starbucks, where only the cool and popular people sip lattes) and he still hasn’t figured any of this out.

And while our educators are trying to instill in our children the attitude that our true worth is not determined by the clothes we wear, and the kids who can only afford second-hand Wranglers at Goodwill are just as important as those wearing top-of-the-line torn jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch, here’s a misguided old man telling them just the opposite — that the kid wearing the Faded Glory t-shirt and Lee’s jeans isn’t as cool as they are.

Let’s be honest: A&F is not the only retailer to apply exclusionary marketing tactics. Far from it. Rolex doesn’t market to factory workers. You’ll never see a Lamborghini dealership in a middle class community like Scott County, Tennessee. And some resorts go so far as to refuse to rent rooms to unwed couples.

But A&F and its CEO may be the only American retailer heartless and naive enough to promote the idea that if you can’t squeeze into skinny jeans you aren’t really cool.

Worse still, A&F is sexist in its approach. If you’re a guy, you can find Abercrombie in plus sizes. But don’t even try if you’re a girl. The biggest size A&F carries in women’s jeans, for example, is 10. The underlying message, whether intended or not, is that it’s okay for men to pack around a few extra pounds but women aren’t worthy if they’re overweight . . . which just happens to be the very long-held mentality that American pop culture is trying to shed itself of.

The bottom line is that two-thirds of us are now considered obese. It is nothing for us to be proud of as a society and as generations of poor decision-making when it comes to our health and eating habits increasingly taxes our health care system, it’s going to be something that we struggle with. But while we try to make health-conscious decisions for our children, from making sure they get the exercise they need to choosing more nutritious meals for them, we also don’t point fingers at them or shun them.

It is a bit ironic, though, that the man who is so obsessed with beauty and popularity is such an ugly man. And I’m not even talking about his mug shot. Jeffries is ugly because, as most adults with a third of his world experience figured out long ago, true beauty really does begin on the inside. And Jeffries’ innermost thoughts, exhibited everytime he spouts off about who he doesn’t want to buy his clothes, reveal that, deep inside, he is truly an unattractive person.

■ Ben Garrett is editor of the Independent Herald. Contact him at bgarrett@ihoneida.com.

A video that has gone viral in recent days seeks to undercut the argument that homosexuality is a choice by posing a question to heterosexuals: “When did you decide to be straight?”

The video has caused a bit of a ruckus in religious and gay rights circles alike. It’s obvious why gay rights supporters would grab hold of a theory that gay people have no control over their sexual preference. If homosexuality is truly genetic in nature, a legal basis is provided for ending the so-called “marriage inequality” in America, and religious objections to the lifestyle are rendered moot. It’s also obvious why opponents of gay rights would balk against the theory.

Perusing the Internet in recent days, I’ve seen Christians making many arguments as to why homosexuality as a genetic trait cannot possibly be scientific fact — some good arguments, some not-so-good arguments. But one thing that struck me as missing from the debate is why no one is talking about what I would consider to be an obvious approach to the issue: of course gays are “born that way.”

From a Christian perspective, the Bible clearly teaches (and it is commonly accepted) that man is born with an innate sinful nature, present ever since God withdrew his holy relationship with Adam and Eve when they sinned against him. There are countless biblical references, none stated more succinctly than the Apostle Paul’s epistle to Rome in Romans 3:23.

So, from a Christian perspective, all humans are inherently sinful, helpless without the grace of God.

While each of us is different, each of us is born with the desire to sin. Most of us have our vices. I sometimes like to have a glass of wine with dinner or some bourbon in the evening. I’ve never been drunk and never intend to be; I can “have a drink for my health” and be done with it. But I know some people who cannot go around any sort of alcoholic beverage without winding up three sheets to the wind. They’re powerless to control their urges when it comes to alcohol. We all know people who have lost everything they have because they were alcoholics, and they weren’t mired in the pitfalls of alcoholism for lack of trying to become sober. But all the rehab programs in the world can’t seem to help them.

Drugs have the same impact on some people. How many of us can name someone who has lost their job, their home and their family because of their addiction to drugs? I can name several. And, to a man, each of them has tried to “come clean.” Sometimes they succeed. Often they fall right back into the same trap.

We can go through a laundry list of sinful behaviors that ensnare people, often seemingly against their will. Right down to what might be our single biggest pitfall as a society: overeating. How many of us have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or some other ailment that’s bound to drive us to an early grave, yet we just can’t resist the next piece of strawberry pie that’s placed in front of us? Here’s one.

We all have our vices; things we struggle with. If we didn’t, there would be no need for the Gospels; no need for Paul’s teachings, right? Man’s plight, that he is helpless without the grace of God being extended to him, is one of the oldest and foremost tenets of Christianity. So why is it difficult for us to accept that gays are, in fact, “born that way”? And why is it so difficult for the other side of the argument to accept that the “being gay isn’t a choice” argument isn’t an invalidation of any scriptural teachings on the subject?

And just as Paul put man’s sinful nature into writing in Romans 3:23, he also provides the remedy for putting aside that sinful nature in his messages to the church at Corinth, as stated in 2 Corinthians 5:17.

I’m obviously no theologian but the bottom line is that the “born that way” argument on homosexuality and Christianity’s approach to the subject do not have to conflict. And no one makes that argument any better than Stephen Bennett, once gay and now a Christian speaker.

If there were any doubts that the habitat of the northern Cumberland Plateau would sustain a healthy population of black bears, well, those have been put to rest:

“Bears breed based on what they can support, what the land gives them,” Burke said. “There is a sow between Bandy and Pickett that has been documented to have five cubs at a time. All our bears here are having twins and triplets.”

Proof that some people will bring race into everything:

Celebrating Ramsay might seem like a positive thing, but the reaction is patronizing, argues Gene Demby at NPR. “Amid the hood backdrop – the gnarled teeth, the dirty white tee, the slang, the shout-out to McDonald’s – we miss the fact that Charles Ramsey is perfectly lucid and intelligent,” Demby writes. He asks, “are we laughing with Charles Ramsay,” or at him?

The memes are worse than patronizing, claims Slate‘s Harris. “It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform,” she writes.

Who knew? We all have a subconscious desire to “see black people perform.”

The L.A. Times on the fact that gun crime has dropped drastically over the past 20 years, though only 12 percent of Americans realize it has declined:

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.

Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

Kudos to the L.A. Times for doing a story that their counterparts — The Washington Post, N.Y. Times, et al — will not touch. But this is hardly a new revelation. New numbers were released this week, but those are just a continuation of numbers the Department of Justice has been releasing for several years. While we still have a very obvious problem with violent crimes in this country, gun crimes have been plummeting for nearly two decades. Supporters of the Second Amendment have highlighted these statistics for years but have been dismissed by the mainstream media as kooks.

Buried deep within the Times’ story is this little gem:

It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up.

Watch the evening news with an objective mind and then tell me whether media coverage could possibly be driving the misconception that gun violence is increasing. Seems to me it’s very clear. Many of the mainstream media outlets who aren’t spoon-feeding viewers/readers the rhetoric of the gun control lobby are fostering these misconceptions by refusing to cover the issue as objectively as this L.A. Times article does. The same concept is behind so-called assault weapons. Only a tiny percentage of homicides in America are committed by persons using assault weapons. And only a tiny percentage of all gun crimes (~2%) involve assault weapons. But there’s a misperception that those percentages are much higher, and it is a misperception driven by media coverage.

This is a spinoff of the hugely popular Super Bowl commercial featuring the voice of the late Paul Harvey — “So God Made A Farmer.” This one is entitled “God Made A Hunter.” I started watching thinking it was going to be a half-baked, lame spinoff. It turned out to be an excellent message, and it would do all sportsmen good to share it with anyone who will listen.

Out of the heartbreaking story in Ohio of the women who went missing as teenagers a decade ago only to be treated as runaways by police but were actually alive the entire time comes this absolute gem. I nearly hit the ditch laughing when I heard a snippet on the radio  this morning, and of course I had to go look up the rest of the interview. So, tell the truth: If this guy had his own radio show, would you listen? I would. Faithfully.

As an aside: While it isn’t shown in the video, the gentleman apparently said he wanted the reward money to go to the girls instead of himself. So, hat’s off to him. (And, seriously: give this guy a TV show.)