Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame” begins,
“We’ve got sunlight on the sand
We’ve got moonlight on the sea
We’ve got mangoes and bananas we can pick right off a tree
We’ve got volleyball and ping-pong and a lot of dandy games
What ain’t we got?
We ain’t got dames!”
The Doobie Brothers, appreciating the predicament, asked, in “Long Train Runnin,’” “Without love, where would you be right now?” Yet higher priorities, in ascending order, are oxygen to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.
Musical satirist Ton Lehrer commenced “Pollution” apropos of highest human needs:
“Time was when an American about to go abroad would be warned by his friends or the guidebooks not to drink the water. But times have changed, and now a foreigner coming to this country might be offered the following advice:
“If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!
“Pollution, pollution!
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud!...”
Experiencing where Jackson Mayor’s radical future leads — empty utopian promises with basic needs unmet — no one is better than four years ago. He must be replaced by someone poised to address increasing crime; repair crumbling infrastructure — pipes, road and bridges; and deliver safe drinking water — understanding that inability to say when water will be restored is unacceptable.
Circumstances will not improve after an ominous initial term. Ideologues on the left and on the right think that ideologies are attractive when basic public services are what people desire from government: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
Today — when I write — marks the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, preceding the Selma to Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The towering titans of the Civil Rights Movement achieved immortality because they sought to improve lives through measurable means instead of intellectual sleight of the hand: No one reimagines the social contract when basic city services go unmet.
Eighteen years ago, I enjoyed an afternoon with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” is arguably the apotheosis of American epistles. Dr. King did not want to confront Birmingham, preferring protests guaranteed to be victorious. Fred — his memorable response, when asked whether he preferred being called “Reverend Shuttlesworth” or “Fred,” was “Fred is what my Mama and Daddy named me!” — pulled Dr. King into Birmingham involuntarily: Fred invited self-destructive sorts “to bring it on.”
Following lunch, while driving Fred from Wetumpka to Montgomery, where he would lecture at Auburn University at Montgomery, I shared the question that I intended to ask, seeking his assessment of an incompetent elected official, that evening.
Fred incorporated the answer into his talk: Fred had nothing against inexperienced individuals — wanting inexperienced individuals to enjoy opportunities. Fred’s issue was that the elected official lacked capacity to grow in the job.
Inherent inability to grow in the job, following four failed years, requires that African Americans and others vote out the incumbent: He seems likable and no whispering of corruption reaches my ears, but he epitomizes ineptitude.
Dr. King’s speech during the 1963 March on Washington — immediately after envisioning Mississippi as “an oasis of Freedom and Justice” — stated:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
The issue is not racial. It is the content of one’s character: inherent incapacity to fulfill fundamental responsibilities of municipal government.
Today’s newspaper mentions that,
“On Tuesday, the state’s top health official at a news conference called the water shortage in Jackson a public health crisis.
“Basic sanitation and water is a foundational component of public health,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. “It’s one of the first things that made a difference in the turn of the century making people healthier.”
A mayor incapable of core competency must go.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
