The legislature's religion problem

It’s worrisome when officials try to turn their private religious principles into public policy. Turns out it can also be worrisome when they ignore those principles. 

Take the refugee resettlement program, a federal program designed to offer a haven for people who flee war, persecution or other dangers in their home countries.

Tennessee already has a fractious relationship with the program. The state withdrew as administrator in 2008. It has been fighting it in court since 2016, with a lawsuit claiming it’s unconstitutional “to commandeer state funds to finance a federal program.”

So far, judges have not looked favorably on that argument. But in September, President Trump issued an executive order allowing states and localities to refuse to accept refugees. 

 

That made for some anxious times for the Tennessee Office for Refugees, a department of Catholic Charities that has administered the program since Tennessee washed its hands of it.

“I had heard that that was coming,” Holly Johnson, state refugee coordinator for the office, said of the Trump order. “But nothing is sure until it’s sure, until you’ve seen it.” Once they had seen it: “We were all sort like, OK, now what?  I’m an eternal optimist; I don’t automatically go to a bad place. But it’s certainly nervous making.”

To his credit Gov. Bill Lee, who along with his wife has worked with refugees in the Nashville area, announced in December that the state would continue accepting them. 

“That was awesome,” Johnson said. “It’s just really nice when someone recognizes the cause that you fight for. We tell the refugee story every day, and it often falls on deaf ears.” 

Lee, she said, “acknowledged that Tennessee is really that kind place that all of us have called home. It was a really good day.” 

Enter, now, the legislature, with three pairs of bills to undercut the governor. Enter in particular, with the worst bill, Rep. Bruce Griffey, a freshman Republican from Paris who, if he had his way, would build a statutory wall around Tennessee to keep out anyone he deems unworthy. 

Griffey spent much of his first year trying (and failing) to pass all manner of anti-immigrant bills. His bill for refugees would require that any resettlement here get a two-thirds vote of local government entities, followed by approval by two-thirds of both houses of the legislature. 

“We were elected to represent Tennesseans,” The Scene quoted Griffey as saying. “We weren’t elected to represent the best interests of refugees.” 

The notion that the two aren’t necessarily in conflict does not seem to have occurred to him. 

Lee, in addressing criticism he’s gotten since his announcement, has charitably ascribed opposition as due to “misinformation,” conflating refugees with illegal immigrants. Johnson agrees that plays a role. 

“I also think there’s the argument that this is how terrorists enter the country,” she said, and “that refugees are a big toll on the state budget. That’s just not the case at all.” 

Before entering a country for resettlement, refugees are subjected to a thorough vetting process that Johnson said takes from 18 months to two years. And while state and local governments do incur costs associated with any residents – refugees or natives – a legislative fiscal review in 2013 found that “refugees brought in twice as much as they cost the state,” Johnson said. 

And then there are the numbers. With this White House allowing fewer and fewer refugees into the country at all, Johnson said Tennessee would stand to resettle only about 300 people this year. 

“It’s just such a small number,” she said.  “I mean, there might be more people than that in our building. I don’t even know why this is a thing.” 

It’s a thing because of mean-spirited people. 

The website for the Tennessee Office for Refugees has this quote near the top of the homepage: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” 

It’s from the New Testament’s Letter to the Hebrews, reminding of the importance of hospitality and compassion as an expression of Christian love. 

This effort by Griffey and others like it represent a profoundly un-Christian approach by a body that, in the past, has voted to make the Bible the official state book. 

But even setting religion aside, the efforts fail the test of basic human kindness.

This is my column for The Nashville Ledger for 2/14/20.  

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com

Me and Marcus Dupree

Having seen ESPN’s “The Best That Never Was,” I now realize that Marcus Dupree and I were amazingly similar football players.

I don’t mean in the superficial, obvious sense. He was 6-foot-3, 225 pounds. I was not.

He ran a 9.5 hundred. I did not.

He rushed for 7,355 yards with an 8.3-yards-per-carry average in his high school career and scored 87 touchdowns. I did not.

He was considered the best high school player in the country – perhaps of all time - and was relentlessly recruited by every major and not-so-major college in the country to wear their uniform and score touchdowns for them.

Again, I was not.

But after one notable season playing for the Oklahoma Sooners (including a Fiesta Bowl record 249 yards) and a few games into the next, Marcus decided he had had enough. It isn’t fun anymore, he explained, and he quit, not quite in that order.

Just like me! For exactly the same reason!

My decision came a bit earlier in life, after my junior year in high school. And unlike Marcus’s, it wasn’t precipitated by a concussion that left me woozily wondering where I was, and what I was doing there. But I imagine the thought process to have been identical:

Not fun + hard work + pain = Outta here.

Of course, having been blessed with an abundant lack of God-given talent, I did not face the repercussions Marcus did. Network news shows did not take note of my choice. And, unlike him, I did not go on to play in the USFL, tear up my knee, attempt a comeback five years later and manage to last a few games over a couple of seasons with the Los Angeles Rams.

Still. We are brothers under the skin.

Some things in life have to be done whether they are fun or not. Some things do not. The trick is to be able to tell the difference and, for those things that do not have to be done, not to do them.

I still try to live by that rule. And I hope Marcus does, too.

Old Times, Not Forgotten

I’ve been visiting with an old friend. It’s nice to renew the relationship.

The friend is Robin Mather, and we haven’t visited in person, exactly. I’ve been reading her new book, “The Feast Nearby.” The subtitle, “How I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally (all on $40 a week),” provides a pretty clear description of what Robin’s been up to lately.

Our lives overlapped for a few years back in the 1980s when we both worked for the newspaper in Jackson, Miss. She wrote about food, I wrote about pretty much whatever. We judged chili competitions together, red beans and rice competitions, beer competitions. (Guess which one I conceived and organized.)

Her book is a reminder of the gentle way she has with words, and her affection for food, not just as fuel for the body, but as restorative for the spirit.

I remember in particular a meal of hers, after a long night of election coverage and post-election revelry for the newspaper staff. As she prepared and cooked it, she spoke of the soul-warming experience of being able to provide someone with sustenance.

At the time, my culinary ability consisted primarily of opening cans, and heating the contents.

But the sentiment stayed with me. Bit by bit, I expanded my range. And some years later I did chicken breasts, herbed pasta and ratatouille for a Valentine’s Day dinner. Not haute cuisine, but enough to surprise – and impress - my date.

Robin’s book is a treasure. It almost made me want to move to a cabin on a lake in the Michigan woods, adopt a dog, a kitten and an African gray parrot, and spend a winter around a heating stove while canning vegetables.

At the least, I will try some of her recipes, which I now feel confident enough to tackle. I’ll share them with that Valentine’s Day date, who is now my wife. And who I still try to surprise from time to time.

Like Father, Like ...

Sooner or later every guy compares himself with his father. Sometimes sooner, and later. How the son fares pretty much depends on what he learned from his father, and how much he appreciates it.

Daddy never taught me how to hit a baseball or catch a football, probably reckoning that those skills and related ones were best acquired in sandlot games with neighborhood friends.

He didn’t bother to show me how to weld, work on machinery or compute production expenses and payroll, perhaps sensing that those staples of his work life were not going to figure in mine.

He did teach me to drive, and as a result I’m pretty darn good at it.

But most of the lessons weren’t formal instruction at all. He taught by example. I only had to pay attention.

He showed that it’s always best to try your best, and to be satisfied with the result. Or if you can’t be satisfied, to try again.

That honesty is not just a policy, but a way of life.

That a man’s word is indeed his bond, but that not every thought needs to be expressed.

That reading is a valuable pastime.

That the ability to laugh - including, and perhaps particularly, at yourself - can lighten a lot of life’s burdens.

That you should do the right thing, even when no one else would know otherwise.

Most important of all, he showed me the importance of treating people right, even when the evidence indicates they haven’t treated you right.

Most of the time I feel that I fall short, because the bar was set pretty high. And that, I believe, is the best way for a man to feel about himself and his father.

Happy would-be 82nd, Daddy.

Who the Hell Are We?

My alma mater concluded a few years back, not unreasonably, that a Civil War icon was not the most progressive image to present on the sidelines of a 21st-century athletic contest.

So, since 2003, Colonel Rebel has been absent from the playing fields of Ole Miss.

A campaign is now under way to replace him, and more than 1,000 people weighed in with suggestions. The original list was winnowed to 11 by the Mascot Selection Committee and that number reduced to five finalists by a vote of students, faculty, alumni association members and, apparently, a large contingent of 3-year-olds. The finalists are:

Horse

Land Shark

Hotty and Toddy

Lion

Bear

To which I say, pardon my abbreviated French, WTF?

Each finalist is accompanied on the committee’s Web site by a claim of its worthiness (“Nothing portrays this sense of Rebel freedom, strength and confidence like a charging stallion,” goes the argument for Horse). And each is clearly ridiculous.

With the possible exception, I grant you, of Hotty and Toddy, the homage to our signature cheer. But the information so far (“The pair may be animals or original ‘muppet-like’ characters”) is too sketchy to build an allegiance on. Painful images of the Phillies Phanatic, as seen above, present themselves.

I am not, mind you, one of those diehard Colonel Rebel fans. As a matter of principle I refuse to wear any Ole Miss gear with its depiction. Besides, as my buddy Rick Cleveland of The Clarion-Ledger helpfully points out, Colonel Rebel as a sideline presence is not exactly steeped in history.

And I take the Selection Committee at its word that, fears of the Sons of Confederate Veterans aside, there are no plans to drop “Rebels” - a nickname that I am, oddly enough, attached to.

But we can do better than this load of dreck. We need a mascot that represents dignity, not to mention one that can be defended without dissolving into helpless laughter. A mascot instantly recognizable, universally esteemed, quintessentially Mississippi. A mascot we can be proud of.

To wit, the Catfish.

Now, that’s Ole Miss, by damn. And tasty, too.

This Won't Hurt a Bit

Take one dodgy family medical history, add in a couple of slightly perplexing test results, combine with a doctor who never met a medical procedure he didn’t like, and you get this:

“I want you to have an angiogram.”

When? you ask.

“Today,” he says.

Dim recollections enter your mind. Angiogram. Isn’t that the exam in which they scootch a wire up a bloodway into your heart and have a gander? From an entry point in an area where a man least wants a pack of strangers meddling? Won’t that be ... unpleasant?

“They’ll make you comfortable,” the doctor says.

Your ideal state for a procedure of this level of invasiveness could best be described as “unconscious.” As you were the last time medical personnel peered around in your inner regions. This theme dominates your thinking as you make your way to the friendly local hospital, where you move along with surprising speed to a room filled with people in beds along the wall, separated by retractable curtains. A nurse named Pam takes you into her care.

“You’ll be comfortable,” she says, as she pokes a needle into a vein in your left arm. A needle that feels distinctly larger than those used to extract blood. A quite attractive young physician assistant stops by to tell you what is soon to happen, which includes the possibility that something resembling the spring in a ballpoint pen will be permanently inserted into your heart tubing. Oh, and there is the rare but occasional bleeding. And heart attack.

You are then wheeled into another room where you edge onto a table beneath a big light. Two more nurses there promise to “make you comfortable” with a cocktail they will inject as soon as the doctor arrives. You ask that it include a Jack and water.

The good news they provide is that it appears the entry point for the scootching can be your wrist, instead of that other place. As a precaution, though, both places are washed with a soap that feels oddly cold. The doctor arrives, the cocktail flows, and he inquires as to its impact. You ask if it can be augmented with a single malt scotch, preferably from the Islay region.

At some point during all this, perhaps while your mind is wandering off to Scotland, the scootching occurs. A dye is injected, with the resultant sensation that you are taking a warm shower, but only on the inside. The dye allows an image to be seen on a screen, an image the doctor shows you. It looks to you like a map of the Amazon and its tributaries, but to the doctor it signifies something else: everything in your ticker, he says, is A-O.K. Those previously perplexing test results must have involved a false positive, he says. No big deal.

At which point, for the first time all day, you feel very comfortable.

Gooooaaaallll!

Inspired by the World Cup, I’m trying to give a damn about soccer. Any kind of damn. It isn't easy.

Part of the reason, I know, is that the only soccer I've ever witnessed in person involved a field full of 8-year-olds running around somewhat randomly, every now and then kicking the ball in no particular direction. I quickly realized that the only way for this to be entertaining was to have a blood relationship - and I mean a close one - to someone on the field. I didn’t.

I’ve seen professional soccer played on TV, and did appreciate the difference in skill level. Those guys certainly have a way with their feet - stutter stepping, juking, hands unemployed - why, I bet they’d be naturals on the Riverdance stage.

But the result seemed all-too-similar to that of the 8-year-olds: one or more players would scheme to get the ball close to the relevant goal, and then some opposing player would intervene and kick it WAY THE HELL to the other end of the field. At which point the process would take place again, in reverse.

It was a little like watching a basketball game in which nobody makes a shot, with the occasional minor drama of someone bouncing a lob pass off his head toward the basket.

My effort to get excited is further complicated by the fact that I have no particular allegiance to my U.S.A. home team. A couple of countries that I could support for genealogical reasons - Scotland and Ireland - failed to qualify. (Slovenia made it! North Korea! What’s wrong, Scotland and Ireland?) England did qualify, and is, in fact, considered one of the stronger contenders. But I have a curious lack of enthusiasm for the English team. Maybe, because of David Beckham, I unfairly associate it with the Spice Girls.

Still, I know that some sort of rooting interest is necessary if I am to give that damn. And so, after careful consideration, I’ve decided to support Brazil, the five-time winner and favorite.

Am I shamelessly boarding the bandwagon? Not at all. It’s just that my extensive research determined that, of all the teams, Brazil has the coolest jerseys. Shirts. Whatever.