Third Harris Award

Harris Award for Editorial Writing

The judge looked at three entries and wrote: "Short but witty, Enough info to inform, enough opinion to interest."
(I think the first one is the "witty" one.)

State school board 'don't' need this guy
The current fuss brewing at the state level is one of those in which the real issue is obscured by some huffing and puffing on
what should be a minor side issue.
The Anderson County legislative delegation appointed a man to serve on the state Board of Education who has a checkered past in the area of race relations. He’s a member of a Confederate group some people question and once sold a textbook that tried subtle revisionism on the sensitive subject of the Holocaust.
He tried to downplay it, saying he wasn’t aware of everything in the textbook, then saying the questionable section was just in a few chapters and not the overall text. He sold the textbook to some private schools and to some parents homeschooling their children.
Because of a past some say is checkered, S.C. Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum says she wants to fight his appointment to the state board. The man wasn’t backed universally by the Anderson County delegation. He was appointed by a close, 4-3 vote.
Our country’s electorate is divided between two political extremes. At times, South Carolina can be divided in many ways, and the racial divide usually is one of the widest we must cross.
This man isn’t being elected to represent Chester County on the state board, but his vote and his voice will be one of many that sets education policy at a statewide level. Every resident of
South Carolina has a stake in each individual member of the state Board of Education because this board sets education policy for a state that isn’t doing the best possible job educating its young people. The Board of Education flies largely under most people’s notice, but it can have a vast effect at the right time.
The state Department of Education is currently running a South Carolina school district, the Allendale County District, partly because the state Board voted to declare an educational emergency in that district.
People are entitled to their opinions. We don’t think his are particularly helpful to our state, but we don’t condemn him as a potential member of the State Board because of the opinions he holds.
We think he is unfit for another reason. When this became a political flap, he told many reporters, according to the Associated Press, “Ain’t no one going to force me out.”
He doesn’t belong on the state Board of Education. He belongs back in school, where someone ought to teach him what a double negative is.
Dec. 15, 2004

Hog dogging? It's not a sport
It isn’t often that South Carolina is the tops of a national category. But given our druthers, we’d rather South Carolina in general and Chester County in specific not be tops in the dubious sport of “hog-dogging.”
Anybody who wants to hunt and raise their kids to lead a sportsman’s life has no problem with this newspaper.
But anyone who thinks that siccin’ one animal on another is a sport is missing something. A heart, probably. The animal fighting called “hog dogging” isn’t even a fair fight.
The most basic line of defense or attack for the boar, the tusks, the tusks of the boar, are whittled down or pulled out. The boar, by definition “feral” or wild, can’t defend itself as its natural instincts tell it to.
In that sense, it isn’t a sport. It’s more akin to watching the Harlem Globetrotters take on the Washington Generals. By definition, the Generals don’t have the skills to beat the Globetrotters and they lose. Every single time out, they lose.
So it’s an exhibition, if one wants to be so kind. But the Globetrotters just humiliate the Generals. The Generals don’t get bitten, don’t get knocked to the ground, don’t get their legs broken.
All such injuries were reportedly found on 15 wild hogs recovered from during a raid of a residence outside Fort Lawn.
We are making absolutely no comment about those arrested in relation to that raid. There are now four people charged with various crimes in connection with “hog-dogging” in Chester County. Law enforcement is working on the case, and at some point, it will take the evidence and present it to a jury of Chester County citizens, who will sooner or later decide if those arrested were indeed connected with this and if any possible connection is a crime.
No, we’re just talking about this, and other kinds of animal “fighting,” and we want to be clear from the outset.
This isn’t a sport. It’s a barbaric practice done by people who think that animals are just “critters.” They think that the animals they use to slake their own blood thirst have no soul and feel no pain. Most often, the reverse is true.
We are judged on how we treat those least able to protect themselves. Pitting animals against each other for sport isn’t a sport. It’s cruel.
Those who violently treat animals are more prone to violence, some studies have shown. They are deadened to the impact of violence.
There’s a special place in hell for people who mistreat animals.
Dec. 29, 2004

Why didn’t council hire locally for suit?
We’re scratching our heads over Chester County’s recent actions in the drawn-out legal battle over the referendum on the form of government.
County Attorney Joan E. Winters said at the beginning of the process — and other county officials have reiterated throughout the process — that this is not a confrontational process, per se. The county is merely asking the court for guidance on what seems to be a difficult issue.
But the suit asking for a declaratory judgment filed by Winters is framed in an adversarial way.
It says on its face, Chester County versus the county Election Commission. Its pleadings take issue with commission actions, and it asks the court to overturn the commission’s actions and throw out the referendum.
The suit and a related filing have been delayed because the commission didn’t have a lawyer.
Winters said from the outset she could not represent both the commission and the council. Her primary client most days is Chester County Council, and that is who she is representing.
There is nothing wrong with that, but more should have been done, earlier on, to secure a lawyer for the commission. The S.C. Attorney General’s office told the paper of a similar case, which suggests the commission should pick a lawyer and submit the bill to the council.
Before that opinion was sought, however, the council somehow got the idea it was entitled to do more than just pay the bill. Councilmen got the idea they ought to pick the lawyer for the commission, even though they are suing the commission.
When the commission finally got around to shopping around for an attorney, it found an election law expert from Columbia it wanted to hire.
The council balked at the price, and one member went so far as to suggest the county should hire someone “local” to represent the commission.
The council had several meetings behind closed doors before it finally came up with a lawyer — a local one — for the commission.
The average member of the public must think it odd the council thinks it has the right to pick the attorney for the commission. Only one councilman said the commission should hire its own lawyer.
The commission said no, and it intends to use the lawyer it wanted back in May.
The case, now in its fifth month without a reply from the commission, is complex. The county’s legal team decided to get some help.
Since the commission rejected the lawyer picked by the council, he was obviously available, and he obviously fit the council’s price range. So did the council, in hiring a lawyer to help Winters, stick to the criteria it used in picking a lawyer for the commission?
No.
Councilmen hired a retired judge from Lancaster County. He isn’t local, and he isn’t cheap. Seems the council is saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Aug. 17, 2005, The News & Reporter