Missing Whom?

Contained in the Thursday, July 26 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), was a 42 page glossy-covered insert section called "The Ultimate Metro Atlanta Guide Book: A Resource for Newcomers and Natives." Contained in the guidebook were all sorts of facts about Atlanta from how to get car tags to how to start your garden, as well as pertinent info on how to buy tickets to major sporting events, information on state government, hotline numbers, airport info, etc.

Also included in the guide were three special sections entitled "People." Following are brief excerpts from the three sections:

PEOPLE: HISPANICS: Remaking whole communities 2001 GUIDE BOOK Mark Bixler – Staff Thursday, July 26, 2001

Excerpt:

For more than 200 years, immigrants have followed friends and relatives to specific neighborhoods in the United States. One person comes here, finds a job and encourages others to follow. It's a pattern that sprinkled the Midwest with German and Swedish settlements and created Chinese enclaves in Los Angeles and New York.

Now the tradition is unfolding in metro Atlanta.

Latino immigrants are clustering in apartment buildings and mobile home parks in places such as Canton, Cumming, Duluth, East Point, Forest Park, Marietta, Norcross and Smyrna.

About 210,600 moved to metro Atlanta in the 1990s, the U.S. Census Bureau says, to take jobs created by the 1996 Summer Olympics, the building boom around Atlanta and a hunger for workers in poultry plants.

PEOPLE: AFRICAN-AMERICANS: Atlanta is top draw in nation for blacks 2001 GUIDE BOOK Maurice Tamman and Ernie Suggs – Staff Thursday, July 26, 2001 Excerpt:

Over the last decade, almost half a million African-Americans flocked to metro Atlanta – the largest growth spurt of any black community in the nation.

In fulfilling its promise as a black mecca, Atlanta was at the forefront of a trend that saw 3.6 million blacks migrate to the South during the decade.

When the 2000 census was taken, there were more than 1.2 million blacks in metro Atlanta, giving the city the sixth-largest black population in the country, according to a study of census data by Milken Institute senior fellow William H. Frey for the University of Michigan.

Although Atlanta still suffers from many big-city woes, such as crime and poverty, its appeal to the young black elite is strikingly similar to the lure that led Southern blacks from Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama at the beginning of the last century to places like Chicago, Detroit and New York: the opportunity to make more money, get a good education and achieve a level of comfort and success.

PEOPLE: GAYS & LESBIANS: 10 things to know Community puts down roots 2001 GUIDE BOOK Jay Croft – Staff Thursday, July 26, 2001 Excerpt:

Atlanta has long been recognized as one of the country's gay meccas. The city is a finalist to host the 2006 Gay Games, a quadrennial athletic and cultural event predicted by bid organizers to attract as many as 1 million visitors. (A decision by the international organizing body is expected in October.)

Gay visitors and new residents will find a mostly warm welcome. Here are the top 10 things natives and newcomers need to know about gay Atlanta:

1. Gay South. In a metro area of more than 4 million people, it's impossible to say how many are gay. But frequently cited estimates say Atlanta has one of the nation's largest concentrations of homosexuals.

As the center of the "new South," Atlanta has for decades drawn all kinds of people – including artists, liberals, people interested in racial equality, and gay men and lesbians – who wanted to escape the "old South."

Try as I might, I could not locate the "People" section on the straight, white, churchgoing Southerners. You know, the kind of folks who are supposed to be embarrassed by their ethnicity and heritage. I know there are still a few of them left around town. Nor was there a "People" section on the large Asian-American community located in and around Doraville, a northeast suburb of Atlanta. As I am certain that these sections must have simply fallen out of the guidebook prior to its being delivered to my home, I have contacted the paper to have them resend me a complete copy of this valuable tool.

Seriously, I find this type of selective "group identity" categorizing to be patently offensive. For example, I am informed by the guidebook that the "young black elite" find Atlanta to be an appealing place to locate. Can you imagine if that were to read "young white elite"? Perish the thought, you racist! A phrase like that would never make it past the editor of such an august publication as the AJC.

It is imperative to the left that group identity take precedent over any common interests that individuals may have independent of race or sexual preference. It is in this way that the socialists maintain political relevance to their special interest groups. We are all divided into units – black, gay, Hispanic, the elderly, women, whatever – who can be portioned government largess and favor based on the group dynamic. This keeps us from seeing that, as individual citizens, this system ensures that we all keep getting the shaft.

Another excerpt from the "Gays and Lesbians" section:

7. Party all the time. Backstreet might be the city's best-known disco that's (at least mostly) gay – and it's known all around town as one of Atlanta's hottest 24-hour dance palaces. Downstairs, shirtless guys dance the night away. Upstairs, drag diva Charlie Brown's raunchy cabaret show draws a wide range of fans, from celebs to suburbanites. (Careful if you're from Cobb County!)

I'll bet that one got a couple of chuckles in the "diversity-enriched" AJC newsroom. The last remark is a direct crack at the Christian conservatives who inhabit Cobb County, a northern Atlanta suburb, and who have gone on the record as being opposed to homosexuality, a position that took on major significance with the gay community prior to the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Again, I ask, could such a snide remark have ever made it past the editor if the situation were reversed? Could a publicly devout Christian make an overt crack about the gay community in an article published in the flagship paper of the South?

Clearly, this double standard is part of the "groupthink" that dominates our major media today. Protected and favored groups get love-pat coverage, while everyone else can go to hell. The AJC thinks it's quite all right for Hispanics, blacks and gays to have their group identity and cultural pride, and they will go out of their way to nurture it. If any group of heterosexual Caucasians were to try the same thing, however, they are immediately labeled racists, homophobes, or far-right religious whack-jobs.

To these folks, the worst insult that you can hurl at somebody is to call them a Christian, or worse, a white, male Christian (heterosexual implied). That's enough right there to negate your right to free speech, freedom of association, and right to self-defense.

In his book, America's Real War, Rabbi Daniel Lapin argues the case that the one binding constant of the left is the rejection of God. To quote Lapin, "Why do gun-control advocates make common cause with militant abortion advocates? What interests do either of these groups share with the homosexual lobby? Why can these groups nearly always be found standing shoulder to shoulder with the multiculturalism militia and the condom counselors? Clearly, they must all share a great unifying principle, which, whether intended or not, is anti-Godism."

Another sad aspect of all this is that the staff of the AJC must actually think this kind of suck-up to the leftist's appointed special interest groups will curry favor with their media elite counterparts in the hotbeds of liberal malaise like New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles. That's a laugh! These idiots still think it's a big deal that Elton John lives (part-time) in Atlanta, and they mention it every chance they get, including in "The Ultimate Metro Guidebook." Can you imagine how hilarious that must seem to the social set in New York? Hey, AJC, listen up! To those folks, Atlanta will always be a backwater hick town, so stop pandering. You're embarrassing yourselves.

July 28, 2001