DICK YARBROUGH: Keeping Cobb County politics in perspective

OK, the game is over. It is time to get back to work. In case you spent the past week or so whirling around on planet Jupiter, the University of Georgia, the oldest state-chartered university in the nation, has now been officially declared college football champions of that very same nation as well as much of the free world and a lot of it that isn’t all that free.

To say I have been a bit distracted by this momentous event is pretty obvious. My sock drawer is a mess. It has been weeks since I strummed my Guzheng (which we all know is a Chinese zither, the most common type being the 21-stringed version tuned to four pentatonic octaves by default.)

Most of all, I have been remiss in not keeping you up to date on all the political doings in Cobb County with my Analysis by Autocatalysis (patent pending.) In case you are wondering, autocatalysis is the catalysis of a reaction by one of its products. What does that have to do with politics? Thank you for asking. It means I have a lot of reaction to the products of political buffoonery.

For instance, take Salleigh Grubbs. (Please.) The chair of the Cobb County Republican Party decided it would be neat to hold a “prayer vigil” on Jan. 6 to acknowledge those Americans who lost their lives a year ago during a totally-uncalled for riot in the U.S. Capitol. That was when a group of Trump supporters stormed the place because they didn’t like the outcome of the presidential election. Grubbs also wanted us to pray “for those who have been denied justice,” meaning those who got caught ransacking the place and talking smack and are awaiting their deserved punishment.

The event was scheduled for the same day we were saying our final goodbyes to Cobb County’s own U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, who spent his entire career building a strong Republican Party in Georgia that the right wingnuts seem intent on driving over the cliff.

Not surprisingly, Grubbs’ announcement met with a swift and negative bipartisan response and was summarily canceled. She tried to defend the indefensible by saying the event had been “misrepresented on social media and in the press.” You can blame it on social media and the press all you want but as that Great American Ron White observed: “You can’t fix stupid.” And that one was tone-deaf stupid from the get-go.

Just as the Cobb GOP is not the party of Johnny Isakson, neither is the current crowd of Democrats, the party of Roy Barnes and Buddy Darden. They are lurching as far left politically as Grubbs and her cohorts are rushing right.

To the Democrats, it seems to be all about race and nothing more. Grubbs’ counterpart, Jacquelyn Bettadapur, chair of the Cobb County Democrats, had the audacity to claim that Cobb County was “born of white flight out of the ’70s and ’80s.” How the devil would she know? She wasn’t here in the ’70s and ’80s.

Cobb County grew because of enlightened political and business leadership. Bettadapur needs to put down her race cards and Google the names of Ernest Barrett and Wyman Pilcher and Al Burruss, among others – all Democrats who put the county and its citizens ahead of partisan politics and made Cobb County an attractive place for ingrates like Bettadapur to alight and criticize us for being a bunch of rednecks.

Meanwhile, the effort to give residents of the proposed city of East Cobb an opportunity to vote on incorporation this November made it through the Legislative House Governmental Affairs Committee and is now headed for the House Rules Committee for a floor vote. One of the attractions of cityhood is to get more control over zoning requests.

Opposing the effort is Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson, who represents the area on the commission. You may recall that she supported a zoning request for condominiums in an area close by Dobbins, where airplanes are most likely to crash into them. (Forget the noise.) She said if the commission didn’t approve the request, the developer might sue them. Like this is the first time in history that has ever happened.

East Cobb proponents should send her a thank you card for making their case for local control of zoning matters better than anything they could think up. And to those proposing a city of Vinings, remember that Richardson represents you, too. (Wink! Wink!)

OK, the football season is history, and now it is time to get back to that long-neglected sock drawer and to Guzheng practice. I must also remember to put Jan. 24 on my calendar. That is National Belly Laugh Day. Organizers remind us that laughter has been known to help your immune system, prevent stress, and burn calories. It also helps us keep Cobb County politics in perspective.