Discovering a funny story
I contributed this story on N.C. politics to the News and Record’s annual “Discover the Triad” magazine.
The premise was that a lot of folks reading the DTT would be newcomers to the area trying to figure out the lay of the land. So I figured that if you were coming from somewhere else, and all you knew of N.C. politics were Liddy Dole, Richard Burr, Jesse Helms and a solidly red chunk of the electoral map on presidential election night, having Democrats control a lot of the organs of state governance might be confusing. The story was an attempt to sort out that presumed confusion.
Now, if you’ve been around North Carolina for any length of time, you probably know what the deal is and the question seems a bit odd. At any rate, I filed my story months ago and had forgotten about it.
Flash back to my little vacation a couple weeks ago, when I spent some time at the Capital Beat conference in Columbus. One of our speakers there was Ferrel Guillory, who I spoke to for the Discover the Triad story.
Now, Guillory, who is a heck of a nice guy, was going through a couple questions he had gotten from journalists that were a little – let’s say – peculiar.
Yes, mine was one of the two. Yes, mine was the weirder of the two.
No matter. In fact, I’m taking it as a challenge. I want to hold down the title of asking the most bare-end backward political question every year. Feel free to contribute your contenders.