exiting state senator for harassment, all that means is you do not understand the very Buddhism you practice.  Barry Graham, you seem overly concerned with promoting one thing above all others: Barry Graham.  Coming soon on the community access television channel, All Barry Graham, All the Time: The Possum Channel.  Whatever happened to killing the Buddha?  I lived in Japan and studied your faith.  I even have a degree in religion.  My faith and experience tells me I will reap what I sow.  I thought you believed in Karma.  Well Barry you seem very selfish in aim and in means, quite a contradiction to your own faith.  The Dhammapada states: "In this world hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible."  Barry Graham you create hate, not love.

I don't know your academic background - I know you never attended College. Maybe you made it out of high school.  I do not even know if you graduated from middle school or not.  I do not know if you have a green card or why you are even here in my neck of the woods, let alone in my country.  People want to target the hard working Hispanic/Latino men and women, many who come here and work jobs (most of us would never take) and we do not criticize a pale, bald Caucasian individual with a funny accent that is here taking a job away from an American High School student. 

But Barry Graham, my avid reader and fan, please do not be jealous.  By all means continue your job.  You have done what many have tried to do for over a decade to do: destroy the Bradley News Weekly.  You have been masterful in taking the paper from a weekly paper of 40 pages to 24 in such a short time. Your advertisers are up?  Not hardly.  It seems to me you are also the chief cook and bottle washer over there as well as writer for everything (unless you get your out of town friends to send you their already published works). Mediocrity, here we come! Community there you go.

I have no doubt you can find advertising most likely from outside of the community and sustain some semblance of a tabloid, but you are not serving local interests or local businesses with your message disguised as journalism. I know your background is in fiction-looks pretty pornographic to me if you want to be more descriptive.  But you would not know a real newspaper if the paperboy hit you in the head throwing it in your Hamilton County driveway. 

So while you replace the local car dealership, local clothes retailer and local real-estate company advertising, your readers may soon discover: Free Tibetan Prayer Wheel, Authentic Barry Graham yoga wear, The Land of Krishna, and Past Life Readings.  The paper always follows the moral direction of the publisher and editor.  I find your morals lacking. A cursory reading of the little live journal website tells anyone all they need to know about you. www.livejournal.com/users/barrygraham/ Most people don't care about your sex life, and as any Gentleman can tell you "don't kiss and tell." 

And how does this work?  You are from Scotland (nice country, cool kilts), who does not stand for the pledge of allegiance to the American flag, and you reside in Chattanooga. You have no connection to local people.  What could you possibly say that even matters to the daily lives of the average citizen of Bradley County?  And who cares?

I honestly do not care if the Bradley Weekly stays or goes.  It is a shame that people have to be subjected to personal attacks and innuendoes and have it thrown in the yards of their friends and neighbors.  People expect that a journalist provides information in a fair and accurate manner, avoiding the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation. You will never be a journalist Barry Graham.  You are a writer of fiction.  You always will be.

Barry Graham you need to pray and thank God everyday for having the opportunity to work in Cleveland.  But you do not believe in God, and your prayers fall on deaf ears.  So, whether I come back here to Cleveland to live or not this will always be my town.  You have ridiculed my faith, my country, my part of the world and even me personally. The later as Art Newman.  You don't want to compete with me, you will lose. But I am not that special.  Anybody could put out a better paper with more journalistic integrity than you do, even an American High School Newspaper. 

--J. C. Bowman is a public policy analyst who resides in Tallahassee, Florida.
He can be reached by email at:
flapolicy@hotmail.com. 

Visit his website at:
www.policyexperts.net
.