American Politics Journal -- Mayberry, ''BFD''!



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MAYBERRY, "BFD"!
Tennessee Republicans prove there's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy as they "help" the downtrodden Mayberrys move to another slum
by Mac MacArthur

Meet the Mayberrys -- "poster
children" for the GOP, and
already in trouble in their
new Ohio digs.
Thursday, July 13, 2000 -- WASHINGTON (AmpolNS) -- Jake Tapper of Salon wrote a far-too-fair depiction of a topic that fat-ass Rush Limbaugh has been harping on for the past month atop his fabulous (not) EIB (nonexistent) "headquarters" building in New York.

And while Tapper is one of America's best editorialists, he continues to pretend that there are two sides to the Clinton-Gore/GOP story.

There aren't.

Take the Mayberrys of Tennessee, for example. You know the couple -- two people with more than a few conspicuous genetic defects who allowed themselves, quite happily, to be used by a bunch of "nigra-loving" GOPers in Carthage last week.

If you've already erased this multi-ton duo from your memory, let me remind you that they are the Paula Joneses of Tennessee, rank opportunists who decided that it was time to cash in on the fact they were living in a house on Vice President Al Gore's property that was not "up to their standards."

So they decided to complain -- all on their own -- to some television station (owned by Republicans), whining that Gore was a "slumlord."

Keep in mind that the Mayberrys paid a little over $400 a month for a house -- not an apartment -- in some of the prettiest country in the South and that the building did need some TLC.

But the rest of their story is one big lie.

This writer travelled down to Carthage and talked to a lot of folks that knew the Mayberrys. Most were convinced that Mrs. Mayberry was a little North of a scam artist, and others told me they knew she had taken more than just some "compassionate conservatism" from the ever-vigilant GOP in exchange for "humiliating" the Vice President -- or at least attempting to.

What she took openly was a crew of wannabe millionaire Republicans, dressed in orange t-shirts (for better television viewing) who offered to move them, free-of charge, to Lima, Ohio -- where they and their dozen or so family and friends could trash another house.

The big-spending GOPers rented a van and a camera crew, packed up the Mayberry's stuff. and drove them the 500 miles to Ohio -- all for the sake of television consumption and added "embarrassment" to Al Gore, of course.

After all, George DumbBellYou Bush has always been looking out for the poor -- he even brought a water line and an exposed sewer pipe into the border shantytowns known as Texas Colonias to "take care" of the 450,000 Americans in Texas of Hispanic lineage who still have no food, no schools, and no medical care -- and have been living this way for the full five years of his own tenancy in the Austin, Texas Governor's Mansion.

"Let them eat tortillas" is the Bush family slogan.

While Gore was spending tens of thousands to make the mainstream media happy and to meet the indirect extortion demands of the Mayberrys and the Republican Party, Bush was poised to preside over his 137th execution since ascending the family dynastic throne in Texas State Government.

82% of those executed during his watch thus far have been black males.

Feeding time at the
Mayberry residence.
Charles and Tracy Mayberry, who together weigh a metric ton, were hauled off to Lima, Ohio over the weekend at the expense of the Tennessee Republican Party. Within hours, Lima police were called to the house on a domestic complaint, the neighbors began to complain about their dogs barking endlessly, and who knows what goes on in the house until all hours of the night.

The Mayberrys also have a penchant for parking their cars in the opposite direction on their block -- a holdover from their Carthage days where they merely parked them on the lawn.

Tracy Mayberry, who began married life at the ripe old age of 13, left her first husband and married Charles at age 16 -- middle age for Tennessee mountain women. The Mayberrys have, between them, six children of their own , and have also, quite extraordinarily, adopted two others with a variety of illnesses (someone might check up on the Carthage social services department). In what can only be described as a true "American pioneer" coupling, the five children still at home suffer from retardation, rashes, epilepsy and a host of other diseases I cannot pronounce. They live, surprisingly, on just a little over $1,500 a month in disability payments. Charles, who weighing in at just over 360 pounds, was "shocked" by a heart attacks in 1995. Now because of what he describes as a "gongenital heart disease," poor Charlie cannot work as a highly skilled tobacco cutter and Tracy, another porcine cross-genetic hybrid, suffered a fat-induced diabetic stroke and now takes insulin shots in stomach because she cannot reach any other part of her body.

She is "too proud" to take food stamps or other relief even while starving her family from her false pride.

The Mayberrys were "horrified" to move out of their rented trailer into the house owned by Al Gore because there was a stopped- up kitchen sink, "old" linoleum on the kitchen floor, a stopped up-bathroom sink and two toilets needing repair. Now if you are an upper-middle-class "journalist," you would certainly hightail it out of that home in a millisecond -- but for the Mayberrys, it was Nirvana.

Despite the fact that Charles Mayberry was quite handy, he refused to follow the GOP rule and "help himself" by going out and buying $15 worth of linoleum and having a floor-laying party with the five kids. He also determined that replacing the guts of one of his toilets (at a cost of 14.95) was far too much to expect, even though he was paying less than half the rent he might pay had the house been in prime condition. Instead, the Mayberrys chose to live in the scatalic-smelling abode, to not snake out the drains, and to cause a national disgrace to the Gores.

Why?

Well, I'll leave that up to you after you read (as the utterly fascist curmudgoen Paul Harvey likes to say) "the rest of the story."

Between insulin shots, Tracy managed to complain to Gore's property managers 'more than 30 times' without much of a response. Remember, however, that Al Gore's father, who died only a few months ago, owned the property originally. Al Gore, the Vice President, most likely had no idea who the Mayberrys were -- let alone the fact that they lived in a house on his inherited property!

The Gore property managers decided that the septic system in the Mayberry-rented house was beyond repair and so they, like thousands of other landlords every day, served notice on the Mayberrys to move out of the house. Repairing the system in exchange for less than $5,000 a year in rental income was not what you'd call a good business decision, and that's what the Gores paid these managers for, one can only suppose.

"We believe that it would be to everyone's advantage if you could find somewhere else to move. This seems to be an ongoing problem with the plumbing and it is not in the best interest or health of the people living there for us to continue renting the house." That was the note the Mayberrys received earlier this year.

Mysteriously though, instead of moving, the Mayberrys decided -- all on their own, mind you -- to telephone Channel Five Television News and give them a "live" tour of the house from which they had just been evicted.

Gee, imagine that: there are Charles Mayberry, a man who left school in the second grade, and poor lamebrained Mrs. Mayberry sitting around the squalor and deciding to use the media so they could STAY in the house.

Why would they want to stay? And what in the world motivated them to continue their charade -- to the delight of "journalists" like Tim Russert and Sam Donaldson?

In fact, what motivated them to rent the house in the first place? Stop and think: if it really was in the condition they claim, even the Mayberrys "theirselves" would not want their beloved offspring exposed to such filth!

Why? America wants to know.

When Gore heard about the problems, he picked up the phone and personally called Tracy Mayberry, apologized profusely, and explained he had no idea about her situation until her (or more likely, someone else's) savvy television news scheme had been carried out. Although he was being extorted, Al Gore was a gentleman: he promised to repair the home, cancel the eviction, and allow the Mayberry's to live in the house rent-free while the repairs were ongoing. In short, he decided it would be advisable to placate the Mayberrys and end the story rather than give the nonstop Gore-Bashing national media another item to rail about.

Tracy invited the Gores to a home-cooked fried chicken dinner.

But not much later, Tracy -- under some GOP coaching -- claimed she had no desire to meet the Vice President of the United States, and that Gore had invited himself to dinner.

True to his word, Gore had the property fixed, replaced the toilets and the linoleum, and did much more. Tracy and Charles, on the other hand, then complained the work was not up to "their standards" and told news people they were fed up -- and so they were moving.

The property managers have told me that the Mayberrys themselves had caused the damage to the house, that fourteen people -- not seven -- lived in it, and that they rued the day the rented the home to them.

True?

Most likely.

I can also tell you that I saw photographs of more than 15 people in the front yard of the Mayberry's property taken on different occasions, and might almost believe her daughter's "wild fantasy" that Tracy Mayberry had delivered twins at the house, "killed one and gave the other up for adoption." The condition of the property, based on photographs taken by the media, was unbelievable -- "decorated" with several dilapidated cars, trash, and the usual "accouterments" of white trash poverty displayed with pride on the
grounds of the house. The damage to the interior did indeed look fresh -- and was probably not there when the Mayberrys moved in 1998 as testified to by the property managers who had prepared the house for rent in 1998, including laying new linoleum on the kitchen floor.

It is understandable however, that the Mayberrys -- stunned and frustrated by their own poverty and the illnesses that have hounded them and their offspring -- might allow their lives and their home to fall into miserable disrepair.

After all, the rural poor, under Republican stewardship of the House and Senate of more than six years, have felt the bite of cowardly GOP uncaring enough to realize that "the party's over for the lazy," as Newt Gingrich used to say privately and publicly to his supporters.

I wish the Mayberrys, their new landlord, and the people of Lima, Ohio the best.

After all, why not?