Category: Alabama

An Odd Sequel to the Bubba/‘Brittni’ Saga

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The late Fred ‘Bubba’ Copeland (left) as ‘Brittni Summerlin’ (right)

It’s been more than two years and most readers have probably forgotten the disturbing story of the late Fred “Bubba” Copeland:

Copeland was the mayor of Smiths Station, a town of less than 7,000 people in Lee County, Alabama. He was also a freakazoid, secretly pursuing transgender fantasies that he posted online using a persona he called “Brittini Blaire Summerlin.”

Habitually working in “file-it-and-forget-it” mode, the tragic tale of Bubba/“Brittini” hadn’t crossed my mind recently, but then Glenn Reynolds called attention to a campus controversy:

The TPUSA chapter at the University of Montevallo rescheduled the mid-February “Change My Mind”-style event after administrators postponed the original date, citing safety concerns.
Now scheduled for March 5, it will still feature conservative commentator and 1819 News founder Bryan Dawson and be a “pick up the mic” format encouraging open debate, according to TPUSA Montevallo’s Instagram page.
“Montevallo caved to the liberal mob on campus who staged a walkout as a protest for the university allowing me to speak,” Dawson posted on his Facebook page. “Montevallo cancelled the TPUSA event citing this and security concerns due to death threats towards me.”
Dawson’s planned appearance had prompted a walkout by several dozen students earlier in the month who said they felt unsafe with the speaker selection, citing his criminal past, the Vallo Vision News reported.

You might not be able to add the 2+2 connection there, so I will give you further information from the Montevallo student newspaper:

Organizers say they consider the [walkout] a success, with 20 to 30 students taking part.
Dawson is president and CEO of conservative news outlet 1819 [News], and student protesters are upset with his invitation to campus. . . .
Protest organizers, who asked to be identified only as A.O. and J.S., believe this decision will only bring harm to their already hurting university. A.O. says if they were an incoming freshman on a campus tour and “someone with that background was sitting in front of a place, one of two places to eat on campus, I probably wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“That background” referring to Dawson’s felony filled background of cocaine trafficking, serial car theft, attempted murder and the releasing of information that led to the suicide of Alabama mayor and pastor Fred “Bubba” Copeland.

A-ha! So now we know what it’s really about: The students regard Dawson as persona non grata because it was his site that exposed Bubba/“Brittini,” who committed suicide a few days after the first story about the mayor’s freakazoid life was published by 1819 News.

Let me now remind you, however, that in his/“her” online persona, Bubba/“Brittini” appears to have harmed real people that he/“she” knew in real life, using their names and photos:

Ansley Summerlin, who alleged Copeland used her identity, told WTVM her name and likeness appeared on multiple porn sites.
“I had some people start sending me photos that were posted of me on multiple porn sites, I guess you could say that also had pictures of ‘Brittini,’ as well,” she said. “And he proceeded to use my first and middle names on these sites. And I believe there are about nine sites now that have five or six photos of my face and my name across the net.”
The second alleged victim, identified as a “local hairstylist in Smiths Station,” also discussed her likeness being used in Copeland’s writings.
“It said my first and last name,” she said. “And it was basically describing the way that I look and intensified, I guess, as a porn star. And it went into very graphic detail. I didn’t get past the first page because I honestly couldn’t stomach it.”

Take my word for it when I tell you that this was arguably not even the worst thing that Bubba/“Brittini” did in his/“her” online fantasy persona. You can browse through the archives at 1819 News if you’re curious, or just trust me when I say that it was very, very bad.

Because of my file-it-and-forget-it habit, I hadn’t followed up on the story — like, the guy’s dead, what else is there to report? — which is why I didn’t realize that a tear-jerker sob story about Bubba/“Brittini” was published by a swanky magazine and it won a Pulitzer Prize!

The article in question omitted the most sordid aspects of what Bubba/“Brittini” did online — and I repeat, this was very, very bad stuff — and instead tried to paint the small-town mayor as a sympathetic figure victimized by an EVIL RIGHT-WING WEBSITE!

While ethical arguments about how 1819 News handled the story are worthy of discussion, I would like to point out that Taylor Lorenz has “doxxed” people who were a lot more innocent than Bubba Copeland.

The protest against Bryan Dawson was, in fact, an attempt to punish and silence 1819 News for publishing the truth about Bubba/“Brittini,” but the students also mentioned Dawson’s criminal record.

In 2007, when he was 22 years old, Bryan Dawson was a serious drug dealer in Colorado. If you know anything at all about drug dealers, you know that “serious” means capable of deadly violence. He very nearly killed a guy he suspected of being a snitch, and could have been sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. A plea bargain got him a 16-year sentence, and while in prison, Dawson became a Christian. He was later released to a halfway house:

After graduating from the program, he was able to transfer his parole to Alabama, where his wife was living.
A friend of Dawson’s helped him get an affiliate relations manager job with USA Radio Networks, which syndicated several big-name talk show hosts such as Steve Deace. Dawson helped market the network’s news segments to stations across the country.
“I was the new guy. I didn’t know the rules, and so you know, I was told that this would never work when I originally pitched it to the team, but I thought it would, and it did,” Dawson said.
His success led him to work for Lee Habeeb on expanding “Our American Stories,” which gave Dawson the experience and skills he would soon use to help launch 1819 News.
Dawson said after the 2020 election, he turned his focus away from national news to the local level. That’s when Caleb Crosby with the Alabama Policy Institute called him about starting a state-focused radio show.

This is an amazing story, and one that Dawson has told at length — his testimony on the saving power of Christ. Which may explain a couple of things. First, why did 1819 News make the decision to publish that story about Bubba/“Brittini”? It may have something to do with the fact that Bubba Copeland was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” pastoring a Baptist church while engaging in heinous online behavior in his “Brittni Summerlin” persona. But surely Dawson would not have expected Copeland’s suicide, because how was Copeland’s situation worse than what Dawson himself had faced when he was sent to prison?

Christians are supposed to be courageous, able to withstand the worst through faith in Jesus, emulating the Savior who was willing to suffer death for our sake. However unfair we may consider our own suffering to be, it cannot be worse than what Jesus suffered. We ought never complain when we are chastised, because our sins give us no room to say our suffering is unjust. If we have any blessings in our life, how much more grateful to God should we be, knowing how unworthy we are?

How does God choose His servants? Those of us of Calvinist leanings ponder Romans 8:28-31, and then look at such an example as Bryan Dawson — plucked out of a prison cell and raised up for a duty that he surely never contemplated during his outlaw career in Colorado. If it pleased God to have such a servant, who are we to object, so long as Bryan is faithful to his calling and does the Lord’s work?

The decision to publish the Bubba/“Brittini” story must be considered in this light. What would I do if such a bombshell story just landed in my lap? How could any editor say no to such a story? Bryan Dawson has been widely condemned for that decision, but has repeatedly pointed out that his critics aren’t willing to reckon with the worst aspects of what Bubba Copeland did. Esquire magazine won a Pulitzer for soft-peddling the heinous nature of what Copeland was doing online, and where are the awards for the guys at 1819 News, including reporter Craig Monger, who broke the original story? Talk about an injustice . . .

Anyway, the students at the University of Montevallo who protested against Bryan Dawson’s appearance are idiots and cowards, and I’m glad they’ve failed to prevent him from speaking on campus.



 

What Happens When Liberals ‘Succeed’

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Liberalism is about winning elections. Whatever the actual results of liberal policies may be, in terms of the well-being of the people who vote for liberals, are of no real consequence. So long as liberals keep winning elections, they consider their policies successful. We see this all the time in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia and St. Louis where, no matter how objectively bad things get — no matter how much poverty, misery and violence prevail — Democrats keep getting re-elected.

The Chicago Bears are reportedly ready to relocate to Hammond, Indiana, because Illinois has been controlled so long by Democrats that not even relocating from Chicago to the suburbs would have saved the franchise; the only hope for the Bears was to leave the state entirely. Businesses and people are fleeing the state; such companies as Boeing, Caterpillar and Tyson Foods have pulled their headquarters out of Illinois. One reason that Democrats in Illinois are so desperate to stop the deportation of illegal aliens is because without foreigners, the state would be losing population. Despite the deepening crisis in Illinois, however, the people there keep voting for Democrats — Kamala Harris got 54% of the vote there in 2024. There is no incentive for change if Democrats keep winning no matter what. And something similar is underway north of the border, which brings us to the news that has shocked Canada:

For eons, Canadians have viewed Alabama as a small state that, save for a few pockets, is dirt poor. All anybody seems to know about Alabama is that Montgomery and Birmingham were the centre of the civil rights movement. In 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he called Birmingham “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.”
So, it was a shock when Canadian economist Trevor Tombe and the International Monetary Fund ran the numbers in 2023 and 2024 and concluded that Canada had, in fact, become poorer than Alabama. . . .
After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state. (Canada has since edged ever-so-slightly higher than Alabama; the numbers are volatile from year to year.)
The timing was terrible for the Canadian psyche. Home prices were on an astronomical trajectory, inflation made everyday items such as groceries far more expensive and there was deep resentment toward Ottawa. Canadians could probably stomach having their living standards slip relative to the broader U.S., the epicentre of the world’s tech revolution. But Alabama? . . .

Yes, Alabama! If anyone wonders why Canada is now lagging behind Alabama, let me make a digression. About 30 years ago, I noticed an emerging theme in Democratic messaging. Our problem, they said, was a “growing gap between rich and poor.” This was the theme of numerous newspaper columns and a talking point in speeches by Democratic politicians, and it got me to wondering why this gap was growing.

Was it a matter of economic policy? Was racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — somehow a factor in this growing gap? And after some study, itn finally hit me: Immigration! It turns out that an influx of cheap labor from the Third World increases poverty. You don’t need a Harvard Ph.D. to figure this out. Every year during the 1990s, at least a million immigrants (both legal and illegal) were being added to the U.S. population. Most of these immigrants came from countries much poorer than the United States, lacked specialized work skills and arrived with few if any assets.

Most were not fluent in English, and quite a few of them were completely illiterate, even in their own native languages. No matter what other policy the government might pursue, the constant addition of so many immigrants — a million this year, a million next year, and so on, year after year — would inevitably increase the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line. But liberals were ignoring this obvious factor in economic trends, instead focusing on statistical changes that got translated to “a growing gap between rich and poor.”

Well, guess why Canada has fallen behind Alabama?

In the 2015 election, Canada’s Liberal Party defeated the Conservative Party, and Justin Trudeau was the Prime Minister for the next 10 years before being succeeded by another Liberal, Mark Carney. So during a decade when the United States has rocked back and forth — Obama, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again — Canada has been governed the whole time by the Liberal Party. And as long as the Liberals keep winning elections, that’s success, even though they’re falling behind Alabama.



 

Carry Me Home to See My Kin

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An unexpected road trip suddenly looms, as I just got word that my Aunt Joanne (actually a second cousin, but we kids called her “aunt” by courtesy) has died at her home in Montgomery, Alabama. Joanne’s mother was my maternal grandmother’s younger sister, and Joanne was especially close to my mother’s younger sister, Barbara Ellis.

Like Aunt Barbara, Joanne was a teacher, and her obituary notes her passion for politics as “a proud Democrat and a committed civil rights activist.” Some of my conservative friends don’t believe me when I say that many of my dearest relatives are Democrats, so there’s your proof.

The funeral will be Friday, which means I’ll have to rent a car, leave Thursday and drive more than 800 miles to get there. Which, of course, means it’s time for a return of the Big Yellow Button.

 

The PayPal donation button is always on the page, but some of our readers may be near-sighted, so on special occasions, I’ll blow it up big enough that you’d have to be blind to miss it. The usual asking amount is $17.76, but any amount — $5 or $10 or whatever — would be most welcome. You know we got to get those big wheels rolling: “Singing songs about the Southland, miss old ’Bammy once again.”

 

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Crazy People Are Dangerous

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Well, this is a sad story: Fred “Bubba” Copeland was the mayor of Smiths Station, a town of less than 7,000 people in Lee County, Alabama. He was also a freakazoid, secretly pursuing transgender fantasies that he posted online using a persona he called “Brittini Blaire Summerlin.”

Somehow (the details are not clear to me) information about “Brittini Blaire” got in the hands of an Alabama web site, 1819 News, which published a lengthy story Nov. 1 about Bubba/“Brittini.” Two days later — last Friday — Copeland shot himself to death when deputies showed up at his house to do a “wellness check.” As might be expected, many have criticized 1819 News for “outing” Bubba/“Brittini,” but before you go jumping on that bandwagon of blame, consider this: In his/“her” online persona, Bubba/“Brittini” appears to have harmed real people that he/“she” knew in real life, using their names and photos:

Ansley Summerlin, who alleged Copeland used her identity, told WTVM her name and likeness appeared on multiple porn sites.
“I had some people start sending me photos that were posted of me on multiple porn sites, I guess you could say that also had pictures of ‘Brittini,’ as well,” she said. “And he proceeded to use my first and middle names on these sites. And I believe there are about nine sites now that have five or six photos of my face and my name across the net.”
The second alleged victim, identified as a “local hairstylist in Smiths Station,” also discussed her likeness being used in Copeland’s writings.
“It said my first and last name,” she said. “And it was basically describing the way that I look and intensified, I guess, as a porn star. And it went into very graphic detail. I didn’t get past the first page because I honestly couldn’t stomach it.”

Click here to read an article with further details about the online activities of the late mayor’s transgender persona. It was certainly creepy, and if Bubba/“Brittini” was mostly harmless, that doesn’t mean that the harmful part of his/“her” activity should be ignored.

The left-wing media are trying to bury the sordid details:

Since the late Smiths Station Mayor Fred “Bubba” Copeland killed himself last Friday following reports of his transgender alter ego, left-wing media outlets and public officials have jumped to defend his behavior, often leaving out key details in the process.
On Monday, political commentator for The Daily Wire Matt Walsh called out those blaming conservatives — and 1819 News in particular — for Copeland’s suicide.
“Bubba Copeland was a deeply troubled man. Also, Copeland’s last act was a choice that he made, the wrong choice, but a choice all the same,” Walsh began during the final segment of his Monday show.
He said many in the media were using “carefully crafted euphemisms” to help Copeland avoid any responsibility for his actions that led to him choosing to take his own life. . . .
Walsh continued: “It’s important to underscore that he uploaded all this material voluntarily to the internet while he was serving as mayor, and since everything that a public official uploads to the internet is newsworthy, especially when it’s perverted and depraved, that’s an important fact to highlight.” . . .
“They’re acting like someone hacked his hard drive or [wiretapped] his phone calls when, in fact, what happened was that a website looked at material that Copeland himself had posted publicly for everyone to see,” Walsh said. “But this notion that Copeland was ‘outed’ somehow became the framing of every major news outlet and prominent politician. They’re all pretending like Bubba Copeland was an innocent victim, a paragon of the community.”
He continued: “For years we’ve been told with a straight face to believe a lie that men with this very obvious fetish are in fact women simply by virtue of the fact that they have this fetish. They’ve repeated this lie over and over again with maximum sincerity as if it’s gospel. But lies that are this grandiose and this absurd inevitably break down. They’re not sustainable. One way or another at some point, liars like this must admit the truth, if only by accident, and with the suicide of Bubba Copeland, that’s exactly what’s happened. The trans movement stands for the idea that a woman is someone who wears his wife’s clothes for fun and uploads some photos on Reddit to arouse himself and quote ‘blow off some steam,’ as Copeland said. That’s the extent of the trans ideology’s definition of womanhood.”

Exactly. It may seem cruel to report on the details of what Bubba/“Brittini” did in his/“her” online persona, but to omit those details, or to obscure the reality with euphemisms, is just dishonest.

R.I.P., Bubba/“Brittini.”



 

We Survived Thunder Bird Falls

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
When my son told us we were going for a hike Saturday, my first thought was, “We’re going to get eaten by bears.” A quick Google search (“thunder bird falls + grizzly bear”) turned up several results, including a recent story with this quote:

“Bear encounters can happen anywhere in Anchorage, in Alaska,” Fish and Game Assistant Area Biologist Cory Stantorf said. “So regardless of where you’re at, whether it’s a viewing deck or the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, Kincaid, you always have to be prepared and ready for an encounter with wildlife, whether it’s bear, moose, wolves.”

And then there was this headline from 2005:

“Nothing to worry about,” said my son, as he loaded his .44 revolver and packed it into the holster strapped to his chest. “Just in case.”

By the way, notice how the Fish and Game biologist spoke of “bear encounters,” rather than “bear attacks.” Political correctness run amok. I expect this kind of euphemism from Democrats in Philadelphia (“Carjacking encounters can happen anywhere”) but this is Alaska, OK? We’re talking the Final Frontier, pioneers in the wilderness. When I “encounter” a gigantic omnivorous wild beast with fangs and claws, this is a bear attack, I don’t care what you call it. Anyway . . .

We headed up the highway to Thunder Bird Falls, which is in Chugach State Park. An interesting Alaska cultural note: “Chugach” is a compound word, from the native chu (“eaten by”) and gach (“bears”).

On our way to adventure.
A helpful map near the park entrance, showing visitors where they can get eaten by grizzly bears (i.e., everywhere)

Thunder Bird Falls is on the Eklutna River, which is less than 12 miles long, tumbling down from the top of a mountain to the Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska. The inlet is named for 18th-century British explorer Captain James Cook, who sailed into the inlet seeking the fabled Northwest Passage. Given the trend whereby Mount McKinley has been renamed “Denali” (because that’s what the natives allegedly called it), it’s probably only a matter of time before Cook Inlet gets renamed, because you can’t name stuff after white guys anymore. Meanwhile . . .

Another interesting Alaska cultural fact: Eklutna is also a compound word, from the native eklu (“food for”) and utna (“grizzly bears”).

If you’re getting tired of my dark sarcasm, imagine how my wife felt as I was cracking these jokes all the way to the park. Facing danger with a smile on your face — that’s just the way I roll. And because of my habitual sarcasm, you may think I was joking when I talked about my son strapping a .44 to his chest before we left the house.

See the revolver handle sticking out of the holster? In addition to being a Ranger-qualified Army Airborne sergeant first class, my son is also a serious hunting enthusiast, who is currently planning bow-hunting expeditions for mountain sheep (aoudad) this fall. On our trip to Thunder Bird Falls, he was telling me something about the state game laws that protect the bears, and I was thinking, “Shouldn’t the laws be about protecting people?” Fortunately, there is a loophole in the laws, so that it’s not illegal to kill a bear in self-defense, but because this is 2023, I’m sure some environmentalist version of Ben Crump would show up to lead a protest claiming the bear was an honor student who was just minding his own business when you killed it: “No justice! No peace!”

Anyway, my son had a pistol strapped to his chest, and a two-month-old baby girl strapped to his back, because he’s a badass that way.

Grandma and Eliza: Smile and say, ‘Bears!’

So now we had the family ready for the hike up the trail, and if I was (mostly) joking about the danger of a “bear encounter,” soon I encountered something perfectly calculated to inspire fear.

OH MY DEAR GOD! While I’d been clowning around about the prospect of being eaten by grizzly bears, it hadn’t occurred to me that this trail followed the edge of a deep mountain gorge. Exactly how high was that “STEEP CLIFF” the sign was warning me about? I don’t know, because I’m so afraid of heights I didn’t dare get close enough to look.

It’s weird how my acrophobia is selective. Like, I’m not afraid of every high-altitude situation. We’d flown over 3,000 miles to get to Alaska, and that didn’t scare me at all. And when I was a kid, it was nothing to climb way up in the biggest poplar tree in the neighbor’s yard. But put me on the edge of a precipice — no, I can’t stand that. It terrifies me. Any action-adventure film where the hero is dangling off the side of a skyscraper? Nope. Never see those scenes. Got my eyes closed.

That first sign, warning me how close I was to the “STEEP CLIFF” — plummeting hundreds of feet to my death — caused me to notice how narrow the trail was, and how crowded it was with tourists who seemed utterly heedless of their proximity to “DANGER.”

When I’d started out up the trail, my main concern was about the my-thighs-are-getting-sore steepness of the climb. Once I realized there was a “STEEP CLIFF” just a few feet to my left, however, my concern shifted to the fact that there were whole families of tourists, some of them with dogs on leashes, carelessly loping up and down this trail with utter disregard of the “DANGER” nearby. And the trail was barely wide enough for three people to walk side-by-side safely, so that when I’d see a cluster of tourists approaching, I’d get wwaaaayy over to the right side of the trail to let them pass. And, every 40 or 50 yards up the trail, there’d be another one of those signs: “DANGER! STEEP CLIFF! STAY ON TRAIL!” And I’d be muttering, “Yeah, you didn’t have to tell me twice.”

About a half-mile up the trail, we reached the “Gorge Overlook.”

Family members foolishly risk their lives.

It must be explained that I also have vicarious acrophobia — it’s not just that I’m afraid of heights, but I also get freaked out by seeing other people near the edge of a precipice, especially my kids. Like, when the boys were little, we’d hike up to Black Rock, and I’d be a bundle of nerves whenever they’d go to the edge of those cliffs. While I could control my own risk — I ain’t going anywhere near the edge, if I can help it — the children were beyond my control, and I was deathly afraid of them falling off. Wonderful irony that my son should have become a paratrooper, but “out of sight, out of mind.” I can ignore Bob’s death-defying career choices, because I don’t have to see it, and am therefore capable of blocking it out of my consciousness. Meanwhile . . .

Staying far away from danger

While everybody else was RISKING THEIR LIVES at the “Gorge Overlook,” I was on the other side of the trail, chilling out — and by “chilling out,” of course I mean, avoiding psychiatric trauma.

Should I mention that I dislike the word “acrophobia”? Because a “phobia” is an irrational fear, whereas being 300 feet above a river gorge is a real danger, and therefore my fear is perfectly rational. The crazy people are the ones who can stare down at the bottom of that cliff and not freak out, but the psychiatric community doesn’t have a word for that.

My daughter-in-law laughs at the danger

See what I mean? She’s standing next to a sign that clearly says “DANGER,” and she’s laughing at my (entirely rational) fear.

It’s Alaska. It’s about survival on the frontier — basically living inside a Jack London novel, and I’m pretty sure his protagonists never took any unnecessary risks, simply because life was so difficult they didn’t have time for cheap thrills. But nonetheless, we continued hiking up to the “Falls Overlook,” with me trailing behind so that I could navigate around the clusters of dumbass tourists who kept coming down the trail with no apparent concern about the “STEEP CLIFF” on one side.

As we approached the overlook, the path turned into a sort of wooden deck, with rails on either side. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN! We were literally suspended over the side of the cliff by some kind of jerry-rigged cantilever construction that I’m certain would not pass a safety inspection in any of the Lower 48 states. The headlines were easy to imagine:

JOURNALIST KILLED WHEN OBESE TOURIST
CAUSES OVERLOOK WALKWAY COLLAPSE

Even if I’m not as skinny as I used to be, still I’m easily 100 pounds lighter than some of the tourists who were clomping around up there.

So the family went ahead of me to the overlook, while I hung back waiting for the crowd to clear out. Because if I’m going onto an overlook deck, I’m sure as hell not going onto it while it’s occupied by:

  • 7 or 8 fat tourists;
  • 5 or 6 of their clumsy low-IQ children;
    and
  • 3 or 4 dogs.

What is it with people taking their dogs everywhere they go? Like, it’s important for your dogs to have the cultural enrichment of travel? Perhaps most people don’t think about this, and maybe my misanthropic streak was aggravated by the circumstances, but COULD YOU IDIOTS PLEASE LEAVE YOUR DOGS HOME when I’m trying to walk a trail marked with “DANGER STEEP CLIFF” signs every 50 yards?

Finally, the crowd thinned out enough, and I was ready.

Smile for the camera!

You may notice in that picture that my left hand is very firmly gripped on the rail, because I’m surviving, like a Jack London hero. Also notice that I’m wearing red sneakers. Those aren’t my sneakers. I’d expected to wear my normal street shoes — tasseled loafers — for this hike, but my son insisted on lending me a pair of his sneakers, and boy, I’m glad he did. As bad as it was going up that “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS” trail, it would have been a thousand times worse if I’d been wearing slick-soled loafers instead of those sneakers. Grateful for every small advantage.

My son’s family.

Despite my advanced age, I out-hiked everybody on the way back down the mountain. It wasn’t even close. Smile for the camera — snap! — and then I set off at a blistering pace, because the faster I went, the sooner I’d be away from “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS.” By the time the rest of the family got to the bottom of the trail, I’d been sitting there 15 minutes, smoking a cigarette, smiling like the hero of a Jack London novel.

 

Throwing in The Big Yellow Button here because I hope you’re enjoying this tale of my Alaska adventures enough to hit the freaking tip jar. And don’t worry about the IRS, because of course, I’ve got plenty of tax-deductible business expenses from this trip. This is one of the beauties of being a Professional Journalist™ in America — anything becomes a “business expense” if you write about it. You write about travel? Tax-deductible business expense. You write about food?

Having survived the trip to Thunder Bird Falls, and to celebrate not getting eaten by bears or falling off a cliff, we headed up to Palmer, where we dined at La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant. This was the occasion of even more of my habitual sarcasm, because who else would travel to the arctic wilderness to eat Mexican food? And as we were heading up there, I already knew what I was going to order, because the menu in every Mexican restaurant has it — the #1 Combination Plate, with a beef taco, chicken enchilada, rice and beans. There is nothing more predictable than the #1 Combination Plate, which is why I always order it. And, wearing my Professional Journalist™ hat as a food critic, I can tell you that La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant serves excellent food in large portions. My wife ordered the vegetarian burrito and it was ENORMOUS! As soon as they brought it out, I was like, “Just go ahead and bring us a take-out box, because there’s no way she’s going to eat that whole thing.”

After dinner, we did a bit of sightseeing in downtown Palmer — the view of the mountains is breathtaking — then went for ice cream at The Big Dipper, which is also excellent, the Professional Journalist™ said.

Having survived the wilderness — in a thrilling Jack London way — I took a long nap when we got back, and now, after 2,000 words, I must remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

 

Dadeville Update: Six Suspects Now in Custody for ‘Sweet 16’ Massacre

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When we last updated on Wednesday, two teenage brothers from Tuskegee, Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, had been charged in last weekend’s mass shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in Dadesville, Alabama, that left four dead and dozens injured. Late Wednesday night, Wilson LaMar Hill Jr., 20, of Auburn was added to the list of those arrested and charged in the shooting, and then yesterday, authorities announced the arrest of Johnny Letron Brown, 20, of Tuskegee, and Willie George Brown, 19, of Auburn. Later, it was announced that a sixth suspect, also from Tuskegee, was under arrest, but because he is only 15 years old, we don’t yet know his name.

As I said Wednesday, the biggest mystery is the motive. What would inspire six young men, ages 15 to 20, from out of town to grab their pistols and head to Dadeville to kill a bunch of people? Auburn is 25 miles from Dadeville, and Tuskegee is 35 miles away, so what was it that made Dadeville their target? Among those killed in the massacre was Phil Dowdell, a local football star who had a scholarship to my alma mater, Jacksonville State University. Dowdell’s sister was the birthday girl at the party, and it occurs to me that this deadly incident might have grown out of some kind of overheated high-school football rivalry.

But that would be completely crazy. You’re going to murder people because of football? The South is notorious for its quasi-religious devotion to football, but this would just be too much.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that today I am once again watching CNN (so you don’t have to), and it seems the network lost interest in the Dadeville mass shooting just about the time cops released the mug shots of the suspects. Coincidence? I don’t think so.



 

 

Teens Charged in Dadeville Massacre

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Sgt. Jeremy Burkett speaks at press conference

Breaking news today in Alabama:

Two teenage brothers have been charged with four counts of reckless murder in the Saturday night shooting at a Dadeville birthday party that killed four young people and injured 32 others.
Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, both of Tuskegee, have each been charged as adults with four counts of reckless murder.
The two were taken into custody abut 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Under Alabama law, the crime of reckless murder is committed when a person recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other than himself or herself and causes the death of another person.
“There is a tremendous amount of work to do. We’re going to be careful with everything we say and everything we do. We’re going to stay focused on the victims and their families,” said Sgt. Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
Burkett said he could not disclose where the teens were arrested or where they are being held. Burkett would not say how many guns were fired or how many shots were fired.
He said investigators are not yet releasing a motive, nor saying how many shooters they believe were involved. . . .

This tight-lipped attitude has been frustrating for much of the public, and Alabama law enforcement is aware of that frustration:

“Please understand with the violence that went on and the magnitude of what happened, we are absolutely still in the early stages of this investigation. This is not the end,” Burkett said. “There is a tremendous amount of work that is yet to be done. We’re going to continue to do exactly what we’ve been doing.” . . .
“I know there has been a frustration… about a lack of communication provided,” said District Attorney Mike Segrest. . . .
Prosecutors will be requesting they be held without bond. . . .
In addition to the four homicides, there are multiple other victims. At least four of the 32 victims remain hospitalized in critical condition. More charges will be filed, Segrest said.
”When I tell you this is just the tip of the iceburg…we’re going to make sure everyone of those victims has justice and not just the deceased,’’ Segrest said. . . .
Dadeville Police Chief Jonathan Floyd said investigators are taking their time to make sure the cases result in convictions.
“This is the very beginning, and we have one chance to get this right,’’ Floyd said.
”We owe it to every person affected to make sure that we’re very slow, make sure we’re very methodical,’’ Floyd said.

Police have previously said that, based on the cartridge casing found at the scene, the shooters used pistols, not rifles. That’s kind of important, considering that the shameless fool Joe Biden used this Alabama shooting as an excuse to blame the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” when there is (as usual) zero evidence that any such “reforms” would have prevented this atrocity. Pretty sure it’s already against the law for minors to be carrying concealed pistols in Alabama and, while we haven’t yet seen mug shots of the McCullough brothers, I’m 99% certain they’re not MAGA-hat-wearing Young Republicans, IYKWIMAITYD. The biggest mystery here is the motive. Tuskegee is in Macon County, about 35 miles south of Dadeville. Why would two teenagers from out of town grab their guns and show up at this “Sweet 16” birthday party, ready to murder everybody inside?

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, before we had any information about the suspects, my brother Kirby speculated that social media might have played a role in this. Maybe someone who had a beef with the McCullough brothers had posted something saying they’d be at this party, and that’s why they showed up in Dadeville. But wow, what a monstrous way to deal with petty adolescent rivalries.



 

 

There Is No Joy in ’Bamaland

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The headline at ESPN says, “Tennessee tops Alabama in epic back-and-forth thriller,” but please, spare me such “thrills.” Pardon my lifelong preference for the boring, easy, lopsided Alabama victories.

O, Lord, keep your “thrillers” far away from the Crimson Tide!

’Bama spotted Tennessee a 28-10 first-half lead, but then Heisman Trophy quarterback Bryce Young led the Tide back to tie it 28-28 early in the third quarter. Alabama only punted once in the second half, scoring touchdowns on three of its five possessions, and adding a defensive touchdown when linebacker Dallas Turner scooped up a Tennessee fumble and ran it in. That gave ’Bama a 49-42 lead with less than eight minutes remaining, but Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker then led the Volunteers on a 75-yard touchdown drive that included two pass interference penalties against Alabama. The second penalty saved Tennessee after a fourth-down interception that would have — should have? — clinched the victory with four minutes left to play.

Now the game was tied, but Young led the Tide downfield again, reaching the Tennessee 32-yard line with 34 seconds left. Alabama still had one timeout left, and you might think they could have RUN THE DAMNED BALL at least once, but instead they threw three passes, all of them incomplete. With 15 seconds on the clock, Will Reichard came on to kick what would have been the game-winning field goal, but it went wide right, and it seemed we were headed to overtime.

Alas, Hendon Hooker may be the best quarterback Tennessee’s had since Peyton Manning. He connected on two passes that put the Vols at the Alabama 23 with two seconds left and Tennessee won on a field goal.

It was the first time Tennessee has beat ’Bama since 2006. Their fans tore down the goal posts and, of course, UT alumnus Glenn Reynolds was celebrating. Someone in the comments at Instapundit said, “Imagine scoring 49 points and losing!” To which I replied, “Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine it.” A dreadful nightmare. “Thriller,” my ass.

Much of the blame for this defeat will fall on Bryce Young, perhaps unfairly. He threw for 455 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, spreading the ball around to nine different receivers. The real problem for Alabama was that they got 17 penalties for 130 yards.

And where the hell was the defense, huh? Since when does Alabama’s defense give up 52 points to anybody, let alone Tennessee? The last time the Crimson Tide gave up this many points was 1907.

If Bear Bryant was alive, he’d have them boys running wind sprints until they died. Fifty-two points! That’s not a defeat, it’s a humiliation!

One of the problems with being America’s Greatest College Football Team is that there are really only two kinds of seasons for ’Bama: National Championships and failures. Since Nick Saban became the coach in 2007, the Crimson Tide has won six National Championships and, in all but two of those years, they did so with at least one regular-season loss on their record. So it is too early to say the Tide can’t come back this year, although they face a difficult schedule down the stretch, with the Nov. 12 game at Ole Miss looking especially tough.

’Bama fans will therefore remain hopeful that somehow Saban can get the team back to the SEC title game and we’ll see how it goes from here. For now, however, a dark cloud looms above Tuscaloosa, and in the hearts of Crimson Tide fans everywhere. There is no joy in ’Bamaland.