Government & Dolly Again

I emailed my senators and congressman about health care and marriage equality for all the good it will do. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are the Republican TN Senators. John Tanner is the Congressman from our district and is a Blue Dog Democrat. I felt dirty just going to Corker's web page. He's like political porn. Lamar Explanation Point is not quite as bad. I call him that because his bumper stickers had "Lamar!" on them.

I thanked Alexander because he co-sponsored a bill to prevent blasting the tops off of East Tennessee mountains which sounds like a good bill to me. HERE is a good article by Dave Cooper about the coal companies boycotting Dollywood and Tennessee travel in Huffington Post. And here is an excerpt from "Dollywood Boycott Falls Flat":

When it comes to entertainers, there is probably no American singer more wholesome, cheerful and relentlessly upbeat as country music star Dolly Parton. Raised in the Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee, Ms. Parton is the public face of Smoky Mountain tourism, exemplified by the popular Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

And she's also a genuinely nice person. So why on earth would anyone want to boycott Dollywood?

Because Dolly lives in Tennessee, and Tennessee loves its mountains.

You see, Tennesseans don't want to see their mountains -- and their billion-dollar tourism economy -- destroyed. So Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander has introduced legislation in the Senate that would prevent coal companies from blasting the tops off of Appalachian Mountains and dumping the debris into mountain streams, a hideous mining method called "mountaintop removal" that is, unfortunately, widespread in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

Sen. Alexander's bill, The "Appalachia Restoration Act" (S. 696) doesn't sit well with certain coal companies such as Coal Mac, a division of St. Louis-based coal giant Arch Coal. In a July 6 letter, Coal Mac HR Manager Richard Phillips advised the Pigeon Forge Chamber of Commerce that Coal Mac's Virginia and Kentucky sister companies were canceling their annual company picnic at Dollywood.

Roger Horton, front man for a West Virginia group called Citizens for Coal has also asked its members to boycott Tennessee travel.

In response to the boycott, The Kentucky Chapter of the Sierra Club is calling on its members to visit Tennessee. Kentucky Sierra Club chairman Joey Shadowen said the organization supports Alexander's legislation, and encourages its members to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and other Tennessee tourist sites.

Hey West Virginia miners: Leave Dolly alone. Just be quiet and go to your Ted Nugent "Friends of Coal" concert.