N&R Comments on Billy Yow’s Website
April 9, 2008 – 6:23 pm 
The News & Record had an interesting take on Billy Yow’s website today. Seems like they suspect some subliminal message going on. Here’s the story:
Do commissioners cancel each other out?
Billy Yow might have you think that.
Yow, the Republican two-term District 5 Guilford County Commissioner, is using a touch of the boardroom friction he gives District 8 Democratic Commissioner Melvin “Skip” Alston to help introduce his campaign website. A profile photo of Yow in apparent disbelief gazes across the site’s banner to a shot of Commissioner Skip Alston, who has a raised eyebrow.
Scoop called Yow today to ask what he’s trying to say with the image.
“When you look you see Skip (Alston) sitting over there. And without me, you see, he’s a loose cannon,” Yow said. Yow added that voters in his district should vote for him at least to keep Alston under control.
So we called Alston to see what he thinks about that.
Billy Yow is an effective and knowledgeable commissioner. He is certainly a friend to the Guilford County taxpayer. I hope he is returned to office.
UPDATE: UNCG economics professor turns mind reader and race relations expert. Shockingly, for the first time in the history of mankind, a liberal injects race into a non-racial story. Read it here before the story breaks in the National Enquirer.
26 Responses to “N&R Comments on Billy Yow’s Website”
in the logo photos, skip looks like he might be growling and billy looks a little startled. advantage: skip.
imho, maybe not the best logo choice by the yow camp.
By cm on Apr 10, 2008
ok, i might have meant “banner,” not logo…
By cm on Apr 10, 2008
Michele, isn’t it odd how a routine background photo of the board could turn into some subliminal plot?
To me it looks like Billy is keeping a watchful eye out on Skip and Skip’s mad about it. Advantage Yow.
It’s really meant to show “incumbent”.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 10, 2008
i see Billy Yow with the Alien look before the smaller Alien comes out of its throat and eats someones face …i see Gary Coleman doin the “whatchu talkin’ ’bout Willis” face and the other 3 are scripted out…this person behind the camera possesses precocity beyond word pictures.
By chuck atkinson on Apr 11, 2008
Hey Tony, our NCFYR Convention starts Friday night; are you coming to take pictures for the County Party website? Yeah, just call me and/or visit: http://www.ncfyrconvention.com.
Hope to see you there!
By Maria Barton on Apr 11, 2008
Hmm, a web banner showing Yow keeping the black commissioner in his place, what wonderful right-wing iconography.
By Dave Ribar on Apr 12, 2008
Attempted fear mongering from the left side? Ribar, who secretly supports three government furnished bidets in every household, forgets the card game is over and attempts to play the one and only trump card that’s played when all else fails.
Good to hear from you Dave, your comments are welcome here anytime.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 12, 2008
Yow: “Without me, you see, he’s a loose cannon.”
“Yow added that voters in his district should vote for him at least to keep Alston under control.”
Wilkins: “To me it looks like Billy is keeping a watchful eye out on Skip.”
You and Billy have already said the message is about keeping Alston in his place.
Some candidates run on a positive message. Instead, Yow has decided to run on antagonism.
By Dave Ribar on Apr 12, 2008
Leave it to our pal Dave to make it into a racial thing.
Good work, Dave.
You fit right into the “business as usual” power structure in this town.
By Bubba on Apr 12, 2008
Posted at Ribar’s:
Just wondering, and this question is based on your analogy above:
Billy is looking across the banner at three Democrats on the current board. Why do you choose the one black commissioner and dream up some scheme behind the banner?
Sounds like Dave Ribar is contributing to race relations, not Billy Yow.
You would have us think Billy had some Karl Rove working on his campaign.
I agree with anon, stick to economics.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 13, 2008
Add’l comment on Ribar’s observation:
My comment about keeping a watchful eye on Skip was directed at Skip’s well known policies for spending and Billy’s well known objections to that spending, it had nothing to do with the color of his skin.
The N&R, Cara Michele, Chuck Atkinson, and Billy Yow himself had commented on the banner and none mentioned race.
Ribar is solely responsible for injecting race into this particular topic.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 13, 2008
All of the Billy Yows in Guilford County wont protect white women from Skip. This Helmsian method may have worked on small minds in the past but this is the Jerry Springer/Ophrah age of stimmalus packages and Republican bailouts. Hate me for my freedom and passion for malt liquor but examine yourselves.
By Kuntisha Tonkins-Alston on Apr 13, 2008
Kuntisha, People such as you and Perfesser Mindreader from UNCG only make the mob stronger and dumber. Dont you know that humans will discard liberty and imprison themselves if the right trusty with the right rhetoric comes along. They wont complain if a turd shows up in the swill as long as they feel protected from the Skips, Alkaaaders, hypenates, muslims, liberals, reds, feds, Canadian meds, papists, rapists, manumitters, Hillary, Billery, Obama, Osama, Africanized bees, wmd’s, spongiform cows and Billy Yows … Its a good trade… personal liberty for protection from these rhyming threats. You keep trying to milk that Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull..okay?
By chuck atkinson on Apr 14, 2008
‘hyphenate’ was the intended rhyming threat
By chuck atkinson on Apr 14, 2008
Get rid of the hyphenates and other threats and what would you have, good sense? HA!. We would all be worrying about the loons with light blue stripes in their ties, rather than conventional yellow or red. Or, the loons with insane red or yellow stripes instead of proper blue. Wait, I sense a whiff of gunpowder coming, I gotta go………..
By Robin Leskovitch on Apr 14, 2008
OH, No! I mentioned color in my post. Am I going to hell?
By Robin Leskovitch on Apr 14, 2008
Robin, the reason you will fuel the fires of hell has nothing to do your chromatic prattle.
By chuck atkinson on Apr 14, 2008
precocity: intelligence achieved far ahead of normal developmental schedules.
Chuck: “this person behind the camera possesses precocity beyond word pictures”
Why thank you Mr. Atkinson.
I almost fell out of my chair when the professor states, “on Tony’s site, those two well-known liberals, Cara Michele and Chuck Atkinson, also mention Alston but no other Democrats.”
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 15, 2008
As I responded over at Ribar’s:
“Just so you know, as one who knows them both here’s a little insight: When Skip needs a new well drilled he calls Yow to drill it for him. And when Yow wants to play golf he calls Skip to play with.
You don’t spend thousands of dollars with a man you hate nor do you freely spend your days golfing with him either.
Both of these men are friends and business associates who play the race card to the hilt and laugh all the way to the bank.
For both men the race card keeps them in office and both are happy to play the game.”
By Billy The Blogging Poet on Apr 15, 2008
Well, Chuckie, better damned for a sheep than to be a sheep. Mister “well known liberal”: when are you going to succeed in inflicting Anarchia’s wrath past your own house, and consume us all?
By Robin Leskovitch on Apr 15, 2008
Professor Ribar,
In your sentence quoted below, you failed to recognize that you had a restrictive appositive. Such a grammar moment requires a comma after “Skip Alston.” (Or if you meant for that to be a nonrestrictive appositive, you should have omitted the comma that precedes Skip’s name.)
“Well, the banner shows that it’s the Democrats on the commission, most especially one of the black commissioners, Skip Alston who is depicted in the background on the right.”
On another note, though you were quoting directly from the N&R, you should have corrected the sentence that read as follows:
“And Yow himself said, ‘When you look you see Skip (Alston) sitting over there. And without me, you see, he’s a loose cannon.’”
If you didn’t notice, the subordinate clause that began with “When” needs a comma after that introductory clause.
With these two items noted, please don’t self-righteously become Mr. Grammar Check to the blog world.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 17, 2008
Sweet!
Tony: I, too, am a grammar, punctuation and MLA aficionado!
Hell, no one else ever taught (most of) my Latin (yes, the official language of the Vatican, better known as ‘the one ancient Romans spoke’) students their own native tongue, ergo, I had to learn lingua anglica so that I could explain it to them before I busted out with the foreign stuff.
By Maria Barton on Apr 18, 2008
Ribar: Tony,You’re right that the sentence is missing a comma.
My guess is that you are referring to my response to Anon’s comment (as I usually don’t comment on other people’s spelling or grammar for the exact reason you pointed out). However, an unconventionally spelled post telling me to “leave politics to much smarter people” was too much to resist.
By Tony Wilkins on Apr 18, 2008
Lingua Anglica?…. Bene……….. Lingua bovis cum mustard et panis secalis usurpo, sed lingua politici, non.
By Robin Leskovitch on Apr 18, 2008
me to iz a grammer buph..i luv to tawk abowt the stuph..but minny run whin the spelin gits tuf witch kawses me to say “enuph”
By chuck atkinson on Apr 18, 2008