Glenn Jacobs can lull you into believing he’s a slow-moving, slow-thinking jock. Then he strikes like a rattler. Who knew a guy 7 feet tall and 300 pounds could be so nimble?
Politics is constant, and you’re either winning or losing. Right now, Jacobs is up, up, up.
It started with his obstinate opposition to business closures and mask requirements during the pre-vaccine covid crisis. He rallied a small army of bar owners and anti-maskers to speak at public meetings. They successfully neutered the county’s health board and Jacobs then announced an end to closures and masks, while telling the Health Department to get back to doing whatever it did before.
A vocal minority egged on by an authoritarian leader develops energy to overthrow a less rabid majority. Gee, where have we seen this happen?
Meanwhile, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said she would pull city police from Knox County Schools at the end of the school year. Jacobs struck back with a letter to the school board (Jacobs letter to BOE) expressing strong opposition to hiring an outside firm to facilitate public meetings on school security. Or as he put it, “To tell the district what every parent in Knox County already knows: armed law enforcement officers are a necessity in schools.”
Kincannon is a perfect foil for Jacobs – the Hillary to his Donald.
Kincannon, 50, graduated from Princeton School of Public and International Affairs with a master’s degree in public affairs and urban & regional planning (1999). She earned a bachelor’s in history (1993) from Haverford College.
Jacobs, 54, earned a bachelor’s in English from Northeast Missouri State University (NEMO), but he’s got a Ph.D. from the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Inc.
Politics is constant. And right now, Jacobs has pinned Kincannon to the mat in a chokehold.
Evetty Satterfield
Evetty Satterfield, school board member, gets the “What She Said” award for the week. During Wednesday’s BOE workshop, a director advocated for a policy change to prohibit parents (or possibly anyone) from recording meetings with school officials without first getting permission from Knox County Schools.
Satterfield asked (paraphrased): “How do we enforce this? What is the penalty for violating it?” Duh. KCS cannot enforce it. So why bother?
Nashville reporter/writer Keel Hunt sees similarity in Gov. Bill Lee’s signing a bill to tell the state’s teachers what they are not to teach children about race, bias and the country’s racial history. He says it’s similar to the 1925 law that forbad the teaching of evolution.
When John Scopes violated that law, he was tried in Rhea County in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Hunt says national laughter from that trial still echoes across our hills. Read his commentary here.
Sandra Clark is editor/CEO of Knox TN Today.