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Reading Glenn Reynolds (”Instapundit”) can be trying; there can be something both a little cold-blooded and a little furtive about his various gnomic pronouncements and their plausibly deniable meanings.

Take for instance his posting on a report about the gunman attack on a Knoxville church (2 dead, 5 hospitalized, 4 in critical condition):

WELL, THIS MAKES MORE SENSE than that “hated Christians” report, though I suppose the two aren’t mutually inconsistent or anything: Police: Accused shooter hated liberals, expected to be killed.

This seems to me a kind of virtuoso dog-whistle solo. You see, it wasn’t just a church, it was just a Unitarian church — chock full o’ gay-lovin’ liberals. I wonder if that’s why Reynolds was puzzled by the otherwise unremarkable theory that someone who shoots people in a Christian church “hated Christians.” Oh, he hated liberals! Now that makes more sense.

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UPDATE, 7/29: Whether or not Glenn Reynolds’s musings fit the bill, the attacker was definitely someone gunning for liberals, and Jeffrey Feldman (”FRAMESHOP”) is right that not enough has been made of that — or of the kind of rhetoric encouraging that. If you’re in the area, he’ll be appearing at a DC Drinking Liberally get-together this Thursday, 6;30pm, at Timberlake’s (1726 Connecticut Ave, near the Dupont Metro stop). His book, “Outright Barbarous”, is about how eliminationist rhetoric is poisoning our discourse and endangering us.

Oak Ridge High School will play Brentwood’s Ravenwood High School in a bid for Oak Ridge’s 9th Tennessee football championship on Saturday. The game will be played at 7pm CST, 8pm EST in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Oak Ridger is covering the story, of course:

The Oak Ridge team will be leaving from Oak Ridge High School at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. Everyone is encouraged to come down and give them a sendoff fit for potential champions. They will travel to Outback, eat, then hit the road. They will stop in Cookeville for a walkthrough on the turf at Tennessee Tech. Fans are encouraged to convoy with them until they exit in Cookeville.

That should be fun! I played in the ORHS high school band a little over 30 years ago now; the football team was competitive back then, too, and won the state championship in 1976. Being a small part of the show during the game and at half time was pretty fun — even if I wasn’t much of a clarinet player.

Over Thanksgiving, I went to the semifinals game in Oak Ridge with my brother, and watched ORHS break out to an early lead and then grind down a surprisingly ineffective Murfreesboro Riverdale team, 17-0. The game wasn’t even as close as that looks — Oak Ridge failed to score on one first and goal situation.

It was a big upset: Riverdale had made the finals the last 5 years in a row, beat ORHS last year in the semifinals, and hadn’t lost a game since 2003. But their running back couldn’t get consistent yardage, their passing game didn’t work very well, and several turnovers finished the job.

My brother was surprised by what seemed like a meager Murfreesboro turnout; it may have made a difference, because the noise from the home crowd section was pretty deafening. Head coach Stanton Stevens seemed to spend about as much time grabbing a cheerleader horn and leading “Who are we? WILDCATS!” cheers as he did directing the team. I guess it worked. Key items: empty detergent bottles with rocks or pennies or something inside. You get a couple of dozen football moms and boosters shaking those things in your vicinity, you’re not going to hear much else during the game, or for a while after it.

Watch this space for a photo or two from that game, if they turn out. Meanwhile, here are a few from the Nashville Tennessean. I’ll be adding an update when the results of the championship game are in.

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UPDATE, 12/3: Via the CoachT.com message board, it appears Ravenwood won 14-7. Congratulations to them, but also to the Oak Ridge team for a great season.
UPDATE, 12/5: Steve “Doc” Combs, the ORHS band director from 1960-1980, died last week. He was a wonderfully nice man, and was very dedicated to music in Oak Ridge. He was also an excellent, patient teacher both of gifted musicians and ones like myself. He will be missed.

The “artist formerly known as South Knox Bubba” is guest-blogging for the week over at “Facing South.”

Topics so far include thoughts on Hurricane Katrina, and a nasty situation in Tennessee’s Blount County involving racially motivated threats, local high schools, and the Confederate flag.

UPDATE, 8/30: Mountain Girl writes that he’s also set up a photo blog, RViews; if you go to the gallery area, there are bird photos and several from his recent trip west.

Meanwhile, in similar news, Paperwight says he’ll be back.

“…after Southknoxbubba.” It’s up over at Big Orange Michael’s. The Volunteer Tailgate Party collects posts submitted by Tennessee (and ex-Tennessee) bloggers; there’s something there for just about everyone.

It’s my habit to post a few reactions to some of the “VTP” posts, and I’ll do so in this space later on. For now: Check it out! …

Johnny Dobbins has set up a great new “RockyTopBrigade.org” site for bloggers who sign up (or have signed up) and who…

• are current or past residents of Tennessee
• put a link to the site on their blog

The site has a home page showing members’ latest posts, a central signup process, an “OPML” list of members that you can import into your favorite blogrolling system, blogger tips, and more.

I’ve corresponded a bit with Johnny, SayUncle, Bob, and Barry as the site was designed; it has been a friendly, collegial process, and I appreciated the chance to be involved.

I’m very sorry to find out Southknoxbubba (aka SKB) has taken down his blog. If you click through to the old address, you get a “Game Over!” image and a “So long!” title bar, so it’s pretty unequivocal.

SayUncle, another Tennessee blogger, got an e-mail from SKB confirming the news. While it doesn’t go into reasons other than “time with family” — which is a pretty good reason, of course — I’m guessing it’s a delayed effect of a recent online scuffle with the owner of “Metropulse,” a worthless Knoxville area newspaper, that resulted in SKB revealing his real name online.

SKB was (is!) an outspoken, liberal voice of reason in a noisy world. I’ll miss his takes on the news, his Friday bird-blogging and wonderful photography, and his sense of humor. His “Rocky Top Brigade” (RTB) has been a wonderful way to stay in touch with my home state and home region. There’s a nice appreciation of his blog by Michael Silence of the Knoxville News Sentinel, and I intend to collect links to others as they start to happen. If there’s a Tennessee Hall of Fame, I think SKB belongs in it — under his pseudonym, the way I got to know him.

So long online, friend. I hope you’ll drop by our various blogs now and then, and I hope someday I get to meet you in person, shake your hand, and thank you for all you’ve done. I mainly hope you remain politically active; like Howard Dean said in Nashville, we need more like you running for office. Think about it! Maybe you already are…

OK, then.

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OTHER VOICES: Smijer, Tennessee Liberal, Democratic Veteran, Great Smoky, Glenn Reynolds, Domestic Psychology, Why Now? (that’s the name of the blog), Brian Arner, 10000 Monkeys and a Camera, Sharon Cobb, Sugarfused, No Direction Home, Lean Left, Doug McDaniel, Les Jones, Meanderthal, Andy Axel, LeftWingCracker, Mike Hollihan, Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Thoughts of an Average Woman, We’re Screwed (that’s the name of the blog), Mountain Girl, Bob Stepno, Swap Blog, Bill Hobbs,WhitesCreek Journal, Six Meat Buffet, Len Cleavelin, Shots Across The Bow, What it is today, Wandering Hillbilly, Nonattainment Zone, Open Your Mind, Mr. Rocky Top, Library Monk, Deliverance, Domestic Psychology, a moveable beast, Chattanooga-Hamilton Civic Forum, Mel’s Diner, Katie Allison Granju, Appalachistan, poop happens, The Bully Pulpit, Ruminate This, Backassward, Tales of Tadeusz, Daily Pepper, The Pop Culturephile, Betty Bean, The Pulse Blog … Sisyphus Shrugged, Chewie World Order, Blue Page Special, Daily Pepper, Alternate Brain, Facing South, PSoTD…

UPDATE, 7/20: Now there’s a message to go with the “Game Over!” image: “…lately it has become too much like work and not so much fun.”
UPDATE, 7/20: Rocky Top Brigade web page temporarily(?) mirrored by Bob Stepno. Thanks!
UPDATE, 7/21: SayUncle posts “RTB Administrative Notes,” essentially saying that the show will go on, and noting that Johnny Dobbins (”Just Johnny”) will be helping. Johnny has established a rockytopbrigade.org site, pending a go-ahead from SKB.
UPDATE, 7/22: OK, I’m done for a while with this post. If you’d like your or someone else’s “so long, SKB” post added, let me know in the comments or by e-mail, and it’ll get up there eventually.

PS: I join a lot of the above bloggers in the hope, however fanciful, that SKB will change his mind sometime and resume his blog.

More Tennessean and ex-Tennessean blogging over at “Domestic Psychology“. (And congrats on “Omega”! We called ours “Schmendrick” until the sonogram convinced us it should be “Schmendrina.”)

A new addition to the wide, wide world of Tennessee blogging: Communists for Tenncare (link to “Manifesto”). I’m still working out whether it’s a dirty trick site by opponents of the beleaguered health care program, an ally with a tongue-in-cheek campy communist schtick, or whether maybe it’s — gasp — just what it says it is. So far, I lean to door number two, because they actually link to information about April 8 protest marches, the “funny” aspect trumps the “communist cooties” one, and maybe because I’ve just never met any communists for Tenncare before.

Appalachia Alumni Association is another interesting site (again). Liz writes about pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control and other prescriptions to which they have religious/moral objections, and describes efforts in her current home state of Texas to expand the class of medical professionals and organizations who can refuse care for such reasons. Noting that “the Supreme Court has affirmed that a woman has an inalienable constitutional right to health care options relating to reproduction up to and including abortion,” she argues:

This is not a question of health care policy, but of political power. While it would be unthinkable for a cafe owner to deny service to non-Christians for conscientious reasons, somehow the matter of health care providers denying service to women for conscientious reasons is tolerable.

This is an interesting argument, even if it finesses a key difference; in one the service is denied because of who the client is, in the other because of what the service is. I also think there’s a certainly a right to expect not to face criminal penalties for abortion or birth control, but I’m not sure there’s a right to expect the availability of either option. I feel like I should know this or have come to a conclusion about it, but I don’t and I haven’t. Please feel free to sharpen your pens and enlighten me.

Even assuming there were such a right to availability, I’m uneasy demanding that a given individual pharmacist help a woman exercise it. I’d (very much) support pro-choice legislators enacting policies discouraging — but not forbidding — “conscience” based service denials by economically favoring pharmacies that don’t do that, and encouraging pharmacies to serve the unmet reproductive health needs of women. Of course, there’s no such legislature in Texas — but if there’s a legal market, wouldn’t some pharmacies want to fill the void?*

A note: I wish even more of the lefty-liberalish Rocky Top Brigade folks would submit entries to these “tailgate parties.” There’s nothing wrong with having a look at the best of, say, Les Jones, No Quarters, or SayUncle, but I’ve missed Brian Arner, C.E. Petro, Democratic Veteran, Smijer & Buck, and the group over at Dark Bilious Vapors the last several times, to name a few. (Southknoxbubba too, for that matter! I assume he gets the e-mail announcements.) They’ve always got some good posts, so head over and give them a look, too.

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* I go back and forth on the general question. I think the situation is different with hospitals and their doctors, because it can be substantially harder to commute to a new hospital than to a new pharmacy. I’m also guessing it’s harder for new hospitals or clinics to be added to a market than it is for a new pharmacy. So as of now I think hospitals should provide options by having doctors who will, but pharmacies shouldn’t have to; I’m open to counterarguments. (EDIT, 3/31: ‘commute’ for ‘find’.)

While we’re on the topic of disgusting simulated concern for helpless victims, who can forget Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s visit to tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka earlier this year:

Just before his helicopter lifted off, Frist and aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris.

‘Get some devastation in the back,’ Frist told a photographer.

(CBS News, via Andrew Sullivan; previously posted on January 9, 2005.)

Busy Mom is hosting the latest edition of the “Volunteer Tailgate Party” … check it out!

See especially Southknoxbubba’s “Black Box Voting Machines Banned” item, forwarding news about California officials recommending that the Diebold voting machines not be used in the November election, after numerous problems with them in the past few elections. SKB also provides a handy list of his prior posts on the subject. He has expert, well-informed, detailed objections to what he knows about these systems.

On Tuesday, the Rhea County, Tennessee Commission passed a motion by an 8-0 margin…

asking its state representatives to introduce legislation that would allow the county to charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

On Thursday, following nationwide coverage, the Rhea County, Tennessee Commission rescinded the motion by an 8-0 margin:

With an overflow crowd of vociferous supporters and foes of the homosexual lifestyle on hand, the commission filed in under police escort.

Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who made the original motion, moved it be rescinded. The vote was taken, and the commissioners quickly filed out - again under escort.

A good day’s work, I guess. The comments about the initial vote at Newschannel 9 are by turns entertaining, scary, and inspiring… Good for many of them for speaking up. Incidentally, what’s up with “lifestyle” all the time.

(Links via Inn of the Last Home; see also A Moveable Beast.)