What are Kentucky's answers?

[BridgeTheGap]

What is the answer for the state of Kentucky? That was the question posed to character actor and West Irvine, Ky., native Harry Dean Stanton, in a recent Esquire interview. "There is no answer to the state of Kentucky," he said.

And so after the battering Kentucky took during the primary elections, we continue to get "The Beverly Hillbillies" treatment by the media.

Particularly memorable was CNN's "interview" with down-and-out-squatters in Clay County lamenting their hard-knock lot in life. Even some of our own natives, like Stanton I presume, see a lost cause.

The history goes back to the coal mining wars with Lyndon Baines Johnson's 1964 announcement of the War on Poverty. He was photographed on the front porch of a run-down house in Inez, Ky. For decades, that famous photo has demonstrated the failures of the family on the front porch -- and how far we have not come in conquering that scourge.

As Inez banker (and former Republican National chairman) Mike Duncan recently put it, "The War on Poverty did not succeed."

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090302/OPINION04/903020311/1054/OPINION

[get the red out]

1. That Scourge

is not conquered and it won't be, as long as "that scourge" is the only face of Kentucky that anyone ever sees. The constant barrage of images of poverty and ignorance being all there is in this state prevents the very things that could help change things. When people who have relocated to Ky look at you and tell you that it is amazing that you managed to get a college education, growing up in the eastern part of the state, and you tell them that all your friends in your middle class sub-division went to college also, AND THEY DON'T BELIEVE YOU; the image needs some realism and balance. The constant pity isn't a solution, it is a stigma.

Now the scourge is drug abuse in eastern Kentucky, and only a change in drug policies and approach to the problem of drug abuse in the country in general can help. The same is true for inner cities as far a drug policies and how they hurt the people.

But I dare anyone to go to any town or city in this state and not find nice homes along with poverty, educated people along with the uneducated.

[iamthebandfanman]

3. cant act like its not there tho

eastern kentucky IS a mess. has been for as long as i can remember(granted i havent lived all that long).

ive tried to volunteer for groups who help in the region, but im told by most of them id hafta make long term commitments...
there were a few religious organisations that told me i couldnt just volunteer for a week... id hafta come for atleast a month.

at the time there was noway i coulda asked for time off my job for that long...

[quidam56]

2. Eastern Kentucky, like the rest of Appalachia is being decapitated

our health care and environment are 3rd world America. http://www.wisecountyissues.com