About The East Nashvillian Magazine! LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Fall is on the way. The air becomes crisp and clear, and the autumn leaves paint their postcard pictures. Life is livable again. Of course, this fall will also serve up its share of spitballs. Spitballs? Yes, you read that correctly, and I’m not talking about fourth graders. That would be giving fourth graders a bad name. No, I’m talking about election year. It has rolled around yet again, accompanied by all the pageantry, pomp, mudslinging, name-calling, misinformation spewing and hate mongering we as Americans have come to know and love. Admittedly, “love” might be a stretch — I’m reaching for the ibuprofen as I write this, but you get my drift. Honestly, if you ask me the entire affair has become one gigantic infomercial with everyone involved displaying an inordinate need for the supplication of his or her oversized ego. It’s a feeding frenzy for the rejected inner child. And then there are the politicians. That the right is might and the left is cerebral is old hat. These days it’s all about the Benjamins, and even our little neck of the woods isn’t immune to its ever-growing influence, as the results of the recent school board election demonstrate. I have no gripe whatsoever with winner Elissa Kim. For that matter her organization did a premium placement, full-page ad buy in our last issue. On the contrary, I wish her the very best and I hope she can do great things during her tenure. What should be pointed out though is there was a disproportionate amount of outside money invested in her candidacy. So that’s the long and the short of it really; do we really want disinterested outside groups influencing local election results? As a country, we’ve already become to a certain degree the land of homogeneity. East Nashville still stands firm against this trend for now. But remember the words of Gordon Gecko, “Money never sleeps, sport.” Chuck Allen editor@theeastnashvillian.com