Tag: Kerry Dougherty
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Oh Look! It’s Mock Jesus Night at the Ballpark.
by Kerry Dougherty During a freak heat wave in April of 2022 I went to a Tides game. To our surprise, it was also “bark in the park” or bring-your-dog-to-the ballpark day. The experience was Gothic. It was so hot and blindingly bright that all of the dogs and their owners huddled in the shade…
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The Lost Art of a Newspaper Hit Piece
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like newspapers have lost more than just their senior editors and writers. They’ve also lost the ability to craft a good old-fashioned hit piece. There was an art to that particular form of journalism. It had to be an expertly crafted story written with so much elegance that the subject sometimes…
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Hey Norfolk: Do Kids Really Need Classes In Masturbation?
by Kerry Dougherty You might think that a mediocre school system where barely half of all schools are fully accredited would put all of its energy and money into academics. Oh, Bambi, you have no idea how public schools work, do you? Norfolk School Board – which oversees a division where just 57.1% of the…
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Mother’s Day: Meandering Through Virginia
Regular readers of this space know that I am still seething over the actions America’s fascists embraced during Covid. The fact that they haven’t apologized and admitted that stomping on Constitutional rights over a virus was a colossal mistake is infuriating. That said, Covid brought two very good things. First: my daughter met the love of…
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As U.S. Teeters On the Brink of Recession, Virginia Beach Hikes Taxes
by Kerry Dougherty Do you mind if I’m brutally honest for a minute? Good. Because there’s no stopping me today. Any member of the Virginia Beach City Council majority who voted Tuesday to approve an obscene $2.5 billion budget as the country teeters on the edge of a recession is a liar if they try…
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Does Virginia Beach School Board Care About Girls’ Sports?
by Kerry Dougherty If you live in Virginia Beach, I have some questions for you: Did you sit at home while the Bathrobe Brigade on the School Board fought to keep schools closed, long after we knew kids weren’t at risk from Covid-19? Did you watch on public access TV as the hysterical hypochondriacs of…
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ODU Graduation: Snotty Brats In Caps and Gowns
by Kerry Dougherty Last month we wrote about snotty brats at George Mason University — a state-supported school — who’d rather stick their fingers in their ears than spend 10 minutes listening to someone who doesn’t share their radical agenda. That was Gov. Glenn Youngkin who they found so objectionable, incidentally. Depending on what news…
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Tornado
by Kerry Dougherty Virginia Beach isn’t tornado country. We know the drill with hurricanes. We had a rash of those in the ‘80s and ‘90s. From August to November most of us keep well-stocked hurricane boxes handy. And we have days — sometimes more than a week — to prepare or evacuate when a storm…
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School Closures Resulted In Spike In Suicide Attempts Among Kids
by Kerry Dougherty How is it that those of us without fancy degrees from prestigious universities or medical training intuitively KNEW that the Covid-19 lockdowns and school closures would have a profoundly negative effect upon kids? I watched one of my nieces, who graduated from high school in 2021, spend her junior year at home,…
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Geez, Louise
by Kerry Dougherty Uh-oh. Looks like Louise Lucas is a little rusty when it comes to campaigning for office. The powerful Democrat from deep blue Portsmouth is used to steamrolling any hapless Republican who gets in her way and sashaying into Richmond where she serves as the president pro tempore of the Senate and gets…
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JMU Debate Team Opposes Debate
by Kerry Dougherty It’s been decades since I was in college so help me out here. Wouldn’t you expect a university debate team to support free speech and the airing of diverse ideas? Yep, that’s what I thought too. But you haven’t met the easily triggered members of James Madison University’s debate team. They’re leading…
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Snow Day in April: Something in the Water
by Kerry Dougherty When the first Something in the Water Festival came to Virginia Beach in 2019, some lemon-sucking locals balked at allowing school buses to be used to transport revelers from satellite parking to the resort area. How will bus drivers be able to drive festival goers until 11 p.m. on Sunday and be…
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Youngkin Pumping The Presidential Brakes
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like Gov. Glenn Youngkin may have some natural immunity to the presidential virus that seems to infect most Virginia governors. At one time or another it seems almost every Virginia governor has his head turned by the seductive intoxication of presidential or vice presidential ambition. Anyone else remember L. Douglas Wilder?…
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Incarceration Should Not Mean Humiliation
by Kerry Dougherty Hang onto your wallets, Portsmouth. A lawsuit filed Friday in Circuit Court is seeking $1 million in damages due to alleged misconduct by a sheriff’s deputy. Oh, and another $350,000 in punitive damages. The conduct – if it happened – was atrocious. According to court papers filed by a former inmate, Danaesha…
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Gun Owner Whose Son Shot His Teacher Will Get Her Day In Court
by Kerry Dougherty Four words came to mind when news broke yesterday that a Newport News grand jury had indicted the mother of a 6-year-old school shooter: what took so long? It’s been 13 weeks since a FIRST GRADER brought a handgun to school in his backpack and used it to shoot his teacher in…