Bruce's blunder at the chamber

I find it amazing we are finding Chairman Bruce Hamrick of the Walker County Commission making crude remarks hailing back from the Vietnam War in front of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce. Of all people to blow this, I didn't think it would be him.

Hamrick did just that Thursday, according to the Birmingham News. (The Birmingham chamber's Web site, loaded with multi-media from 2008, did not have any thing by which to hear the remarks Friday.)

"When talking about economic challenges facing the region, Hamrick told a story comparing the economic situation to his time in Vietnam," News Writer Joseph Bryant wrote Friday on page 3B. "In the story, an officer complained about the small number of enemies killed and soldiers responded by saying they could only kill so many (slur) in a day. Hamrick then said the region must work the same way as the soldiers did in attacking the economic problems" by working together.

Of course, the economic problems seem to spring out of the jungle like the enemy in Vietnam and we seem to be losing no matter what we do, but that's beside the point. The point is that in one of the most diverse cities in the state, a true melting pot that maybe better represents America than Walker County does, Hamrick made a careless remark that is offensive to a number of people who now are business leaders in this nation.

It doesn't stop there. The News said Hamrick talked about the influence of women and used a joke about his granddaughter to say he was getting used to the idea. That's great, since most of America got used to it 20 years ago. I don't even want to know how many women there were in the audience, because it was probably half.

You can imagine the backlash. The News had a five-column headline (out of six): "Remarks called insensitive, sexist." Underneath, the chamber president said that the chamber does not "condone sexist or racist comments, regardless of the context in which the comments were made," although he added the chamber does not screen the comments in advance.

Birmingham businessman David Sher said he didn't know about the Vietnam term, but had a bad enough feeling about it that he thought, "Ouch," at the time. Birmingham City Councilman Steven Hoyt said he didn't appreciate it and thought it was "out of place and out of line."

State Sen. Jabo Waggoner, who resides much of the time at Smith Lake and is a friend to local officials, and county attorney Hank Wiley was the only ones to defend Hamrick in the story, as Hamrick could not be reached.

As a person, I like Hamrick. He did serve bravely in Vietnam, and I know he is proud of his record. I think he has done well to try to represent the county at wine-and-cheese crowds such as this, at least in the past. But something failed this year. Badly.

It is not the first time a speech has gone badly. Comedy writer Hal Kanter said at a 1999 Friars Club event, "the human brain is an astonishing instrument. it starts working the moment you're born and it doesn't stop until you're called on to speak in public. That just happened to me."

Still, Hamrick has had enough experiences with crowds like this that he should have known to be on his best behavior. Walker County has the problem of being the ugly stepchild in a room of Birmingham officials, and you have to project a professional image that can win over their support. In a time where we are in that economic slump that Hamrick talked about, we have to be more careful so we can get that cooperation and image to win jobs and projects.

So what do we project? Well, first there was the redneck image, and, let's face it, an image we can sometimes be racist here, where the Klan was once strong. Then there were the bingo halls. Now this.

I feel bad for Hamrick. I really do. But I hope our public officials will consider the implications in a politically correct before they make an address like this again.