Low class 'Carolina trash'

Editorial by Greenville Daily Reflector, March 11, 2014.

Gov. Pat McCrory on Monday helped kick off a new statewide anti-litter campaign that intends to raise awareness of littering and crack down on offenders. The governor might draw more attention to the problem by adopting a nastier attitude toward citizens who routinely toss garbage from the windows of moving automobiles.

He could call those people what they are, which is “Carolina Trash.”

Pitt County certainly has a terrible problem when it comes to “Carolina Trash.” The problem is evident along any main highway that connects to Greenville — take your pick. It’s not pretty and the inmate crews that work to remove the trash might as well be trying to empty the Tar River with teaspoons.

The best part of the state’s new anti-litter campaign is its emphasis on law enforcement and encouraging citizens who witness littering to use a cellphone to call *47 and report the offense. Unfortunately, the vast majority of litter tends to find its way to the roadsides without an audience.

It’s hard to criticize any effort to reduce the problem of littering, but the new campaign slogan, “Litter Free NC, A Clean State is a Safer State,” does not exactly get stuck in your head.

To find an anti-littering slogan that does get stuck in your head, and also works to stigmatize offenders, you have to go back nearly 40 years and visit our neighbor to the west, Tennessee. A public service announcement that first aired there in 1976 put Nashville’s country music machine to work producing a song, “Tennessee Trash,” that got straight to the point:

He’s a little bit of you,

He’s a little bit of me

He’s the trash along the roadside of Tennessee

He’s the garbage that we find

He’s the dream we left behind

Lord, there ain’t no lower class than Tennessee Trash ...

In the PSA (which can be found on YouTube) a filthy man in a wife-beater T-shirt rides along in a junky convertible constantly tossing out garbage. As the car disappears into the hazy heat rising from the highway, a deep-voiced announcer proclaims, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

North Carolina needs an anti-litter campaign that points fingers and abandon’s political correctness.

The Volunteer State had no problem with borrowing North Carolina’s “Click It or Ticket” seat belt campaign. Why not borrow one of their’s and call out the “Carolina Trash” among us?

http://www.reflector.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-low-class-carolina-trash-2417779