Jan:

Let’s get acquainted. You’re a journalist at the New York Times, a former newspaper. Assigned to cover vaccine rollout, you decided to figure out why some people aren’t getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

I’m Chris. I’m from Greeneville, Tennessee. Born and raised.

And after this hatchet job you wrote, you and I have a problem.

I get it. You need to push a narrative white Christian evangelicals aren’t getting vaccinated. If they don’t, they’re interfering with the country’s ability to reach herd immunity.

You fucked with my quiet mountain home. Now I’m calling you on your bullshit.

I’ll grant you did a great job picking Greeneville as a white, Christian, Republican town. If you’re there for a day or two, it would look that way.

Until you ran into any number of Greene County’s numerous Latino residents. Or the people of color. The place is more diverse than you’d like to admit.

You also let readers know seven paragraphs in you actually learned something during your week in my backyard. If there’s one thing Greene County folks despise, it’s outsiders messing in our business.

I take no issue with your cited statistics. Nor do I doubt the vaccinated are staying tight lipped. As we established, Greene County folks mind their business.

Where I begin to take issue is your painting Greeneville as a place where people are dropping like flies. I worked in and around Greeneville all winter and it was business as usual save for masks, lots of takeout and odd business hours.

Another problem comes with your feature of Walt Cross, who appears to be some sort of new age healer-type in Cocke County, as some sort of well known, universally respected figure. Ma’am, I’ve lived in and around East Tennessee my entire life. I’ve never heard of the guy.

Cocke County is a different place than Greene as well. The communities are a half hour apart. But that little detail was convenient to obscure, wasn’t it?

I’ll give you credit for quoting Jeremy Faison correctly. Most folks around here think it’s best to take care of our own, and we don’t like being told what to do.

But then you go and bring religion into it.

Yes, Greene County, with its numerous churches (three on one street alone), is full of deeply religious people. And I get this might offend your Yankee sensibilities, but yeah. Most of us feel if we die, we die, no matter the cause, and Heaven awaits us.

But then you try to paint the community’s religious leaders as the sole authority figures. Honestly, they’re not. The local government is. Religious people aren’t stupid, and this isn’t a theocracy.

And one of the alleged authority figures you cite is a Mennonite pastor. During your week in my quiet mountain home, did you notice the Mennonite population is incredibly small? And that they live what most folks wouldn’t call “normal” lives?

Preachers also stick to preaching the Gospel around here too. I don’t know what church you attend, Jan, but here ministers don’t spew policy from the pulpit.

I also don’t know who you talked to while you were here besides the folks you named in the piece, but I did a little informal poll of Greene Countians today, Jan. No one believes the vaccine had anything to do with aborted fetuses. People have heard of the conspiracy theory about the microchips, but no one believes it.

One person was unsure because of how quickly the vaccine was developed. Another said the vaccine was “experimental,” there was no guarantee it would work and you’d still have to wear a mask.

“Why don’t you think the vaccines work?” I asked.

“Dr. Fauci said so” was the answer.

And there you have it. It’s not because of toxic whiteness, Christianity or Darth Cheeto. It’s the guy your pals in the media keep trotting out as Public Health Jesus telling everyone even after two shots we need to wear two face diapers forever and Grandma needs to visit in a plastic bubble.

But that doesn’t fit your blessed narrative.

The pictures in your piece are beautiful. They’re also staged as hell. Masks are still required on entry at Tipton’s, and it’s crowded because it’s small. I was also there Monday and rare was the sight of a maskless person.

It’s funny how often people in the news portray Southerners as dumb, gun-toting, God-fearing idiots who live in coveralls and can’t read.

The truth is most of us are a lot more complex than you snooty Yankees like to admit.

What kills me the most about your reporting, Jan, was your analysis on the paper’s podcast “The Daily.” Adopting a patronizing and condescending attitude is no way to change someone’s mind.

The problem is you do that in your entire piece.

So Jan, as a native son of Greeneville, from all of us to you: go fuck yourself. You wrote an article full of shit. You are by extension full of shit. Congratulations on being part of the reason people like folks in Greeneville don’t trust the media.

To everyone else reading this: happy weekend, everybody!