Duh-huh! That 'best face' has egg all over it

It looks like we've had another outbreak of idiocy.

According to The Salisbury Post, Kannapolis is taking down banners relating to the late Dale Earnhardt apparently because billionaire David Murdock is bringing an important guest to town this weekend and he wants to see the town put on "it's best face."

The rumbling is that Murdock is bringing Oprah Winfrey in to look at the North Carolina Research Center, the science research park that Murdock's company, Castle & Cooke, is developing on the site of the former Cannon Mills.

Apparently there have been some e-mails exchanged among city officials in Kannapolis and members of the Cabarrus Convention and Visitors Bureau that "Dale Trail" banners celebrating the fact that Kannapolis is the birthplace of one of NASCAR's greatest drivers doesn't jibe with the efforts to turn the city into a home for science.

You know, because anybody who likes NASCAR is stoopid.

Good grief.

First, in case you haven't noticed, there's a pretty fair concentration of smart people who work in the NASCAR shops and live in homes in Cabarrus and surrounding counties. NASCAR teams have dozens of engineers and highly trained experts in things like fluid dynamics. A brand-new, state-of-the-art, rolling road wind tunnel just opened in the county a week ago and race teams from all over the world are signing up to bring their cars here for high-tech research.

Second, if Cabarrus County wants to be the "home of science" then why doesn't it tell its hotels and restaurants not to serve those "NASCAR people" who come in not only when there are races in town but all year round to see things like the Dale Earnhardt statue that's in downtown Kannapolis.

Surely these nitwits with the up-turned noses don't want the dumbed down dollars from race fans to taint those collected from all the "smart" people who come into for Murdock's new deal.

Third, if Murdock thinks Oprah Winfrey or whoever he's bringing to town this weekend is going to make decisions about a community about what kind of banners might be hung up on the poles along the street, that's even more insulting to the intelligence of that person than it is to the good people of Kannapolis and to the good race fans who ought to feel fairly well insulted by this whole silly mess.