This editorial board is aware that the Missouri General Assembly's
late-2025 mid-decade redistricting of the state's congressional map —
a procedural action approved on party lines in December 2025 and
currently the subject of at least three separate pending federal
lawsuits — has, per extensive and credible reporting in the national
political press, been tied to the 1997 Disney children's sports-
comedy film Air Bud.
The connection is not, in the pejorative sense, tenuous. It has been
reported on by the Washington Post, the Missouri Independent,
and Politico. The reporting is sourced. The reporting has not
been retracted. The connection exists. We concede it.
This editorial board has read the reporting.
We will not reproduce it.
Our reasoning
We decline, in this editorial, to explain the connection between a
1997 children's film about a basketball-playing golden retriever and
the 2025 redistricting of Missouri's congressional map on three
grounds:
We are a local Helen, Georgia publication. Our jurisdiction —
White County, the municipality of Helen, Sautee-Nacoochee
Valley — is geographically contiguous with neither Missouri nor,
to our knowledge, any filming location of Air Bud. The story is
not, in any meaningful sense, a Helen story. Our readership did
not subscribe for Missouri redistricting coverage. Our reporters
have not been to St. Louis. Our editorial board has not been to
St. Louis. We do not feel qualified to be, in our pages, the
outlet that finally makes the Air Bud connection make sense to
the Northeast Georgia reading public.
The connection, once explained, cannot be un-explained. We
have, in the preparation of this editorial, read the reporting
twice — once on the day of initial publication (December 27,
- and once in a second reading Saturday afternoon, January
- On each reading, we have understood the connection. On
neither reading has the understanding been an improvement to our
day. We are, by the end of the second reading, approximately
three percent less hopeful about the country than we were at the
beginning. We are a local paper. Our role is not to make our
readers less hopeful.
Some things are better simply acknowledged. It is sometimes
the case, in a functioning republic, that an observably true
thing has occurred, and the most appropriate journalistic
response is to note the observably true thing, trust the reader
to pursue the details elsewhere if so inclined, and decline to
provide further propagation. This is one of those cases. The
reader who wishes to understand why a 1997 Disney sports-comedy
is load-bearing to Missouri's 2026 congressional map has, from
the Washington Post et al., ample access. The reader who
prefers not to have to, is, in our view, entitled to that
preference.
Our expected response
We expect, in response to the editorial, to receive a number of
communications from readers asking us to please just explain the
connection.
We will, in the aggregate, decline.
The reader who has encountered the concept for the first time in
these pages is, per this editorial board's informal Saturday
afternoon canvassing of my wife Beatrice (who is, I remind you,
neither in the newspaper business nor in politics), expected to look
up the full story independently within approximately 40 minutes of
finishing this editorial.
You may, if you wish, use your own 40 minutes however you like.
We recommend the forty minutes be spent on something else. The
Chattahoochee at the Robertstown Road bridge is, per Friday's USGS
gauge, flowing at 27 cfs. It is a clear, cold, pale-green river. It
would welcome a walk.
— Edmund Crowe, Editorial Page Editor
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