Liz Garrigan lives in Bangkok, Thailand, and served as editor-in-chief of the Scene well before Nashville was a bachelorette destination.
Talk about hypocrisy in full regalia.
Gov. Bill Lee magnanimously posted on X last week that the state would issue a $5 million grant for food banks to offset expiring SNAP benefits. That represents just 3.5 percent of the estimated $145 million in federal food aid that 690,629 Tennesseans received in September. It’s the political equivalent of tossing crumbs from the banquet table and calling it generosity. He’s dressing up malpractice as magnanimity.
Lee’s symphony of shrugs in the face of this crisis for Tennessee families is a middle finger to common decency. This is a man who would force a 12-year-old rape victim to give birth. But damned if he’d feed her. It’s so perverse it would make even Andrew Jackson blush.
Without federal money, Gov. Lee says state is unable to backstop SNAP with $2.1 billion Rainy Day Fund
History will interpret Lee’s moral vacancy in declining to access Tennessee’s flush $2.1 billion rainy day fund as a cruel abdication of leadership — and humanity.
Lee’s stunningly unpersuasive justification for inaction? He admits incompetence, saying the state can’t figure out how to load benefits onto recipients’ SNAP cards. Sort your circus, Uncle Mandible — the kids are hungry. If that’s the case, then perhaps ante up more than table scraps to the food banks doing the moral labor for you.
At 77 years old, Jaynee Day, the retired former president and CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, is doing more than the state’s top officeholder to plug the gaps. “I am deeply disappointed by the governor’s decision not to extend SNAP benefits or utilize Tennessee’s reserve funds to support families in need,” she tells the Scene. “At a time when so many Tennesseans are struggling to afford basic necessities, I believe it is both prudent and compassionate to use available resources to ensure no one goes hungry.”
The governor’s office could, of course, gather stakeholders, review the data, try to develop consensus around a solution. In other words, work with the legislature to demonstrate that compassion and conservatism are not necessarily at odds. Instead, Tennesseans get indolence and lifeless press releases as courage takes another personal day. Uncle Mandible: strong chin, soft conscience.
Lee’s defenders would say he’s just being fiscally responsible, demonstrating fealty to a core red-state principle. But fiscal responsibility is not a synonym for studied indifference. The budget is healthy, the rainy-day fund is full — on the backs, by the way, of the poorest Tennesseans who suffer the most from the state’s regressive tax structure. And yet when it rains on Tennesseans’ dinner tables, we’re told the umbrella costs too much.
Lee’s political brand is essentially “steady hands, calm leadership,” which would be reassuring if it ever translated into action. He smiles through crisis, prays through policy and punts on decision-making.
The governor’s communication strategy appears to lean on the assumption that if he doesn’t say much, he won’t say anything wrong. And maybe that’s true. Silence is bulletproof — and just as empty as many Tennessee stomachs. The state’s social safety net is already threadbare, and all Lee had to do was not pull the last few strings.
There is a special irony in a governor who touts “Tennessee values” while ignoring the most basic one: taking care of our neighbors. And we’ve been here before. A little more than a decade ago, Tennessee declined to expand Medicaid, leaving billions in federal funds on the table because accepting them might look too blue for our red-state sensibilities. The SNAP debacle is déjà vu. Once again, ideology overrides pragmatism, and the people pay the price.
Southern politeness often cloaks cruelty in civility — preaching Christian values it won’t practice. Lee has perfected it. He is the embodiment of contradiction. He won’t shout, grandstand or appear actively unkind. He will simply let policies expire and programs atrophy, and allow people to fend for themselves — all with the serene composure of Uncle Mandible, convinced he’s done nothing wrong.
History won’t remember a scandal here, just a pattern: quiet neglect and garden-variety heartlessness dressed up as fiscal restraint. No drama, no noise, just the slow erosion of a government’s obligation to its people.
Leadership isn’t about doing nothing well. It’s about showing up when it costs you something. That’s a price Uncle Mandible never seems willing to pay.
Kentucky novelist James Allen Lane once wrote that “adversity does not build character; it reveals it.” By that measure, Bill Lee has exposed himself as someone who is thin on empathy, short on courage, and dangerously light on leadership. But credit where it’s due: grinning through this much hypocrisy takes a mighty jaw.
