Eat our Krispy Kremes! Ignore those stupid protesters!

The state of Georgia will host some 3,500 reporters from around the world at the G-8 Summit June 8-10. They’ll file their stories from a state-of-the-art media center across the river from downtown Savannah. They’ll take home goodie bags filled with trinkets. Southern hospitality will also include — no kidding — a Krispy Kreme doughnut stand inside the media center, where reporters can stuff their pie holes to their hearts’ content.

The idea, according to Eric Tanenblatt, the state organizer for G-8 who spoke at an Atlanta Press Club panel last week, is that reporters will go home to Japan or Jamaica or wherever, spouting the wonders of Georgia. This, presumably, will lead to more tourism dollars and, most optimistically, foreign investors who want to set up business here.

All that hospitality for reporters, unfortunately, seems to have left very little for demonstrators opposed to the G-8. With the summit less than two weeks away, organizers of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) — an annual series of panels that follows G-8 summits from city to city — are still looking for a place to conduct their business. So too are organizers of the Fair World Fair. And while the city of Brunswick last week loosened regulations on public gatherings, it added a clause that now gives police even more discretion to shut down events, especially if a “state of emergency” exists.

Conveniently, Gov. Sonny Perdue has declared a state of emergency in six counties — including Glynn — along coastal Georgia.

“It’s strange to have a state of emergency when nothing’s happened,” says Robert Randall, a Fair World Fair organizer. A pre-emptive state of emergency, he says, is kind of like a pre-emptive state of war. “You go ahead and clobber people whether they’ve done anything or not.”??