Month: October 2001

Categories
News News Feature

Feeling a Draft

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have both stated recently that the chances of reinstating the draft are unlikely. But President Bush has also speculated that we are entering a war on terrorism that could drag on for a decade or more and produce heavy casualties. The question becomes: How can we incur heavy casualties over a period of years without a draft? The answer, at least in the opinion of Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator for the Center on Conscience and War, is that we can’t.

“You’ll notice that Secretary Rumsfeld tacked the word ‘yet,’ or something to that effect, onto the end of his sentence,” says Galvin. “Rumsfeld said, ‘It’s not likely that we’ll need to reinstate the draft yet.’ But if we get into this kind of protracted ground war with heavy casualties, who knows? I think it’s highly likely that there will be a draft.”

Pat Schubach, the public affairs spokesperson for Selective Service, isn’t so sure the draft will be reinstated, but he doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility. “[Bush and Rumsfeld] didn’t want to say that there would be no draft because they didn’t want to say ‘no.'” The implication is that, should we find ourselves in a position where a draft becomes necessary, nobody has to go back on prior statements. “I don’t want to say anything that would [contradict] the president,” Schubach says. “We have an all-volunteer force and that works best. It’s better than having to draft people.”

Galvin notes that the imminent need for a draft has been mitigated by a recent increase in volunteers. But that increase can be misleading, he says. “When you have these periods of increased patriotism, like the Gulf War for instance, you see a spurt of enlistments. Then there are several months where fewer people go in than usual. My guess is this is partly because those who join during the period of increased patriotism would have eventually joined anyway. Or, after time passes, people start realizing that this isn’t about money for college or technical training. This is about fighting.”

Galvin’s view is confirmed to some degree by Schubach. “We have 1,500 people register a day on the Internet,” he says. “On September 11th that number jumped to 6,381, almost a 200 percent increase over the record, which was set in December 2000.” Schubach explains that while registration has remained strong, in the days since the attack on New York and D.C. the number of registrants has dropped off significantly.

“The entire Selective Service system is ready to go,” Galvin says. “It could take several months to initiate it, but it could happen that quickly.”

Schubach, who says Selective Service remains in a constant state of readiness, claims it wouldn’t take that long. “It looks like we could have the lottery going anywhere from day five to day 45. Notices would go out by day 76 and the first registrants would report about 10 days later. And all of this could be compressed.”

According to information provided by Selective Service, the lottery — a system made infamous during the Vietnam War — is still in place. Should the draft be reinstated, the lottery would focus first on men who are turning 21. There are fewer deferment possibilities than in years past in order to make the system more fair. College students may only defer until the end of the semester. College seniors may defer until graduation. In short, having the money to stay in school indefinitely is no longer a way to avoid the draft.

Schubach says there have been other changes made to increase the draft’s fairness. “During Vietnam local draft boards determined who was going to be drafted and who wasn’t,” he says. “Now it’s all centralized.”

At this point only young men are required to register, but Schubach does not entirely rule out the possibility of drafting women. “That would, of course, take a congressional action,” he says. “But the mechanism is the same. It would take some time to build the data base.”

If the draft is reinstated, the only way to avoid being called up is to file as a conscientious objector, and since all C.O.s have to be approved by their draft board, even that is no guarantee.

“You can’t [officially] file as a conscientious objector until you’ve been [drafted],” Galvin says. “So you could have as little as a week to file a claim. If you don’t file within a week, you aren’t entitled to it. This system is anything but fair. Unless you happen to know about [an organization like] us, you don’t really have many options.”

“It’s important for conscientious objectors to get involved with their church,” Galvin advises, noting that while draft laws don’t officially discriminate against those who aren’t religious, members of draft boards can show a bias. “Almost every religion supports conscientious objectors,” he continues, “and has some mechanism in place for supporting them.”

Galvin also recommends that conscientious objectors who are turning 18 write “I am a conscientious objector” somewhere on their registration form. “[Selective Service] won’t recognize this,” Galvin says, “but you should still do it.” Galvin also explains that when Selective Service sends notification they have received your registration, all conscientious objectors should send a certified letter, return receipt requested, reminding Selective Service that they are a conscientious objector. “That will stand up in court,” Galvin says, adding, “if Selective Service sends a form letter saying, ‘We aren’t accepting conscientious-objector requests now,’ that should be kept [as evidence].”

For more information on Selective Service or how to register for the draft, go to www.sss.gov. For more information on the Center on Conscience and War and achieving conscientious-objector status, go to www.nisbco.org.

You can e-mail Chris Davis at davis@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Deja View

The New York Times described it as “a crash out of a blue sky — an unexpected bolt which in a twinkling turned into shambles the busiest corner of America’s financial centre and sent scurrying to places of shelter hundreds of wounded, dumb-stricken, white-faced men and women, fleeing from an unknown danger …. Skyscrapers of the financial district appear to have been shelled.”

The nearest hospital was overflowing with the wounded and dying shortly after noon on that September day. A 17-year-old youth commandeered a car and made four trips carrying 30 of the injured to a nearby hospital — just one of the many heroes that afternoon.

Nearly 100 doctors and nurses volunteered to minister to the wounded. Hundreds of rescue workers flooded the downtown area. “Fumes from explosion and dust,” according to the Times, “formed a dense haze.” The headline the next day read, “Street strewn with bodies of dead and wounded — panic follows explosion.” The paper reported “slow identification of the dead, many of them mangled beyond ready recognition.”

The Stock Exchange immediately halted trading for the first time in its history. The mayor rushed to the scene. An editorial the next day claimed “it would appear there were human beings so depraved as to plot and carry out what they knew would be indiscriminate and wholesale murder.” Investigators now were convinced that “they faced a piece of organized deviltry.”

The head of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation saw it “as an act of general terrorism, believed to have been aimed against the Federal Government as well as against American capital.” He believed that “it was planned in the financial heart of America as a defiance against the American people and the American government.”

The Times reported that the terrorists “evidently timed their infernal machine for an hour when the streets … were crowded, but they chose … the hour when not the captains of industry but their clerks and messengers were on the street.”

The attorney general of the United States took charge of the investigation and immediately blamed budget cutting for the lapse in intelligence: “Therefore we are not able to keep in as close touch with ultra-radicals as we were,” he said.

Sound familiar?

It happened on September 16th, 1920, just a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, at the corner of Wall Street and Broad. The events of that day are just a reminder to Americans that this is not the first nor will it probably be the last time we experience acts of terror within our country.

Just across the East River, the Dodgers would extend their lead over the Reds to 10 games after beating Cincinnati later in the day. A few miles north, the Giants would split a doubleheader with the Pirates. And Yankee fans were wondering if Babe Ruth, in his first season in the Bronx, was really worth $125,000.

But at 12:01 on the 16th of September lower Manhattan was rocked by an explosion of perhaps 100 tons of TNT left in an “uncovered one-horse truck … in front of the new U.S. Assay office next door to the Sub-Treasury, and directly across the street from the J.P. Morgan Building,” according to the Times.

The bomb killed nearly 40 and injured over 300. Property damage was estimated at $2 million. A bronze statue of George Washington was “sprayed with bits of metal.” Slugs were found on the 34th floor of a nearby building.

Though banking baron J.P. Morgan was abroad, flying glass cut his son and killed a clerk at America’s premier financial institution. There would be little doubt about who was to blame. “While no arrest has been made … federal, state, and city authorities were agreed that the devastating blast signaled the long-threatened Red outrage,” the Times reported.

This was the last in a series of terrorist bombings that began in April 1919. Historians today believe an anarchist group operating out of the New York/Boston area was to blame. But the real blame fell on the thousands of innocent immigrants who were caught up in the ensuing panic. Many of the radicals were foreign-born, with Italians being especially singled out. (The Sacco-Vanzetti case being one example.)

Labor unions had been encouraged during World War I to think that they would benefit at the war’s conclusion. But when prices rose without any corresponding rise in wages, strikes broke out across the country. By the fall of 1919, the Boston police went on strike, followed by the steel workers, then the coal miners — nearly two million workers in all.

Immigration was on the rise. Lenin was waving the red flag. America was nervous. Somehow the ocean that had provided us with so much comfort in the past was suddenly not as wide. (A few years earlier we had invaded Mexico in an attempt to bring Pancho Villa to justice for his terrorist attack on our homeland. Skeptics correctly predicted failure. Villa remained a free man and today is considered a folk hero by many.)

If it weren’t for the bumbling of the terrorists, the toll would have been much higher. Nearly 40 letter bombs were sent to government and business leaders. Many were found in a New York City post office with postage due. A terrorist blew himself up trying to bomb the home of the attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer.

The “fighting Quaker,” as his friends were fond of calling him (his critics preferred “quaking quitter”), was up to the test. With President Woodrow Wilson recovering from a stroke, Palmer led the fight against the Red Menace. In January 1920, raids across the country netted over 6,000 suspects, mostly immigrants, 500 of whom were deported. The raids yielded a total of three handguns.

Civil libertarians were outraged but the country was too frightened to care. A rigid quota system would result in less immigration during the 1920s; it was especially aimed against those Europeans thought to be less desirable. As the president of the New York Chamber of Commerce said: “The Anglo-Saxon sometimes blunders, but he never has been intimidated.”

The Times editorial two days after the bombing sounded strangely similar to President Bush when he told the American people that we would “smoke the terrorists from their caves.” The paper suggested that “these callous and cowardly murderers must be made to feel that every resource of civilization will be employed against them. They will be hunted down in their lairs like wild animals … so that, in the end, the greater terror will be their own.”

Oddly enough, not a single person was brought to justice for the Wall Street bombing. The Red Scare was winding down by the fall of 1920 and Americans were more interested in the Black Sox scandal and the upcoming presidential election. The stock market reopened the next day after the blast — up! Within a week the story had dropped off the front page of the Times. The Roaring ’20s were about to begin. Normalcy was at hand.

Steve Haley is a professor of sociology and history at Southwest Tennessee Community College.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

A Comet’s Tale

Of course, everyone knows John Amos from his work as James Evans on the popular ’70s sitcom Good Times as well as his performance as the adult Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking mini-series Roots. Some may remember his reoccurring role as Gordy the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, while younger audiences are certain to recognize him from recent appearances on The West Wing. But, chances are, most aren’t acquainted with John Amos the writer. That will change when Amos brings his one-man show Halley’s Comet, a pet project he has toured with for the last decade, to the Germantown Performing Arts Centre on Friday, October 5th.

“The comet came through our solar system last in 1986,” he says, “and it was then that I got the basic idea for writing the piece. It was the result of me and so many others who were attempting to observe the comet. The bottom line is that we couldn’t actually see the comet because there was really heavy cloud cover, but I did observe and was privy to a dialogue between a very elderly gentleman and his family in which he related his childhood experiences and his experiences as a young man growing up into adulthood and ‘seniorhood,’ if such a word exists. Obviously, this guy was a walking history book. So I went home and as a writer I began to fashion a character who had had those experiences.”

“I think even now, following the recent terrorist activities, that Halley’s Comet has a spiritual reference that enhances it and makes it even more powerful and more attractive to audiences,” Amos says, noting that history can be both a hard teacher and a tremendous source of comfort. “Now we need to balance the tragedy with some degree of — not humor per se — but levity that allows us to look at life not unlike the way that this old man does. He’s lost a son in each of the world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, and he lost a daughter during the civil rights movement. So obviously the pain caused by mankind’s lack of ability to get along with others — he feels it on a personal, visceral level. It’s the old man’s contention that the comet isn’t coming by for us to see it, but it’s coming by to check in on us and see how we are doing. It’s his contention that the comet is really an emissary from the Almighty that is coming to check on the condition of this experiment that he calls mankind. To see whether or not the experiment is worth continuing. The old man is pretty much asking the comet, ‘When you get back to the headmaster tell him all of his sheep down here are not lost.’ Some of them still know who the headmaster is. If people can read between the lines and come away from Halley’s Comet with some kind of spiritual recharging of their batteries, so much the better. Particularly in these times.”

After 10 years of steady touring, Halley’s Comet has not lost even an ounce of allure for its creator. “As an actor,” he says enthusiastically, “all of the roles I ever wanted to play when I was younger, all those roles that were denied me for one reason or another, I’ve been able to recreate for myself. This [old man] character morphs into his own 18-year-old son during the Second World War. He morphs into his own redneck captain, into an Italian-American sergeant. At one point it’s suggested that he has become his own 10-year-old great-granddaughter when he relates a story about looking at her jeans she’s bought that have more holes than material.”

This kind of socially conscious entertainment comes naturally for Amos, who, over the course of his career, has had the opportunity to work with a number of visionary writers and producers, including Norman Lear.

“Prior to Norman becoming the preeminent producer during the ’70s, TV was all pap,” he says. “It didn’t address pertinent issues. But on Good Times and All in the Family, issues like teenage violence, gang violence, seniors being forced to eat pet food we addressed 25 years ago. I couldn’t help but carry that into the writing of Halley’s Comet.”

Of course, not everything Amos has been involved with has been quite as intellectually stimulating as Lear’s socially conscious sitcoms. When asked if he ever looks back at pictures of himself wearing a leather thong for the fantasy flick The Beastmaster, Amos roars with laughter. “There are a couple of things that motivated me to do that film,” he says. “Number one, the mortgage was due. Number two, I wanted a role that was going to be fun. They didn’t tell me what the costume was going to be. And it wasn’t X-rated by any means. I did, however, get invited to a lot of strange parties in certain parts of Hollywood. There was always a P.S. on the invitation of ‘feel free to wear your costume.’ I declined.”

Halley’s Comet

Germantown Performing Arts Centre, Friday, October 5th

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

A couple of promising shows from the indie fringes during this relatively slow week: Austin’s American Analog Set create drone-y rock that moves in gentle, lovely waves. They’ll be at the Map Room on Friday, October 5th, with like-minded locals Palindrome. At the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, October 6th, you can catch a couple of notable indie bands, Destroyer and The Summer Hymns. Destroyer is led by Dan Bejar, who is also the driving force behind Canadian indie “supergroup” the New Pornographers, whose Mass Romantic was one of 2000’s most enjoyable records. Destroyer is less rock-oriented than the New Pornographers, instead capturing a softer, more British-sounding mood that recalls classic David Bowie. The Summer Hymns are from longtime indie hotbed Athens, Georgia, and offer a more gently psychedelic sound that will remind listeners of Elephant 6 bands such as Apples in Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel. — Chris Herrington

I’m loath to refer to any event as “magical.” It conjures up images of Disney On Ice or an evening with Siegfried and Roy. But when I think back on the many nights I’ve sat around the campfire tugging on a whiskey bottle and swapping stories with total strangers at the King Biscuit Blues Festival, “magic” is the only adjective that seems to fit. Helena, Arkansas, is a gorgeous town in a bucolic, days-of-yesteryear sort of way, and there’s just nothing better than sitting on the levee listening to some of the best blues the world has to offer while watching the tugs float up and down the Mississippi. The steak sandwiches they sell on the street are another mighty fine reason for making the pilgrimage.This year’s festival features a stellar lineup of 50-plus artists, including regulars like barrelhouse key-pounder Pinetop Perkins and big-panty provocateur Bobby Rush, as well as drum-and-fife man extraordinaire Othar Turner and the fantastic Robert Lockwood Jr. Any chance to see Sun rockabilly artist Billy Lee Riley play his blues set should be jumped at, and I hardly need to tell you about Alvin Youngblood Hart’s guitar prowess. The Band’s Levon Helm will be on hand with his band the Barnburners, and Guitar Shorty will be standing tall. Of course, it’s always hard to say who will be jamming with whom at the local juke joints after all the stage lights go out, and those who choose to camp out will be treated (or in some cases subjected) to booze-addled acoustic sets that go on ’til sunup. A word to the wise: If you want to keep all of your beautiful memories of Helena, avoid a product at the local liquor store called Mello Corn. My head aches just thinking about it. The festival will be going strong — and is still free — in Helena from Thursday, October 4th, through Saturday, October 6th. — Chris Davis

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Folding the Flag

The world was a very different place when Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical made its Broadway debut in 1968. The civil rights movement was in full swing. The Amboy Dukes’ hit song “Journey to the Center of the Mind” made an acid-washed plea for listeners to “leave your cares behind, come with us and find the pleasures of a journey to the center of the mind.” RFK, heir to the throne of Camelot, was assassinated shortly after a fund-raiser for his seemingly unstoppable presidential campaign. Three astronauts made space seem accessible when they orbited the moon in the Apollo 8 space capsule. Bushy-headed flower children consumed drugs and preached their righteous messages of love and peace in the streets of New York and San Francisco, while 715 oil spills worldwide generated tremendous ecological concern in certain quarters of the American counterculture. Nixon promised to reestablish wholesome American values when he succeeded LBJ as president of the United States, and a bloody little war fought for reasons most people didn’t fully understand raged out of control in a faraway place called Vietnam.

Hair, a musical which substituted psychedelic rock for stodgy show tunes and advocated chemically enhanced mind expansion, free love, and the symbolic desecration of the American flag, was the natural offspring of this turbulent era. But what does this loosely woven be-in of a show mean today? Only a month ago it was, at the very least, a curious museum piece whose innocent messages of “harmony, understanding, sympathy and love” made it seem far less subversive than it originally was. But after the September 11th attack on Washington and New York, everything changed. The themes that drive this musical are seemingly at odds with the mood of a flag-waving country determined to take revenge on the perpetrators. America isn’t feelin’ too groovy right now, and it’s anybody’s guess how the superficial anti-patriotism of Hair, which opens at Playhouse on the Square this weekend, will be received.

“Thank God we had a flag in prop storage,” says Dave Landis, director of the Playhouse production, noting at least one significant physical change in the current American landscape. He laughs, shrugs, and explains that the show’s prop master had gone out searching for a flag only to discover they were sold out everywhere. Landis is not entirely convinced that now is the best time to perform Hair. On the other hand, he’s certain that the piece offers a great deal of insight to a nation on the brink of war.

“I was 5 in 1968, so I don’t really remember Vietnam,” Landis admits, adding that his incredibly young company was surprisingly unschooled in the sociopolitical history of the 1960s. “We brought in a professor from the U of M to talk to us about Vietnam. He told us that Vietnam had been incredibly popular for the first three years. It had a very positive spin for the first three years. Now everybody is like, ‘Hey, let’s go to war.’ But I have to wonder where we are all going to be in three years.”

“I went and saw the traveling Vietnam Memorial when it came through town,” he continues, “and as I looked at that sea of names I couldn’t help but wonder if sometime in the near future I’d look at [another memorial] and see the names of half the cast of Hair there. There’s a line in the show, ‘Our eyes are open.’ We can’t go into this [new war] blindly.”

The blink-and-you-missed-it nudity in the original production of Hair — as well as nonjudgmental references to acts like sodomy and pederasty and its full-on embrace of the drug culture — caused quite a stir in ’68. While the nudity may not be a big deal these days, here in the Bible Belt it’s still difficult to broach certain subjects on stage.

“From the beginning, the whole nudity thing has been an issue,” Landis says. “People were constantly asking, ‘Are you going to do it?’ Well, since September 11th I haven’t had to worry about that. Certainly theaters are more and more often trying to make their plays PG-13, and I understand that. We have to do that if we want to stay in business. But I would love to put a big banner in the lobby with this list that goes on and on of things [in our production] that people might find offensive. People need to know that if they are coming to see Hair; they aren’t going to see Mame.”

But offending the easily offended is not Landis’ primary concern. “It’s important for 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds to see how [in the ’60s] people their age dealt with what we are getting ready to go into. It’s not advocacy of that kind of behavior, it’s just saying, ‘If you are going off to war, little boy, you might as well know what you are getting into.'”

Through November 4th.

Categories
News

On Whitefish Lake

The handshake is firm, the smile endearing, the greeting genuine. When Charlie Abell heard some travel writers were coming to his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, he insisted on showing them around Whitefish Lake in his boat. So bundle up against the autumn wind, grab yourself a beer from the hold, and enjoy the ride.

You start at City Beach, where there’s a public swimming area and a hamburger stand. There used to be a good restaurant over there to the right, but it got torn down and replaced by some condos. And it’s right there that you detect in the voice of the locals the slightest … Tension? Worry? Curiosity?

The folks in Whitefish have always sort of been on their own. It was a railroad town when it got started in the 1890s. Then it was a timber town. But the railroad got automated, and the timber got wiped out by regulations and big corporations that didn’t manage the forests right, and Whitefish was left sort of … out there.

But few places, and especially places like Whitefish, stay “undiscovered.” And when a place gets “discovered,” the money comes in to gobble up the good land and drive the prices into the stars. Then somebody wants to develop million-dollar homes up at the ski hill or along the new golf courses.

So as Charlie Abell points out the homes of the rich and famous — NFL players, TV folks, movie stars, stock market wizards — you have to wonder what he’s thinking. Sometimes you sense a simple admiration for the homes and their occupants; other times you sense he’s wondering what people do with all that money.

Charlie’s grandfather came to town in 1913 as a machinist with the Great Northern Railroad. He raised Charlie’s dad in a house on the lakeshore. Charlie’s mom and dad built a house there in the 1930s “on their honeymoon,” from timber they cut on the property. Charlie grew up there and married, literally, the girl next door. Now they have another house on the lake, and Charlie is the “president/CEO/sweeper/paycheck deliverer” at the Whitefish Credit Union.

At one point, you come to a place on the lake where there are no houses, and you ask Charlie about it. “That’s privately owned,” he says. And who owns it? “We do.” That, he says, is why it’s in pristine natural condition; he hopes his kids will keep it that way. God knows they’ve had offers.

Charlie is something of a caretaker of the lake. Somebody asked about the rope swing, and Charlie said he’ll keep taking it down as long as people keep putting it up. “Liability,” he says. He tells another story about “some teenagers who like to cuss” starting a bonfire in the middle of wildfire season. Charlie, in what I suspect is an understatement, says he pulled up in his boat “and discussed it with them.”

You look down into the water and you can see the bottom at about 30 feet. Charlie says it used to be a little clearer. He says you can still drink it, though. The county doctor used to pipe it right into his house. As for the fishing, it ain’t what it used to be. But that’s because the Fish and Game Department introduced some kind of shrimp to the lake, since in some Canadian lakes the kokanee salmon eat those shrimp and get real big. Problem was, Whitefish isn’t a Canadian lake, and because of some subtle differences the result was “they destroyed a great fishery.” The record for a lake trout in Whitefish Lake is 42 pounds, but Charlie says you won’t get anything bigger than about 12 pounds anymore.

Of course, there are other things to do on the lake. You can take a twilight cruise or rent a canoe or sea kayak. The lake is seven miles long but has about 25 miles of shoreline, and generally the water is pretty calm. There’s a rustic state park and plenty of little bays to explore. Or you can follow the Whitefish Canoe Trail. It starts at the head of the lake where Swift Krik and Lazy Krik come in — Charlie insists that it’s krik, not creek — and you can paddle into the flat Whitefish River, get out at one of the town’s parks, get something to eat, then finish the trip.

At the end of our trip, Charlie’s wife is at the dock to meet us. We bid Charlie farewell and head into town for dinner. But his wife jumps into the boat with their dinner; they’ll be dining on the lake this evening. There might be, somewhere, tension about the future of Whitefish and its lake, but you’d never know it at a time like this.

It seems that old Montana and new Montana are meeting up in Whitefish these days. My advice is to explore both. New Montana will greet you right off the plane and be somewhat tough to avoid, although plenty easy to enjoy. To visit old Montana, stop in the credit union in Whitefish sometime and say howdy to Charlie.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

‘THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN’

From “Doing One Thing Well: Who is State Senator Steve Cohen, and How Did He Get That Way?” (Memphis Magazine, October 2001)

…When he was five years old, the age at which, Freud says, the psyche is achieving its first complete sense of itself, young Steve Cohen had an experience which is bound to have had an incalculable effect on him. Perhaps it even explains why his father, Dr. Morris Cohen, changed medical courses in mid-career, from pediatrics to psychiatry.

In 1954, when Dr. Jonas Salk was developed the first successful vaccine to end the once endemic scourge of polio (a.k.a. infantile paralysis), Dr.Cohen was given one of the first batches of the vaccine to administer to his patients on a trial basis.

“I don’t know if he volunteered, or how it came about, but in 1954 they gave him the Salk vaccine to give to second-grade students for testing. And he gave the shots to my brother [Michael], who was in the second grade. He didn’t give me the shots. I was in kindergarten. He had the vaccine, and he apparently thought about it and didn’t give it to me. I don’t know whether it was honor, a sense of responsibility, or whether it wasn’t his issue – his purpose. Or I’ve also heard there was some concern that some people might get the polio from the vaccine. Maybe he was concerned, you know, what if that happened? I didn’t know. But anyway, I got polio that fall. I was one of the last people to get it. And my father could have given me the vaccine. He didn’t.”

One doesn’t need an amateur psychologist’s license to read in this the possible origin of some ambiguity towards authority and authority figures.

“It didn’t cause any stress between us,” Cohen insists. “But it did cause my father a lot of angst. He goes on. “One good thing about polio: I’ve read this, that polio survivors tend to max themselves out, they tend to be over-achievers. ”

When he wears shorts, which is frequently around his house in the warm weather months, it is apparent that Cohen’s left leg is thinned and attenuated from the ravages of his childhood disease. That didn’t stop him, however, from playing football in high school — at the position of center, no less, one which results in about as much hard banging as you can expect on a football field.

As Dr. Cohen shifted jobs and specialties, he also shifted locales, from Memphis to Florida to California, back to Florida, and then back to Memphis. (“Stranger in a strange land, man without a country.,” indeed.)

One of the ways in which the young Steve Cohen connected with the shifting world about him was through the appurtenances of popular culture: sports, Top 40 music and politics. To go through Cohen’s house on Kenilworth, adjoining Overton Park, is to walk through a theme park of the aforesaid personal artifacts.

The button collection, for example, enchased here and there on his walls: There are campaign buttons for virtually every presidential campaign and every state political campaign of consequence, sports buttons, movie buttons. There are photographs of sports and music celebrities of every stripe, and photographs of Cohen with many of those selfsame celebrities.

Notable among these is Orestes “Minnie” Minoso, the Chicago White Sox great from the ’50s. When Steve Cohen was five years old, recuperating from the first ravages of polio and attending an exhibition game at Memphis’ old Russwood Park, leaning on crutches, a White Sox player came over and handed him a ball, then pointed to Minoso, who was standing some distance away.

“He wanted you to have this,” the player said, and then explained that Minoso, a Latino black, was nervous about approaching a white child himself.

“That was how it was in the ’50s,” Cohen remembers. “It gave me my first insight into the insanity of segregation.”

(It also, after the passage of some time, gave Cohen his email moniker, a variation on the name Minnie Minoso.)

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

GIBBONS FORMS MAYORAL EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE

District Attorney General Bill Gibbons stirred the pot and thickened the plot of the forthcoming Shelby County Mayor’s race Monday by announcing the formation of an exploratory committee, headed by Attorney David Kustoff, to look into the race.

Gibbons becomes the first name Republican candidate to take even this semi-official step, and his action will presumably be sufficient to keep at bay other GOP possibilities Ð like former city councilman John Bobango and current councilman Jack Sammons, both of whom have indicated they would run only if Gibbons didn’t.

Gibbons’ statement reads as follows:..

“Today I am filing the necessary paperwork to form an exploratory committee for the upcoming

campaign for mayor of Shelby County.

“Attorney David Kustoff will serve as chairman and treasurer of the exploratory committee

David has served as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party and was Tennessee

manager of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000. I value greatly his advice. I have also retained

the services of the Ingram Group, a statewide public affairs firm to assist during the exploratory

phase.

“Our county faces many challenges m the coming years. It is essential that we have a county

mayor who is focused on reducing crime, improving schools and strengthening our

neighborhoods. If’ we build a reputation as a safe community with good schools and strong

neighborhoods, we will be a community where residents want to remain and others will want to

live, we will be a community where existing businesses want to stay and expand, and new

businesses will want to locate.

“While we have made significant progress in the fight against crime, our crime rate remains far

too high Those on the front line lack the necessary resources to ensure a dramatic reduction in

our crime rate.

“We must have a county mayor committed to a dramatic reduction in crime. The mayor is in a

position to take the lead in ensuring enough prosecutors to quickly and effectively hold criminals

accountable and in providing the necessary treatment dollars to move non-violent drug addicts

away from crime and into productive lives

“More than 60 of our public schools have been officially rated as failures, The status quo in our

schools is not acceptable. We must be open to new, innovative approaches such as increased

public school choice, which would promote healthy competition among our schools. We must

have a strong county mayor who is willing to tie support for increased funding to a commitment

to fundamental changes and to high expectations for the children of our community, especially

disadvantaged children whose only hope is a good education.

“We must have a mayor who is committed to revitalizing existing inner city neighborhoods while

at the same time insuring the proper kind of growth through the development of new, well

planned neighborhoods with long-term stability.

In the coming weeks, I will be considering very carefully what I could do as the next county

mayor to deliver less crime, better schools and stronger neighborhoods. I will also consider what

I feel I can accomplish by remaining district attorney. I will make my decision based upon a

careful look at how I can have the strongest positive impact on our community.”

— JACKSON BAKER

Categories
News News Feature

A SAMARITAN’S TALE

Sixteen months after he was kidnapped at gunpoint and thrown into the trunk of his car, attorney Kemper Durand watched with some regret last week as two juveniles involved in the case were given prison sentences.

Durand was walking to his car around 2 a.m. on May 25, 2000, after attending a par ty on Beale Street when a lone gunman walked up behind him, took his wallet, and forced him into the trunk. The abductor, Cleotha Abston, drove around and picked up friends then, after about two hours, escorted Durand into a Mapco station to withdraw money from an ATM. A uniformed Memphis Housing Authority officer entered, Durand yelled that he had been kidnapped, and the kidnappers ran away.

On Monday, Abston pled guilty just before he was scheduled to go to trial and was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole. He had earlier turned down an offer of 15 years on the same charge but, according to Durand, told the court “he did not want to sign his name giving himself the time.” Abston has a long juvenile record of theft and aggravated assault.

It was the sentencing of the second defendant that gave Durand pause. Marquette Cobbins was 17 years old at the time of the incident. He was one of the friends picked up by Abston after he kidnapped Durand. His prior court record consisted of a truancy violation and a disorderly con duct charge.

“He was literally sitting on the porch when Abston came by,” says Durand. “Any kid who could grow up where he did and have only two miniscule run-ins I figure is probably pretty decent material.”

Durand wrote a letter to District Attorney Bill Gibbons urging probation for Cobbins if he would submit to conditions including supervision by a private probation service, high school graduation, repaying Durand $195 for the money in his wallet and towing charges for his car, and undergoing a mentoring program.

The proposal was turned down and Cobbins pled guilty to aiding a kidnapping. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years and will be eligible for parole in 18 months.

Durand says he feels bad about that and is also dismayed at the pace of justice.

“Cleotha Abston spent almost 16 months in jail before today,” Durand says. “Perhaps this is one reason why the jail is overcrowded.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

THE FIGHTIN’ SIDE OF BRENT

The Fightin

Side of Brent

According to Rebekah Gleaves, the Flyer s city coun cil reporter, council member Brent Taylor has a personal bone to pick with Osama bin Laden. Speculating that the tragic events in New York and D.C. will delay Senator Fred Thompson s retirement, thereby delaying any sitting congressman s race for the Senate, further delaying Taylor s own hopes of becoming a congressman when he grows up, the councilman said, They could send me and David Kustoff over to Afghanistan and we d hunt down bin Laden. He messed up our plans. Gosh, Brent, do you think he did it on purpose?