Month: October 2002

News

Grey-dogged

Post author By Paul Gerald
Post date October 3, 2002

I showed up at the Dallas bus station at 2:05 a.m., admittedly intoxicated but easily in time for a 2:20 bus to Albuquerque, and I was told to go to Gate 7.

I went to Gate 7, but when I reached the driver, who was taking the tickets, he said I was in the wrong line. So I asked the lady with the clipboard which line to get in for Albuquerque, and she said Gate 2.

At the end of the Gate 2 line, I was told, “No, you need the Amarillo bus. This is the Phoenix bus.”

A baggage man grabbed my backpack to lead me to that bus, but we arrived at an empty bus lane. The express bus to Albuquerque was gone. The next one? A local bus (which stops at every half-ass town along the way) was at 5:30 a.m., more than two and a half hours later.

Two and a half hours at the Dallas bus station, drunk and bitter, when I should have been sleeping soundly on an AmeriCruiser headed for Albuquerque. Instead of arriving at 5 p.m., when my friend expected to pick me up, I would get there at half past midnight, with very little sleep and even less happiness. The later bus would take four more hours to get there and involve a three-hour layover in lovely Abilene.

I was being tormented, again, by that most treacherous of the travel gods, the Great Grey Dog.

The 4 to 5 a.m. hour was the toughest. I was the nervous-looking dude in the corner with a laptop, smacking on my gum and occasionally pounding the table and punctuating this action with an emphatic expletive — which, this being a Greyhound station, brought no attention to me whatsoever. I did have a small audience: a man who asked about my computer and then asked if I had any spare coins in my pocket. Someone was talking loudly to himself, but I tried not to look. I couldn’t tell if it was the man with the cane and the weightlifting belt or the Dennis Weaver look-alike with the briefcase.

Some old buddies had, after an insane night that can’t be discussed here, more or less poured me into the Dallas station, and I was flying high on that special on-the-road confidence that tells you, “Yes, even with all the wackiness and way too many beers, I WILL be on that bus, and I WILL go on to the next adventure as planned.” Well, you know what happened to that. Instead of crashing on the bus to Albuquerque, I found myself buying eggs, sausage, a biscuit, orange juice, a bowl of Fruit Loops, and four extra-strength Tylenol in Dallas just before dawn. I also got to hear about a guy’s impending eye surgery at the VA hospital in Dallas — not that I asked. You have to love the bus.

I finally got to sleep on the Dog — after checking twice with the driver to make sure it was the right one — and all I remember of the ride to Abilene is that there was snow blowing around when I woke up briefly in Mineral Wells. In Abilene, it was sunny and 18 degrees, and the wind was blowing at what I would call a sustained 25 mph, with gusts up to brain-freezing.

News updates from the Abilene paper: Two cows were run over by an 18-wheeler the night before, and a 21-year-old man was in custody after allegedly swatting the heads of his wife and 6-month-old son “in a dispute centering on the death of a chicken.” I can’t make things like this up.

Back at the Abilene station, things took a turn toward the pessimistic. When I handed my ticket to the driver and asked — paranoia check — if this was indeed the bus to Albuquerque, he laughed a mostly toothless laugh and said, “Sure is — good luck!”

A few minutes later, he explained this comment in the following reassuring remarks to the seven of us on board (I’ll try to write in his accent, but bear in mind that you’re listening to a 63-year-old Greyhound driver who just said he can remember when driving from Dallas to Fort Worth was an all-day affair):

“Well, folks, th’road from h’yar to Lubbock should be allraht b’now — ah ‘magine the wind down blowed it drah — but when ah left Lubbock this mawnin, half the town was covered w’ black ahs [that would be ‘ice’]. From Clovis on in to Albuquerque, y’all may have to all sit in the way back to weight ‘er down — heh heh heh. She purdy much come from Lubbock to h’yar this mawnin goin’ sahdways through the snow and ahs. Heh heh heh.”

With these comforting images, I leave you for now. My laptop is running low on battery power, and as my battery fades, so do I. With any luck — make that with any GOOD luck — I will see the Rocky Mountains when the sun comes up tomorrow, and then all will be well. The Rockies are beautiful, they’re covered with snow, and they’re a hell of a long way from Dallas and Abilene.

Opinion Viewpoint

Insecurity Plan

Post author By Molly Ivins
Post date October 3, 2002

No. This is not acceptable. This is not the country we want to be. This is not the world we want to make.

The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children’s blood.

We want to find a way so that killing is the last resort, not the first. We would rather put our time, energy, money, and even blood into making peace than making war.

“The National Security Strategy of the United States — 2002” is repellent, unnecessary, and, above all, impractical. Americans are famous for pragmatism, and we need a good dose of common sense right now. This Will Not Work.

The announced plan of the current administration for world domination reinforces every paranoid, anti-American prejudice on this earth. This plan is guaranteed to produce more terrorists. Even if this country were to become some insane, 21st-century version of Sparta — armed to the teeth, guards on every foot of our borders — we would still not be safe. Have the Israelis been able to stop terrorism with their tactics?

Not only would we not be safe, we would not have a nickel left for schools or health care or roads or parks or zoos or gardens or universities or mass transit or senior centers or the arts or anything resembling civilization. This is nuts.

This creepy, un-American document has a pedigree going back to Bush I, when — surprise! — Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were at the Department of Defense and both such geniuses that they not only didn’t see the collapse of the Soviet Union coming, they didn’t believe it after they saw it.

In those days, this plan for permanent imperial adventurism was called “Defense Strategy for the 1990s” and was supposed to be a definitive response to the Soviet threat. Then the Soviet threat disappeared, and the same plan re-emerged as a response to the post-Soviet world.

It was roundly criticized at the time, its manifest weaknesses attacked by both right and left. Now, it is back yet again as the answer to post-September 11th. Sort of like the selling of the Bush tax cut — needed in surplus, needed in deficit, needed for rain and shine — the plan exists apart from rationale.

In what is indeed a dangerous and uncertain world, we need the cooperation of other nations as never before. Under this doctrine, we claim the right to first-strike use of nuclear weapons and “unannounced pre-emptive strikes.” That means surprise attacks. Happy Pearl Harbor Day. We have just proclaimed ourselves Bully of the World.

There is a better way. Foreign-policy experts polled at the end of the 20th century agreed the great triumph of the past 100 years in foreign policy was the Marshall Plan. We can use our strength to promote our interests through diplomacy, economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (which we dominate anyway), and free trade conditioned to benefit all.

None of this will make al Qaeda love us but will make it a lot more likely that whoever finds them will hand them over.

This reckless, hateful, and ineffective approach to the rest of the world has glaring weaknesses. It announces that we intend to go in and take out everybody else’s nukes (27 countries have them) whenever we feel like it. Meanwhile, we’re doing virtually nothing to stop their spread.

Last month, Ted Turner’s Nuclear Threat Initiative had to pony up $5 million to get poorly secured, weapons-grade uranium out of Belgrade. Privatizing disarmament: Why didn’t we think of that before?

The final absurdity is that the plan is supposed to Stop Change. Does no one in the administration read history?

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a member of the Creative Writers Syndicate. Her work frequently appears in the Flyer.

Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS: Center Ring

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 3, 2002

CENTER RING

The first of five planned debates between the two major-party U.S. Senate candidates is now in the can, after a televised encounter Monday night in Chattanooga, and it is clear that Democratic candidate Bob Clement, currently the congressman representing Nashville, has his work cut out for him in hoping to overtake his Republican opponent, former governor Lamar Alexander.

One of the ironies of Clement’s situation was highlighted by polls taken during the past few weeks, showing his political future ebbing and flowing on wildly fluctuating findings. One day’s survey would show him almost 20 points behind Alexander, another only eight, and the Clement camp’s chief lobbying point was that, as the candidate himself urged on a recent evening in Memphis, “when our name-recognition is the same with a group of voters, we come out even.”

What is astounding about this is that Clement has run for – and held – statewide office before, has been the capital city’s man in Washington for more than a decade, and is the son of one of Tennessee’s most legendary governors in modern times, Frank Clement, a magnetic orator whose keynote speech at the 1956 Democratic Convention mesmerized the nation’s listeners.

The senior Clement was still serving as governor during the late ‘60s when an automobile accident terminated his life and career simultaneously. Indeed, it was almost entirely on the basis of the family name that son Bob was able to launch his own political career in the years following his father’s death, winning election as a Public Service Commissioner and mounting a credible challenge for governor.

As the Democratic nominee for the 7th District congressional seat in 1982, he was upset by a Republican who later became governor, Don Sundquist, but his race that year, followed by his subsequent service in the Nashville-based 5th District, should have guaranteed wide name recognition in the state’s two most populous areas.

The fact is that Clement, though arguably in possession of a quite lustrous vita (he also served terms as a director of the Tennessee Valley Authority and as president of Cumberland University), has a persona problem that stems not from any dearth of ability (his gifts are generally recognized) nor even from his diminutive stature (he stands at considerably less than six feet) but from the fact that he seems low-profile by nature, almost bashful – an introvert in an extrovert’s profession.

One difference between himself and Alexander was dramatized during the televised debate Monday night in the periodic cutaway shots of either candidate reacting to what the other was saying. Alexander appeared to have the actor’s gift of knowing when he was on camera; he seemed polite, attentive, shrewd, and skeptical as needed. When he smiled, it was in good-natured acknowledgement of the developing plotline.

Clement, on the other hand, seemed to pout and glower whenever his adversary was making a point that he deemed off the mark or unfair in what it suggested, and to purse his lips when he was just listening. At several points the camera caught him rolling his tongue in the hollow of his right cheek – a maneuver that in closeup looked huge and almost volcanic.

In short, Alexander at all times had his public face on, while Clement’s private self kept wandering into the proceedings like a lost child. It was a situation that could be interpreted to either man’s credit or to either’s blame, but in an age when appearances count for as much as issues, the cosmetic edge clearly belonged to the former governor.

Even the logistics of the TV studio in Chattanooga worked to Clement’s disadvantage: Those who have seen them both in the flesh are aware that Clement is as ruddy of complexion as Alexander is, but the side of the set on which the congressman sat seemed to be bathed in an antiseptically yellow light, while the former governor had the benefit of pinker and more natural-looking hues, a state of affairs that somewhat equaled out on those rare occasions when Clement was able to stand center stage and field a question from a guest in the studio audience.

Echoes of the Primary

From time to time, Clement has picked up and hurled at Alexander one of the barbs thrown at the Republican nominee by his erstwhile antagonist in the GOP Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Ed Bryant.

The kiss-and-make-up etiquette of partisan politics requires that intra-party rivals support each other even after the most bitter of primaries, and that between Alexander and Bryant was one such. Speaking at a recent luncheon meeting, the outgoing 7th District congressman dutifully endorsed – and sported the stickers of- both Alexander, whom he so recently was chastising on an almost daily basis, and congressional colleague Van Hilleary, the GOP gubernatorial nominee with whom Bryant played Alphonse-and-Gaston a few seasons back, when both men, equally ambitious, were eyeing both a Senate and a governor’s race for 2002.

Though Bryant was no doubt sincere, the exercise had a bit of a pro forma feel to it, and Clement, perhaps over-optimistically, has frequently made appeals on the stump to the erstwhile Bryant voters, professing to represent their populist interests against the putatively more elitist and establishmentarian Alexander.

In any case, Clement has, as indicated, appropriated some of Bryant’s weaponry, repeating the 7th District congressman’s charges that Alexander was out of step with the Senate, which passed by a 97-0 vote a corporate reform measure that Alexander disapproved of, and strongly suggesting, as did Bryant, that the former governor had amassed his fortune by means of sweetheart deals that may have leveraged his governmental connections.

In Monday night’s debate, as previously, Clement made much of a recently renewed $102 million contract between the state and Education Networks of America (ENA), a company on whose board Alexander sits for an annual salary of $60,000. Alexander should give the money back, Clement suggested, “but it hasn’t happened.”

For the record, Alexander has denied anything improper and has noted, as in the televised debate, that Clement, like himself, is a “multi-millionaire.” He made an attempt to turn the tables by recalling what he said was Clement’s membership in the ‘70s on the board of directors of a bank owned by the Butcher brothers, Jake and C.H., once prominent Tennessee Democrats whose banks later failed, leading to federal fraud convictions for both men.

An apparently surprised Clement denied any such membership, but the Alexander campaign later emailed to reporters copies of a photograph from the 1973 annual report of the City and County Bank of Knox County, showing a youthful Bob Clement as one of several “directors.”

Though Clement quibbled about the meaning of the picture – and the nature of his relationship to the bank and to the Butchers, whom he ended up on the wrong side of, politically, losing to Jake Butcher in the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1978 – and Alexander has pooh-poohed the nature of his ENA involvement, the fact is that both men have profited from private-sector opportunities that their public prominence made easier for them.

There is no great surprise in this – it is one of the unspoken perks of public life, conspicuously so in the careers of most recent American presidents, for example – and there is nothing necessarily improper about it. In any case, the fallout from Monday night may make it more difficult henceforth for Clement to link Alexander with “Enron capitalism” – though the former governor seems to have been measurably more active in the corporate sector than the congressman.

Clement may have more luck with another stratagem inherited from Bryant. In the primary the GOP congressman made much of a remark made by Alexander early in the year to Knoxville News-Sentinel reporter Tom Humphrey, who quoted the two-time presidential aspirant as saying, “I wanted to be president. The Senate will have to do.”

Bryant interpreted the remark as demonstrating the arrogance of a lordly Alexander deigning to go slumming for what he regarded as a consolation price. This is how Clement would prefer it be seen, as well.

As it happens, Alexander first learned of the possible repercussions of his statement while on a visit to the Flyer office during the primary. Informed of Bryant’s first broadside on the subject, the former governor was clearly taken aback. He had made the statement near the end of a long interview at the close of a long day’s worth of campaigning, he said, and had just let his guard down.

In subsequent interviews, Alexander would amend his response, suggesting that he had been indulging in some kind of levity. (That seems to be the favored approach these days of political figures confronted with potentially embarrassing quotations.) There is no reason why the statement should not be taken at face value, however, and no particular reason why any odium should attach to it. By definition, anybody who has tried for the presidency – as Alexander did in the 1996 and 2000 cycles – and failed is settling for less by seeking another public office later on.

A ‘Moderate’’s Re-emergence

What has intrigued some in the current race is the obvious ease with which Alexander has worn his Senate candidate’s mantle – contrasted with the relatively awkward and unconvincing manner of his two presidential races, in which, having compiled a moderate record as the successful two-term governor of Tennessee, he chose to run as a conservative’s conservative – even to the point, in 1996, of advocating the abolition of the Department of Education which he once headed and, in 1999, of denouncing then rival George W. Bush’s phrase “compassionate conservatism” as a case of “weasel words.”

In his primary campaign this year against Bryant, Alexander was compelled once again to stress his conservative credentials, but since then has re-emerged as a reassuringly middle-of-the-road figure – capable, for example, of stretching hands across partisan boundaries to form a “coalition” with Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, a nominal Democrat and former city schools superintendent who professes admiration for Alexander’s educational reforms as governor during the ‘80s.

Meanwhile, those red-meat Republicans who always distrusted Alexander for the very moderation which he practiced as governor, when he had to make common cause with Democrats to get his programs enacted, have apparently been mollified by his stated allegiance in this campaign year to the programs of the Bush administration.

The difference between administrative and legislative functions being what it is, there is relatively little likelihood that a Senator Alexander would run afoul of his party’s conservatives, though he – like Clement – has shown signs of wanting to brake the administration’s headlong rush toward confrontation with Iraq. (While giving lip service to the president’s pronouncements, Alexander has advocated a greater role for Congress and America’s allies in the shaping of a military policy, and he makes a point of saying that his own interest is in domestic policy and in “winning the peace.”)

ClemeNt has proved a doughty campaigner, and his wife, Mary Clement, has won numerous admirers for her strength and sagacity on the campaign trail (though she, like her counterpart Honey Alexander, has been under-employed as a campaign surrogate). He has legitimate policy differences with Alexander – notably on providing prescription-drug insurance for seniors through Medicare and imposing a form of price controls on drugs – but his own history as a sometime fellow traveler with the Bush administration (on the initial Bush tax cuts, for example) makes it difficult for him to draw graphic contrasts.

With a month to go, it would seem to be the mellifluous-voiced Alexander’s race to lose, but the undecideds in an electorate that has seen Republican Van Hilleary close the gap with Democrat Phil Bredesen, the long-term leader in that race, may reserve judgment for a few more weeks yet between candidates Alexander and Clement, both of whom are doggedly working the middle of the road.

News News Feature

HOW IT LOOKS

Post author By Frank Murtaugh
Post date October 3, 2002

News News Feature

TRANSLATION: MEMPHIS

Post author By Jenn Hall
Post date October 2, 2002

DID THIS LAW HICCUP?

To drink or not to drink, is that the question?

Starting this week, it may well be–at least if you’re planning to drive in the process.

Tennessee is toughening its stance on repeat DUI offenders statewide. Provisions include a stronger emphasis on treatment programs for drivers convicted two or more times in a five-year period. In addition, a lower limit will be placed on the legal blood-alcohol level as of July 2003.

Though I’m sometimes hesitant when it comes to the implementation of legal measures that run the risk of over-parenting, for lack of a better term, my experience here leads me to believe that this may be more or less necessary.

If you’ve braved the roads on a weekend night, or hell, even on a weekday night, you probably know what I mean. Cars scattering in every direction like they’re in a city street snow-globe that’s been freshly shaken. Utter lack of attention to any sign, traffic light, or moving (or stationary) object.

Where, oh where, has our survival instinct gone?

Ultimately, I would like to be able to refute the new law. I mean, we’re grown-ups, right? We can handle it.

But maybe we can’t.

Perhaps I’m naive and never looked for it before, but I have never in my life encountered a population so blasé about drinking and driving. And when I say that I am referring specifically to drinking AND driving.

At what point in the partying process does this become acceptable?

This may be why the new laws are geared primarily toward repeat offenders. However, this is also the point at which I question a certain aspect of this imminent crackdown.

Apparently a test program is in the works in Shelby County for a new gadget designed to slap the wrists of said offenders before they can even rev their engines, sober or otherwise. Essentially an onboard breathalyzer, this gadget may be installed in the dash of convicted driver’s vehicles, rendering their cars inoperable if a blood-alcohol level greater than .024 is registered.

Here’s the interesting part, though. In addition to the initial reading, these drivers will be subject to additional readings throughout the course of their time operating their vehicles. Sounds like a bit of a distraction to me.

Maybe the intended point is to prevent those with the desire to enjoy Miller time onboard from getting drunk between point A and point B, but I’m not sure this would work. What would prevent the driver from having a passenger take the test instead? Or from ignoring the possible consequences and guzzling down the juice of their choice?

The question that needs to be asked is whether this is perhaps somewhat symbolic.

The justification offered is that this punishment is aimed towards curtailing the “alcoholic” drivers. Not the drunk drivers, mind you. The alcoholics.

You know, lots of people drink and drive in the world, alcoholics or otherwise. Using the term in this way, however, may create a mindset in the driving population that could defeat the entire purpose of the stricter laws.

How many alcoholics that you know run around referring to themselves as such?

Not many, I would guess.

But, if the presentation of this measure includes the use of a term such as alcoholic lightly, it will most likely function to create a false sense of security in the minds of those who don’t categorize themselves as such.

As in, well I wouldn’t drive home tonight, but I’m not an alcoholic so…

Fine. Perhaps I’m being over-analytical about the whole thing. Obviously a society that desires to keep its populace, well, alive needs to address issues such as these. It’s important, though, to frame and discuss it in the right manner.

Otherwise it’ll quickly become another measure that’s ignored until one is on the side of the road in the dancing blue lights.

And that would be the best case scenario.

Sports Sports Feature

LITTLE BOYS LOST

Post author By Frank Murtaugh
Post date October 2, 2002

Everything seems so hard,

You don’t know where your wishes are,

In dreams they’re really not so far away

So when sadness rains

and your hopes get tossed to the wind

Remember, winds blow many ways,

We’re bound to see better days,

When smiles leave tears in the haze,

Little Boy Lost...

PIC: UAB’s Watson Brown gets a victory shower.

When I was a wee lad, I remember how Mother would recite to me a charming if chilling piece of doggerel entitled “Little Boy Lost,” which poem would (a) scare the daylights out of me, and (b) ensure that I would never loosen my six-year-old selfÕs grip on my father’s hand coming and going from Fenway Park, or the old Boston Garden…

Sitting in the faux-empty stands at Legion Field in Birmingham last Saturday, watching our beloved Tigers get the ever-loving cow manure kicked out of them, 31-17, by a University of Alabama-Birmingham “team” which had little more to recommend itself than, say, Memphis Central, I somehow was reminded of this little ditty. For the footballing Tigers, with but one or two exceptions, were clearly, utterly “little boys lost” — lost in the cavernous emptiness of a once-famous football stadium, lost in their complete inability to execute, well, anything whatsoever. (Full disclosure: the lines quoted above were not from my mother’s poem, which is lost in time, but from a 1998 model I found in WebLand, authored by one Janet Lee Hickey that seems to have been built around the same premise. You get the idea, though).

The Little Boys Lost. Those of you who have been paying attention may have noticed my absence from the pages of the print Flyer for two weeks, during which time I was awol in the Canadian Woods, where cell phones and internet connections are still considered the stuff of legend. Imagine, therefore, my enthusiasm, as I reentered these United States, and descended upon hilly Birmingham, eager to pick up the script of the 2002 Tiger Morality Play I had put down after a painful yet noble defeat in Oxford three Saturdays before. Yes, we had lost to a manly Southern Mississippi aggregation in the meantime, but we had recovered to wax Tulane comprehensively back home in the Liberty Bowl, right? So we were on course, of course, for our rendezvous with destiny. Smite UAB, return home covered with glory, ready for an epochal encounter Tuesday next with Louisville, and….

Speaking of smiting, and blacksmiths: while driving me to Legion Field, over the mountain from Homewood, my host for the evening’s postgame activities (thank god for those, at least), pointed out that “Vulcan,” the massive statue of the God of Fire who usually towers over Birmingham from high atop Red Mountain, was absent his pedestal these days, off being “repaired” after a hundred-odd years of reminding central Alabamans from whence their meal tickets had come. Alas, I suspect this mythological Man of Steel was not resting comfortably in some ironmonger’s workshop last Saturday, but inhabiting at least one if not several green-and-gold jerseys down on the gloomy turf at Legion Field.

How else do you explain the Tigers getting their brains beaten in, by a “team” that was coming off a 34-0 loss at Louisiana-Lafayette, that football powerhouse that, yes, may well play in the same league as Memphis Central? How else do you explain the myriad successes of a UAB offense ranked 116th in the country? How else do you explain the miraculous way that virtually every bounce of the football — fumbles, interceptions, near-miss sacks — went UAB’s way, and precious few went Memphis’?

Bad bounces not withstanding: I have watched Tiger football for over two decades, and never, ever, seen a more dispirited effort or, for the fans, a more disheartening performance. And here’s the scary part, witnessed by yours truly sitting just twenty rows up from the Tigers bench. With the notable exception of Danny Wimprine — as the game wore on, he looked more and more like a Polish cavalry commander facing Nazi tanks in 1939 — not many folks on the Tigers’ sideline seemed to even care. And I’m talking coaches, not just players. Maybe looks are deceiving, but I was oh-so-reminded of a second-division baseball club playing out the string, yes, in late September.

Just before halftime, UAB’s Watson Brown (one of my favorite coaches and the collegiate equivalent of St. Jude, given that he always seems to work for “lost causes,” first Rice, then Vanderbilt, now UAB, whose football program’s future, locals tell me, is on ultra-thin ice) milked the clock and gigged the Tigers with a brain-bashing last-minute TD, putting the Blazers ahead 28-17. Along with many road-weary Tiger fans, I retreated under the gray-concrete stands on the U of M side, to sample a hot dog “loaded” (purportedly they are the best dogs in C-USA; they are). There I was, in the bowels of an archaic stadium eerily reminiscent, yes, dare I say it? of our own Crump Stadium: decrepit, degenerate, and, today the home field for Memphis Central High School.

I think the same thought was crossing all our minds simultaneously: if the Tigers keep this up, they should retreat back to the place from whence they came into the Liberty Bowl, back in 1966. God knows they won’t be needing the 30,000 extra seats. And maybe Dave Casinelli’s ghost might kick some butt in the locker room at half time.

Because clearly, little if any butt was kicked at halftime Saturday at Legion Field. Along with the Boys and Girls in Blue who comprised the majority, believe it or not, of the crowd (forget that 14,179 attendance figure quoted in the paper, folks; if there were eight thousand warm bodies in Legion Field Saturday night, I’m a frog), I returned to my seat hoping/thinking/assuming that this was all nothing more than a bad dream. But presto: the lethargy the Tigers had unleashed in the first half seemed to have been bottled by the case in the locker room, and returned to the sideline for quick and easy distribution to the players on the field.

Hard as it is to imagine, the Tigers came back out onto Legion Field even flatter than ever. Watson Brown’s troops kept running the ball straight up the middle, and the Tiger defense, obliging fellows all, kept getting out of the ballcarriers’ way. Missed tackles were, well, legion. It got so bad that our little sorry gaggle of blue-clad masochists started cheering whenever we held the mighty Blazers to less than seven yards a carry. Even then, we didn’t cheer too often.

So perhaps you think I’m being a little too bitter, and painting misery with too broad a brush? Okay, here’s a few specific observations, for what they’re worth. You asked for it…

1) The Tiger defense looks utterly rudderless. Watching these guys go through the motions, I asked myself, “What would Danton Barto think of this crap?” Barto, Tiger linebacker extraordinaire of the early Nineties, was a consummate team leader; I remember one sad but entertaining game in the old Orange Bowl, back in 1993, when the team was getting its proverbial clock cleaned by Miami, and yet watching Barto exhort the troops as if the score were tied. It wasn’t, at least not for long; the Tigers lost 41-17, but, trust me, it was a light-years’ better performance than what this sorry bunch delivered last Saturday…

2) In Danny Wimprine, the team at least has a leader, and a talented one at that, on the offensive side of the ball. But I must ask: what has offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner been doing to mess with these guys’ heads since the Ole Miss game? They had twice, maybe five times as much talent as their UAB counterparts, but it took them twice, maybe five times longer to execute most of their offensive plays. I can still see the whole team leaning towards the sidelines as the playclock clicked relentlessly down, waiting for Fichtner to re-call the play. No telling how many of the team’s eleven players actually knew what was going on when the ball was snapped; my guess would be an average of eight, at best. Why bother with a no-huddle offense — designed to “unnerve” the opposition — if one of its primary products, clearly, is team confusion?

3) If I live to be 400, I will never understand why Fichtner’s troops line up 35% of the time in a no-tailback formation, telegraphing Wimprine’s passing intentions as clearly as can be imagined. Nothing like keeping your opponent guessing, right? Why do this, when you have two (on paper, at least) of C-USA’s best running backs on your roster? Maybe I’m just a little slow…

4) And then there’s the old special-teams problems. Special-teams killed us in Oxford, and they nailed us again in Birmingham. In the game’s turning point early in the second quarter, punter James Gaither, after a bad snap sailed over his head, chased it back into the endzone, but, in trying to kick the ball over the end-line, whiffed as inelegantly as Queen Elizabeth might have, single-handedly converting a safety into a UAB touchdown. No personal offense to Gaither, who kicked quite impressively in the second half, but these are the kind of mistakes that get automatic benching, yes, at Memphis Central. They say you can’t coach stupidity, but how come our team’s braintrust seems to be working so hard at it?

I could go on with the specifics all night, but you get the picture. And Coach West, if and when you read this, try not to come after me with a gun. I think I speak for all U of M fans when I say we think the world of you, and, even still, of the job you’re doing with the program. One horrific, MurphyÕs Law date does not a romance kill, if the romance is worth anything in the first place.

But enough is enough, Coach; enough is enough. Losing to a bunch of piss-ants from Birmingham is not something we were expecting; neither were you, we suspect. But if lose we must, when we least expect it, let’s lose with some class. We can deal with losing, coach — hey, we’re certainly used to it — but only if it’s the Danton Barto way. Not the Queen Elizabeth way.

We’ve got ten days before the Cardinals come to town, Coach, ten days. That’s plenty of time to retool the offense, dump the laggards on the defense and replace them with folks who at least care, and maybe round up a fresh bunch of walk-ons for special-teams. Hey, maybe Dave Ragone and company will be as overconfident coming into Memphis as we were, clearly, going into Birmingham. And now that he’s come down from Red Mountain, maybe Vulcan the Blacksmith is free on Tuesday nights, as well.

Politics Politics Beat Blog

CITY BEAT

Post author By John Branston
Post date October 2, 2002

ALPHABET SOUP

The alphabet agencies are about to catch a little flak from the City Council.

The spark that set off the council’s fire was the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau’s (CVB) hiring of former Shelby County mayoral aide Tom Jones less than a month after Jones was suspended for using a county credit card for personal items. When Jones was not reappointed by new county mayor A C Wharton, the CVB and its president, Kevin Kane, snapped him up.

Jones will be doing a job in community development that did not previously exist at the CVB. The Commercial Appeal reported that his salary will be approximately $100,000, but Kane said last week it is not that much.

Kane attended Tuesday’s council committee meeting where the issue of “quasi-governmental agencies” was pressed most forcibly by council members TaJuan Stout Mitchell and John Vergos. Kane noted that the CVB wasn’t created by the city or county and gets “not one penny from the general tax fund in 20 years.” It does, however, get a dedicated revenue stream from the so-called bed tax on hotel rooms.

The council committee unanimously approved a resolution requiring the “quasis” to regularly provide information about budgets and expenses. The list of agencies is yet to be compiled but members indicated it will include the CVB, Center City Commission (CCC), Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), Memphis in May, the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Orpheum.

Mitchell said she wasn’t singling out the CVB or Jones, but felt the job should have been posted because “there are a lot of folks looking for jobs and people need to know where the opportunities are.” She said she didn’t care if “Donald Trump or Donald Duck” gets the job.

“This is just a request for information,” she said. “It does not imply that someone will lose funds.”

Vergos said some of the agencies are “creating kingdoms” run by a handful of well-connected board members who are hostile to requests for sensitive information but quick to run to the council in time of need.

“They want to all act as if they are independent private corporations,” he said, noting that his father, Rendezvous founder Charlie Vergos, was instrumental in setting up both the CVB and the Memphis Development Foundation which runs the Orpheum.

Turf and jealousy may be factors with the council as well. The alphabet agencies have been grabbing a lot of headlines, and the pay and perks are usually better than they are in government. The City Council gets the heat, a modest salary, some of the bills, and a supporting role. Top executives at the quasis tend to be consumate government insiders or, like Jones, former top-level government employees. In recent years, three city and county division directors have moved over to alphabet agencies Ñ Benny Lendermon and John Conroy at the RDC and Dexter Muller at the chamber of commerce.

Neither Kane nor council members were particularly happy with the term “quasi-governmental agencies.” In addition to being a mouthful, it lumps together agencies like the RDC and CCC that were created by elected public officials and organizations like the CVB and chamber of commerce that get most of their operating support from their members.

The resolution adds to the confusion by making it seem that divisions of city government are the target. It says “each division of the City of Memphis that is either dependent on city funds or the approval of same shall provide the Memphis City Council and the chief administrative officer of the city of Memphis copies of their enabling legislation, annual report, 10K form, and personnel policies and procedures” each year.

A handier and more accurate catch-all phrase is nonprofits, although that has a “food baskets to the needy” connotation that is outdated. All of the groups the council is interested in are nonprofits, and they are already required by the IRS to file and make readily available to the public an annual Form 990 listing their public purpose, top salaries and benefits, budget, income and expenses.

Nonprofit organizations, specially created authorities, and quasi-governmental agencies have virtually taken over much of downtown, including the public parks on the riverfront, AutoZone Park, the new NBA arena, the Orpheum, Memphis in May, and dozens of office buildings and apartments to which the Center City Commission’s Revenue Finance Corporation holds title so they can get tax freezes.

Councilman Jack Sammons pointed out that many nonprofit board members serve for altruistic reasons, bring special skills and fresh ideas to the table, and “would be glad to provide us this information.”

This is not the first time the accountability issue has surfaced. During the NBA arena debate, State Sen. John Ford, a member of the Public Building Authority, argued that the authority and by extension the arena could not exist without the enabling legislation and support of the state legislature. Elected officials have made similar comments about the Center City Commission, with the result that several of them now serve on the board.

Vergos said having a city council representative or other elected official on the board of the quasi-government agencies doesn’t solve the accountability problem if the board is “stagnant” and run by a handful of insiders.

Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS: Center Ring

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 2, 2002

CENTER RING

What is astounding about this is that Clement has run for — and held — statewide office before, has been the capital city’s man in Washington for more than a decade, and is the son of one of Tennessee’s most legendary governors in modern times, Frank Clement, a magnetic orator whose keynote speech at the 1956 Democratic Convention mesmerized the nation’s listeners.

Clement, on the other hand, seemed to pout and glower whenever his adversary was making a point that he deemed off the mark or unfair in what it suggested, and to purse his lips when he was just listening. At several points the camera caught him rolling his tongue in the hollow of his right cheek — a maneuver that in closeup looked huge and almost volcanic.

In short, Alexander at all times had his public face on, while Clement’s private self kept wandering into the proceedings like a lost child. It was a situation that could be interpreted to either man’s credit or to either’s blame, but in any age when appearances count for as much as issues, the cosmetic edge clearly belonged to the former governor.

Echoes of the Primary

From time to time, Clement has picked up and hurled at Alexander one of the barbs thrown at the Republican nominee by his erstwhile antagonist in the GOP Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Ed Bryant.

The kiss-and-make-up etiquette of partisan politics requires that intra-party rivals support each other even after the most bitter of primaries, and that between Alexander and Bryant was one such. Speaking at a recent luncheon meeting, the outgoing 7th District congressman dutifully endorsed — and sported the stickers of– both Alexander, whom he so recently was chastising on an almost daily basis, and congressional colleague Van Hilleary, the GOP gubernatorial nominee with whom Bryant played Alphonse-and-Gaston a few seasons back, when both men, equally ambitious, were eyeing both a Senate and a governor’s race for 2002.

Though Clement quibbled about the meaning of the picture — and the nature of his relationship to the bank and to the Butchers, whom he ended up on the wrong side of, politically, losing to Jake Butcher in the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1978 — and Alexander has pooh-poohed the nature of his ENA involvement, the fact is that both men have profited from private-sector opportunities that their public prominence made easier for them.

There is no great surprise in this — it is one of the unspoken perks of public life, conspicuously so in the careers of most recent American presidents, for example — and there is nothing necessarily improper about it. In any case, the fallout from Monday night may make it more difficult henceforth for Clement to link Alexander with “Enron capitalism” — though the former governor seems to have been measurably more active in the corporate sector than the congressman.

In subsequent interviews, Alexander would amend his response, suggesting that he had been indulging in some kind of levity. (That seems to be the favored approach these days of political figures confronted with potentially embarrassing quotations.) There is no reason why the statement should not be taken at face value, however, and no particular reason why any odium should attach to it. By definition, anybody who has tried for the presidency — as Alexander did in the 1996 and 2000 cycles — and failed is settling for less by seeking another public office later on.

A ÔModerate’’s Re-emergence

What has intrigued some in the current race is the obvious ease with which Alexander has worn his Senate candidate’s mantle — contrasted with the relatively awkward and unconvincing manner of his two presidential races, in which, having compiled a moderate record as the successful two-term governor of Tennessee, he chose to run as a conservative’s conservative — even to the point, in 1996, of advocating the abolition of the Department of Education which he once headed and, in 1999, of denouncing then rival George W. Bush’s phrase “compassionate conservatism” as a case of “weasel words.”

In his primary campaign this year against Bryant, Alexander was compelled once again to stress his conservative credentials, but since then has re-emerged as a reassuringly middle-of-the-road figure — capable, for example, of stretching hands across partisan boundaries to form a “coalition” with Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, a nominal Democrat and former city schools superintendent who professes admiration for Alexander’s educational reforms as governor during the ‘80s.

The difference between administrative and legislative functions being what it is, there is relatively little likelihood that a Senator Alexander would run afoul of his party’s conservatives, though he — like Clement — has shown signs of wanting to brake the administration’s headlong rush toward confrontation with Iraq. (While giving lip service to the president’s pronouncements, Alexander has advocated a greater role for Congress and America’s allies in the shaping of a military policy, and he makes a point of saying that his own interest is in domestic policy and in “winning the peace.”)

Clement has proved a doughty campaigner, and his wife, Mary Clement, has won numerous admirers for her strength and sagacity on the campaign trail (though she, like her counterpart Honey Alexander, has been under-employed as a campaign surrogate). He has legitimate policy differences with Alexander — notably on providing prescription-drug insurance for seniors through Medicare and imposing a form of price controls on drugs — but his own history as a sometime fellow traveler with the Bush administration (on the initial Bush tax cuts, for example) makes it difficult for him to draw graphic contrasts.

News The Fly-By

VICE PRESIDENTIAL PROSPECT AND FRIEND NAMED W.

Post author By
Post date October 1, 2002

Tennessee’s Senator Bill Frist experimented with future photo-op possibilities at opening of Shelby County Republican campaign headquarters at Park Place Saturday.