If CBS comes calling — as they will today at 3:30 at The Pyramid to see John Caliparti’s basketball Tigers take on Villanova, the least we can do is show up inforce to boost the homeboys and heckle the intruders. Be there.
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Month: January 2003
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‘MAD AS HELL!’
When in doubt, whup somebody’s ass. Anybody’s.
Remember Howard P. Beale, the aging news-anchor character played by Peter Finch in the 1970’s film classic Network!, who, when he learns he’s about to be fired, successfully retrieves his reputation and career by simply venting, ad nauseum, whenever it looks like it will play properly in tv-land?
“I’m Howard P. Beale, and I’m as mad as hell, and not gonna take it anymore!”
Well, I’m terribly afraid that Mr. Howard P. Beale has landed in the White House. How else do you make any sense of what George W. Bush, President of these United States, has had to say for himself in recent days?
No doubt about it, the First Hawk is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore. And no doubt he was made even madder by the news reports coming out of the Middle East these first few days of the new year 2003.
As the world gears up for near-certain war in Iraq, the BBC reported Wednesday that U.N. weapons inspectors who had scoured that country “have almost nothing to report.” United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan added, no doubt irritating the Bush Administration in the process, that he saw no basis at present for the use of force against Iraq. “I don’t see an argument for military action now,” said Mr. Annan.
Annan also told Israeli radio that Baghdad was co-operating with UN weapons inspectors, and that no military action should be considered by the United Nations Security Council, at least until the inspectors issued their full report.
Making matters worse for the administration, one of those UN weapons inspectors told the Los Angeles Times that same day that not only had he and his colleagues found no concealed material in Iraq; they had not seen any of the so-called “intelligence reports” that Washington has said it will supply to help in the search for weapons of mass destruction. “We haven’t found an iota of concealed material yet,” the newspaper quoted this inspector as saying.
All this was bad news, I’m sure, in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush was trying to enjoy the last few hours of his Christmas holidays. That same day, he was lashing out directly at Saddam Hussein, the administration’s 2002 poster boy for evil incarnate, and odds-on favorite right now for the top spot again in 2003. “You know,” said Bush somberly, “he (Saddam) is a man who likes to play games and charades.”
Clearly, the First Hawk has already seen and heard enough about Saddam for not one but two lifetimes, and wishes the Iraqi dictator would simply do the right thing and, well, allow himself to be blasted into oblivion. The President didn’t mince words: “For 11 long years the world has dealt with him, and now he has got to understand his day of reckoning is coming…”
Bingo. Sorry, that’s a game, and the President has told us, it’s Saddam, not us, who likes to play games and charades. Not us; we mean business. We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore. We mean war.
We mean war, because… well, we’re mad as hell, and for good reason. Damn it, Osama Bin Laden, 2001’s “evil one,” took down the Twin Towers and destroyed thousands of American lives, and what’ve we got to show for it? Well, about $39 billion dumped into the security industry, and maybe a few hundred sorry-ass Arab prisoners in Guatanamo, Cuba, prisoners whose greatest crimes wouldn’t make the police blotters of most major American cities.
But no Osama. No Mullah Omar. Nope, the Republicans may have won a significant victory in the 2002 Congressional elections, but they and we still haven’t given anybody outside Afghanistan, as we say in the South, a real “whuppin’.” And what good is all that power if you can’t give somebody a whuppin’?
No, this will never do. We can’t have the the President of these United States looking like Yosemite Sam chasing around after Bugs Bunny, can we? Not when America, the world’s only superpower and God’s most-favored nation, is entitled, fully entitled, to whup some ass. In such circumstances, that ass needs finding.
The appropriate posterior, of course, has been properly identified for months now. And the Bush Administration was all set, any day, to start wiping the floor with Saddam Hussein, until just last weekend, when things got a little complicated in the Far East.
That pesky little devil Kim Jong-il, lord and master of North Korea, last Friday surprised the world by blithely announcing, axis-of-evil kind of guy that he is, that his country already has and will continue to develop the same kind of “weapons of mass destruction” the Bush Administration is hell-bent on finding in Iraq. Not only that: Kim acts like he could care less if the US is upset about his own WMDs. Just to show his true colors, he’s made a point of turfing out UN weapons inspectors already in North Korea keeping tabs on his arms program.
Not very sporting, that Kim. Doesn’t he know we’re mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore?
Kim has certainly muddied the waters. He has thousands of artillery pieces trained on Seoul, the capital of South Korea, just a stone’s throw away from the border. And even allowing for the fact that he has no oil (historically, the Bush presidents have been in the oil business, and have not unnaturally focused most of their foreign-affairs energies on oil-producing nations), messing with Kim would run the severe risk that all our military “might” would be rendered useless by Kim’s 11,000 howitzers, weapons of not-so-mass-destruction whose clever positioning has allowed the North Korean dictator to make a city of some ten million people his virtual hostage.
No, letting Seoul be smashed to bits would never do. Besides, those South Koreans don’t exactly love us right now anyway, and they surely wouldn’t be thrilled to see our foreign-policy blundering lead to a few hundred thousand Korean civilian casualties. Bad television, at the very least, for all concerned.
So what is an angry President to do? He needs to do what any self-respecting, dysfunctional Southern father would do: he and his cohorts need to lash out wildly at the easiest target they can find. They’ll feel a damned sight better after they’ve done so.
It’s not easy being the First Hawk these days. Poor George W. Bush is like the daddy with two teen-aged sons whom he’s told, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever catches one of them smoking, he’s gonna “whup their ass.” Son Number One is the more crafty and malicious of the two; Daddy suspects he may be sneaking around behind the garage for a smoke, and swears he can smell the cigarettes on his breath everytime he comes in the house. But he can never quite catch him doing the dirty deed.
Ah, but Son Number Two. The poor boy comes home from a party where he’s had a drink or two, and, losing all fear, is out there sitting on the front porch smoking a big fat cigar, when Daddy throws open the door, screaming, “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”
You all know what happens next, don’t you, in the topsy-turvy world of dysfunctional Southern fatherhood and twenty-first century international affairs? Daddy drags Son Number One out of his bed upstairs, takes him out back and gives him a thorough whuppin’.
Doesn’t make sense, you say? That’s just because you don’t get it. Daddy beat the stuffings out of Son Number One just because he could. And because he’s mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore…
Kenneth Neill is the publisher/CEO of Contemporary Media, parent company of The Memphis Flyer
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TIGERS TOP ARKANSAS, 72-67
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) – Billy Richmond scored 16 points and Memphis made all six of its free throws in the final 21.8 seconds to claim a 72-67 victory over Arkansas on Thursday.
The Razorbacks (5-6) took a 67-64 lead on Michael Jones’ fourth 3-pointer of the game with 1:39 to go. Jones paced Arkansas with 18 points, tying a career high, off the bench.
The Tigers (8-2) responded by scoring the final eight points on a layup by Richmond, while Earl Barron, John Grice and Duane Erwin each hit a pair of free throws as Arkansas rushed its shots in the final half- minute of the game.
In what is expected to be the last game in the series for a while, Memphis won for the first time in Fayetteville. Arkansas had won the previous five meetings at Bud Walton Arena and lead the overall series 11-10.
Memphis’ Clyde Wade drives against Arkansas’ Eric Ferguson during the first half.
The Tigers tied the score at 64-64 on a 3-point play by guard Billy Richmond with 1:56 remaining. Arkansas didn’t get back fast enough on defense, allowing Richmond to make a layup and draw a blocking foul on Alonzo Lane, who fouled out on the play.
After Jones’ 3-pointer, Richmond made another layup with just over a minute remaining to pull the Tigers within one.
Dionisio Gomez missed two free throws for Arkansas with 37.5 seconds remaining and then Barron, a 7-foot center and a 77 percent free throw shooter, gave Memphis a 68-67 lead with 21.8 seconds left.
After Arkansas moved the ball upcourt and called timeout, Jones rushed a 3-pointer from the top of the key and Grice was fouled after making the rebound with 12.5 seconds left. His free throws gave Memphis a 70-67 lead.
The Razorbacks had a chance to tie but Kendrick Davis missed and Erwin iced the game with 2.2 seconds remaining.
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UPSET ABOUT THE UPSET?
‘Twas a famous victory, all right, the Fiesta Bowl Ohio State win that all the jock-sniffers and armchair quarterbacks amongst us watched Friday night. Okay, Okay, so the interference call that kept Miami from winning in overtime was a bad call! Just like the one that umpire Don Denkinger blew in the 7th game of the 1985 World Series. But remember, all you Cardinal fans who won’t let that one rest: Jack Clark dropped a pop foul and Todd Worrell unloosed a wild pitch in the same inning. Who are we to quarrel with the fates? Hooray, Buckeyes!
The Memphis Grizzlies had their best half ever, then almost let Corey Maggette and the Los Angeles Clippers steal the game before recovering for a 116-111 win at The Pyramid.
Maggette scored 22 of his career-high 34 points in the second half but could not lead the Clippers to victory after they trailed by as many as 32 in the first half.
Rookie Gordan Giricek scored three of his season-high 31 points in the final minute to help seal the win.
The Grizzlies had a 71-46 lead at halftime, the largest intermission margin in team history, but the Clippers outscored them 40-19 in the third quarter. Maggette hit a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer at the end of the period, bringing Los Angeles within 90-86.
Maggette sank two more 3-pointers early in the fourth quarter to give the Clippers their first lead at 95-94. They led by as many as five points, but the Grizzlies rediscovered their form with a 9-0 run to retake the lead at 108-104 with just under three minutes left.
The Clippers played without center Michael Olowokandi, who sat out with a sore knee, then lost guard Quentin Richardson to an ankle injury early in the first quarter. Los Angeles suffered its fifth straight loss.
Memphis has won 10 of its last 19 games after starting the season with 13 straight defeats.
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ECHOES OF YESTERYEAR?
Previews of Coming Attractions?
A new Rambo-style action-adventure film, “Iraqui 2”
A new blues number, “Korea, Korea”
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friday, 3
The Griz go against the Clippers of L.A. 7 p.m., The Pyramid.
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THE MAYOR’S NEW-YEAR FIREWORKS SHOW
For those Memphians who thought they’d heard all the fireworks the night before, the remarks by Mayor Willie Herenton at city councilman Myron Lowery’s annual New Year’s prayer breakfast at the Peabody had to come as something of a shock. And there was lots of unexpected heat for an audience that had come in shivering.
After a graceful introduction by his relatively new Shelby County counterpart, A C Wharton, the mayor announced he was there to “say some things” and maybe “step on a few toes,” though (he said straight-facedly) what he had to say was “not about personalities”
Viewing with alarm the state of things in every governmental sphere save Memphis’, Herenton said the “Paradigm of 2002” should not be the paradigm of 2003. He spent a few words boasting of the city’s “fiscally sound status,” compared to such metropolises as New York and Atlanta, praised his administrators and the city council as being “prudent, not reckless,” and noted that, after being nominated by council member TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, he’d been named “Mayor of the Year’ by a national magazine devoted to municipal and county governments.
Then he rapidly got down to business, musing on the “deep-seated problems” in local education. He could not be pleased, he said, when there were “two governments and two separate school systems, neither with appropriate resources.”
This was all on account of — or the cause of — too many “selfish agendas.”
Referring to a recent suggestion by Shelby County schools superintendent Bobby Webb that new county schools should be built at a safe distance from the annexation areas of Memphis, the mayor said he had a “message” for the superintendent, noting parenthetically, “He’s a newcomer. I’ve been around a long time.”
Such thinking was “unacceptable to me,” Herenton said, and so were the “reform” notions envisioned by Webb (and, by implication, Wharton, who recently suggested a plan of his own that would, among other things, revise the funding formula, abhorred in the suburbs, that favors the city over the county by a ratio of 3-to-one in the distribution of state capital-construction funds).
“I’m going to do all that I can to lobby the Memphis city council and the Memphis Board of Education [against it]. And, Mr. Mayor [Wharton], that is no disrespect to your reform plan.”
There were just some things he needed to “make clear” to the suburbanites, Herenton said. “They boast of having superior schools. They ought to pay for them.”
The mayor said, “I came here today to put the gloves on and draw battle lines,” because the aforesaid suburban mayors “don’t want to do the right thing.” And: “If they don’t need Memphis, they don’t need our tax dollars.”
Then the Memphis mayor turned his attack in another direction. After promising that his own reform plan of a year ago — one which envisioned single-source funding but separate school jurisdictions — would be “back on the agenda” for the Memphis School Board, Herenton said, “The School Board is a disaster…It makes no sense.”
Singing out member Hubert “Dutch” Sandridge, who “tore up my proposal,” Herenton warned the board, Your business is my businessÉThere is no law that my signature is not on.”
He compared his own tenure as schools superintendent favorably with that of his successor, Dr. Gerry House, who, he said, “was a disaster,” a dilettante who had loaded the school system with unnecessary programs and “got herself a lot of awards” and moved on, leaving current superintendent Johnnie B. Watson to clean up after her.
Rounding again on the Board, Herenton said, “Your best ain’t good enough,” and accused the board of “spending our dollars with arrogance.” Pledging again to draw “deep battle lines,” he said, “I have tried compromise. I’ve tried everything. I worked with these officials to try to get them to do the right thing.”
“I run a city and I run it well,” Herenton said, promising to work with Wharton in devising a school-reform plan both could agree one.”These suburban mayors don’t want to do the right thing,” he said “They like you better than they like me….Let their schools be overpopulated.”.
The mayor repeated “I want to tell Hubon Sandridge. That proposal he tore up, it’s coming back.” The two-headed current educational structures and the “piecemeal” approaches that characterized them were not only ineffective but too expensive, he said, a constant goad to the city and county tax rates. “Ask the realtors, Ask the homebuilders,” he said.
The latter point drew a grudging assent from Wharton, who, however, left the room quickly when the mayor had finished. Seemingly baffled by that fact, Herenton insisted that his remarks were “not personal,” that he had merely been trying to “challenge” Wharton and the other exemplars of local government.
At least one member of his audience, school board member Sara Lewis, took his remarks in that spirit. “Somebody should get the four units talking,” she said, meaning the city/county legislative bodies and school boards. “Maybe it’ll be me. Maybe I’ll call a meeting.”
Oh, and lest anyone out there hadn’t known, Mayor Herenton said after his speech that “of course,” he’d be running again in 2003.
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thursday, 2
It’s way over Fayetteville-way, but if it’s good enough for the ever-mobile Tiger Road Show, it’s good enough for us fans. The U of M basketball team takes on Arkansas at Bud Walton Arena, 7:05 p.m.
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I T ‘ S 2 0 0 3 !
H A P P Y N E W Y E A R!