Month: August 2003

Categories
Opinion

Charitable Disclosure

Charitable foundations do much good work, but they can also be as unaccountable as the federal bureaucracies they often resemble,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial this week. It went on to praise Rep. Harold Ford for co-sponsoring legislation focusing on salaries, travel, and office furnishings counted as “charitable spending.”

Needless to say, Ford, a Democrat, is not exactly a house pet of the conservative Wall Street Journal. But Ford and the Journal recognize something that most of the Memphis media, notably The Commercial Appeal, don’t. Namely, that disclosure of salaries and expenses at foundations and nonprofits transcends partisanship and is simply good government and good reporting.

In 1996, this newspaper published a long story on local nonprofit agencies that listed the salaries and benefits, along with the revenues, of a representative sampling of 40 organizations ranging from hospitals to colleges to the Boy Scouts of America.

It wasn’t an original idea. Other weekly newspapers had done it, and we got the idea and some helpful pointers at an annual convention. The main thrust of the story was that nonprofits do a lot more than prepare food baskets for the needy.

It was no picnic. Some of the people at the top were our advertisers, sources, and friends. Several organizations strongly resisted giving our reporters access to their federal 990 tax forms, even though the form says in the upper right-hand corner, “This form is open to public inspection.” Many of them called in their lawyers, dragged their feet, provided outdated information, or refused to let us make copies. One invoked “the privacy act.”

We repeated the survey for two more years, to include more organizations and because it was popular with readers. It seemed both fairer and more informative than spot-reporting of a single salary or expense without context just because it happened to be in the news. There was plenty to go around, and our hope was that other local media organizations would do the same thing. Newspapers are especially well suited for this kind of detail-laden project. But The Commercial Appeal, with its bulldog editor and its lighthouse logo and its platitude about giving light and all that, never did.

After a few years we climbed off that particular hobbyhorse and went on to other things. But the influence of nonprofit organizations and foundations in the public sector continued to grow, and it is still growing. The Center City Commission, the Riverfront Development Corporation, and the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau receive taxes or fees and influence policies and projects such as the downtown taxing district, FedExForum, and riverfront redevelopment. Ambitious politicians have learned to get themselves named to their boards if they want to be where the action is.

The Sports Authority, the Memphis Redbirds Foundation, Memphis Development Foundation (Orpheum), and the Blues Foundation promote and seek financial support for tourism, events such as Spring Fling, and music and cultural events. The Plough Foundation, Hyde Family Foundation, and Partners in Public Education (PIPE) seek to influence policy on public education.

In recent years, top city employees including Rick Masson, Dexter Muller, John Conroy, and Benny Lendermon have found that they can make as much or more money with fewer headaches working for a local nonprofit. It is very likely that former county mayoral aide Tom Jones would not have come to grief if he had done the same four years ago. Most of the salaries are competitive and reasonable. But disclosure only works if the media do their part, which they don’t.

Two years ago, the Flyer reported that the Redbirds Foundation was spending more than $400,000 on its top two salaries and just over $200,000 on inner-city baseball. The rest of the media yawned. Just a few weeks ago, the CA said that the Sports Authority is passing the hat in the wake of Spring Fling but lamely reported a ballpark figure of $200,000 for staff salaries and expenses. Executive director Tiffany Brown makes $120,000. Likewise, when PIPE lectured the city school board about spending its money efficiently, it became appropriate to examine PIPE’s own spending in a year when PIPE has frozen its support for public schools. Interim PIPE director Ethele Hilliard declined to disclose her consulting fee but said it is less than the $100,000 to $125,000 a year plus bonus that PIPE plans to pay a new director.

H.L. Mencken proposed a simple standard: No publicity and no public funds for any organization until every penny of salaries and expenses is freely disclosed. If The Wall Street Journal and Harold Ford can agree, maybe the CA and the rest of the Memphis media can put down their pom-poms and join in. But don’t hold your breath.

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Reporter

Profiting from Pain

Some tree services are making a buck off of disaster.

By Bianca Phillips

Like many Memphians, James and Mary Jane Hamlet were desperately in need of tree work after the storm of three weeks ago. Four large trees in the backyard of their River Oaks home were ripped from the ground, and the tops were broken off several others. But when they called their usual tree service for an estimate, they were shocked when they heard it would cost $48,000 to clean up.

According to Memphis City Council chairman Brent Taylor, the council has received quite a few calls reporting price gouging from out-of-town tree services. As a result, the council has posted a list of phone numbers of local tree services on its Web site. However, Mike Mabe, manager of Davey Tree & Landscape, says a few local companies are jacking up prices as well.

“They’re just robbing people,” said Mabe. “You’ve got people charging prices that are inflated 10 times what they ought to be.”

Davey charges $75 per man per hour and an additional $225 an hour for a crane if it’s necessary. Mabe says his company recently charged $1,800 to remove a limb from the top of a house after another local company gave the homeowner an estimate of $6,000.

Citizens who feel they are victims of price gouging can report the incident to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) of the Mid-South. James Pascover, director of marketing and communication for the BBB, recommends checking the company’s record with the BBB by calling 759-1300 or visiting MidSouth.BBB.org. He also says if the amount of the work exceeds $3,000, the contractor should be licensed by the Tennessee Home Improvement Bureau.

Mabe says not to take an estimate from anyone who approaches you without having been called, and Taylor suggests getting several estimates before settling on a service.

“We’re very skittish now on getting bids from people. We got one bid for $5,000, but I’m not sure if this guy was intent on doing the whole job. And we got one bid for $24,000,” said Mary Hamlet. “It’s not going to be cheap, but I just don’t see it being $20,000 to 40,000.”

The City Council has also set up a Helping Hands hotline at 576-6786 for seniors, the disabled, and fixed-income individuals who may not be able to afford tree work. The council will relay requests for assistance to volunteer groups. The city will pick up tree debris left on the curb but will not enter onto private property.

In the Red

Shelby County Head Start violates lease.

By Janel Davis

Troubles seem to be growing for Shelby County Head Start, Inc., which oversees most of the students in Head Start programs. Already in appeals after being fired by the county for mismanagement of funds and credit-card fraud, the agency can add a charge of lease violation to the list.

Pam Ali, the CEO and director of Cultural Connection, says Head Start violated its lease at her facility and owes her more than $41,000 in back taxes, lease fees, and damages stemming from its two-year rental of her facility.

Beginning July 2001, Ali rented the 10,000-square-foot facility at 2288 Dunn and Airways to one of the 16 centers operated by the agency to carry out its nationally funded early-childhood development program. The two-year lease included an option to rent the building for a third year with a written renewal decision required at least 90 days before the lease expired in July 2003.

According to Ali, Head Start wanted the monthly rent of $12,000 reduced to $7,500. When she refused the offer in January, she says the agency never responded to any correspondence. In June, Ali agreed to lower the monthly rent to $9,000 but received no acceptance or refusal of the offer. As a result, Ali requested the company vacate her facility.

While Head Start ended its operations at the Dunn location and paid the final month’s required rent of $12,000, administrators offered to refund Ali only $29,000 of the amount she was asking.

A signed lease between the two entities outlines a fee structure ordering the agency to pay Ali the taxes assessed during the term of the lease, a $12,000 one-time down payment, and costs of subletting internal monitoring equipment. At odds is the $12,000 down payment which Head Start requested be used to pay back and current taxes.

Representatives of the agency, including board member Bob Hatton and facilities manager Arthur Wells, are being represented by attorney Glenwood Roane. None of the parties involved with Head Start returned calls for comment.

“Since they did not negotiate with me in good faith, I’ve missed the opportunity to lease the building out to someone else,” said Ali. She plans to reopen the building for a nonprofit after-school program in September. “I need my money to be able to reopen. I don’t have time to go to court. There’s a note on the building, and if I don’t pay the note, then I will lose the building.”

Although Ali may not have time to go to court, she will do so if a resolution cannot be reached. She has turned her case over to Head Start headquarters in Atlanta for further assistance.

No Charge

Charges dropped in alleged newspaper extortion case.

By John Branston

Extortion charges against the former classified advertising manager of The Tri-State Defender have been dropped.

Myron Hudson was arrested in June and taken to jail in the middle of the night on a charge of extortion filed by the news-paper’s editor, Marzie Thomas. She told police Hudson demanded $50,000 or he would go public with plagiarism allegations against The Tri-State Defender.

After The Memphis Flyer broke the still-uncontested plagiarism story,The Commercial Appeal reported the charge and arrest in a front-page story on June 3rd. The Associated Press picked it up and passed it along to other Tennessee newspapers.

The Flyer’s reporting was based on a detailed comparison of numerous stories published in the Defender and was neither prompted nor assisted by Hudson.

The charge was “nolle prossed” — or discontinued — by the county prosecutor’s office July 29th.

The Great Sweater Debate

Who has it in for pedal pushers? The city school board fashion police?

By Mary Cashiola

A wise man said, “Good clothes open all doors.”

If you’re a Memphis City Schools student or parent, you know it’s not quite that simple.

At the last meeting, school board commissioner Deni Hirsh made a motion to send the district’s uniform policy, just amended last month, back to committee. The new policy was criticized by Hirsh and fellow board member Wanda Halbert as being too restrictive.

Halbert said she had initially misread the policy and objected to the clause stating that light jackets, sweaters, and sweatshirts were permitted as long as they were white or in a color picked by the school. True outerwear, like heavy jackets, is not permitted to be worn during school hours.

“No one from my son’s school told us a color jacket he could wear,” said Halbert. “Are you saying that if a parent cannot find a white sweater, vest, or jacket [their child] will have to be cold?”

Hirsh objected to the policy changes for similar reasons when it was first amended. “I’m totally opposed to this policy as a parent,” Hirsh said in a meeting last month. “Throughout the year, I saw a deterioration of niceness and attempts by good kids to get away with whatever they could. … The biggest issue is only allowing the white shirt unless the student leadership council picks other colors.”

Many schools don’t have functioning leadership councils; others have hard-to-find colors, especially in the district’s prescribed shirt styles, such as maroon. One school is allowing students to wear only white shirts or a school shirt they buy from the school.

“Do you want to wear navy and white all your life every day of the week?” asked Hirsh. “Maybe we could allow more basic colors.”

Attempts by students to get away with what they could led to the new, more restrictive uniform rules. One of the largest loopholes was what kind of clothing students were wearing over their white shirts. Denim is also expressly not allowed, to keep students from saying blue jeans are the same as navy pants.

But as with personal style, everyone has his or her own preferences for the uniform policy. Hirsh, for instance, says she and her daughters each have a black sweater they wear when they get cold. Board president Carl Johnson doesn’t agree with nixing denim. Cropped pants and capris are allowed, while their shorter cousin, pedal pushers, aren’t, but walking shorts are. Similarly, boot-cut pants and cargo pants are okay, but bell bottoms are not.

Watson was asked to change the rules but he said he didn’t think it would be productive to do so “at this time.” Board commissioner Lora Jobe also dissented, saying that it would be “a mess” to change the policy so close to the start of school.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

MLGW After the Storm

If your house were on fire, would you care if the firemen who responded came from West Memphis, Memphis, Southaven, or Germantown?

Not likely. That must be how tens of thousands of people still without power more than a week after the big storm felt, and how the thousands whose power remains off two weeks after the storm are still feeling.

As part of the “cleanup,” our elected officials should insist that MLGW give us the following information by the end of August:

Why is it unsafe to hire Entergy linemen and subcontractors but not unsafe to have MLGW crews, many of whom had sweltered sleeplessly for seven or more consecutive days in their own powerless homes, working in perilous jobs 14 hours a day?

Why were Entergy’s experienced personnel and subcontractors, who were demonstrably willing to assist MLGW on Thursday, July 24th, really turned away? MLGW spokespeople say that they weren’t available until Saturday. Entergy says they were available immediately. Who’s lying?

What was the hourly overtime rate for MLGW linemen and employees, and what, if any, premiums were paid beyond overtime? What rates were negotiated with the utility companies and contractors that came to the aid of MLGW and Memphis?

What price did Entergy propose for the spurned offer of assistance from 775 crewmen and subcontractors gathered at the Mississippi state line two days after the storm?

Why, when faced with damage from a storm of similar magnitude, did an investor-owned utility in Kansas City hire more than twice as many outside workers as MLGW did and complete the job without any reported fatalities or serious injuries within 10 days?

That will do for starters.

We are not ungrateful for the job MLGW and the city of Memphis are doing cleaning up from the storm, and anyone who suggests that raising these questions implies disdain for repair crews is missing the point.

MLGW officials and employees have admitted to the Flyer that there is a culture clash, both between union and non-union workers and between municipally owned MLGW and investor-owned Entergy. The statement in The Commercial Appeal this week that the two utilities have “a real good relationship” is public relations nonsense.

Spokesmen for both companies confirm that they do not have a mutual assistance agreement. Nor, as officials of the companies also confirm, have these next-door neighbors assisted each other during a variety of recent storms in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The few MLGW employees who helped out in a West Memphis storm were there at the request of West Memphis, not Entergy.

“A real good relationship” means more than issuing press releases to daily newspaper apologists. It means ironing out differences and forming a genuine mutual assistance agreement as soon as possible.

Memphis has had one catastrophic ice storm and two catastrophic wind storms in nine years. When the next storm hits, we’ll need all the help we can get.

It was troubling that it took more than a week for Mayor Herenton and MLGW president Herman Morris to hold a joint news conference, and that when they did they were physically far apart instead of shoulder-to-shoulder. They can talk all they want about cooperation, but in this case a picture was worth 1,000 words.

This has nothing to do with mayoral candidate John Willingham’s efforts to make

political hay from frustration over the cleanup. It has nothing to do with union bashing or maligning the good work that’s being done by the city and MLGW.

The issue is how to do a better job next time.

Categories
Opinion

An American Hero

There was no ceremonial viewing of the body of Pfc. Raheen Tyson Heighter on July 28th. His remains have not arrived here from Iraq. He was a spectacular 21-year-old who was killed when a convoy in which he was riding was attacked early in the morning outside of Baghdad.

His mother, Cathy Heighter, spent yesterday afternoon sitting with relatives in her mother’s house on Long Island. She expects the body back next week. Then there will be a public viewing.

“I want to let people know he died for this country,” the mother was saying. “He died an American hero.”

“He was supposed to be home in June,” one of the women in the living room said.

“Been there too long,” an aunt, Barbara Adams, said.

“They wanted to come home,” one of the others said.

Cathy Heighter is a pretty woman of 45. She wore a cream blouse and blue pants and sat on a living-room couch underneath front windows. “The field commander called me,” she was saying. “He talked so very highly of Raheen. He said the troops looked up to him. He fought to the end. He emptied his gun.

“I loved him,” she said.

“He loved you,” one of the women said.

Her son has written moving, memorable lines of the war. They were in a letter sent on June 20th that arrived at his mother’s house on July 2nd: “Today is a blissful day … . Today is the first time I realized you have tried your hardest to bring the bestowed, hidden, optimistic, and spontaneous qualities out of me … . As I sit here in tears, I thank you.”

His mother never liked the idea of the Army from the start. He was 17, and she was in her beauty shop, “Beyond Images of Beauty” on Main Street in Bay Shore, when an Army recruiting officer came in. He said that he had seen Raheen in high school and the young man told him that he wanted to join.

“The recruiter said he just needed my signature,” she said. “I told him, ‘Don’t even ask. Get out of here.'”

Her son, however, saw his life ahead as something that he had to run right up to like a train on the tracks outside. At 14, he came home from school and took a number-two pencil and drew a father holding his son. Holding the child to his chest with a powerful left arm protecting the child from a world that the father, his face strong and simultaneously haunted by pain, could see ahead for the son.

It is a wonderful drawing.

He and his mother, who sells art out of her beauty shop, made prints of the drawing and sold them. He thought that was a good enough start, but he was going to go so much higher. He was going to pierce the sky. When he graduated from high school, he worked in a brokerage and he studied for a license exam, but he saw so much more dancing on the horizon. He wanted to go to college outside of New York. He would use such a place, with its walks through trees, with its professors, as an exciting studio for his art.

The combined income of his mother and father, who was in construction, wasn’t spectacular, but it was over the limit for scholarships and loans.

There was one way. Out there in the high school halls were the military recruiters with their dark bargains. You put your body up and if nothing happens you get college paid for. Raheen took the Army. That is the contract signed by so many. The Army buys them for a college degree. It works unless you wind up in Iraq and come home in a box.

On August 7, 2001, he walked into his mother’s shop and said he was leaving for the Army the next day. He had sold himself. He was now old enough to enlist without her written permission. “He put me in shock,” she said. “We got up at 5:30 the next morning. He had three big duffel bags packed. They told him to bring only one. I hugged him. I told him I loved him. I told him be a man.”

The other day at 10 a.m., she was on the phone in her beauty shop with a customer. Her oldest son, Glynn, and two Army officers walked in and stood nervously. “You think you’re seeing ghosts,” she said. “I’m standing there on the phone and I know they are there to tell me that my son is dead. How can this be happening? They are ghosts.”

“Why do we stay there?” an aunt said. “They don’t want us there.”

“Shooting at us. They don’t want us there.”

“Do they know why they’re there?”

“No. They don’t know. They’re there for their country. That’s what they know,” the soldier’s mother said.

“Do you know?” one aunt was asked.

“Oil.”

“Oil,” Cathy Heighter said, softly and so sadly.

Jimmy Breslin writes for Newsday, where this column first appeared.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

It’s the hottest part of the summer, and, in grand Mississippi tradition, Clarksdale welcomes music fans from around the world for the 15th annual Sunflower Blues Festival. Scheduled for Thursday, August 7th, through Saturday, August 9th, this free festival will star such regional blues greats as O.B. Buchana, Willie King & the Liberators, and Floyd Taylor.

The festival opens Thursday with an educational stage inside the Delta Blues Museum; later that night, area clubs — including Sarah’s Kitchen, Ground Zero Blues Club, and Red’s Lounge — will host a Juke Joint Caravan event, starring Sunflower Festival performers like Cadillac John and The Wesley Jefferson Band.

Friday, expect sets from Buchana, Super Chikan, and local music teacher Mr. Johnnie Billington, as well as readings from Memphis author Robert Gordon (who will be signing copies of his Muddy Waters biography, Can’t Be Satisfied) and a chat with legendary acoustic player Honeyboy Edwards.

On Saturday, the festival will feature four stages, including the Othar Turner Memorial Acoustic Stage, which will host a tribute to the late fife player with a much-anticipated performance from Sharde Thom-as & the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band. Bob Margolin’s Allstar Blues Jam, which will include such Muddy Waters sidemen as barrelhouse pianist Pinetop Perkins, harp blower Carey Bell, and guitar genius Hubert Sumlin, goes down just after 10 p.m., while earlier sets include Jimbo Mathus’ Knockdown Society, Big T & the Family, and more.

“The Sunflower Blues Festival specializes in real Mississippi blues artists,” explains Roger Stolle, chairman of the festival’s booking committee. “The blues isn’t dead, [and] we prove it down here in Clarksdale. The genre has become so homogenized, but you can hear distinctive regional styles at the festival,” he says, pointing to musicians like Leland picker Pat Thomas and hill-country guitarist Robert Belfour, who are both playing this year.

Stolle’s store, Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, will celebrate its first anniversary during the festival. Along with free coffee and donuts, Cat Head will feature live music and folk-art demonstrations from the likes of lowebow creator John Lowe, welder Butch Anthony, and sculptor Willie Kinard. Sunday, the store, which is located at 252 Delta Avenue in downtown Clarksdale, will be hosting its own Mini Blues Fest, with performances by Big George Brock and William Lee Ellis.

While one of the best new acoustic blues duos on the scene, Elam McKnight & Keith Carter, aren’t playing the official Sunflower Blues Festival, look for them at Ground Zero Blues Club and Sarah’s Kitchen throughout the weekend, then at Cat Head’s Mini Blues Fest on Sunday. Memphians can catch the gritty duo on WREG-Channel 3‘s morning show earlier in the week or tune into the King Biscuit Blues Hour on Helena’s KFFA radio on Friday at noon for an on-air performance.

But that’s not all: Living Blues co-founder Jim O’Neal will be signing copies of his invaluable “Delta Blues Map Kit” at Dela’s Stackhouse on Sunflower Avenue (be sure to dig through proprietor Nancy Kossman’s vast selection of books and records while you’re there), while Morgan Freeman’s Madidi restaurant will host a blues brunch on Sunday afternoon.

Finally, be sure to drop in at the Hopson Commissary and the Shack Up Inn, off Highway 49 on the northwest side of town. Thursday night, the good folks at Hopson will be serving up barbecue dinners and screening a new Honeyboy Edwards documentary, with director Scott Taradash in attendance. The rest of the weekend, they’ll roll out the carpet for local hero Mathus, who will be playing songs from Stop and Let the Devil Ride, his latest record, and accompanying Arkansan CeDell Davis.

For more information, including a complete schedule of events, go to SunflowerFest.org or CatHead.biz.

Can’t get out of town this weekend? Send the kids to bed early and settle into a front-row seat for the Soul Comes Home concert, which will be broadcast on local PBS affiliate WKNO-Channel 10 this Saturday, August 9th. Billed as “a celebration of Stax Records and Memphis Soul Music,” this concert (filmed at The Orpheum on April 30, 2003) stars Stax greats Booker T. & the MGs, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, and Isaac Hayes alongside such soul superstars as Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge. Be sure to tune in: You don’t want to wait for the Shout! Factory DVD (available in early 2004) to catch gospel singer Rance Allen‘s devastating “That Will Be Good Enough for Me.”

Also on WKNO: Willy Bearden, one of the producers of the “Memphis Memoirs” series, cranks up the volume for a look at the history of Memphis garage bands. Playing for a Piece of the Door, inspired by local musicologist Ron Hall‘s book of the same title, will feature archival footage from The Gentrys, Tommy Burk & the Counts, The Box Tops, and The Coachmen. A look at the hundreds of groups that sprang up around town between 1960 and 1975 — in ’65, Bearden claims, there were more than 500 garage bands playing nightclubs, skating rinks, community centers, and church dances within the city limits — Playing for a Piece of the Door will premiere at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 12th, then rebroadcast at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, August 16th.

Meanwhile, public radio staple Beale Street Caravan, locally produced since 1996, has packed up and moved from its former home inside the Blues Foundation. Relax, folks. Beale Street Caravan has new quarters just a block away at 66 Monroe Avenue. “We actually separated from the Blues Foundation in 2001.This move has been afoot since then,” Sid Selvidge, executive producer of the radio program, explains. “We have a great relationship with them, but we needed to raise the profile of Beale Street Caravan and gain some square-footage. The corner of Front and Monroe is high-visibility, and we’ll have our own studio there.”

Where will the Beale Street Caravan crew appear next? At the Sunflower Blues Festival, of course.

You can e-mail Local Beat at localbeat@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Sure Bet?

Though he’s shown plenty of range, playing smug or swaggering with great aplomb in the likes of Punch-Drunk Love, Almost Famous, and The Talented Mr. Ripley (which may be his finest performance, despite its limited screen time), Philip Seymour Hoffman may still be best recognized as his generation’s greatest cinematic icon of anxiety and sloppy, unkempt neediness.

Dan Mahowny, the Toronto bank manager Hoffman plays in Owning Mahowny, is the latter –a cousin to the obsessive, uncomfortable loser the actor portrayed so memorably in Happiness and Boogie Nights. Hoffman’s Mahowny is in control of some aspects of his life. He’s talented at buttering up his superiors at the bank and has a pretty, devoted (and perhaps just as unhealthily obsessive) girlfriend (Minnie Driver). But other things are falling apart, and Mahowny’s disheveled physical appearance –his pudgy, pink skin protruding from poorly fitting suits, his perpetually agitated yet self-contained expression decorated with an awkward comb-over and dark, blocky glasses –gives a hint of the chaos.

Mahowny is frugal in his public and even private life — driving a beater of a car, worrying about spending $30 on a dinner with his girlfriend even though the occasion is to celebrate a new promotion and raise — but in his secret life he gambles outrageous sums of money, betting on sporting events with his bookie Frank (veteran character actor and Atom Egoyan regular Maury Chakin) and on increasingly desperate and nonsensical bets — such as taking all the home teams in the National League and all the road teams in the American League for $1,000 each. When his debt grows unmanageable, Mahowny takes the dramatic step of issuing a bank loan under a false name to pay it off, and then there’s no turning back.

Owning Mahowny is the true story of bank drone Brian Molony who, in the early 1980s, embezzled $10 million from his employer over a two-year span and lost it all at the tables in Atlantic City, where the casino was so pleased to have his business that near the end of his two-year spree it was flying him in on a private jet.

Director Richard Kwietniowski (following up his debut, Love and Death on Long Island) tracks Mahowny’s lost weekend as a blankly obsessive affair. We never see an early winning streak that might have gotten Mahowny hooked, and we see little of the thrill of gambling as the protagonist describes it to a therapist late in the film. Mahowny seems not addicted to the thrill of winning but to the thrill of risking and losing, so much so that he seems incapable of leaving the table as long as there is money left to gamble, his single-minded devotion to losing money making him an obscure object of desire for Atlantic City casino manager Victor Foss (John Hurt), who watches Mahowny gambling from his surveillance cage and cackles, “He’s a beauty. I love him!” Early in the film, when Frank tries to turn away Mahowny’s business, the addict is incredulous, saying, “You can’t do that. So what am I supposed to do? Go to the racetrack and watch?”

Kwietniowski plays this scenario as a dry comedy. He also took a slyly comic approach to an obsessive scenario in Love and Death on Long Island, where Hurt’s protagonist was infatuated with a young actor played by Jason Priestley. (One wonders whether Lolita is Kwietniowski’s favorite novel?) But his precise direction is so unflashy as to border on dull. The director nicely captures Mahowny’s antiseptic environment of bank offices, casino gaming halls, and parking garages and neatly compares casino managers and bank executives to vultures who prey on the bad judgment of their clients. But ultimately, Owning Mahowny hinges on Hoffman’s performance and whether such an inscrutable, unattractive character can carry a film. Mission accomplished.

Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue LINE, one of the greatest of documentaries, begins with a mystery –is its protagonist, a convicted murderer, actually guilty of the crime of which he’s been accused? — and ends with a certainty — someone else all but confessing to the same crime on tape. In some ways Andrew Jarecki’s harrowing Capturing the Friedmans is reminiscent of Morris’ film, except it works in the opposite way: It begins with a certainty of sorts — Long Island school teacher Arnold Friedman and his teenage son Jesse pled guilty in the late ’80s to several counts of child molestation — but by the end of the film very little about its subject seems established or even knowable. Friedmans is a Rashomon scenario, with many different voices giving achingly different accounts of the very same act(s), but where Kurosawa’s iconic film seemed to conclude that all of its witnesses were lying, the awful truth of Capturing the Friedmans is that everyone may be telling the truth, at least as they see it.

But perhaps the most astounding thing about the film is that it isn’t even that complicated. Jarecki’s tragic, sometimes horrifyingly comic film (inspiring the kind of laughs that catch in your throat) actually begins as the film Jarecki originally set out to make: a profile of David Friedman, the most popular children’s birthday clown in New York City. The interviews with David and with his mother Elaine seen early on were, in retrospect, clearly conducted for this film, as each cagily avoids the subject of David’s father when the director rather innocently inquires about it.

But then Jarecki plunges the viewer down the rabbit’s hole, a sinister twilight crane shot over the tree-lined street of Great Neck, New York, segueing into a clip from a video diary David made in 1988, in which he stares at the camera (and thus, now, the film’s audience) and says: “This is private. So if you’re not me you shouldn’t be watching this.”

What follows is the spellbinding but sorrowful vision of a family and a community spinning apart, told through present-day interviews, file footage, and, most dramatically, home movies taken by and provided by the Friedmans themselves. The extent to which this family documented themselves is astounding. First are the innocent home movies taken before Arnold Friedman was arrested in a child-pornography sting and he and his youngest son, Jesse, were charged with multiple counts of molesting the neighborhood kids in Arnold’s home-based computer class. Then come home movies, audio tapes, and the aforementioned video diaries taken by David and his brothers (including middle son Seth, who declined to be interviewed for the film) during the tumultuous aftermath of the arrest. We see this nuclear family falling apart before our eyes as they sit around the dining-room table or circle each other in the family kitchen, planning trial strategy and casting blame.

Jarecki’s method here is the strategic parceling of information, so that just when the viewer is feeling comfortable with one version of the truth a bit of previously withheld information is revealed that increases the doubt and confusion — like police interviews in which investigators innocently and unwittingly expose horribly flawed and biased practices — or the fact that Arnold admitted to a couple of earlier pedophilic incidents or that one student, whose testimony resulted in multiple counts of felony abuse, now admits that he has no actual memory of any transgressions and that his testimony at the time came from hypnosis. These ricocheting bits of information tighten to the point where Jarecki cuts back and forth between interviews with Jesse and his lawyer, who give directly opposed accounts of why Jesse eventually pleaded guilty.

The closest the film comes to an unbiased voice is investigative reporter Debbie Nathan, who covered a string of similar cases across the nation at the time, including the Friedmans’, and who is suspicious of the “hysteria” over the allegations. But not even her testimony can totally put the viewer at ease.

Ultimately, Capturing the Friedmans is most moving, and most troubling, not as a portrait of a legal system gone wrong or a terrible crime committed but as a horrifying vision of a flawed family utterly destroyed, whether through injustice, personal transgression, the cruelty of nature, or all of the above.

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Music Music Features

Good Girls Gone Bad

The Dixie Chicks didn’t become interesting artists on March 10th, when lead singer Natalie Maines decided to take on President Bush. Somehow both more traditional and more liberal than their mainstream country colleagues, the band’s megastardom is fascinating because of the way it sweeps up and speaks for a whole new audience — a generation of Sunbelt suburban cowgirls who prize their independence and don’t have much connection to the world of Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn. So the Dixie Chicks were a rich and compelling pop phenomenon long before Maines got the band in hot water.

But the Dixie Chicks didn’t become the culture heroes of the year in that moment either; Maines’ comment was glib, juvenile, and pandered to an audience primed to applaud just such a sentiment. Rather, the band found its voice and, unlikely as it seems, became heroic, in the aftermath of Maines’ off-hand rejection. They became heroic for knowing what to apologize for and what not to apologize for. They became heroic for their stubborn refusal to be bullied into a public mea culpa by Diane Sawyer and ABC. Most of all, the Dixie Chicks became heroic as a very public dramatization of embattled citizenship, their spat with Toby “boot in your ass” Keith (whose latest hit, “Beer for My Horses,” is an endorsement of vigilantism) presenting a clear choice between two visions of what it means to be a responsible citizen in this America — and giving a glimpse as to the consequences of the choice.

The Dixie Chicks were banned from most country radio stations in the immediate aftermath of Maines’ remarks this spring and widely denounced by the Nashville establishment and right-wing talking heads. But subsequent months have proven that Nashville needs this band a lot more than the band needs Nashville and that America, despite the current administration’s best efforts, is still a better country than that. And so, last Saturday night at The Pyramid, the Dixie Chicks took a victory lap before a sellout crowd eager to embrace them all over again.

Opener Michelle Branch out of the way, the band warmed up the crowd with an unapologetically defiant mix of pre-concert music — including “Our Lips Are Sealed”; “Band on the Run”; and, most perceptively, given their sudden, violent rebuke by the country-music industry, Lynn’s “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.”

When this set ended with “Born in the USA,” the house lights all came on and 19,000-plus went nuts. My first instinct was “still misunderstood after all these years,” and maybe so, but it also felt like an honest affirmation, a feeling bolstered during the opening “Goodbye Earl” when one young woman waved an American flag at Chick Emily Robison, not to taunt but to exult.

The warm-up music wasn’t the only acknowledgement of the elephant in the room. Some songs were unmistakably topical — the utterly decent and apolitical wartime lament “Travelin’ Soldier” (where much of the crowd sang along with the last verse) and “Truth No. 2” (which begins, “You don’t like the sound of the truth/Coming from my mouth”); other songs became unintentional anthems, Maines, wearing a “Dare to Be Free” T-shirt, making sure the audience could hear the dual meaning in otherwise unconnected lyrics.

Prefacing “Truth No. 2,” which came with a companion video celebrating political protest and dissent, Maines made one of her few direct comments on “the Incident,” as she called it, encouraging her audience to visit the Rock the Vote registration booth outside, because “voting is a wonderful way to express your opinion.” She might not approve of the result: My guess is that most of the crowd Saturday night, if they voted at all, voted Bush and will likely do so again.

But by showing up and cheering along all night, this crowd wasn’t affirming Maines’ position on the president or his war. They were affirming something more important and more precious: The band’s vision of citizenship itself. This wasn’t the case of outspoken leftists — Sleater-Kinney or the Mekons — preaching to the choir. This is a country-pop band that has sold 30 million records. These are ordinary people asking ordinary questions — of their government, of their fans, of themselves — and taking the considerable risk of asking their vast, ordinary audience to come along for a ride that could end up anywhere. That the crowd gladly climbed aboard Saturday night (“They said people in the South might not come to see our show,” Maines said from the stage) made the concert feel like the 4th of July.

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News The Fly-By

Drafting the General

A group of about 100 people gathered recently on a Monday night in Little Rock to eat chips and dip and discuss their shared passion — General Wesley K. Clark. The bottom line among the group: They want him as their next president.

Little Rock is the place the former allied commander for NATO calls home. Clark was born in Chicago but grew up in Little Rock and returned in 2000 after a storied military career. This city, which watched Bill Clinton rise to global prominence, has recently become ground zero for the nationwide effort to recruit Clark for a White House run. Other “Draft Clark” groups throughout the country existed before this Arkansas group, but this is the one that matters the most now.

Jeff Dailey, the son of Little Rock’s mayor and a former Clinton staffer, created “Arkansans for Clark,” an online petition for Clark supporters. That group is working in tandem with the Draft Clark 2004 movement, which is now in 42 states with more than 100 chapters.

“General Clark has what it takes to ask Bush the tough questions, to really give Democrats a strong edge,” says Dailey, who hopped on the Clark bandwagon after hearing him speak. “He is the kind of leader we need to deal with international and national issues — brilliant and he knows the issues.”

The Draft Clark 2004 movement plans to move its national headquarters to Little Rock in the next few days. Clark supporters from around the country will descend on the city and work on a full-fledged campaign to convince the general to run.

Their hope is that this show of loyalty will go toward convincing Clark to plunge into the already flooded field of nine Democrats. The big question: Is Clark a Democrat?

Clark has yet to declare a party and plays coy when asked. Most of his close associates insist he is a Democrat because he bashes George W. Bush. His record leans left of center. He’s pro-affirmative action and pro-choice. He is against drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and sits on the board of Wavecrest Laboratories, a Virginia-based technology company that has developed a breakthrough electric propulsion system that transforms electrical energy into mechanical motion.

Since exiting NATO, Clark has pontificated around the country about global affairs, appeared regularly as a military analyst on CNN, worked for Little Rock’s Stephens Inc., the largest brokerage house off Wall Street, and traveled the world attending conferences and accepting awards. He has also launched his own Web site for Americans to talk about critical issues, which serves as an outlet to create a platform and gain media exposure. In September, Clark’s new book about the war in Iraq and terrorism hits the shelves, a surefire boost for his name recognition.

Recently, on National Public Radio, Clark said he is seriously considering throwing his hat in the ring for president. He still dodges party affiliation, but his admitted interest in running erases any thoughts that Clark craved media attention so that he could shore up support as a vice-presidential candidate. A former general accustomed to controlling troops, he doesn’t want to hang in the shadow of John Kerry or Joe Lieberman. Clark plans to lead his own campaign — if it isn’t too late for battle.

Clark has said that the one question Americans should ask themselves in 2004 is: Do you feel safer now than four years ago? The answer, he says, is probably no. With Clark as their candidate, Democrats get an inoculation against their perceived weakness on defense issues.

The general’s critics say he should forgo the games about party affiliation if he wants to be considered a serious politician. They also say he should also have jumped in the race months ago, and it’s really too late now. Most candidates have hired experienced staff who know the intricacies of Iowa and New Hampshire. Clark supporters point to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, when the then-Arkansas governor didn’t enter the race until October.

But maybe Clark’s grand plan — slowly building an army of loyal, hard-working supporters from coast to coast — is working. They write letters, hold “meet ups” (the new online method to gain supporters), and recruit like-minded individuals to sign petitions. This support keeps the media’s attention and lands Clark on the Sunday-morning talk shows.

In Little Rock, Clark confidants say that he told them several months ago he wouldn’t run for president unless he was drafted. His request has definitely become reality. Every day more people log on and sign up to work for a man they know little about. Clark tells aides he will make a decision about the future before Labor Day.

Suzi Parker is an Arkansas journalist whose work frequently appears in The Economist and U.S. News & World Report.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Payroll Tax?

Some of his colleagues have already expressed misgivings, and some are evidently wide open to the prospect, but, whatever the case and ready or not, Shelby County commissioner John Willingham has prepared a version of what from his hand or someone else’s is likely to be the next new thing — and the focus of the next new battle: a payroll tax.

Moreover, he’s won the conditional support of an important ally, Cleo Kirk, the commission’s budget chairman.

The idea for such a tax arose several months back when county mayor A C Wharton, facing a budget crisis and looking for some revenue source besides that of a property-tax increase, proposed what he called an “altered facilities tax.” That was a diplomatic way of saying “impact fee,” and the county’s developers massed impressively at a subsequent meeting of the Shelby County Commission to turn it aside.

Wharton had another ace up his sleeve, though. He had already discussed the idea of a payroll tax as a fallback possibility with Commissioner Deidre Malone, and Malone dutifully put the idea forth during public discussion of the altered facilities measure (which would end up being tabled for further study next year). Commissioner Michael Hooks, a Democrat like Malone, promptly took the bait, and so did Republican Willingham.

Currently engaged in an underdog campaign for Memphis mayor against incumbent Willie Herenton, Willingham is not reticent about committing himself to innovative formulas (e.g., converting The Pyramid into a downtown casino).

Nor is Willingham bashful about overlapping his mayoral candidacy with proposals that do double duty on the commission agenda.

Bruce Thompson and David Lillard, two freshman commissioners who have assumed the mantle of conservative reformers, are on record as doubting the efficacy of a payroll tax, with Lillard suggesting last week that such a tax would “probably cost the county jobs.” But Joyce Avery, another first-termer who, like Thompson and Lillard, is a Republican and a conservative, is reportedly open to the idea. And so are Malone and Hooks, of course.

So, too, it turns out, is budget chairman Kirk, a Democrat whose willingness to compromise on a 25 cent tax-rate increase (Kirk, like commission chairman Walter Bailey, wanted more to take care of school operating costs) enabled last week’s decisive vote for a county budget after months of agonizing deliberation.

“I’m interested in the advantages of a payroll tax. Each year we go through all this intense anxiety over increasing the tax burden on property owners, and each year we go through this concern about finding alternative revenue sources. I think it’s time for something like this,” said Kirk, who went on to say, “If John’s figures are right, and if the legislature gives it approval, I think we’re three-quarters of the way there already.”

Here are Willingham’s figures, through at least seven drafts of his proposal: Setting the proposed payroll-tax rate at 2.5 percent, and assessing that against an estimated annual payroll amount of $19 billion-plus, would yield annual revenues in the neighborhood of $476 million. (For purposes of comparison, Wharton’s proposed altered facilities tax would have netted something like $4 million.) That level of revenue collections, estimates the commissioner, would allow the outright abolition of the county wheel tax ($141 million, annually), a rollback of this year’s property-tax increase and one from two years ago (totaling $94 million), and the reduction of the county’s sales-tax portion from 9 and a quarter percent to 7 percent ($124 million).

The tax, according to Willingham, would provide enough extra revenue to subsidize Oakville Sanitarium, Head Start, and The Med at currently suggested or, in the case of the latter, enormously increased levels. It would allow the county debt to be paid down by $80 million and provide a $9 million sum to be used for an “attack on crime” (a category in which Willingham would include a variety of social services for low-income residents).

“I want to be sure these figures are audited and accurate before I put myself on the line,” cautioned Kirk, and, indeed, there are numerous complications to be vetted before a payroll tax could end up even being voted on. The state legislature would have to authorize Shelby County to impose such a tax, for example.

Though he, too, believes a payroll tax deserves to be looked at carefully and very soon, Thompson makes no secret of his wariness. “First off, it’s an income tax in disguise. And I think it’s one of those variables which could put the county at a competitive disadvantage in attracting new residents and new industry.” It also could prompt various businesses to relocate in nearly out-of-state suburban areas or at least to diversify their operations geographically, Thompson said.

But, one way or another, the issue would seem to be about to hit the front burner sometime very soon.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

It’s been a long time since I popped in a CD that made me get up and dance like someone had poured battery acid down my pants. But the eponymous EP from Knoxville’s Pink Sexies (which arrived courtesy of the good folks at Memphis’ tastefully named Wrecked ‘Em Records) did just that and then some. In fact, I’m still shaking like crazy over it. The first track, “Bye Bye Zombie (Baby)” is pure punkabilly, as ragged and raw as it is right on the money. But how could that have prepared me for the so-clever trash-rock confection “Do the Dance,” which is designed for no other purpose than to make listeners convulse with glee? Songs like “Speed Demon,” “Frankenhooker,” and “Tease Kiss” all deliver the hot-rod raunch and graveyard glam that defines the sweaty, juke-joint sound of Southern garage punk. I could listen to Pink Sexies frontman P.S. Corvette howl “If you’re going to kill me/Kill me with a kiss” all night long, and I just may when these guys roll into Murphy’s on Saturday, August 9th, with Nashville’s The Clutters and a noisy power duo from Kentucky called The Smacks.

The Clutters have that second-tier British-invasion sound. Imagine the Nashville Teens with a sense of humor and without all the blues pretensions and you’ll get the notion. Their song “Back of My Mind” is like a slice of ’60s psychedelia stripped down to only the rhythm tracks, while the goofy vocals on “Cup of Coffee and a Cigarette” are pure vaudeville. The Smacks, on the other hand, are just plain silly. They are alternately the best and the worst band in this lineup, with songs that range from the painfully noisy to the devilishly inspired. A little ode to insanity called “Locked in the Cellar” is the kind of lo-fi gem Dr. Demento would wet his pants over. Moving easily between rockabilly, incomprehensible punk, and ingeniously wrongheaded, lyric-driven madness, this duo can make you shake your head with despair and your ass with joy all at the same time. If you’re a fan of that grinding Southern trash-rock sound, don’t miss this show. — Chris Davis

Champaign-Urbana’s Absinthe Blind don’t sound like what you’d expect an indie band from the Midwest to sound like. They’re not alt-country, garage rock, or emo. Rather, they traffic in a big, bold, borderline-psychedelic sound that triangulates present-day prog-pop (Flaming Lips, with whom they share a producer), the shoe-gazing rock of a decade ago, and the kind of vanilla ’80s Top 40 synth-pop the band probably wouldn’t claim. But it’s an interesting mix and something you don’t hear much in Midtown clubs. They’ll be joined at the Hi-Tone CafÇ Wednesday, August 13th, by another band doing its own thing, like-minded locals Dora.

Also at the Hi-Tone this week, and at the opposite end of the sonic spectrum, is roots-music singer-songwriter Bruce Robison, brother-in-law of Dixie Chick Emily Robison and author of that band’s recent hit “Travelin’ Soldier.” Local singer-songwriter Dan Montgomery will open. n — Chris Herrington