Month: November 2003

PLANES AND BRAINS

Just in time for the holidays, two new Memphis companies are going public with stock offerings, hoping to become mainstays of the airport and the medical center– or what’s left of it– for years to come.

This week, Pinnacle Airlines Corp., a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, went to market with 19.4 million shares, priced at $14. Buy some and you’ll own a piece of one of the country’s largest regional jet services based out of Memphis, Detroit, and Minneapolis. Northwest bought Pinnacle in 1997 and gave most of the stock to its pension plans in 2002 and 2003. The CEO is Philip Trenary.

Risk factors listed in the prospectus include possible terrorist attacks, labor unrest among Pinnacle’s 2,438 employees, competition from Mesaba and other regional jets, more debt than capital, and heavy dependence upon Northwest.

On the plus side, business is good, on-time performance is among the best in the industry, service is offered to 76 cities and 29 states, and there’s a sweetheart deal with the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority. By increasing its fleet and juggling routes, Pinnacle expects to grow a measurement called “available seat miles” 24 percent a year through 2006.

A second Memphis company, GTx, is the brainchild of AutoZone founder J R. “Pitt” Hyde, III. Its business is applied medical research into new drugs to treat prostate cancer, which Hyde himself has beaten, and other types of cancer. It is expected to start selling shares to the public in December or early in 2004.

GTx has actually been around since 1997 but has only 43 employees and a low-profile. That will change after the stock goes public, and if the company is successful in partnership with the University of Tennessee Medical School, it could remake the site of the old Baptist Hospital and the medical center in several years.

GTx has no revenues. In the start-up stage, investors will be betting on UT’s brains and intellectual property and Hyde’s business savvy and dedication. The stock price won’t be set until just before the offering.

MANY THANKS…

In the spirit of Turkey Day, there are a few tasty morsels from the world of sports (near and far) for which I’m eternally thankful.

THE AGENDA

Your marriage is in trouble.

By the time the holidays roll around next year, your wife will have left you for another woman. Or, if you’re a wife, your husband will be shacked up with another man.

Not to worry, though–your family is in even bigger trouble than your marriage. Next year, when your teenage daughter has a sleepover at your house, it will mean she’s having an orgy with other girls. Next Christmas, your college-age son will bring home, not his fiancée, but his fiancé. Meanwhile, your elementary school son will spend most of his days in third grade fending off sexual advances from predatory cross-dressing male teachers, and Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s fiftieth wedding anniversary will be mocked by an announcement in the local liberal newspaper calling the two of them old hetero fossils celebrating a dying hetero institution. Actually, Granddaddy won’t mind too much–he’ll be too busy having sex with your aunt, his daughter. None of these troubles will last long, though, because everyone in your family will have AIDS and die in a little while. Then you’ll all go to hell.

There’s nothing you can do to stop any of this, at least not legally, since most of the judges in the federal courts will by that time be atheist drag queens and dykes, and they’re all for it.

This, you see, is the famous Homosexual Agenda, and on November 18 the runaway liberal judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a decree that makes the death of marriage and the American family inevitable. The court declared that homosexual couples who want them must be offered the same legal rights as married heterosexuals. As the Reverend Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition has put it, “the dark forces who oppose the family are on the move.” Any good Christian American (which is, of course, a tautology) knows who commands the dark forces.

But, wait, there is some hope. Thanks to forward-thinking statespersons like Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, and Representative Marilyn Musgrave, Republican of Colorado, Satan’s forces might yet be beaten back; Grandpa might yet be pried from Auntie’s bed and Junior saved from a life of pederasty. Brownback and Musgrave plan to introduce legislation calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As Roberta Combs, President of the (needless to say) Christian Coalition of America, has said, we must pass this amendment “to secure the future for our children and grandchildren.” Indeed, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins (no relation to the homocidal–I mean, homicidal–maniac in the movie Psycho) has declared that this amendment must be passed or “we will lose marriage in this nation.” Wow. Who’d have thought that the Constitution was missing this key piece–a piece that saves our grandchildren’s future, not to mention the whole institution of marriage? That represents a pretty big omission on the part of the Founding Fathers, who seem to have been, in this respect, delinquent parents.

Mr. Perkins’ logic is irrefutable. Clearly, if a man in Massachusetts or anywhere else is allowed to spend the rest of his life with another man while being covered by the second man’s health insurance, everybody’s marriage is headed for trouble. And if a woman is allowed to share a bed with another woman while together they try to raise children, then wedlock in the (tautology coming) Biblical American sense is as good as gone. I mean, think about the single women you know who are raising children now; put two of them together, and things will almost certainly be twice as bad. Besides, anyone knows that a properly wed man and woman, even if their relationship is measured mostly in screams and black eyes, can do better raising kids than two women perverse enough to fall in love with each other.

Should any moral relativists of your acquaintance question this logic, send them immediately to the web site of Concerned Women for America (CWA). This is a “pro-family” group that I suspect was formed in reaction to an anti-family group called Unconcerned Lesbians Against America, but I can’t prove it. On the CWA web site, the moral relativists (who almost certainly hate marriage) will find a section called “Talking Points: Why Homosexual ‘Marriage’ Is Wrong”; the web site is http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=4589&department=LEGAL&categoryid=family. Here the relativists will learn in the deepest metaphysical sense why homosexuals should not be allowed to have marriage rights. Among the CWA’s incontrovertible arguments are these: “A licensed electrician cannot produce power by taping two same-sex plugs together.” “Homosexual marriage is as wrong as giving a man a license to marry his mother or daughter or sister or a group.” “A license to marry is a legal document by which government will treat same-sex marriage as if it were equal to the real thing . . . . If the Smithsonian Museum displays a hunk of polished blue glass next to the Hope Diamond with a sign that says, ‘These are of equal value,’ and treats them as if they were, the Hope Diamond is devalued in the public’s eye.” And finally: “Engaging in sex doesn’t equal marriage.” We certainly all needed that reminder.

So there you have it. The institution of heterosexual marriage– “our bedrock,” as Mr. Perkins of the Family Research Council calls it–is a rock about to be smashed by men who love men and women who love women. When you think about it, that’s just too much love to be safe. Why, it’s almost like a terrorism kind of love. So as you sit down to say grace over Thanksgiving dinner this week with your loving, pure, heterosexual parents and your loving, pure, heterosexual children gathered around–all, I’m sure, representatives, practitioners, and offspring of happy, strong heterosexual marriages–be sure to say the proper grace to the proper Christian God, and add a little prayer for all the good Republican legislators who would preserve us from the wrong kind of love. Your children and grandchildren–not to mention the Hope Diamond–will thank you.

(For more of Ed Weathers’ views on this subject, see the columns which appear at these web addresses:

http://www.memphisflyer.com/MFSearch/full_results.asp?xt_from=2&aID=2433 OR CLICK HERE.

and

http://www.memphisflyer.com/MFSearch/full_results.asp?xt_from=2&aID=2399 OR CLICK HERE.)

BLOWHARDS END UP BLOWING IT

A mighty wind blew across the Northeast recently (no, not the mega-storm that knocked down trees and knocked out electricity to thousands). That other mighty wind: Congress’ 30-hour talkathon. What an embarrassment!

Not surprisingly, such an abundance of hot air had no effect whatsoever on the continuing conflict between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush’s judicial nominees. Some rich folks lost a little sleep, is all (not to worry, though — it’s not like any of them are missing any meals.) It’s a wonder they can sleep at all; but then, congressional salaries can buy a lot of expensive mattresses, sleep aids, and/or Viagra.

Congress’ monumental chin-wag did result in one thing, however: It deepened the disgust many Americans feel toward politicians in general. What is especially disgusting is the spectacle of suited wind-bags flapping their flabby gums while America’s finest are being siphoned off as cannon-fodder in yet another war begun by wind-bags who can’t seem to find anything new to say or suggest.

“Stay the Course!” “The Ultimate Sacrifice!” “Our Deepest Sympathies!” “Evil-Doers!” “Global Democratic Revolution!” — such oft-repeated phrases evaporate like so much flop-sweat on the brows of hypocrites who cannot possibly believe what they’re spouting as they drag the world into a self-fulfilling Armageddon.

The age of oratory is long dead, apparently, and mercifully so. If this is where grandiloquence has brought us, then too bad the power of speech wasn’t revoked at the Tower of Babel. These days, the lies come so thick and fast and transparent that my 8-year-old can spot them. “War is stupid,” says my third-grader. And wisdom is the property of the dead, according to a poet named Yeats who once wrote meaningful lines about another “War to End All Wars” nearly 100 years ago.