Month: February 2004

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Primary Colors

In all of the packings and repackings, the security checks at airports and the sheer pell-mell of rushing around 10 cities in four days on Howard Dean’s “Sleepless Summer Tour” last August, only one thing ended up missing in my personal inventory: an hour’s worth of taped conversation with Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager and the guru of what many saw as a movement that would change American politics.

Trippi, who had logged time in other presidential campaigns — those of Gary Hart and Dick Gephardt in 1988, for example — was credited with devising the whole new panoply of Internet-based techniques — Web logs, summons to “meetups,” and, most importantly, fund solicitations — that had boosted the once-obscure ex-Vermont governor to the front of the pack of Democratic candidates hoping to bring down President Bush in 2004.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AP
John Kerry

Whatever the final fate of the Dean candidacy, which suffered potentially lethal setbacks in Iowa and New Hampshire, it was the Greatest Show on Earth for most of last year into January of this year. And last summer’s cross-country Sleepless Tour, which drew large and sometimes idolatrous crowds, may prove in retrospect to have been the very apex of the candidate’s fortunes.

Dean made himself freely available to the accompanying media during that barnstorming tour, but his accessibility was nothing compared to that provided by the talkative Trippi, who engaged in a constant gabfest with reporters en route to events, at the sites themselves, and at hotels.

You know the old joke: First prize is an evening with So-and-So, second prize is two evenings, and so forth? Well, So-and-So, thy name is Trippi.

The missing tape was from a conversation at a late-night restaurant stop in either Seattle or San Antonio. (The cities, which also included such stops as Chicago, New York, and Boise, Idaho, went by like blurs.) Trippi was voluble and specific on a number of subjects relating to the campaign, including the likely impact of the entry into the race, then pending, of General Wesley Clark and the chances of wooing Clark as a potential running mate.

On only one subject was Trippi either evasive or vague: What would happen if Dean should peak too soon? The answer he gave was at length, but what it boiled down to was: We’ll worry about that if and when it happens — the implication clearly being that it wouldn’t.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AP
John Edwards

Well, it did. Considered by most observers to be a shoo-in after his endorsement by former Vice President Al Gore in December, Dean underwent some serial misfortunes: First, the capture of Saddam Hussein both upstaged the Gore endorsement and — temporarily, at least — took Iraq off the map. Then Dean — who, as the acknowledged frontrunner, was undergoing nonstop. ritual batterings from his then desperate rivals — began visibly to slow down. His basic speech, which once upon a time had been a real rouser, dried up as Dean kept reciting it, all but unchanged, into the new year. And then came disclosures, from old, pre-candidate days, that he had once disparaged the role of the Iowa caucuses in the presidential-selection process.

We all know the subsequent story: the third-place finish in Iowa, the “I Have a Scream” concession speech, the unimpressive second place in the New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was somehow morphing from a Herman Munster-like stiff into the Man Who.

Arguably even more astonishing was the mystery of Dean’s vanishing war chest. Before Iowa, he had raised some $41 million, far and above what his Democratic rivals had done, including Kerry, who had to write a $6 million personal check on his heiress wife Theresa’s account in order to stay in the race.

On the night of the New Hampshire primary, Dean told Washington Week‘s Gwen Ifill that he was determined to keep fighting, in “10 states in 10 days … if you really think about it, it’s 13 states … in about 13 days.” Ifill asked: “Can you afford … to compete in all states?” Dean assured her: “Yeah, we will compete in every state.”

Within 24 hours, that answer was inoperative. It was announced that Dean’s holdings were — like his poll ratings in too many states — in the single digits. All the way down to a figure between $5 million and $7 million, to be exact. He wouldn’t be campaigning in the next seven states — the ones voting on February 2nd. And then the real shocker: Trippi would be going, to be replaced as campaign manager by former Gore chief of staff Roy Neel, a longtime Washington pro.

In the ensuing flood of crocodile tears from a media which found Trippi as beloved as Dean was suddenly suspect, some important facts were overlooked: One was that Trippi had not been fired; Dean had wanted him to stay on as a strategist, in fact, but Trippi had declared that “two captains” could not share power. More important was the likely cause of the change: overspending by erstwhile manager Trippi.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AP
Wesley Clark

Persistent rumors began to materialize — as on the TomPaine.com Web site — alleging that Trippi was getting as much as a 15 percent commission on all ads placed by the campaign, and there were beaucoup of them. Oakland, California, Mayor Jerry Brown, a two-time former presidential candidate himself and a onetime employer of Trippi’s, opined in a conversation with Flyer publisher Kenneth Neill last weekend that Trippi was best suited “for fringe candidates like myself,” suggesting that the mainstream was not Joe’s stream.

If and when Dean has to depart the trail, it will sadden his left-behind legions of supporters — like Memphis’ Stacy Luttrell, a 27-year-old mother who did grunt work in the zero-degree climes of Iowa and New Hampshire for the man she called “the Bobby Kennedy of my generation.”

And it won’t exactly overjoy those observers of the political game who allowed themselves to be bemused by the prospect of a nominee beholden for a change not to the big lobbies and fat-cat givers — as all other serious candidates, regardless of party, have been — but to all those nickel-and-dimers whose average contribution to the campaign amounted to all of $77. And now that piggyback treasury is all busted up and gone. Nice trip, Trippi.

A link between all of this and our local election scene was vocalized Saturday night by state Senator Roscoe Dixon, a candidate this year for General Sessions Court clerk and a prime speaker at an African-Americans-for-Dean function at The Peabody. Addressing a crowd that was sparser by perhaps three-fourths what it would have been if Dean had, as once widely predicted, won in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Dixon declared: “I know I’m running for office, and I’m not supposed to be endorsing candidates, but this man has inspired me. Howard Dean has inspired me to be here, and he’s inspired you to be here. That’s why we are endorsing Howard Dean, even though he may be [moving now] in the valley of the shadow of death. … Let’s not give up, because Howard Dean’s dream is our dream.”

The Man Who

PHOTOGRAPH BY AP
Howard Dean

Portions of Dean’s dream will, of course, live on in other candidates — most particularly in the campaign of the man most likely to succeed him as a nominee-presumptive, Senator John Kerry, whose resurrection from the near-dead in the few weeks since New Year’s is something of a mystery, even to such longtime supporters as Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., a national co-chair of the senator’s campaign, who was asked about the reasons for Kerry’s sudden turnaround in a conference call with Tennessee reporters on Monday.

“These races last for so doggone long,” began Ford uncertainly. He then theorized, probably correctly, that the capture of Saddam Hussein in mid-December had probably done much to turn voter attention to former naval officer Kerry, a bona fide Vietnam war hero (and an influential war protester afterward) and to puncture war opponent Dean’s longstanding balloon.

That educated guess was followed by a more dubious one. Perhaps understandably, Ford, who, like Kerry, had voted in 2002 to authorize war powers for President Bush in Iraq, wanted to expiate that one. Kerry had gained support, the congressman supposed, by demonstrating that “he had thought long and hard about authorizing the use of force and was able to articulate his reasons.”

That was disingenuous by half. In point of fact, Kerry’s vote for the war resolution was the one thing the candidate was shying away from in his stump speeches — dealing with it, if he had to, only in Q-and-A sessions. And the thinking-long-and-hard aspect of his answers could perhaps be attributed more to a need for squaring an obstinate circle than to any quality of thoughtfulness per se.

Still, it was evident in both Iowa and New Hampshire that Kerry’s speeches were both crisper and reflected a new quasi-populist note. He spoke of “fundamental unfairness” in the tax code, of a “creed of greed” promoted by the Bush administration, of “Benedict Arnold CEOs who take their companies overseas and stick you with the tax bill,” of overfed, over-profiteering drug companies, and of his desire to “complete the mission begun by Harry Truman in 1948” by instituting a national health-care system.

The similarity of most of this to rhetoric that had been uttered by the now-fading Dean for much of the previous six months could be regarded as coincidental. There was consensus among Democrats on these themes, after all — even if the Truman reference arched close indeed to the “Give ‘Em Hell” stump speech favored by Dean during his now-crested rise to national celebrity.

Another argument for borrowing was harder to refute. Like any speaker, Dean had had his inimitable tics — like his serial invocation of countries which, unlike the United States, provide universal health care. The list, which included, inter alia, “the Dutch, the French, the British, the Belgians,” etc., would inevitably conclude with the capper: “Even Costa Rica has a national health-care system.” (Dean’s audiences had taken to rhythmic foot stomping in anticipation of his mention of the tiny Central American nation.”)

Kerry had, no doubt wisely, left the Costa Rica reference to its originator, but he had suddenly found room in his speeches for another idiosyncratic Dean nugget, the lament that the United States, under Bush, had not availed itself of its treaty rights to purchase leftover (and potentially lethal) uranium stocks from Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

None of this invalidated the new appeal of Kerry, of course — since ultimate nominees have a license, even an obligation, to represent the spectrum of their parties. And, as MarDee Xifaras, an ebullient New Hampshire supporter of Kerry’s, had put it: “Date a Dean, marry a Kerry.” The looming cragginess that had been vaguely off-putting for much of last year had suddenly come to seem appropriately rugged, even Rushmorean, especially now that the candidate had retooled his speaking and campaigning styles, making the former leaner and less sonorous and achieving a remarkable folksiness in the latter.

Flyer online columnist Cheri DelBrocco, who had an opportunity to observe Kerry in New Hampshire, was struck with the attention — and warmth — the candidate lavished on one voter, a woman who had tugged on the senator at the rope line following a speech, telling him of a family casualty in Iraq.

Insiders in the Kerry campaign attribute the sea change in their man almost entirely to the influence of Mary Beth Cahill, an operative schooled in the service of Kerry’s Massachusetts Senate colleague, Ted Kennedy. Cahill had replaced Kerry’s own former chief aide, Jim Jordan, in November, and in a conclave of Kerry campaign staffers in December had put it to them bluntly, “We can’t make a single mistake in January.”

They — and Kerry — didn’t. And the gods gave them luck. “The perfect storm,” Memphian David Cocke would call it, as he and other local supporters of Kerry prepared for a Tuesday night election-watch party at the home of Memphian Kerry Fullmer, the senator’s first cousin, once removed. Up for grabs this week were delegates in South Carolina, Missouri, Delaware, New Mexico, Arizona, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Only in Oklahoma, where retired NATO commander Wesley Clark, might win, and South Carolina, home of Senator John Edwards, another aspirant, was Kerry’s lead in doubt.

Southern Echoes

Though both Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich and Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman were technically still in the race, only Clark and Edwards had a chance to block Kerry’s march in the short run. And those hopes were almost as long-odds as those of Dean, who was trying desperately to retool for a comeback in later states.

As candidates, both Clark and Edwards had much to commend them. The general — who had earlier picked up the support of numerous influential Tennesseans (including aides to Governor Phil Bredesen) as a potential alternative to the then ascendant Dean — now dangled perilously on the cusp of irrelevance.

Adding to Clark’s predicament was the fact that his unflattering performance in a couple of recent debates — notably one in New Hampshire — had been seen everywhere, while his bravado speeches — extraordinarily energized and encapsulating an impressive variety of Democratic Party shibboleths — had been observed only by those who attended the general’s barn-burning speeches in the primary states.

Clark’s decision to pass up Iowa may in the long run have been the single greatest mistake of the primary season. If circumstances — say, even a modest stalling of the Kerry bandwagon — were to somehow allow him an attentive national audience, voters might yet get to contemplate a candidate with a stretch that was arguably even greater than Kerry’s — from wartime valor like the senator’s on one end of the stick to the most libertarian of appeals for tolerance of diversity on the other.

Nor was Edwards, who spoke eloquently of “two Americas … one for the rich, one for everybody else,” anybody’s slouch. The boyish senator was a successful trial lawyer who had long since developed a remarkable ability to bat his eyes at the women in his crowds while making man talk to the menfolk. And when he said, “The South isn’t George W. Bush’s backyard, it’s my backyard,” his logic was obvious, even compelling.

Nor, even if defeated, was Edwards likely to be forgotten. His name was increasingly on the lips of Kerry supporters as the likely vice-presidential pick of the Massachusetts senator.

Just in case the fat lady wasn’t quite ready to tune up, both Edwards and Clark were due to hit Memphis this week and were slated to tour the rest of Tennessee. In years past, the state has ended up having to deal with table scraps in the primary season — after the results in early states had already determined the outcome.

For that reason, the state legislature last year voted to move Tennessee’s own presidential primary up to February 10th — next Tuesday — and there’s at least a chance that, with big states like Ohio, New York, and California still to hold primaries within the next several weeks, the Volunteer State might have a say in determining the final outcome.

Even if so, Bush still possesses the bully pulpit and a fund-raising capacity that can’t be matched even by Kerry and the now reeling Dean — each of whom had, like the president, forsaken the federal matching-fund framework with its built-in limits on candidates’ fundraising.

This week’s polls showing the president’s job approval rating falling below 50 percent is bound to gratify Democrats and trouble Republicans, including a president who must surely be nagged by memories of the fate which befell his father, President George H.W. Bush, a leader who saw his standing soar after a declaration of “mission accomplished” in an Iraqi war, then erode in the national election that followed.

We shall see what we shall see. Let be be finale of seem.

Local Options

Roscoe Dixon

This year’s local countywide primary for the offices of General Sessions Court clerk and assessor was moved to the unusually early date of February 10th in order to dovetail with state legislators’ wishes to hold a presidential primary that might affect the national results.

That has created organizational and fund-raising difficulties for the candidates — challengers, especially.

Here’s the lineup:

Assessor: Democratic incumbent Rita Clark will have her hands full holding off a primary challenge from Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks, a former assessor. Hooks ran as an independent against Clark four years ago, without much effect, but he’s in far better shape this year.

Clark, however, has done some serious campaigning — especially among African-American voters who might otherwise be drawn to the Hooks fold. One of her co-chairs is Janis Fullilove, who almost unseated City Court clerk Thomas Long last year.

Republicans vying for the post include another assessor, Harold Sterling, who upset Hooks 12 years ago and was upset in his turn by Clark four years later. Sterling is capitalizing on his established image and has been campaigning energetically. Other GOP contenders are real estate appraiser Grady Frisby, who has attracted good support from those Republicans seeking a new face; real estate broker and former Lakeland mayor Jim Bomprezzi; tax consultant Bob Kahn; and John C. Bogan, a deputy county assessor.

General Sessions Court clerk: Republican incumbent Chris Turner has at least nominal opposition from his primary opponent, process server Charles Fineberg. But Turner’s chief long-term opposition is likely to come from state Senator Roscoe Dixon, a Democratic challenger who has made it clear this year — unlike the case with his 2000 bid for the post — that he will resign his Senate seat if elected.

Dixon must first make it by fellow Democrat Rebecca Clark, a former chief administrator of the clerk’s office. Clark has some party and labor support and could benefit from the prevalence of her surname on the primary-election list (Besides Rita Clark, General Wesley Clark is on the ballot as a presidential candidate.)

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Tale of Two Governments

These are austere times in local, state, and federal governments, and the capacity of any of these jurisdictions to expand services is limited at best and impossible at worst. The trick these days, in fact, is to avoid the kind of harsh budget cuts that debilitate those essential functions that the governed depend upon and that governments exist to provide.

Down the line, we fear the worst concerning the current national administration. What with Middle Eastern wars and projected journeys to Mars, the high likelihood is that at some none too distant point, President Bush — if reelected to a second term — will end up shedding crocodile tears and will tell us, Sorry, folks, the money’s gone. We’ll have to do away with, oh, Medicare here and Social Security there. But it just so happens I’ve got a privatization plan for those functions, anyhow. Bye, bye, New Deal. Bye, bye, Great Society. Nice knowing you.

There are those among us who believe that such an outcome would not be an unfortunate consequence but precisely what the administration’s sequential tax giveaways to the wealthy are designed to produce. We’re not conspiracy theorists, but we confess to a sense of alarm at hearing our Mars-minded president tell us that we are soon to make “choices” about what to cut. We doubt not what kinds of cuts the president will ask us to “choose.”

That’s the wrong way to go at a budget. Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen’s version of a budget, unveiled in Nashville as Bush’s plans were being announced in Washington, is more like it.

Just as he did last year, Bredesen is calling for — not tax cuts but spending cuts, and, just like last year’s, these are to be across the board, at 5 percent this time around. There are exceptions — one of which is not the much pondered TennCare program. Though committed to health care for the state’s citizens, Bredesen commissioned a careful study of the program, found that it could not be continued at the current levels, and did the sensible thing. He slated it for reduction also and promised to reconfigure it so as to make it more functional and less expensive.

And Bredesen not only isn’t running a record deficit, he’s managed to come up with a surplus of sorts. Like Bush, he makes improved education a goal, but unlike the president, whose No Child Left Behind initiative remains unfunded and thus a burden to state and local governments, Bredesen has directed his limited resources to the goal. Teacher pay will be raised, and funding has also been increased. The result will be that a state whose per capita expenditures have lagged relative to neighboring states will find itself ahead of the curve — this in a time of acknowledged shortages!

Almost simultaneous with Bredesen’s budget presentation was the announcement from state lottery director Rebecca Paul that proceeds from the lottery, also intended to benefit education, are up to expectations: $72 million during the first two weeks, just concluded.

When Paul presented these figures this week at the Memphis Rotary Club, she was asked how much the state will have pulled in by the end of the year? Wait and see, she said, in effect. It’s too early to tell. But she allowed herself one clear projection: Enough money will be raised to fund scholarships for the number of Tennessee high school graduates who will be eligible and are expected to apply.

It’s amazing what a little fair-minded foresight and careful planning can do. Take note, President Bush.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

That Girl

Serial-killer chic is one of the most unfortunate and tasteless things to happen to pop culture over the past couple of decades. The elevation of something like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter character into a communal outlaw hero is but the tip of an iceberg of alluring, mad-genius psychopaths who now (over)populate detective fiction and Hollywood movies.

So Monster, the debut film from writer-director Patty Jenkins, is useful as a cultural corrective if nothing else. A fictionalized account of the case of Aileen Wuornos, a hitchhiking prostitute who was convicted of killing seven men and was recently executed (and who has been the subject of two films by British documentarian Nick Broomfield, one of which screened at last year’s IndieMemphis Film Festival), Monster drains the serial-killer concept of any of its dubious voyeuristic thrills or sexual allure.

The title is pointedly ironic: The woman we see is not a monster but a human being who has been beaten into a psychotic state by abusive parents, cruel classmates, exploitative men, violent johns, and the hard realities of subsistence living. The message here is that “monsters” are made, not born, and Jenkins, with considerable help from star Charlize Theron’s performance, makes a persuasive case.

After a brief prologue that details Aileen’s troubled childhood and entry into prostitution, the film picks up the adult Aileen in Florida on what might be the last day of her life. Our first glimpse is of a wet, dirty, anxious woman, water dripping from her nose and her hand clutching a gun. She’s on the verge of suicide but is stopped by the discovery of a five-dollar bill, presumably the last bit of money she has, payment for her last sexual encounter. She decides to put off suicide and spend the money because if she doesn’t, she “would have blown him for nothing.”

Aileen wanders into what happens to be a lesbian bar, where she meets the meek, awkward Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a young woman tentatively test-driving a new social scene. Selby is looking for “one decent night out before heading back to my parents’ closet.”

The two share a pitcher of beer and a tortured courtship of sorts, each seeing in the other an abstract object of desire. For Selby, Aileen is an avenue to explore her repressed sexuality. For Aileen, Selby represents the one thing in the world she can care about and that can care about her. She clings to Selby because the idea of her is the only thing keeping Aileen alive. That these two women are united not by their actual feelings for each other but by naked desperation makes the story more moving, especially in Aileen’s deluded, fated-to-fail attempt to go straight.

Despite its execution and despite the fact that it’s based on a true story, Monster feels perhaps a bit too familiar. In film terms, it could be easily short-handed as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (matter-of-fact depiction of a killing spree) meets Boys Don’t Cry (the dramatic physical transformation of a pretty actress; the low-rent, white working-class settings; the same-sex outsider romance — though the subterranean pairing of beaten-down protagonist and naive sidekick also reminds me of Midnight Cowboy).

Theron dominates the film, and it’s her performance that has earned her an Oscar nomination and gotten the film attention. Previously thought of as a lightweight actress, as just a pretty face, the Amazonian Theron engages in one of those de-glammed, physical-transformation-as-acting gambits that has become a time-honored Oscar-bait strategy. (See Hillary Swank, Nicole Kidman, Billy Bob Thornton, Robert De Niro, etc.). But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an awfully impressive performance.

Theron gained weight for the role (stripping down to bra and panties to underscore the transformation) and is made up with a splotchy, freckled face, fake teeth, and frazzled hair. With her awkward, lumbering gait, slacker vocal mannerisms (“whatever, man”), and acid-wash-denim wardrobe, she makes Wuornos a particularly unattractive protagonist but not an unsympathetic one. While it’s unnerving to see this true story become not much more than a vehicle for one actress’ Oscar grab, the fault lies in how the film has been packaged and covered rather than in Theron’s performance or Jenkins’ direction.

For all the crass media hype of the real-life Wuornos as “America’s first female serial killer,” her case was different from the Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys of the world. These are men who are emotionally detached from what they do. Monster presents a Wuornos who is emotionally torn by her actions. And she kills not for sport or fulfillment but out of what she perceives as need. Though Jenkins is clearly sympathetic to Wuornos, the director doesn’t allow an easy reading of her situation. Wuornos’ first killing is depicted as a sensible act of self-defense, but her murders become increasingly troubling. She spares a stuttering john (Pruitt Taylor Vince) who admits he’s never been with a prostitute, but later victims include an ex-cop with a paralyzed wife and one man who picks her up solely to offer a ride and gets killed out of Aileen’s fear of being exposed for the other murders.

In a lot of these cases, the term “senseless killings” gets thrown around. Jenkins presents plenty of reasons for what Wuornos does — self-defense, financial desperation, moral vigilantism, delayed retribution. But no excuses.

— Chris Herrington

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Long Overdue

To the Editor:

It is really wonderful to see Walter Anderson receiving the national recognition so long overdue (“New and Strange,” January 29th issue).

In 1967, my father, Robert J. McKnight, was director of the Brooks Museum, and he was asked by a mutual friend to help the Anderson family catalog Walter’s work. On arriving at the Anderson family compound, he found a small house piled so high with papers they had to move things to enter. Off to the side was a small closed-off room. When they opened the door, they found the spectacularly painted room that is now in the Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

After months with Sissy Anderson (Walter’s wife) cataloging work, my father developed the first comprehensive exhibit of Anderson’s work at the Brooks in l968. He called everyone he knew, and people came from all over the country to buy. Purchasers included numerous local collectors, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, Chuck Jones (creator of Bugs Bunny cartoons), Nancy Hanks from the National Endowment for the Arts, Katharine Hepburn, and a representative from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Despite the fact that everything in the exhibit sold, Anderson did not gain the national acclaim due him. My father was the first to compare Anderson to van Gogh in terms of his intrepretation of nature and individualistic style. His life was truly a work of art.

Peggy McKnight

Memphis

Politics, As Usual

To the Editor:

Thank you for Jackson Baker’s insightful reporting from New Hampshire (“Another Kerry Win,” January 29th issue). John Kerry must be doing something right (and worrying Bush supporters) since he is “enjoying” the predictable sort of incoherent attacks that right-wing radio and editorialists used to reserve for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Kerry is a formidable candidate for many reasons, but he scares the dickens out of the Bush partisans because he is an authentic Vietnam war hero who had the guts (and the good judgment) to forcefully criticize the war after he returned to the States. The thought of an actual war hero debating foreign policy with our Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief petrifies Bush’s handlers. Bush admits he was basically oblivious to the heated debate about the Vietnam war that gripped most of the country during his college days. Furthermore, Bush avoided battlefield service by using his family influence to vault ahead of many other young men and enter the Texas Air National Guard — where he “distinguished” himself primarily by failing to report for duty for more than a year at one point.

Meanwhile, the most hawkish person in the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney, sought five different deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam. There’s something more than a little repugnant about someone who enthusiastically supports the involvement of his peers in an armed conflict while methodically avoiding service himself.

B. Keith English

Memphis

To the Editor:

As a longtime environmental advocate, I urge your readers to support John Kerry for president in the upcoming primary. He is the only candidate in the race with a record of protecting the environment. That’s why he received the endorsement of the League of Conservation Voters.

Kerry has been a top leader on the environment for decades. Aside from protecting our precious wilderness areas, his environmental policies will improve the economic vitality and quality of life of the places where we live and work. Most importantly, a proper focus on this issue creates jobs and avoids enormous cleanup costs for future generations. With the staggering deficits of the last three years, we don’t need to add to that burden with the long-term costs of a failed environmental policy.

John Montgomery

Memphis

To the Editor:

President Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge is a farce. Each time he charges $540 billion to our children’s credit cards he’s taxing with interest. A tax by any other name is still a tax. This one is a very cruel one.

Our national debt exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 1981. Since then, it has increased sevenfold for our future generations to pay.

Now, Bush is promising to reduce the deficit by 50 percent within five years! Why do the media let such promises be made without qualification? Is it impolite to simply ask how?

Robert Perkins

Richfield, North Carolina

To the Editor:

Jackson Baker writes of Dennis Kucinich that he was: “Reminded at the restaurant that voters had forced the onetime boy mayor of Cleveland to undergo a recall election in the ’80s because of charges that he had emptied the city’s coffers … .”

The sale of Cleveland’s Muny Light was already in the works when Kucinich ran for mayor. He ran on a platform to stop the sale of the public company and was elected.

The bankers holding the city’s debt also sat on the board of the utility company that was seeking to create a monopoly by swallowing up Muny. The bankers demanded that Kucinich approve of the sale and threatened to call in the debts he inherited from a Republican mayor if he refused. The bankers did not care if the people of Cleveland were hurt and acted solely to destroy the political career of one man who stood up to them.

Kucinich survived the recall but was defeated for reelection. Since then, the city of Cleveland has saved $200 million by controlling its electric supply. In 1998, the Cleveland City Council unanimously passed a resolution to formally thank Kucinich for having the courage and foresight to save Muny Light.

Jean Robertson

Cleveland, Ohio

Tim, Tim, Tim

To the Editor:

Kerri Lawless-Hopkins (Letters to the Editor, January 29th issue) wants Tim Sampson to “let it go,” because we can’t change what happened in the 2000 election. But I hope Tim will keep reminding us.

Our election system is still broken, and we are still in danger of having our voice stolen. Broward County, Florida, was at the center of the controversy in the 2000 election. On January 6, 2004, residents in Broward County voted on touch-screen computers. There were 134 “non-votes,” and the election was decided by a difference of 12 votes. But this time, since there was no paper trail, the Supreme Court won’t have to stop a recount.

I agree that we can forget about punch cards and pregnant chads. But I’m not willing to forget that nearly 180,000 “spoiled-ballot” votes were not counted and that a large number of those uncounted votes were cast by African Americans. I’m not willing to forget that many people were incorrectly purged from voter lists in a process that again seemed to target African Americans.

It is naive to think that the 2000 election was a one-time fluke that can’t happen again or that we can just show up to vote on Election Day and assume that our vote will be accurately counted. My thanks go out to Sampson for reminding us how fragile our privileges are.

Becki Barnhardt

Memphis

To the Editor:

Please tell Tim Sampson that Bill Clinton has first dibs on the title “the Liar.”

Stephanie Wolf

Memphis

City Reportage

To the Editor:

I had expected a little more accurate reporting in Janel Davis’ piece (City Reporter, January 29th issue) on serving Bishop Grayson with his restraining order. I told Davis that the threat made on me “would” be in the unedited tape shot by Channels 5 and 24 when Patricia Rogers said, “We have our own police and he will have large men with him to stop you or they will run you down.”

Doesn’t sound very “Christian” to me! And I most certainly took that as a threat after the bishop evaded service of process with the known help of others.

Rik Anderson

Memphis

The Mayor and the Council

To the Editor:

What gives local religious leaders the right to ask Mayor Herenton to pick another candidate from within the ranks of the Memphis Fire Department? What motives do they have?

The mayor stated that he believes Chief Crawford is the most qualified man for the position. Do the religious leaders think the fire department deserves the mayor’s second, third, or forth choice? I have worked for the Memphis Fire Department for 31 years, and I support the mayor’s choice. I know the fire department needs the most qualified man for the job — not the second- or third-best choice.

This is not a popularity contest, not a racial issue, and shouldn’t be a political game.

Division Chief Joe Davis

Memphis

The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

Rock the vote: This month, expect to see classical guitarist Mark Allen at plenty of shows around town. The musician won’t always be playing, however. Instead, he’ll be manning a voter’s registration table at local gigs.

Allen has worked on local Get Out the Vote campaigns in the past and helped put Otis Higgs and Harold Ford Sr. into office. “People in Shelby County are pretty active voters,” he says, “but there’s been a lull lately. When you get someone in office that’s undefeatable, it’s discouraging. I can’t sit idly by. I want to see more people express themselves and make positive changes.”

Last week, Allen signed up several prospective voters at The Caravan while Akasha and Murder By Death played onstage. He expects to pop up at more local shows before the Tennessee Democratic primary on February 10th, but he won’t end there: On February 15th at The Hi-Tone Café, Allen plans to play a set of guitar tangos, then register voters while Brad Postlethwaite, Candice Ivory, and Akasha perform.

“I’ve gotten a good response from Memphis musicians,” Allen says. “While they don’t mind sharing their views, they don’t necessarily want to preach to their audiences, so this works out well. It’s not political. It’s civic involvement. The guys in Akasha are really into it. They immediately gave me [more support than I expected].”

“As individuals — and as a band — we’re always looking to enhance our community,” Akasha drummer Anthony Siracusa says. “Mark asked us to provide the forum, and he said he’d provide the forms. There were 40 people in the crowd at our show last week, and he registered eight of them. If we can provide a vein for locals to plug into politics, then why not do it?”

“I just wanted to nudge people into action,” Allen adds. “But this feels delicious. It’s almost like stuffing the ballot box!”

What’s in a name, part one: At Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, February 7th, Justice Naczycz‘s group — formerly billed as The Visible Band — will make their debut as The Secret Service. “The Visible Band was a default name in the first place to differentiate from my solo gigs, where I was backed by ‘The Invisible Band,'” Naczycz explains. “Zac Ives [Naczycz’s bandmate in the Final Solutions] suggested the Secret Service, and we started calling ourselves that in December.”

“I’m trying to break away from the singer-songwriter scene,” Naczycz confesses. “I’m not even bringing my old CD [2002’s Water for the Withered Root] to shows. I still love that album, but we’re not playing any of those songs right now. We realized last year that we’re a total rock band.”

After Saturday’s show — where the Secret Service will play with Mouserocket — Naczycz plans to record an EP with his group, which includes guitarist Steve Selvidge, bassist Mark Stuart, and drummer John Argroves. His next step? Shopping for a record label. “We’re talking to a few people, but it’s a hard fit,” Naczycz says.

What’s in a name, part two: While Halfacre Gunroom have been playing around town for nearly two years, they still languish in obscurity. Why? “We don’t fit in with the local music scene at all,” says frontman Bryan Hartley. “We’ve tried playing shows in Midtown, but we haven’t made a connection, so we just do our own thing.” For now, that includes regular Wednesday-night gigs at Earnestine & Hazel’s downtown.

Fans of twangy country rock — Ö la Whiskeytown and Wilco — need to hear this five-piece group, which includes Brian Wallace on lead guitar, Aaron Brame on keys, Chris Cary on bass, and Justin Fox Burks on drums.

So where did the name come from? “I came up with it,” admits Hartley, an avowed William Faulkner fan. “It’s from Absalom, Absalom! Thomas Sutpen builds this house where all the drinking and hunting and gambling goes on, which Faulkner describes as a ‘halfacre gunroom.’ That’s how I spent my 20s — well, except for the hunting.”

Last summer, Halfacre Gunroom recorded a dozen tracks at Easley-McCain Recording Studio. Salem, Massachusetts, label Icarus Records (an offshoot of hardcore imprint Deathwish) plans to release the CD, titled Wrecked, this spring. Until then, the band will stick to its weekly residency downtown, while making forays to New Orleans, Auburn, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi, on the weekends. Pay attention, folks: This is one band you’ll want to watch in 2004.

Congratulations are in order for Mrs. Fletcher, who recently finished recording their second album, the second project the hard-rock band has done through Young Avenue Sound. Mrs. Fletcher will be celebrating with a record-release party at The New Daisy Theatre Saturday, February 7th. Love & War, On a Dead Machine, and First Wave will open the all-ages show.

E-mail: localbeat@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Music Features

Whose Blues?

A nerdy little white guy, bespectacled, steps to the front of the stage, grimacing his way through a flashy but empty guitar solo. He wears the standard white blues-guy uniform — black, short-sleeve button-up shirt with “I’m a musician” patterns, stage lights gleaming off his polished Stacey Adams shoes. He is accompanied by a Will Ferrell lookalike sidekick decked out in a backward Kangol hat and a buttoned-up Oxford shirt with tie. The band is Blind Rhino, from Portland, Oregon, and they are playing “the blues.” One thought is inescapable: Is there anything in contemporary music –or in American culture, period –more dead than this?

It’s Saturday, January 31st — officially the final day of the congressionally mandated “Year of the Blues” –at the New Daisy Theatre on historic Beale Street, and nine bands from across the country are vying for the title “best unsigned blues band” in the Blues Foundation’s 20th annual International Blues Challenge. The event, in which more than 90 acts from across the globe are sponsored by local blues societies and sent to Memphis, offers a snapshot of what modern blues looks like. Needless to say, it isn’t always a pretty picture.

Daniel “Slick” Ballinger

Watch this contest with a critical eye, amid the almost exclusively white audience, and you get the sense that much of the contemporary blues scene can be divided into a few common subgenres: Blues Brothers, “Jonny Wayne Shepherd,” Blues Hammer (a priceless shorthand proffered by the film Ghost World), and “available for your next corporate function.” Most of the first group –well-meaning hobbyists, generally –get weeded out early in contests like this. The other types are well-represented: The would-be-incendiary guitar fireworks of Kentucky’s Kyle Daniel Band, with its 18-year-old, blond-pony-tailed frontman, was a veritable template for the modern blues-rock prodigy –the faster the playing the better, putting an emphasis on what is difficult to play over what is interesting to listen to. Birmingham’s talented Tennessee Hat Company –who may have a bright future but seemed out of place at a blues contest — were the “Blues Hammer” of the night, their stadium-sized aggression putting across music that might be dubbed the frat-boy mosh-pit blues. And Boston’s Matthew Stubbs Band, who actually finished third, fit the final category to a T, their fresh-scrubbed zoot-suit boogie the kind of blues (or “buh-LOOOZE,” as seems to be a preferred alternative pronunciation) you’d expect to see lawyers sipping martinis to at the end of an Ally McBeal episode.

Most of the other bands –Blind Rhino a prime example — trafficked in generic, smoky bar-band blues rock, the kind of sound that makes the case that contemporary blues has morphed into a cultural refuge for white boomers who grew up on blues-based classic rock and now feel alienated by cultural shifts (i.e., the rise of hip-hop and punk) over the past quarter-century. These bands tend to give the impression of going through the motions in a dead art form.

This unavoidable subject was tackled quite well in a piece in Mother Jones magazine last September by veteran music writer David Hadju, who tracked the evolution of blues from an African-American music “born of oppression” to a “feel-good soundtrack for white America.” Discussing how the elevation of guitar playing over singing as the core of blues expression is an extension of an audience shift toward classic-rock-reared white fans, Hadju quotes Delmark Records head Bob Koester who derided some white blues fans as reminiscent of “the idiot who goes to the opera house to listen to the orchestra.”

Koester was a judge at the IBC finals Saturday, as was another of Hadju’s interview subjects, Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer. Saturday night, Koester, Iglauer, and their jury mates seemed to be searching madly for a sign of authenticity amid so many perfunctory pretenders, and they may have found it.

Dennis Jones of the Mid-South Blues Revue

The Los Angeles-based Zac Harmon & the Mid-South Blues Revue took home the big prize. Harmon’s band stood out in part because three of the five members were African-American, but that wasn’t the only reason (though there may well be a connection between race and style). They also stood out because they played with feel rather than flash. Harmon cut a large, commanding figure at the front of the stage and was the night’s most soulful, nuanced singer, especially on slower numbers (including a crowd-pleasing paean to full-figured women). And when he sang about sex –threatening to “break that little girl in two” — there seemed to be no wink behind it.

Harmon’s band was part of the lineup at the Thursday night semifinal round that I helped judge, and though I and my fellow judges (blues specialists where I’m a generalist and a dabbler) enjoyed the band and gave them high scores, we didn’t think we were witnessing the future of the music. But if the band wasn’t a revelation, at least they were a reminder that old-fashioned blues values and blues feel continue to persist amid a landscape of blues-rock flash and corporate sponsorships. They were solid.

A bit flashier but still with real blues feel was the night’s second-place finisher, Rev. Slick & the Soul Blues Boys, representing Mississippi’s Howlin’ Wolf Blues Society. Fronted by baby-faced Daniel Ballinger –a white teen from North Carolina who is now based in Como, Mississippi –with Kinney Kimbrough (son of the late Junior Kimbrough) on drums and Terry Bean (perhaps the real star of the night; reminding everyone that he was from Mississippi as much as other acts constantly remind listeners that they play “the blues”) on harmonica, this trio served as a reminder that the hill-country sound may well be the last great, authentic blues scene that we have, their rural style a welcome anomaly. They may have been the crowd favorites, and it was truly heartening to see a large portion of the audience leap to its feet to dance along with the band’s chugging hill-country rhythms.

Terry Bean

The flamboyant yet seemingly un-self-conscious Ballinger (who has played regular gigs at Beale’s Blues City CafÇ in recent months) played pure rhythm on guitar, leading his band into a standard hypnotic, hill-country trance groove. By awarding the modest Ballinger –whose playing was interesting to listen to but not difficult to play –with the Albert King Award for “most promising guitarist” (Ballinger’s reaction: “I ain’t anywhere close to being the best guitarist in this place, but I’m glad y’all like Mississippi-style blues”), the judges seemed to be sending a message to all of the solo-mad blues rockers in attendance: that imagination and feel are more important than dexterity and volume. Not everyone got the message: One meaty middle-linebacker type standing next to me at the back of the club complained after Ballinger’s set, “That was like a swing band. He only knew one fucking chord.”

The impression any nonpartisan onlooker would have gotten from this year’s International Blues Challenge is of a proud genre limping along. An endangered species fighting to survive. But is this the truth? It might be that it’s a reflection of the culture of blues societies (which sponsored all the competing bands) rather than the blues. An endlessly durable root form, the blues has sparked plenty of interesting new developments in recent years — from the hip-hop inflections of young African-American bluesmen Corey Harris and Chris Thomas King to the blues grounding of white, punk-bred rock bands like the White Stripes and the Gossip. That these sounds were nowhere to be found Saturday night is troubling, but that doesn’t mean the energy isn’t still out there.

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

How We Handle Our Midnights

Glossary

(Undertow)

Kings of Leon isn’t the best “Southern rock” band from Middle Tennessee, just the most hyped, and here’s the proof: On their concept-album-like third full-length, How We Handle Our Midnights, Murfreesboro’s Glossary reminds me a bit of locals Lucero: They have a similar romantic spirit, though they aren’t quite as dynamic. Glossary also reminds me a little of Dallas’ Old 97’s: Their music taps specifically into post-collegiate rootlessness, though their lyrics aren’t quite as sharp.

A smart, solid Southern-rock band with some Memphis connections (current drummer J.D. Reager is a Memphian and former Flyer contributor, though he didn’t play on this record), Glossary starts with a formula of fairly standard post-punk bar-band rock and spices it up with a lot of flourishes — some Neil Young harmonica here, some extra percussion there, a woo-woo vocal hook or two. A nice feature is the male/female vocal harmonies. Kelly Smith’s dulcet tones lends a nice contrast to lead singer Joey Kneiser’s gravelly drawl.

On How We Handle Our Midnights, Glossary tackles a lot of familiar lyrical tropes, their worldview bounded by a geographic matrix of highway signs, city lights, and Southern skies, but they have enough verbal flair and emotional reach to tweak these potential clichÇs into something that feels real and alive.

I’ve never been to Murfreesboro, but the world of How We Handle Our Midnights sure feels like an actual place –a land of vagabond highways that connect small towns to cities, littered with newly minted adults working on their night moves and trying to figure out what’s next. The album’s opening line, “The Southern sky is like a halo burning bright,” feels like an invitation to this world, and Glossary makes their probably standard restlessness signify, only occasionally coming across as too maudlin or self-conscious. (“I was a lonesome stray hitch-hiking down a heart-worn highway” –ugh.)

With songs like “At Midnight” (“Midnight is the only time we feel alive/We’re older now and still drinking too much”) and “The Rutherford County Line” (“We can talk about all the things we wish we had/Tell stories of who we were”) coming on like anti-anthems, How We Handle Our Midnights is the sound of twentysomethings reckoning with reality but still seduced by those late-night drives. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Glossary will perform Sunday, February 8th, at the Hi-Tone CafÇ, with the High Strung and the Passport Again.

Coral Fang

The Distillers

(Sire)

It’s sadly indicative of a particular strain of sexism in rock journalism that Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle has been so relentlessly compared to Courtney Love. Both favor smeared makeup and a brand of punk rock that is abrasive and accessible, but the more obvious comparison is to Love’s former husband, Kurt Cobain. Like the Nirvana singer, Dalle can go from a whisper to a strain in a single breath; her song structures and minor-chord progressions recall Nirvana’s Bleach; and her lyrics rely on images of self-mutilation and death tools (gallows, guillotines, razor blades, etc.) that fit thematically with Nirvana’s In Utero.

But this comparison is just as limiting: Despite being married to old-school punk Tim Armstrong (of Rancid) and more recently hooked up with Queen of the Stone Age Josh Homme, Dalle is her own person, as Coral Fang ably proves. She has crammed her influences — the men mentioned above, among others — into a unique persona. At a time when punk is gradually losing its provocative edge to mall boys like Good Charlotte and old guards like Green Day, Dalle is one of the truest punks out there.

The album’s overproduction keeps it from being as visceral and grinding as Dalle obviously intended, but there are strong songs here. “Die on a Rope” has a catchy call-and-response chorus, and “The Gallow Is God” is a spiraling minor-key dirge. Most impressive, Dalle isn’t afraid to punch up her songs with catchy pop hooks: “Beat Your Heart Out” is one of the best expressions of female lust this side of Sleater-Kinney (take that, PJ Harvey!), and “Drain the Blood” is catchier than anything Cobain ever recorded.

On a few songs, Dalle’s fearlessness clouds her sensibilities. “The Hunger” begins, surprisingly, with a power-ballad acoustic guitar, but the song descends into a morass of unstructured nasal whining and guitar crunch that is more annoying than bracing.

Still, all faults aside, Coral Fang reveals Dalle has the kind of punk integrity that can’t be inherited from any musical influences. “I will always speak the truth,” she sings on “Dismantle Me.” “I will always bleed the truth.” n

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

The Diary of Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys

(J Records)

Alicia Keys’ appeal lies in her old-school approach to new soul music. She’s learned her chops from Aretha and Gladys, but the woman who famously proclaimed Chopin her ‘dawg’ isn’t afraid to learn some new tricks. On “So Simple,” a stand-out track from her second album, the quaintly titled The Diary of Alicia Keys, she duets with a distorted, sped-up tape loop of her own voice singing the chorus. The effect is eerie, and the song sheds its influences to become something much more memorable than your typical radio-ready diva ballad: “So Simple” is a meditation on loss and regret that is every bit as baring and personal as the album title promises.

Equally risky is the first single, the sublimely erotic “You Don’t Know My Name,” in which producer Kanye West wraps Keys’ dusky voice in candlelight and a descending piano glissando that sounds like a dress falling to the floor. But it’s the lyrics that really heat up the song: “I can hardly wait for the first time/My imagination’s running wild.” The song’s all the more captivating for being so understated, overshadowing more blatant come-ons like Tweet’s “Oops (Oh My)” and Kelis’ ludicrous “Milkshake.” When Keys stops mid-song to call up the man of her daydreams, you might think you’ve got a date with her.

It’s when the balance between new and old teeters that Diary becomes something less than fabulous. “If I Was Your Woman/Walk on By” promises a Bacharach cover by way of Hot Buttered Soul, but it’s just Isaac Hayes’ insistent beat that gets used — obviously enough to justify the double song title. Nothing says soulful like legal obligation.

Keys wants it both ways — old and new school. And most of the time she has enough personality and imagination to get exactly what she wants. n —SD

Grade: B+

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

“Canned Hunts”

Tennessee is among a growing number of states that offer the nation’s more than 10 million hunters a controversial way to pursue and kill trophy animals. The practice is known as “canned hunting” and has recently drawn a barrage of opposition from animal protection groups as well as the public.

Here’s how canned hunts work: After paying fees that can range from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000, a hunter at a canned-hunt facility is allowed to kill animals, such as deer or pheasants, in an enclosed hunting area. The method, which animal advocates say often targets exotic animals, is practiced at six facilities in Tennessee and more than 1,000 facilities in 24 other states, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

The practice has drawn criticism at state and national levels. In 2002, the Maryland-based animal protection group the Fund for Animals issued a report scolding Tennessee, among other states, for what it termed were “overly-cruel” canned-hunt facilities. The hunting practice was also the subject of national media attention late last year after Vice President Dick Cheney visited a canned-hunt facility in Pennsylvania. According to a report by MSNBC, Cheney visited the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, Pennsylvania, where he and nine companions shot at 500 ringneck pheasants and killed 417 of them.

“Until things like this happen, most people usually remain unaware of the existence of canned hunts,” said Heidi Prescott, national director of the Fund for Animals.

The group’s 2002 report, which Prescott said would be updated soon, is a list of the top 10 states with “cruel” canned-hunt facilities. Prescott said that states on the group’s list have “the most number of canned hunts on the smallest acreage, and allow hunters to pursue exotic animals.”

In addition to Tennessee, states on the list are Texas, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, Maine, Missouri, and Louisiana.

There are six canned-hunt facilities in Tennessee, according to the report, and two of them operate in the Mid-South: the Arrowhead Hunt Club in Whiteville and the Crockett Hunting Preserve in Gadsden. Phone calls to both facilities were not returned.

However, an employee at a Nashville-area canned-hunt facility described the operation there in detail. Jerry Pistole, who works at the Cumberland Mountain Hunting Lodge, explained that hunters can buy a number of packages, one of which costs $1,080 and includes three nights’ lodging and two days of guided hunting of Russian wild boars. The lodge’s hunting area is enclosed by nearly eight miles of 8-foot-tall fence, Pistole said.

Facilities such as his typically shy away from identifying themselves as canned hunts, Prescott explained, adding that they usually prefer to advertise themselves as “hunting preserves” or “hunt clubs.”

Pistole defended the lodge’s fenced-in hunting ground and attempted to distance the lodge from comparisons with other canned-hunt facilities. “This is not like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said.

When asked to defend the lodge’s operation against criticism from the Fund for Animals, including charges that canned hunts are “inhumane,” Pistole replied, “It might seem that way if you had never been here and were an animal-rights person.”

Walter Cook, captive wildlife coordinator for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, also stopped short of comparing hunting preserves in Tennessee to canned-hunt facilities.

Unlike canned-hunt facilities in other states, Cook said, a typical hunting preserve in Tennessee includes up to 1,800 acres. At true canned-hunt facilities, Cook said hunting areas are more constricted and captive animals are usually killed in cages or immediately outside a cage.

“That just does not happen in Tennessee,” he said.

Cook did concede, however, that some animal advocates and hunters might interpret an unspecified number of the state’s hunting preserves as canned-hunt operations.

Kathy Simonetti, director of the Memphis Humane Society, said she has received multiple inquiries about the operation and legality of canned-hunt facilities. Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, blasted the practice in a New York Times op-ed last month.

“Canned hunting belongs in the same category as other forms of animal abuse, like cockfighting and bullfighting,” he wrote. “It’s hard on animals and easy on people — and it should be against the law.”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

May Day

While the Bush administration never tires of reminding the American people that the president’s war on terrorism, his invasion of Iraq, and the Patriot Act I and II are all rooted in the 9/11 attacks, it has tired of one little bitty aspect of this post-9/11 period: the investigation by the 10-member bipartisan independent commission.

White House officials, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), have decided to oppose extending the time limit for work by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, “virtually guaranteeing that the panel” will have to be done with its work by the end of May, The Washington Post reported on January 19th. According to the statute that created the panel in late 2002, the comission needs to complete a report for the president and Congress by May 27th.

After months of stalling on even having a commission, then appointing Henry Kissinger to head it (and having to withdraw that appointment), the administration threw every conceivable roadblock in the commission’s path, including the withholding of significant documents. Despite the growing consensus among commission members that they need more time, the president and his congressional allies want to shut the investigation down. The administration appears to be concerned that an ongoing investigation would bleed into the election season and hurt the president’s reelection chances.

“With time running short,” the Post reported, “the … panel [chaired by the former governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean] has already decided to scale back the number and scope of hearings that it will hold for the public, [and it] is rushing to finish interviews with as many as 200 remaining witnesses and to finish examining about 2 million pages of documents related to the attacks.”

In an early-January interview with The New York Times, Kean was asked whether 9/11 could have been avoided. “Yes, there is a good chance that 9/11 could have been prevented by any number of people along the way,” Kean replied. “Everybody pretty well agrees our intelligence agencies were not set up to deal with domestic terrorism … . They were not ready for an internal attack.” Then the Times asked whether “anyone in the Bush administration [had] any idea that an attack was being planned.” Kean: “That is why we are looking at the internal papers. I can’t talk about what’s classified. [The] President’s daily briefings are classified. If I told you what was in them, I would go to jail.”

The administration’s decision to shut down the investigation cannot be good news for the victims’ families and citizen watchdog groups that have been fighting tooth and nail since the commission was appointed. “The momentous nature of the event requires that this commission not be rushed to complete its work,” said Kyle Hence, co-founder of 9/11 Citizens Watch.

“The commission is coming up with new information,” said Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband, Ron, in the collapse of the World Trade Center. “As time goes by and more comes to light, we get a clearer picture of how this terrible thing happened. The commission’s report will be the definitive official account. There is only one chance to get this right, so we plan to make sure they get all the time they need.”

“We’ve had it,” Breitweiser added. “It is such a slap in the face of the families of victims. They are dishonoring the dead with their irresponsible behavior.”

At the end of January, after two days of hearing testimonies about the attacks, the independent commission announced it was formally requesting an extension of its deadline, from May 27th to July. The ball is in your court, Mr. Bush.

Bill Berkowitz writes for Working For Change.

Categories
News News Feature

LETTER FROM MEMPHIS

P.T. BARNUM’S AMERICA

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, the famous circus man once said. Alas, some things never change.

I confess, I’ve found myself getting slightly optimistic these past few weeks about the possibility of a premature end to the presidency of George W. Bush. After all, he gave what was by all accounts a mediocre State of the Union Address. His own chief WMD hunter has now admitted that there are probably none to be found in Iraq. And with the leading Democrats like Kerry, Edwards and Clark all seeming to have grown in stature as the primary season has begun, the prognosis for November looks suddenly less bleak. Even the once-cowed mass media has begun to whisper about how the President is facing a stiffer challenge than anyone ever expected.

Then today I happened to pick up the current Newsweek, and my pseudo-euphoria turned rather quickly into gloom. The reason? The magazine’s latest opinion poll, conducted January 29-30, a poll that still includes the now-famous question about Saddam and 9/11:

“Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was DIRECTLY involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, or not?”

The President himself, of course, has admitted that no links between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 have been established. Not a single credible intelligence report, domestic or foreign, has ever confirmed the existence of any connection; the rest of the world guffaws whenever the subject comes up. But do you think the American people would let a little thing like the facts get in the way of their opinions?

Not on your life. Believe it or not, fully 49% of respondents STILL are answering that question in the affirmative.

Despite the enormous media attention already given this absurdity, half of the people in this country still believe Saddam is/was the Great Boogie Man behind the Twin Towers tragedy. The mind boggles at what else they must think. Do half of us still think the Moon is made of green cheese? Or that the Tooth Fairy would make an ideal presidential candidate in 2008?

I do not mean to sound smug or condescending, but this is serious stuff, friends. When the people of a country prefer believing in fantasy to accepting reality, that country is in deep, deep trouble. Particularly when that country uses democratic elections to choose its leaders. Forget about the pen being mightier than the sword; when the power of innuendo is mightier than the power of fact, democracy becomes little more than farce.

The danger in which we as nation find ourselves was driven home to me

by a personal experience Wednesday morning; allow me to relate it. I was in a little diner here in downtown Memphis at breakfast time, where Wesley Clark spoke on his swing through Tennessee in advance of next Tuesday’s state Democratic primary.

At 8 am, General Clark could be seen standing atop the lunch counter of the Arcade restaurant, delivering his standard stump speech to a crowd of several hundred locals crammed into a room that holds seventy-five. I’d been told he’s way better in person than on television, and while I’m not an ardent supporter, I can testify that this is indeed the case with Clark. As someone nearby said to me, “The man can burn barns.”

I was standing just beside the General while he spoke, so close that when my cell phone began ringing unexpectedly, the folks nearby immediately shoosshed me, with the usual looks of disapproval. I whispered quickly into the mouthpiece, telling the caller that I was at a political breakfast, and quickly turned the damned thing off.

After the event, I returned the call of this business acquaintance (let’s call him Bill), apologizing for having to cut him off. “I knew you were at one of those Democratic rallies,” he replied, referring to the fact that John Edwards was also campaigning in Memphis on the same morning. “Which of those two communists was it?”

I realize that this guy, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, no doubt, was probably just being smart. But we’re not close friends, so his remark took me aback. I was struck by his choice of descriptors. “Gee, Bill, I didn’t know we had any communists speaking here in town today. I was at General Clark’s breakfast, though.” Bill sort of laughed.

No big deal, but the conversation stuck with me all day. So did the image of an angry American — a guy who actually grew up in the same country I did, and was roughly the same age — willing to throw around an incendiary term like that to describe General Wesley Clark, who, of course, served 33 years in the U.S. Army, after finishing first in his class in West Point, who served with distinction and courage, as his Vietnam War battle scars and no end of stories would attest.

In a way, Bill’s comment bothered me way more than the silly Newsweek poll. The Newsweek poll demonstrated that a significant portion of the American population is bone-headed stupid. That’s nothing new. P.T. Barnum could have told us that, a century ago.

No, good old Bill’s communist throwaway line demonstrates just how cleverly and maliciously the Bush Administration has capitalized upon that ignorance, manipulating truth to protect its interests and implement policies, at home and abroad, which as recently as a decade ago would have been dismissed as madness.

I honestly don’t believe that Bill would have called Wesley Clark a Communist four years ago. Bill Clinton, maybe, but Wesley Clark? No.

But that was then, and this is now, now being the post-9/11America that the Bush Administration will do anything to continue to divide so that it can reconquer next November.

It is a sad time for America. Dick Cheney and his minions have successfully made fear a more powerful weapon than anything Saddam Hussein ever possessed, and like that tyrant, they’ve had no qualms about using that weapon upon their own people. “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists,” George W. Bush told us after 9/11, and his administration has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in using that mantra to stifle legitimate criticism, to protect their self interests, and to poison the well of political discourse in America.

The well is so poisoned that Wesley Clark can be called a communist. Go figure. And go cry.