Month: April 2004

Categories
Cover Feature News

Easy Targets

The Family Dollar store in Southgate Shopping Center loses an average of $2,000 a month to burglaries.

On March 10th at 2:30 a.m. most Memphians were in bed, savoring a few more hours of sleep before work. But for one man, that early morning hour was a time of opportunity.

The thief used a sledgehammer to knock a hole into the back wall of a Dollar General store at 2228 Lamar, then crept inside, grabbed some items, and escaped the way he came in. Total time: 16 minutes. Witnesses: zero. It was four hours before someone noticed the hole in the wall and notified police. The thief was long gone, leaving store owners with a mess to clean up, a wall to repair, and inventory sheets to modify. For police, it meant adding another tally to the city’s growing number of business burglaries.

Later that same day, police responded to a burglar alarm. This time, surveillance tape showed a man entering a Fred’s Discount Store after breaking the front-door glass. Once inside, the man grabbed cartons of cigarettes, stuffed them into a plastic bag, and left. It was the second of 11 business burglaries reported on March 10th.

It’s a disturbing trend in Memphis: Discount stores are being robbed with record frequency. Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Big Lots, chain stores selling discounted merchandise, have become significant targets for burglaries (see accompanying chart). Consequently, the Memphis Police Department has launched an all-out effort to curb these crimes and to assist store owners and managers in taking preventative measures.

Crime of Opportunity

 

Memphis discount chains are plagued by burglaries, despite increased security. This chart shows a disturbing trend.

So far this year, Memphis police have recorded 587 business burglaries. In 2003, there were 2,770 such crimes, up from 2,720 in 2002 but less than the 3,219 recorded in 2001. In 2002, almost 45 percent of burglaries nationwide occurred in the South.

Burglaries should not be confused with robberies, says Memphis Police Department burglary bureau commander Billy Garrett. A burglary occurs when a person enters a business or home to commit a crime. Robbery involves taking property while in the presence of the victim, either through violence or threat.

Memphis police counted 156 discount store burglaries in 2003, 177 in 2002, and 139 in 2001. These numbers have helped garner Memphis the second-highest crime rate in the nation for cities with a population of more than 500,000. Only Tucson, Arizona, outranks Memphis in 2002 FBI crime statistics.

“Many times, burglaries are just crimes of opportunity, and in the scheme of things, these are considered petty crimes,” says Garrett.

Still, police director James Bolden has made burglaries a priority, beefing up the burglary bureau to 34 investigators and starting collaborations with the crime prevention bureau and area businesses. This focus has paid off, says Garrett, who cites more than 1,600 arrests made last year and a business burglary clearance rate of 13.5 percent, half a percent higher than the national average. Garrett attributes the burglary problem to a larger issue: “Memphis’ major problem is substance abuse — drugs and alcohol. If we could find some way to combat that problem, a lot of the other crimes we see could be drastically decreased.”

Easy Targets

For discount stores, the problems are exacerbated by their location in poor neighborhoods, workforce limitations, high corporate expectations, and even the type of merchandise on store shelves. These conditions work together in a kind of malignant harmony to negatively affect daily operations.

“I’ve had cars backed through the front doors of my store by people trying to steal,” says Citi Trends store manager Alzeda Nickelberry. Standing in her enclosed cubicle/office, the 25-year retail veteran rattles off incidents on her fingers. In her three years at the 1967 S. Third Street location in the Southgate Shopping Center, she estimates about 15 burglaries have occurred. “We sell a lot of popular name-brand clothing and that’s what [criminals] take because they can resell it on the street,” she says. “When our weather changes, we get a lot of problems, since many [burglaries] happen when it gets warmer.” The store has reinforced its security bars, added more surveillance cameras, and raised customer services counters.

Police records show Nickelberry’s store had five burglaries last year, with two in April. Her store is one of six Memphis locations of the Savannah, Georgia-based retailer, which sells clothing, shoes, and accessories for men, women, and children. The store’s motto is “Fashion for less.”

The FBI estimated burglary losses in the South in 2002 at $3.3 billion, with an average value of $1,549 per offense. Because of the type of crime and the areas where crimes occur, recovery of goods and cash is difficult.

Citi Trends’ Web site describes prime real estate locations for its stores as a “tenant mix comprised of dollar stores, rent-to-own stores, beauty supply, and other value-priced retailers,” with its target demographic being households with a median income under $35,000.

In Memphis, such sites are in strip shopping centers or shopping malls in poorer neighborhoods from Frayser to Hickory Hill.

“These kind of stores are easy targets because of where they’re located,” says Jane, a Family Dollar store manager in Frayser who didn’t want her last name used. Although it has been about a year since the last burglary at her Frayser Boulevard location, she has been robbed by criminals as young as 6 years old. She pushes back a dolly full of boxes to reveal a plywood-covered hole where criminals broke in through the wall. “Out here, we’ve got poor people, people looking to get by. People break in and take whatever they know someone out there will buy.”

Risky locations and discount prices go hand-in-hand because the benefits of such locations far outweigh the problems, says Dollar General corporate spokesperson Andrea Turner. Speaking from company headquarters in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, Turner says, “Our stores are in areas where people are most in need of the products that we sell. We sell to a niche market of underserved customers that are on low or fixed incomes and senior citizens. We recognize that the areas are high crime areas, but we have to serve our niche.”

In 2003, the Dollar General chain listed loss of revenue for unaccounted for, or “shrink,” merchandise as 3 percent, or $207 million, of the company’s $6.9 billion revenues. While the number includes merchandise lost to damage and accounting errors, most of the loss was due to theft. Only nine of Dollar General’s 6,800 stores are in Shelby County. Police records for the last three years show the six stores with only three burglaries.

For rival discount chain Family Dollar, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, business burglaries in Memphis are an ongoing problem. Police records show 28 break-ins for 15 of its 34 locations in the city during 2003.

The company, which reported $81.4 million in earnings in the second quarter, averages $9.13 per customer transaction. Unlike Dollar General, a Family Dollar spokesperson refused to discuss the burglary situation in Memphis. Columbus, Ohio-based Big Lots, which operates four Memphis stores, also declined to comment.

At the 4433 S. Third Family Dollar in South Memphis, which reported four burglaries last year, the manager refused to discuss any of the incidents. “We’ve got metal bars [on the windows and doors], and we haven’t had any problems,” he said. But records show the business was burglarized three times within 14 days last April.

In the company’s Southgate Shopping Center location, manager James Wright talked freely about his store’s problems. “We do experience a lot of burglaries, and divide them into two categories: those we see, and those we don’t see,” he says. “Those we see, we press charges against.” Wright sees no end to the problem. Just two days before, a new reinforced steel security door had to be installed at the back of his store after a burglar used a crowbar to pry open the original lock.

In addition to cash and clothing, the most popular items stolen from Wright’s store are hair and beauty accessories, including permanent kits and deodorant. Clothes are resold on the street, usually by drug abusers. Wright has responded by installing an alarm system, motion detectors, and cameras within the store and attaching security tags to clothing.

Wright has also dealt with employee crimes, including those who “hook up” friends and family with free merchandise, as well as monetary theft. Six months ago, an employee staged a robbery, telling Wright that armed men broke into the store during his shift, threatening him and taking money. The story was discovered to be false and the employee was caught with $6,000 in stolen company funds. Wright says many of his store’s problems can be attributed to its location. “I used to manage a [Family Dollar] store on Perkins and it was much better than this one,” he says. “The [amount of] crime has a lot to do with the area.”

Whitehaven Family Dollar store manager Mike Jones echoes Wright’s concerns but also blames the company for a lack of staffing. “We’re targets because we don’t have enough people working in our stores,” he says. “Many times, it’s only three people working the whole store. When it gets busy, I’ve got to put both of them on the registers, leaving me alone to patrol the store.” Jones works almost 70 hours a week, usually seven days a week, to meet the company’s earnings goals.

Jones says the company also mismanages inventory. His stockroom is overflowing with merchandise. “It’s hard to maintain control in here,” says Jones, pointing to boxes stacked to the ceiling. “Someone could easily hide here between these boxes, wait until we leave, and have their way. Or worse, they could surprise you with a gun to your head while you work back here.”

Family Dollar locations have been plagued with more burglaries than any other local discount chain in the last three years. Memphis police won’t say for certain, but the numbers indicate some sort of organized effort. “We have our share of suspicious situations,” says Garrett. “It’s really tough for the business owners to get good-quality workers. We advise employers to trust them with just what they need to know. If their area of responsibility is stocking merchandise, don’t extend them to working cash registers.”

At Jones’ Millbranch location in Whitehaven, three incidents have occurred during his year-and-a-half tenure. He thinks they all could be employee-related. “The problem with people [in Memphis] is that they want something for nothing. In other places where I’ve managed stores, we didn’t have these problems as much,” says Jones. “Here they’ll beg you for a job and then they don’t want it. A lot of these crimes could be inside jobs because they [employees] know where to go.”

Fixing the Problem

Garrett says increased police presence has begun to work. Officers from large precincts, as well as smaller community COACT units, patrol the neighborhoods where most of the stores are located. The Southgate Shopping Center even has a COACT unit based there.

In addition to increased visibility, police have installed COBRA alarms in many businesses. The alarms, which cost around $2,500, are installed free of charge by the department and transmit a signal to the police when a store is burglarized. Alarms are moved from business to business as needed. The program is funded through law enforcement grants and taxpayer funds. Police also coach owners and managers on instituting safer business practices, including better internal controls like drop boxes for cash, better screening of potential employees, and common sense.

“Generally, the smaller the business, the more lax the security,” Garrett says. “If care was taken to do little things, like not displaying or counting large sums of money in front of customers, it would really help a lot.”

For Family Dollar managers, the fight against buglary remains a challenge. A Hickory Hill Family Dollar store was burglarized last Wednesday. Police found no fingerprints and a security camera at the location may not have been working.

“You can never stop it,” says Wright, looking around his store. “All you can do is try to control it.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Editorial

Testing the Limits

As far as we can see, the current lawsuit in Chancery Court whereby three members of the Shelby County Commission seek to invalidate a term-limits requirement is being handled with all due propriety. And for that we credit the good judgment of current county attorney Brian Kuhn.

Early on, Kuhn noted that the three veteran commissioners — Walter Bailey, Cleo Kirk, and Julian Bolton — would have to arrange and finance their own legal representation. They have done so, engaging Allan Wade, who happens to double as attorney for the Memphis City Council. That latter fact may be an eyebrow-raiser, but it does not connote any impropriety. Kuhn also advised of a possible conflict of interest if his office, which normally represents both the commission as a public body and the commissioners as separate entities, should directly handle any of the proceedings. Accordingly, the county has engaged lawyer Leo Bearman of the respected Baker Donelson law firm to conduct a defense of the 1994 referendum, whereby county residents voted for a limit of two terms for the offices of county mayor and county commissioner. Inevitably — and properly, since their interests are involved — taxpayers are footing the bill for this defense.

The issues of the case are intriguing. Are the offices of a county chief executive and commissioner mandated by the state Constitution, as the three plaintiffs argue they are? If so, the term-limits referendum could be held invalid. If, on the other hand, these offices are ruled to be creatures of the Shelby County charter, then the limits would presumably stand. The legal picture is cloudy, with prior rulings of the state attorney general’s office and those by the county attorney’s office in apparent conflict.

We are no fans of the term-limits concept in the abstract — especially since both city and county voters have demonstrated in recent elections that they are prepared to turn out veteran legislators whom they regard as having outlived their public usefulness. No law required them to do so; they merely exercised the franchise.

And, as Republican congressman Henry Hyde once argued in opposing such limits for the U.S. House of Representatives, you don’t develop governmental leaders by looking up numbers in the phone book. All other factors being equal, we would be opposed to the retention of the local two-term limit for commissioners. But the fact that the county term-limits referendum was approved by 81 percent of the voters in 1994 is a compelling one that tilts the argument in favor of keeping the limits.

That, however, is a political judgment, not a legal one. The courts — and we use the plural because a round of appeals in this matter is a foregone conclusion — will decide. And this too is as it should be.

The Grizzlies

In no uncertain terms, we celebrate the current success of Memphis’ pro basketball franchise, whose exciting season has qualified them for the NBA playoffs, with at least the possibility of a home-court advantage for the first round.

Congratulations are in order for Coach Hubie Brown, a candidate for league Coach of the Year honors, for general manager nonpareil Jerry West, and for those Everyman Heroes, the Grizzlies themselves.

Some sticky issues still accrue to the one-sided agreement with the team ownership, in which the city and county find their hands tied in dealing with the potential white elephant of The Pyramid. The winning season does not and should not substitute for a fair resolution of these issues. But in the meantime, we resolutely decline to be a house divided. Go Griz!

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Fool Proof

We must have waffles. We must all have waffles, forthwith. And think. We must have waffles and think.”

This is my favorite line from The Ladykillers and the moment from the film’s trailer that inspired me to see it. Tom Hanks as “Professor” Goldthwait H. Dorr, an anachronistic Twain-type — replete with Southern drawl and three-piece ice cream suit, sitting in a Waffle Hut — plots a robbery. Most would try to be inconspicuous, but Professor Dorr is too eccentric to notice that he’s eccentric or that his team of misfit conspirators is indeed misfit. There is the dumb brute, Lump (Ryan Hurst), the hip-hopper Gawain (Marlon Wayans), the chain-smoking Viet Cong veteran, the General (Tzi Ma), and the blowhard handyman Mr. Pancake (J.K. Simmons). They are like a joke — the kind that walks into a bar with a priest and a rabbi. They are fools.

Anecdote: I recently dined with my friend Brannen at a Starbucks. I got a salad, which came in a large, saucer-like plastic container. Brannen and I sat near an intense, artsy looking fellow who kept falling asleep, literally hitting the table as he fell, thus waking himself up. Nearby, a clutch of giggly girls squealed about whatever they were squealing about. Eating my salad, I had to stop to remove something strange I had bitten into. It was a prong of the fork that had somehow dislodged and stuck in my throat. As we left, I tried with one hand to dispose of my garbage into the prohibitively small hole of the Starbucks garbage can while holding my brambleberry tea in my other hand. The salad container was too large to be downed. The girls stopped giggling long enough to chime, “Well, that’s not going to work!” before erupting into even shriller peals. I tried harder to push the container down, but the top flipped up and the fork flew away. More squeals and even a smirk from the sleeping man before once again drifting to sleep. Brannen asked, on our way out, if I had ever been likened to the movie character Mr. Bean.

Ah, Mr. Bean. Played by Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean is a smug bumbler, haughty and arrogant on the outside, stooge on the inside, a desperate, weird man searching for the slightest modicum of dignity. This is why I enjoyed The Ladykillers. Not because it’s good, because it isn’t very, and not because it’s howlingly funny, because it isn’t that either. It’s because this film is essentially about two souls on two different quests for dignity, without the slightest comprehension of their ridiculousness. Like Mr. Bean. Like me.

Soul #1: Professor Dorr. Soul #2: Marva Munson (the sublime Irma P. Hall), an elderly black lady whose devotion to Jesus through prayer and churchgoing is seconded in regularity only by her monthly $5 checks to Bob Jones University of which she knows little except that it’s a Bible college. Dorr hides behind his vocabulary in his search for esteem. Marva’s shield is the Good Book. Dorr rents a room in Munson’s home, only so he and his cronies can use her root cellar to burrow to a nearby casino vault. Their guise: They are Renaissance-period instrumentalists who play devotional music. Hallelujah! The plot thickens once Marva stumbles onto their scheme. Money in hand, the mission changes from thievery to murder. But like the Energizer Bunny, cockroaches, or Dick Clark, she can’t be killed.

As far as comedy goes, this is fairly broad. The Coens’ recent O Brother, Where Art Thou? at least had a ribbon of drama through it (not to mention that fantastic bluegrass music, grounding it to something just beyond drama or comedy). In classical terms, this is more like a Larry, Curly, and Moe film, where a Buster Keaton-style might have been more appreciated. There is even a portrait of Marva’s late husband that changes expressions to suit whatever slapstick moment has preceded — just in case the audience didn’t know to laugh. The treat, therein, is the quirky chemistry between Hall and Hanks who are as evenly matched in wit and delivery as can be seen in any film duo this decade. The scene where Marva talks to Dorr as he’s hiding under a bed, while a sheriff looks on assuming that she’s crazy and talking to a cat, is probably the film’s funniest.

The Ladykillers is not for everyone, which is par for the course for the off-center Coen brothers but not for the mainstream Hanks, who’s trying something a little different here, folks. I wish The Ladykillers had been a worthier vehicle for the kind of villainous experiment he performs, but at least it has revealed the luminous, dignified “fool,” Irma P. Hall.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

A Public Walloping?

To the Editor:

Regarding your editorial (“Word to the Wise,” March 25th issue): Having shown up at the Shelby County Commission briefing on March 22nd and at the prior briefing in February on The Pyramid, it is amazing that I am still being ridiculed and accused of grandstanding for showing up for important meetings on public business, especially when all council members were invited.

It is mind-boggling and disappointing in 2004 that there are still those who think that it is in vogue to give a woman a public tongue-lashing. How is it that an individual with a bachelor’s degree, a law degree, who is a 13-year veteran legislator and has been a public servant for almost two decades rates public ridicule and verbal abuse from anyone for simply doing what she was elected to do? What Neanderthal and childish mind-set thinks that a man has a right to give a woman a public verbal walloping in 2004? Perhaps there are still those who would prefer a giggling, silly, barefoot girl whom they can simply control by making demands. It’s this mind-set that creates problems for women in business today. Be on notice that I won’t take verbal abuse and a public walloping from anyone without walloping right back. And thank goodness everybody down there at the Flyer had the good sense not to put their names to that editorial.

You all have admitted publicly that changes are needed at the City Council, that public service must become our priority, that the pension plan was ill-advised and costly, and that it was ill-advised to give public money to private organizations without accountability. If we agree on the message, why can’t we agree on the messenger? Perhaps you would prefer that a man had made these statements?

Carol Chumney

City Councilwoman, District 5

Memphis

A Pickle for Bush?

To the Editor:

Thank you for Richard Cohen’s masterful summary of the pickle that President George W. Bush and his cronies find themselves in today (Viewpoint, March 25th issue). Two major players in the Bush administration — former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill and former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke — have now confirmed the worst fears of Bush’s critics: that the president used 9/11 as an excuse to launch a preemptive attack on Iraq, even though Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and did not have weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, both Clarke and O’Neill have confirmed that Mr. Bush focused so much on Iraq — before and after September 11th — that he undermined the ability of his administration to effectively deal with real threats like the one posed by al-Qaeda. In addition, we now learn that Medicare actuary Richard Foster was threatened with the loss of his job when he tried to provide legislators with an honest estimate of the cost of the Medicare prescription drug plan recently rammed through Congress.

Remember when Bush claimed that he would “bring integrity back to the White House”? Well, surely a man of integrity would take these problems seriously and do some soul-searching. But instead Bush has failed to respond to these important concerns and has turned on his smear machine to attack anyone who would criticize the emperor. Those tactics will certainly be embraced by far-right venues like talk radio (a parallel universe), but it won’t cut it in the real world. Indeed, many prominent Republicans aren’t buying into this garbage. Republican senators (including John McCain) have called on the administration to quit attacking the messengers and start dealing with the issues.

How much worse will it have to be before Republicans with a conscience reject this president and what he has done to our country?

B. Keith English

Memphis

To the Editor:

President Bush tells the truth and nothing but the truth all the time. Condoleezza Rice comes forward and testifies openly before the 9/11 commission. Vice President Dick Cheney discloses the names of all those who attended his energy task-force meetings. Fundamentalist House leader Tom DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist turn over a new leaf and become truely compassionate Christians. Attorney General John Ashcroft decides to stop interfering with a woman’s God-given right to freedom of choice.

April Fools!

Eddie Sullivant

Dyersburg, Tennessee

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
Politics Politics Beat Blog

It Ain’t Over

The Shelby County Commission seemingly dealt a death blow last Wednesday to a proposal for converting The Pyramid into a casino. But did it? In all likelihood, the casino scenario, first advanced by Commissioner John Willingham, will surface for another vote in mid-April that could well reverse the verdict of Wednesday’s special session.

That session was made necessary by an objection at last week’s regular Monday commission meeting by Commissioner Marilyn Loeffel that the proposal had not been properly added to the body’s agenda at an earlier committee meeting.

That created enough confusion that commissioners agreed to defer a vote on the matter until the specially called session two days later. And Loeffel, by her own account as well as Willingham’s, used the extra time to organize a pressure campaign on commissioners to reject the proposal.

“I’ll give her her due. She’s very powerful in terms of her constituency,” said Willingham after two casino-related votes had fallen short by two votes at the Wednesday meeting. He identified that constituency as one symbolized by — but not limited to — the Bellevue Baptist Church congregation and that church’s pastor, the Rev. Adrian Rogers. Willingham added that pressure — presumably independent of Loeffel — had also come from sources close to Tunica gambling interests.

Loeffel acknowledged that she made efforts to see that her fellow commissioners heard from citizens objecting to votes that would have authorized the Tennessee General Assembly to pass casino-friendly legislation. One bill would begin a constitutional-amendment process legalizing a casino at the single site of The Pyramid. Another would legalize “games of skill” throughout the state.

“It was a combination of hard work and God dust,” a beaming Loeffel said of the outcome, which saw the proposals turned back by votes of 5-7-1 (Cleo Kirk abstaining in the constitutional-amendment vote) and 5-8.

Voting no on both votes were Commissioners Linda Rendtorff, Walter Bailey, Joyce Avery, David Lillard, Tom Moss, Bruce Thompson, and Chairwoman Loeffel. Yes votes came from Willingham, Julian Bolton, Deidre Malone, Michael Hooks, and Joe Ford.

The votes almost didn’t come off. After the commission had unanimously approved the other proposal on last Wednesday’s special agenda for a reorganization of county school board district lines, Moss moved to defer action on the casino votes until the commission’s regular meeting of April 12th. He was seconded by Lillard.

For a while, that seemed to be that, but Willingham pressed for a roll-call vote on the deferral, which was defeated.

After the two nay votes on the casino proposal, Thompson pointedly crossed over to Willingham’s side of the commission table, whispered in his ear, and shook his hand — an action inviting speculation from Loeffel and others that a move to reconsider the votes might be in the offing for April 12th.

If it did, the most likely converts would be Thompson and Kirk — the former of whom did acknowledge later the eloquence of remarks made Monday by Hooks to the effect that Memphis and Shelby County “already” had casino gambling — meaning the complex in nearby Tunica — without benefiting from accompanying tax revenues.

Hooks also noted that the county’s taxpayers were still on the line for $32 million worth of outstanding bonds and additional annual maintenance costs for The Pyramid, which would shortly “go dark” now that the University of Memphis basketball Tigers have completed plans to move to the new FedExForum.

“We’ve got a bone, but we don’t even have a dog in the yard,” Willingham said about nonexistent prospects for occupancy of The Pyramid, other than his proposal, in tandem with the Lakes Corporation of Minnesota, for developing it as a casino/hotel complex.

Among what seems to be a growing number of prominent Memphians advocating consideration of the idea is Convention & Visitors Bureau head Kevin Kane, who volunteered favorable testimony to a meeting of Willingham’s Tourism and Public Works committee last week.

Opponents of a casino at The Pyramid and some media sources cite Governor Phil Bredesen as also being opposed to the idea, but the governor has debunked that notion, telling local officials who have contacted him, as well as the Flyer, that while he is “not at all sure” that the idea is good for Memphis and Shelby County, he intends to be responsive to local business, political, and civic leaders on the point.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Cutting Loose?

Responding last week to the controversy that erupted over former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke‘s criticism of President Bush’s handling of the war on terror, 9th District congressman Harold Ford appeared to be distancing himself from the administration’s war policies in Iraq.

Ford, who had previously expressed reservations about the conduct of the war and its aftermath but had declined to cast public doubt on the Bush administration’s bona fides, said in a telephone interview that “it now appears from what we’ve learned in the last couple of days that the president was determined to go to war in Iraq and may have exaggerated the evidence he had for doing so.”

Though the congressman, who voted for the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, continued to profess his frequently expressed belief that “we are safer with Saddam Hussein out of power,” his response still represented a deviation of sorts from the qualified support for the war that he had repeated as recently as early March in an appearance before the Germantown Democratic Club.

At that meeting, during which he had to deal with some animated and occasionally hostile questioning, Ford’s criticism of the administration was largely limited to chastising the president for retaining CIA chief George Tenet, whom the congressman blamed for faulty intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons programs or lack of any. The blame-Tenet approach was similar to one advanced by supporters of the president’s war policy, including such active promoters as leading neoconservative Richard Perle, until recently chairman of the administration’s Defense Policy Board.

What may have been lost in the shuffle of events over the years is the fact that Ford himself was associated very early on with calls for action against Saddam’s regime. A reader calls attention to an artifact of that concern, currently featured on the Web site of the Project for the New American Century, an organization in which Perle, Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and other neoconservatives are prominent.

This is a letter to President Bush signed by Ford and eight other members of Congress, including Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). The letter, dated December 5, 2001, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the beginnings of military action in Afghanistan, says in part:

“As we work to clean up Afghanistan and destroy al Qaeda, it is imperative that we plan to eliminate the threat from Iraq.

“This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”

The letter goes on to praise the “Iraqi National Congress,” a group led by then exiled figure Ahmed Chalabi, now president of the U.S.-installed Iraq Governing Council. The congress has been identified as a prime source of early allegations concerning Iraq’s possession of WMDs.

“The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained,” continues the December 2001 letter. “For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later. … [I]n the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power.”

Other signatories to the letter are Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Reps. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.).

Ford’s presence in such company reflects his penchant for other positions normally associated with political conservatives. The congressman, currently a national co-chair of the presidential campaign of Massachusetts senator John Kerry, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, is a member of the congressional Blue Dog caucus, composed of conservative Democrats. He is regarded as an almost certain candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

In 1956, Wanda Jackson, rock-and-roll’s first serious female practitioner, recorded “Let’s Have a Party,” one of the hottest rockabilly tunes ever committed to vinyl. “I never kissed a bear/I never kissed a goon/But I can shake a chicken in the middle of the room/Let’s have a party/Whoo!”

Now, what do those lyrics mean, you might ask? I haven’t the foggiest. But this is rockabilly, so it’s not about literature, it’s about getting “with it,” and in the mid-1950s nobody was more with it than Jackson. She could whine a good old country tune like a honky-tonk angel (she was discovered by Hank Thompson, after all) or she could turn around and belt out rock-and-roll like she was one of the greasy guys. While touring together, an aspiring young singer named Elvis Presley advised Wanda to drop the hillbilly act (for a little while, anyway) and get real, real gone. The impressionable teenager may have taken Presley’s advice a little too seriously. Recording first for Decca and later for Capitol, Jackson was nothing like the sweet girl singers of the day. She was not just sexy, she was frankly sexual, and her recordings, aided by hot guitar picking by the likes of Buck Owens and Joe Maphis, were music steamed with overt naughtiness.

Her record labels couldn’t quite figure out what to do with their little spitfire, and after a few hits Jackson all but vanished from the American recording scene, though she remained wildly popular throughout Europe and Asia. Her signature song, “Fuijiyama Mama,” became a huge hit in Japan in spite of (or, more likely, because of) the opening lyrics: “I’ve been to Nagasaki/Hiroshima too/The things I did to them, baby/I can do to you.”

Jackson’s most recent recording, Heart Trouble, includes appearances by such Jackson fans as Elvis Costello, Dave Alvin, and the Cramps. It showcases Jackson, the first lady of rockabilly, at her howling and growling best. If you miss Wanda Jackson when she plays the Hi-Tone CafÇ on Friday, April 2nd, you don’t deserve to have your chicken shaken, and that’s all there is to it.– Chris Davis

Athens, Georgia, rock duo Jucifer play heavy, scuzzy rock that often carries a dreamy undercurrent, but if that grunge-meets-shoegazer description sounds oh-so-’90s, it both dates the birth of the band and flies in the face of their increasing popularity, as these longtime road warriors have become college-radio stars. The band plays Memphis pretty frequently and will be back in town Saturday, April 3rd, touring behind their solid new EP, War Birds. They’ll be paired with locals The Lost Sounds, and that’s who I’m most excited by. Newly signed to relatively high-profile indie In the Red, the Lost Sounds could be ready for a boost in name recognition when they release their debut for the label later this year. This prolific outfit just keeps getting better, lacing their noisy assaults with a nuance and passion that few of their more generic garage-rockin’ scene (and now label) cohorts can match. They followed only the Reigning Sound as the best Memphis performance I saw at SXSW last month, and they should be even better back at the friendly confines of Young Avenue Deli. Hopefully, Jucifer can keep up. —Chris Herrington

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Hooray for Jesus

There’s a short bit of streaming video running constantly at Bellevue Baptist Church’s Web site. Grainy animation provides the illusion of motion for otherwise still photographs depicting the life of Christ. Though the clip is silent, the accompanying text has been carefully assembled to remind readers of a booming Hollywood-style voiceover.

“He is despised and rejected by men,” the trailer begins. “He has borne our grief. He was wounded for our transgressions. He poured out his soul unto death. He bore the sin of many, and this spring Jesus returns to send all the bad guys back to hell with heart-stopping, heaven-sent kung-fu action.”

Okay, all that stuff about kung-fu and hell — I just made that up. But you get the idea. The Memphis Passion Play isn’t just some run-of-the-mill pageant that’s being promoted. Do not expect to see a handful of bashful, Kool-Aid-stained children dressed in their parents’ bathrobes with sheets tied to their heads, adorably misremembering their lines and accidentally rewriting the Bible. This is a very serious production produced by a mega-church with deep coffers and virtually limitless resources. It’s no “pageant” whatsoever.

Though it is produced indoors (in the church’s 7,000-seat sanctuary), it is realized on the kind of epic scale usually reserved for outdoor dramas like Unto These Hills or The Legend of Daniel Boone. Lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and the production climaxes with an earthquake even the audience can feel. With a cast and crew of nearly 900, it might very well be Memphis’ largest locally produced theatrical. To provide a little more perspective, Mesa, Arizona’s 66-year-old Mormon-produced Passion play may claim to be the largest in the world. And while the Saints’ spectacle does sport a somewhat larger cast than Bellevue’s modest 300, Mesa’s combined cast and crew is only 500 strong.

On Saturday, a week before opening, the set is nearly complete. The main stage, as large as any in town, if perhaps not as deep, has been turned into a rocky hill in Jerusalem. But the set doesn’t stop there. To the left, there is a monstrously large representation of a Jewish temple. To the right, we see Pilate’s home and a smaller dwelling. The stage is filled to capacity with volunteer actors in sweats. The aisles are lined with additional dancers, the orchestra pit is full, and a robeless choir is seated down front, music in hand. There is a second, smaller stage in the auditorium for the director. He paces back and forth, joyfully barking out directions on his microphone: directions like, “Shepherds, can you sit down?” “Ladies and disciples, get ready for the stick dance.” “Judas, I really like that thing you’re doing.

“This is where we show the might of Rome,” he says, “with legions and animals.” Drums bang out a throbbing Middle Eastern rhythm. Amateur dancers whirl about, and everyone shouts, “Hooray, Jesus is coming!”

Yes, “Hooray, Jesus is coming.” It may not be the most sophisticated dialogue, but when 300 people jump up and down at the same time, the message gets across.

“We try to show the joy of Jesus,” says James Whitmire, the music minister at Bellevue Baptist who has watched the church’s Passion play grow for 22 years. “Jesus was a person,” he says. “People loved him. The Pharisees said he ‘spent too much time with sinners.’ When the crucifixion comes, we want people to say here was a God that came to earth and lived a full life.”

Whitmire recalls Bellevue’s first Passion play inside its old church in Midtown. “It was called Living Pictures,” he says. The choir stood on either side of the stage like a Greek chorus while the Passion of Christ was acted out behind a scrim. It was a simple shadow play with music. It’s now five times larger with a script and music written by members of the congregation.”

At this point, it might be helpful to remember the words of Jesus. He told the world that a widow’s pennies meant more to God than the elaborate sacrifices and loud prayers of the Pharisees. Bellevue is a gigantic organization with a sprawling campus and neighboring athletic field. There are few organizations capable of mounting such a tremendous spectacle, and given Jesus’ feelings about over-the-top displays of faith, it does give one pause.

“We’ve got a lot of members of the church who are carpenters,” Whitmire says. “It’s a core of about 70 volunteers who are carpenters, and they built the set pretty much overnight. We feed them supper at 11 [p.m.] and breakfast in the morning. They do it because of the end result. Because so many lives are changed. We have all of these women who sew and are just so talented. We have people who cook and all these wonderful ladies who provide child-care. And it’s all volunteer. They could never afford to do this on Broadway.”

Whitmire has 900 volunteers giving what they can, and in the end, it would appear, all those pennies add up. So, in the spirit of the Easter season, “Hooray for Jesus.”

The Memphis Passion Play runs April 2nd-7th at Bellevue Baptist Church.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Under the Rainbow

Do the monkeys fly? Yes, they fly. Well, they swing about a bit. It’s pretty tragic, really.

But does the witch fly? Oh my, yes, but only once that I recall and very early in the show. It happens fast and flawlessly and is really quite spectacular. It gives the impression that you are about to see something special. And that impression is not entirely false.

But does the witch melt? Oh God, yes, yes, yes, of course the witch melts. What a stupid, stupid question. You simply cannot do The Wizard of Oz if the witch doesn’t melt. It is a law, most likely. Next?

Okay, smart guy, how does Playhouse on the Square pull off a tornado on stage? Please, ask a hard one next time. They do it with projection, silly. This is the 21st century. We have the technology to project a black-and-white swirl that eventually turns into a colorful swirl while little pieces of Kansas fly offstage on wires. And before you even ask, yes, the Wizard is introduced as a big green head projected on curtains. He’s more frightening on celluloid but not nearly as bizarre. And for your complete edification, everything that happens in the movie also happens in the play. That is the point of this incarnation of Frank Baum’s classic story. Okay, okay, so the Scarecrow doesn’t get set on fire, but that’s the only real deviation from MGM’s solid-gold standard.

But does it work? Well, when it works, it works. And for the kiddies in the crowd (possibly the reigning majority), it seems to work every time. Then again, when the Wicked Witch of the West has to run around stage, manually disconnecting her monkeys from their flying harnesses so they can stop swinging around helplessly and go do her evil bidding, the magic disappears. It suddenly morphs into gimmickry. And while director Shorey Walker has done what she can to make this show her own, gimmickry is really what it’s all about.

This Wizard of Oz tries to be faithful to the film. It also tries to be original. Now let’s be frank: You just can’t have it both ways. The original songs are all here (even Harold Arlen’s “Jitterbug,” a number that was shot but cut from the film). But all those songs you grew up with and know by heart have been — ahem — brought up to date. Hey, doesn’t everybody want to hear “Over the Rainbow” given a hip, new soft-rock treatment yet again? It’s difficult to think of the play’s few deviations from the source material as anything approaching improvement. In fact, this production, when not busy appropriating, fairly revels in fixing things never broken to begin with.

I assume there is no need to retell this tale. Little orphan Dorothy, raised by her uncle and aunt in Kansas, is swept away in a cyclone to the merry old fairyland of Oz, where she meets a good witch and a bad witch and a tin man and a scarecrow and a cowardly lion. I didn’t think so. And that’s part of the problem. If you’re going to almost imitate this classic film more than 60 years after the fact, there is no avoiding a touch of post-modernism. There are countless winks (and snaps and “thank ya, boys”) to the extra, occasionally subcultural meanings this too-familiar film has picked up over the years. Can anyone say “friends of Dorothy”? Fabulous. And while these self-conscious moments fly by (and well over the kiddies’ heads), they are almost annoying. Part of The Wizard of Oz’s charm is its childlike sincerity and too many winks and nudges can spoil the rainbow stew. Homage is a dish best served simply, without garnish. And po-mo or not, it’s hard to see African Americans dressed up like crows putting on a full-fledged minstrel show without your flinching just a little bit.

This past Sunday’s matinee was low on energy. The voices all seemed a little tired and shaky. Then again, anyone who goes to sit in the dark and watch a Sunday matinee on a beautiful spring day deserves everything they get. It’s a proven recipe for disappointment.

Angela Groeschen does a smashing job as Dorothy Gale, calling to mind Judy Garland without ever doing an exact imitation. Most impressively, she never lets Toto upstage her, a feat anyone who has ever worked with an animal should certainly envy. It would have been nice to see just a little more character from the actors who play Dorothy’s famous friends and a little less mugging from the Wizard. But all grumbling aside, if you want to see a nicely done live production of a movie you grew up loving, here it is. Buy your ticket, enjoy the ride. A trip to Playhouse is certainly cheaper than a day at Disney World. And it’s a heckuva lot closer, to boot.

Through April 18th

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Bad Budget

The Founding Fathers entrusted Congress with the “power of the purse,” because the legislative body was viewed as the most accountable to the people. This responsibility demands honesty and candor about the nation’s finances.

Unfortunately, Congress last week passed a dishonest budget. At a time when the nation is challenged on more fronts than ever, the budget recommended by President Bush and approved by Congress fails to address many urgent priorities. It saddles future generations of Americans with mounting debt.

We can do better but only if we are candid about the fact that the policies we’ve been pursuing haven’t worked. The deficit is $521 billion this year — a record high. We’re borrowing more with little to show for it. More than 2 million jobs have been lost in the last three years, and only 21,000 were created last month. College tuition is up; gas prices are at an all-time high; and property, sales, and other local taxes are on the rise.

Hospitals are closing, 44 million people don’t have health insurance, and the Bush administration intentionally withheld the actual cost of the Medicare bill from Congress and the American people. Principals and teachers are working harder to achieve the goals of the No Child Left Behind act, but they don’t have the tools they need. Nearly half of the schools in Tennessee are falling short.

America needs a new set of priorities. The first priority is security. Money for our troops in Iraq was not included in this year’s budget even though many troops lack body armor and other essential equipment. Money for our troops should be provided up front in the budget. In addition, our military is overstretched like never before. To relieve the burden on our military and lessen our reliance on the National Guard and Reserves, we should expand the active-duty military by 40,000. And we should honor our nation’s veterans by giving them the benefits and health care they have earned through service.

At home, we should fully invest in homeland security. The tragic attacks in Spain have underscored the need for better rail security. We should protect our ports, chemical plants, and other potential targets.

Next, we have to invest in our schools. The No Child Left Behind act promised $10 billion more for schools than the president’s budget requested. We need to fully fund education so that schools can hire more teachers, reduce class sizes, and make other investments to help kids learn.

New policies are needed to create jobs and grow the economy. Deficits threaten to crowd out private-sector investment and stifle economic growth. If we’re not careful, deficits will force interest rates and mortgage rates upward. That’s a tax on families and the economy.

It’s not smart to raise taxes on small businesses or middle-class families as the economy recovers. That is why we should lower taxes on businesses creating jobs in America and providing health care for their workers. We should cut taxes for families earning $200,000 a year or less.

Let’s be honest. We can’t afford all the Bush tax cuts. And we can’t close the deficit by reducing spending alone. The hard fact is that even if we cut out all nondefense spending, including education, health care, housing, and law enforcement, the budget would still not be balanced.

We should suspend the tax cuts for the top bracket and reform the estate tax so that small businesses, family farms, and all estates under $20 million are exempted, but we can’t afford to eliminate it entirely.

American people deserve and want us to be honest about the money we have and where it’s going. Unfortunately, the budget passed by Congress last Thursday fails that test.

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, a Memphis Democrat, represents the 9th District of Tennessee.