Month: July 2004

Categories
Music Music Features

sound advice

If there’s a modern sound that defines the South these days, it’s “down South crunk.” In any major Southern city, there’s a few prized rap jewels. But Atlanta seems to be the hotbed of the movement. They’ve got enough jewels (or should we say, bling-bling?) to fill a museum.

A few of Atlanta’s shining stars will be joining popular Memphis acts at CrunkFest 2004 on Friday, July 2nd, at 7 p.m. at the Mid-South Coliseum.

The annual S&S Entertainment show will feature Atlanta’s Ying-Yang Twins, Trillville, Lil’ Scrappy, and Crime Mobb. They’ll be joined by Memphis acts Yo Gotti, Criminal Manne, and Kristyle. And if that’s not enough, Mac Brez, Nu-Nu, and Pastor Troy will be there too.

Atlanta’s Ying-Yang Twins pioneered the crunk movement. In 2000, when they released their first big single, “Whistle While You Twurk,” the crunk sound was in its infancy. These days, the Twins are bigger than ever with appearances in the film Soul Plane and an upcoming Pepsi Smash performance on the WB. Not to mention that their song “Salt Shaker” has become a dance club anthem.

Lil’ Scrappy is relatively new to the crunk scene, but this Atlanta native didn’t waste any time releasing a hit single. “Head Bussa” has gotten heavy airplay on MTV and radio stations throughout the South. Trillville’s “Never Eva” has received just as much attention.

As for Memphis names on the CrunkFest bill, Yo Gotti is a must-see. He and his group of childhood buddies from North Memphis recently signed with the king of all crunk rap labels, Cash Money Millionaires. After the popularity of “Shawty,” Yo Gotti is leading the way in Memphis rap.

Other names on the bill worth sticking around for include local indie rapper Criminal Manne, whose single “Tryna Bust Sumthin” has become a local radio hit. Kristyle, a 15-year-old honor student from Memphis, should make for an interesting show. He was chosen to open for Lil’ Bow-Wow on last year’s Unleashed tour.

Categories
News The Fly-By

A Blocked Union?

When it comes to avoiding downtown traffic, drivers need to time it just right. So does the city.

Jerry Collins, director of public works, said the city will likely make a decision this week about when to begin the six- to nine-month drainage project on Union Avenue and Third Street downtown.

Collins, mayor Willie Herenton, and representatives from Beale Street, the Memphis Grizzlies, the FedExForum, the Redbirds, and Toyota Plaza met June 23rd to discuss timetables and possible ramifications of the project.

“Some time ago, we didn’t have the resources for this project,” Herenton told the group. “As of July 1st, we have the resources, and we have the plans.”

The first phase of construction — a bore pit near Union and Fourth — could begin as early as September. Under this scenario, the city would have to declare the project an emergency to waive normal purchasing procedures. Construction would overlap the first season the Grizzlies and the University of Memphis Tigers are in the FedExForum and would be completed near the beginning of the Redbirds season, Memphis in May, and the NBA playoffs.

Under another option, the city could choose to wait until January 2005 to start the project. Construction would be ongoing during the last half of the basketball season and through part or all of the Redbirds’ season but would be completed before the Grizzlies’ second season in the Forum.

The last option is delaying the project until June 2005 and the driest part of the year. That schedule conflicts with most of the Redbirds’ season and overlaps the start of basketball season.

No plan met with everyone’s approval. Representatives from Parkway Properties, owners of Toyota Center, said they were concerned with safety issues and thought the work should be done as soon as possible. But executives with the Grizzlies were worried about the effect the expedited schedule would have on downtown traffic flow. Grizzlies president of operations Andy Dolich said, “We do have the largest public works project [in the city] opening in August and September and there will be some unanswered questions.”

Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation president Rita Sparks said their main concern was that phase three of the project — a pit at the corner of Union and Third, right in front of AutoZone Park’s gates — not happen in the middle of the Redbirds’ season, a possible scenario if project dates are delayed until next year.

Collins said the city is still getting input from various groups, but a decision is forthcoming. “There are a lot of things going on in the downtown area. We want to make sure we don’t unduly cause difficulties,” said Collins. “It’s not every year we have the grand opening of the FedExForum.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Political Briefs

Dr. Jeff Warren, a family-practice physician and a newcomer to politics, became the first formal filee Monday for the District 5 (Midtown) school board seat being vacated by Lora Jobe. At his filing, Warren was flanked by a diverse group of supporters including state senator Steve Cohen, state representative Beverly Marrero, activist David Upton, Dr. George Flinn, and Jobe herself.

n Financial analyst Dennis Bertrand of Newbern has become a write-in candidate for the 8th District congressional seat with the backing of TeamGOP, a statewide Republican organization anchored in Tipton County. The organization has repudiated formal GOP nominee James L. Hart for avowedly racist views. Incumbent Democrat John Tanner is a heavy favorite.

n U.S. representative Harold Ford’s cup runneth over. The political newsletter Roll Call reported that FedEx plans a party in honor of the highly visible congressman at this month’s Democratic convention in Boston. Entertainer Justin Timberlake is rumored to be aboard.

n Senator Lamar Alexander is the target of criticism from the Rev. James Dobson and other national pro-life activists for being one of the signatories of a letter sent to all members of the Senate calling on President Bush to rescind his restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Medical Tour Guides

When Marva Turner underwent breast cancer treatment at Baptist Hospital, a health-care social worker was by her side. Unfortunately, many patients have to endure this process alone, which can lead to misinformation and fear. Congress has proposed a bill to ensure that patients with chronic disease are no longer left alone to manage the health-care maze.

The Patient Navigator, Outreach, and Chronic Disease Prevention Act is a sort of “buddy system” bill that pairs patients with a health-care professional. The “navigator” would help patients schedule appointments, arrange transportation, and identify financial sources to pay for medical care.

“This year 30,850 people will be diagnosed with cancer and another 12,710 will die in Tennessee,” said Turner. “This legislation can benefit people in Memphis. For people who are isolated and don’t know where to get help, just knowing somebody is there would really be good for them.”

The bill has garnered support from several health-care organizations, including the American Cancer Society, which has lobbied Tennessee congressional members to support the legislation. If approved, the National Cancer Institute and similar health alliances would become responsible for allocating grants to outreach organizations. Patients requesting navigator services through the American Cancer Society would pay fees based on their financial ability to do so, said ACS community advocacy spokesperson Dena Owens. n

The proposal is modeled after successful programs such as the Harlem Navigator Program in New York City. After that program began in 1990, New York’s early diagnosis of breast cancer has improved from one out of 20 to four out of 10. Kansas City, Missouri’s program reduced the number of days from cancer screening to treatment from 176 to 28. Hazard, Kentucky’s program has lowered the one-year cost of hospitalization from more than $1 million to $250,000.

The bill is currently pending before the senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Making Over Memphis

Six Memphians will get their 15 minutes of fame and a whole new look when the crew from Fox Television’s Ambush Makeover comes to town in August.

Casting for the Memphis shoot began this week on the show’s Web site and runs through July 12th. On the show, a crew of stylists takes subjects nominated by their friends or family from salon to boutique, revamping their appearances.

“If you think your mom needs a makeover, go to the Ambush Makeover Web site and do the whole thing there,” said Cathleen Jordan, a casting researcher for the show. “If we think you’ve got a great story, we’ll give you a call back.”

Jordan said they’ll be picking three stories from information submitted to the Web site. They’re especially seeking African-American women, and nominees must be willing to have their hair cut and colored.

“We’ll pick the stories that grab our attention the most, like maybe finding someone in Memphis who’s an Elvis look-alike and his wife wants him made over,” said Jordan.

Three other makeover subjects will be chosen by the show’s style agents when they’re in town. They’ll scout the streets makeover candidates.

The show will use local salons and boutiques. Jordan said the production crew is still selecting which businesses to feature. The Memphis segments will air randomly throughout the show’s next season.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Teaching Baptists

The 55,000 delegates in town last week for the National Baptist Convention got an education — some of it in city schools.

Memphis City Schools officials let delgates use Vance Middle, Booker T. Washington High, Carver High, and Hamilton High for classes last week at no charge.

“Most of the things we have are on weekends, and they require someone actually having to come to the school, open it up and stay there, which requires us to charge them,” said Vince McCaskill, communications manager for the school district. Because the schools have employees working in them and because the conventioneers needed facilities during the week, the school district didn’t need to charge a fee.

McCaskill says anyone who wants to use the school district’s facilities can make a request through the district’s business operations division. “Generally, community organizations want to use our facilities on weekends, and we have to charge a them.”

Unlike last week’s conventioneers, most groups who use school facilities only want a specific area such as the auditorium or the gymnasium.

According to the district’s fee schedule, groups wanting to use an air-conditioned school are charged $200 to $400, depending on the day and the school.

Now that the delegates are gone, the city schools are lending their hospitality to the Johnny Cash biopic, I Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, which will be filming at Humes Middle, gratis.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Running with the Devil

“Coming Home” at the University of Memphis puts religious folk art in its place.

Leslie Luebbers, director of the Art Museum at the University of Memphis, doesn’t particularly care for the expression “self-taught artists,” but for the moment it will have to do. Of the 122 pieces collected for AMUM’s extraordinary exhibit “Coming Home: Self-taught Artists, the Bible and the American South,” most were created by artists with little or no formal training. Still, Luebbers is convinced that terms such as “self-taught,” and “folk art,” are too limiting. At worst, the terms are built-in apologies. At best, they are gimmicks.

“I don’t like the idea of calling any of this outsider art,” Luebbers says of the work in “Coming Home.” “Generally speaking, none of these artists are outsiders, not by any traditional definition of the word. They are people who participate — sometimes participate very actively — in communities of belief. Many are ministers. They may be disadvantaged in terms of education, but that’s not the point. This isn’t art brut. It isn’t the art of the insane or art by the dysfunctional. It’s work by mostly self-taught artists who are connected by a set of spiritual and social practices. We wanted to look at that phenomenon because we didn’t think it had been done before. Or maybe it’s been done before but never well.”

“Coming Home,” in both concept and execution, is a significant departure from and a reaction against typical folk-art exhibits where emphasis is placed not on the work but on quirky artist biographies.

“It’s all been ‘this artist was born and died on the same mattress’ and not about the art,” Luebbers says. “It’s all been blah-blah-blah poor, blah-blah-blah nutty people, blah-blah-blah. What’s all this telling us about the art? Nothing.”

In 1995, Luebbers wrote a scathing review of a folk-art catalog for Number:, a locally produced quarterly focusing on contemporary art in the South. She was appalled because the art was taking a backseat to circumstance. She soon started organizing smarter, art-forward exhibits of the American-primitive. The U of M exhibited the apocalyptic visions of Myrtice West. It produced a show called “Noah’s Ark: Animals By Self-taught Artists.” But those shows were just a warm-up for “Coming Home,” which treats a school of art traditionally perceived as naive as seriously as any major artistic movement.

“Coming Home” is curated by Carol Crown, and on the front end it seems like a step outside the box for this U of M professor who specializes in medieval art. But when you consider the colorful, flatly rendered images of capering devils, trumpeting angels, and exalted saints who populate the paintings and decorate the cathedrals of the medieval period, Crown’s choice seems more obvious.

“There are a lot of serious art historians who would say [to Carol], ‘Why would you want to do [folk art]? There’s no real content there. And the art’s just not very good, besides,'” Luebbers says.

Contrary to the opinions of “serious art historians,” Crown has assembled a provocative show divided into four sections: “Religious Life,” “The Garden of Eden,” “The New Adam,” and “The New Heavens and Earth.”

The first section, “Religious Life,” presents the self-taught artist as both documentarian and critic. We’re taken inside charismatic churches where God’s children kick off their shoes and dance with the Holy Ghost while outside a storm rages. Jim Shore’s Taking Up Serpents is a metal and found-object sculpture depicting a rather surprised fellow pulling rattlesnakes from a box to prove his faith. Herbert Singleton’s The Biggest Baptist Is the Biggest Sinner, a carved and painted wood relief, shows a lascivious preacher offering a well-built parishioner a Bible and a pat on the tush. Throughout “Religious Life,” God is presented as an invisible, inexhaustible source of joy, and Satan has an erect penis. In light of conventional wisdom concerning the prudishness of fundamentalist Christians, some of the work is both shocking and revelatory.

“The Garden of Eden” links American-primitive artwork with modern, academic, and medieval traditions. Flat colorful animals cavort in painted comic-book style narratives that call to mind artists such as Rousseau, Picasso, and on occasion even R. Crumb.

“It’s become rather commonplace to say that Picasso had no trouble ‘connecting with his inner child,”’ Luebbers says in an attempt to provide some context for the work. “He painted from this very primitive place, and although he was trained, he had no trouble picking up dirt and working with it.”

There is a tradition in Christian art to present Christ as the “The New Adam” come to reverse the course of original sin. While there are many fine pieces in this section, they are all subordinate to Jesse Aaron’s Crucifixion. Aaron, the son of a former slave, combed the swamps around Gainesville, Florida, looking for twisted roots and branches for his sculptures. With little adornment to the found wood, Aaron’s huge but bloodless Crucifixion is more horrifying than anything sprung from the mind of Mel Gibson.

In “The New Heavens and Earth,” Bible prophesy is depicted as a taxonomy of mythical beasts and monsters. The Reverend Howard Finster presents comical but sinister visions of the Apocalypse viewed through a lens of current events. He also envisions heaven as a childlike land of puffy, happy clouds, with magnificent castles for everyone.

Hung against a backdrop of corrugated tin, “Coming Home” winks at kitsch but never gives into temptation. It’s a serious look at religion as it has evolved in the rural South by artists who were definitely on the inside. n

Through November 13th

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Beating Around the Bush

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last two months, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the latest inflammatory film by documentarian Michael Moore, who first came to prominence with the 1989 documentary Roger and Me about the closing of General Motors’ automotive plants in his native Flint, Michigan. In 2002, Bowling for Columbine examined not only the proliferation of guns in our country but how the culture itself nurtures violence and encourages guns as a means of defense and as a symbol of strength, self-importance, and pride. Moore is angry again. He’s angry at George W. Bush and his administration. Big time.

Fahrenheit begins with the 2000 presidential election and suggests that the results may not have been the most accurate representation of the will of the people. This is nothing new, right? But Moore goes a step further to scold not just the Bush posse for rigging the election results but also the Democrats for not stepping up to do something about it. A scene from a session of the Senate reveals several black representatives of the House calling for a senatorial investigation. With the support of just one senator, an investigation could have taken place, but as each congressperson desperately and unsuccessfully pleads for support, each is dismissed by the president of the Senate, Al Gore. Weird.

We move quickly to al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but this eerie prologue sets the stage for a presidency that Moore famously referred to as fictitious in his Oscar speech (accepting as Best Documentary Director for Columbine). To what extent does Bush represent the people and to what extent does he represent big money, special interests, and the wills and ideas of those who would manipulate him? What follows is a step-by-step survey of the circumstances leading to the attacks on America on September 11th; ties between the Bush family and the bin Laden family; curious cover-ups in the investigation of Bush’s military records; and ultimately, the questionable decision to go to war with Iraq, when it was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda that crashed the planes. To this day, Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction have not been found and neither has bin Laden.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a remarkable experience. While not as entertaining, in a theatrical sense, as Columbine, Fahrenheit more subtly and calmly submits an argument: Bush is unfit for the presidency, and he has led us foolishly into a war that has compromised our credibility in the world community, brought irreparable harm to innocent people in Iraq, and put our soldiers needlessly into harm’s way.

Does Fahrenheit 9/11 make a good case for these points? You bet it does. Is the argument objective? By no means. As journalism, this is not balanced reporting. This is editorial. As an essay, this is not objectively informative; it is persuasive. Moore is taking some conservative heat for not presenting a balanced depiction of the film’s events. Screw “balanced.” Moore is a storyteller, and like all good storytellers, Moore presents a strong point of view.

The most successful presentation of his thesis comes early in the film when we see the fallout of the World Trade Center attacks. There is an early scene where we see the papers and debris and dust swirling in slow motion as people scurry for cover. The music is haunting and somber; the scene is horrifyingly beautiful. We soon switch our focus to Bush as he sits in a Florida classroom reading to schoolchildren. After being told that the country is under attack, he waits seven minutes before he even gets up. Both towers of the World Trade Center have been crashed into by commercial jets, people are jumping to their deaths, the Pentagon has not yet been hit nor has the plane crashed in Pennsylvania, the streets of Manhattan are chaos WE ARE UNDER ATTACK and suddenly those seven minutes seem like a very long time for the leader of the free world to sit reading My Pet Goat when he knows what is happening, if not to the full extent.

This film is good news for America, whose people have been numbed by soundbites and rhetoric and by the unending stream of violent images that have flooded our airwaves since the attacks of September 11, 2001. There has been enough talk. This movie is action. It’s a gauntlet thrown down to inspire, engage, and provoke discussion, and I hope that everyone will see it and strengthen themselves and their voices in this great national debate.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

BARNSTORMING

YOU’VE GOTTA HAVE FAITH?

New York Times “political columnist” David Brooks began his June 22 column “A Matter of Faith” oddly, but innocently enough.

Brooks: When Bill Clinton was 8, he started taking himself to church. When he was 10, he publicly committed himself to Jesus. As a boy, he begged his Sunday school teacher to take him to see Billy Graham. And as anybody watching his book rollout knows, he still exudes religiosity. He gave Dan Rather a tour of his Little Rock church, and talked about praying in good times and bad.

Wow! Brooks the befuddled is expressing genuine admiration for the Clenis? There has GOT to be a catch.

More than any other leading Democrat, Bill Clinton understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics.

Presuming, of course, Jimmy Carter is too old and irrelevant to be a “leading Democrat.”

[Clinton] knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders’ faith. A recent Pew survey showed that for every American who thinks politicians should talk less about religion, there are two Americans who believe politicians should talk more.

Ah-Hah! There is mischief afoot after all! Let’s watch in awesome wonder as Brooks, an able architect of intellectual dishonesty, builds his mighty cathedral made of straw. Two out of three Americans think our politicians should talk more about God-stuff do they? Well naturally it follows that Democrats Ñand specifically POTUS wannabe John KerryÑ should spend less time discussing the issues of governance and TESTIFY like it was judgment day.

Christ on skates.

Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician’s faith isn’t just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn’t have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God.

Whoa there, Dave ol’ buddy, maybe you need to step away from the grape Kool-Aid. Politics is like showbizÑsureÑthere’s going to be some razzle dazzle to keep the idiots engaged. But where is all this cult-think coming from, dude? Oh Dave, poor Dave, have you been moonlighting over at the Moonie Times?

[Clinton] understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose.

Yale, It’s widely known, has a special clause allowing it to secede from the Ivy League retroactively whenever conservative alums like George W. Bush come into power. History will now report that while Bush was at Yale they were part of the Big 10.

A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That’s a catastrophic number.

Catastrophic Foxxy Loxxy, positively eschatological! We must run and tell the King!

That number should be the first thing Kerry strategists think about when they wake up in the morning and it should be the last thing on their lips when they go to sleep at night.

Unless they want to pray to Jesus (or John Ashcroft, I get confused) for strength and guidance.

They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry’s faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their voteÉ Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last.

Kerry would rather empower the weak than talk about how Christ said we should empower the weak. God have mercy on his wonky, secular soul.

Of course Kerry has been talking quite a bit about faith lately.

“The scriptures say, ‘what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Big John declared. “When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?”

“[John Kerry’s comment] was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack,” said Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.

Ain’t that the pot calling the crack-rock dope? But back to God’s man at the Times.

Can’t the Democratic strategists read the data? Religious involvement is a much, much more powerful predictor of how someone will vote than income, education, gender or any other social and demographic category save race.

And, in case you haven’t heard Christians are the new, new, new NegroEs, forever doing battle with “the man” just to catch an even break. That’s why only a white Christian man who prays to in public can ever be elected President of the United States.

Like the religious right in the Republican Party, the members of the secular left are interested primarily in social issues. What unites them more than anything else is a strong antipathy to pro-lifers and fundamentalists?

According toÉ???

While 75 percent of Americans feel little or no hostility to fundamentalists, people in this group are far more hostile to them than to other traditional Democratic b?te noires, the rich or big business.

Sourced to thirteen 13-year old girls perhaps???

They don’t like to see their politicians meddling with religion in any way.

Because of the Constitution maybe?

Just as Republicans have to appeal to religious conservatives but move beyond them, Democrats have to appeal to the secular left but also build a bridge to religious moderates.

Well, yeahÉ

Bill Clinton did this. John Kerry hasn’t.

Thirteen 13-year-old girls agree.

If you want to know why Kerry is still roughly even with Bush in the polls, even though Bush has had the worst year of any president since Nixon in 1973 or L.B.J. in 1968, this is one big reason.

Except that Kerry’s mostly ahead of an incumbent who is drawing open comparisons to failed Presidents like Nixon who resigned in disgrace, and Johnson who didn’t run for a second term. And Kerry hasn’t even named a running mate.

The moral of this little screed: A heroic punditry red-flags the red herrings. A heroic punditry doesn’t beg for artifice and hollow populist pandering.

The Times must be proud.

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We Recommend We Recommend

thursday, 1

If you have children who might read this paper, please put it away so they won t do so. If you are extremely religious and are offended by profanity, please just turn the page. I really don t want to offend you. I just want to say, what a shit head. What an asshole. What a lying, demented, crooked, piece of dog shit (no, there s nothing really wrong or evil about dog shit, so I take that back out of respect to dogs) we have for a vice president. What an arrogant, irresponsible, miserable waste of human sperm and ovarian eggs. There. Having said those vile things, let me just add that in the words of our great vice president, Dick Cheney, who, in the capital of the United States of America during a photo session last week, told United States Senator Patrick Leahy to, FUCK YOURSELF I feel better. Again, if you have children or are offended by profanity, please throw this page in the trash. And know that I am very sorry to have to quote the vice president of the United States as having told a member of the United States Senate to fuck yourself. I would like to quote the vice president as saying something that is suitable for your children to read, but, well, I really can t. But before I wrote this, I did check with some of my colleagues about it since the vice president, when rigorously defending his use of the phrase fuck yourself on the Senate floor in the capital of the United States, told the press, I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue. So my colleagues said that it would be okay to quote him here and that it was badly needed and long overdue. The sad thing is that even if you are able to keep your children from reading this, they are still subject to all of the mainstream press, which is likely to be reporting on this for some time if that, they suddenly grow any gonads overnight and don t take their payola to brush it under the carpet. One would think that, out of concern for the children of this country and around the world, the vice president of the United States would have apologized for this instead of being proud of it, but then, he is who he is. And if you plan to vote for George W. Bush in the fall with Cheney as his running mate for vice president, just remember that he has told each of you, and each of your children, that it is just fine and dandy and long overdue to say the word fuck in public, in the capital of the United States of America. If you hear your kids repeating that word, having heard the vice president of the United States say it, I feel bad for you when you try to explain to them that it s really not such a great thing to do. Here s a question for the fans of the vice president out there, of which there are many of and which many of whom are devoutly religious people: Just what do you think about this and how do you explain your continued support for a man who has told you, your families, your friends, your colleagues, and your small, innocent children that it is fine to tell on the Senate Chamber floor to fuck yourself, and then feel good about it? Memphis ministers? Thoughts? People all about family values? Thoughts? Those of you who love your dear George W. Bush, who would not criticize Mr. Cheney for this? Thoughts? Where are your usual letters to the editors? Too busy thinking of a way to justify this? Can t quite come to a conclusion on why this is okay? Still wondering if this is part of the plan that God Himself, as Mr. Bush would have you believe (and which you probably do), bestowed upon your precious president and his VP to unite the country and bring a sense of decency back to the White House? Not quite sure how this use of profanity and taking such delight in fits in? I would love to hear from you. It would make me feel better. In the meantime, I guess I can use all of the profanity in this column that I care to, since the vice president of the United States says it s okay, but I really don t feel the need to do so. I ll just get to the real point of all this: what s going on around this week. Tonight s Sunset Atop the Madison Series party on the rooftop of the Madison Hotel features cocktails, a great view of the river and sunset, and live music by Ms. Ruby Wilson & Co. Don Henley is in concert at the Horseshoe Casino down in Tunica. And Lynn Cardona & Friends are playing jazz at Republic Coffee.