Month: July 2004

Categories
News The Fly-By

SHOOK-UP WORLD

Could it be? Is it remotely possible that every time two men exchange vows a chemical reaction occurs causing heterosexual wedding rings to explode? Nearly 5,500 people attended a Rally for Traditional Marriage in Tupelo last week to hear speakers hold forth on the manifold evils of same-sex marriage. Mississippi congressman Roger Wicker, who must have been using The Bible Code or some other arcane means of determining the social fallout of events yet to come, claimed that redefining marriage laws would cheapen the institution, leading to lower marriage rates among heterosexuals and more single-parent families.

The Rev. William Owens of Memphis, who serves as the president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, kicked the criticism up a notch, claiming that proponents of same-sex unions have pirated the civil rights movement. Owens announced, I was born black and I m going to die black. I didn t choose to be black. They [gays] are choosing to do what they are doing. Even if you buy into the dubious theory that the civil rights movement is specifically about color, there s always this guy to counter Owens theory.

He s been white for a while now, and that hasn t affected the African-American birthrate one little bit, now has it?

Plante: How It Looks

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Editorial

“Let our errant sisters go.” That was the advice of the celebrated New York editor Horace Greeley at the time of the Southern states’ secession from the Union in 1861. The newly elected president of the United States, one Abraham Lincoln, was not of that persuasion, however, and a conflict between regions ensued that remains unrivaled in the amount of American blood spilled.

Obviously, nothing this drastic is involved in the current set-to involving the secession of Germantown from the existing city/county system — the Memphis/Shelby County Public Library & Information Center — even if Collierville follows suit, as seems all too likely. But the crisis is still quite real. Germantown Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy, speaking on behalf of herself and her city’s Board of Aldermen, has vowed to “step up” and fill the gap left as a result of substantially reduced library funding from the Shelby County Commission, which was determined to hold the tax line this year. During its recent budget hearings, the commission made it clear that community libraries would have to make do with less money or compensate for reduced county funding through their own devices. Nobody should have been surprised that the issue of local control would enter so directly into the equation.

Just as Lincoln declined to turn over Fort Sumter to the state of South Carolina, so have the powers that be on the City Council and in the library system so far refused to continue systemwide privileges for the seceding Germantown library. Bizarre as it seems, Germantown cardholders have already been refused the right to check out books in the larger city/county system. Though Goldsworthy professed optimism on that score this week, it was even doubtful whether books borrowed from the former Germantown branch will be returned there if they are left at “drops” elsewhere in the system.

In the long run, Germantown, which has hired the private firm of Library Systems and Services, LLC to run its system, will undoubtedly be able to make a go of things. So will Collierville. But it will cost them. At some point, Bartlett (which drew back from secession this time and determined to stay in the system, though at the cost of a likely tax increase) may follow suit, as might other suburban communities. Will they take the next logical step and depart the existing county school system, financing their own schools through municipal taxes? Something like that would seem inevitable, given that county schools, too, were denied additional funding this year and forced to make severe cuts in their operating and capital-improvement budgets.

Shelby County’s newly “independent” outlying communities could soon find themselves realigned in a governmental confederation that resembles nothing so much as the dreaded consolidation that suburbanites have sworn holy oaths to resist. The fact is that, where general services are concerned, none of the suburbs, not even wealthy Germantown, can do without some sort of city/county umbrella. Memphis mayor Willie Herenton and Shelby County mayor A C Wharton have both proposed models for “functional” consolidation of schools. The current breakaway movement in the library system may end up, ironically enough, providing the impetus to a far more general consolidation — and much more quickly than anyone would have dreamed.

Categories
Music Music Features

A Million Points of Light

Waylon Payne strolls into the hotel bar right on time, and he is a sight to behold — worn-out blue jeans, a torn denim shirt that spotlights a few of his many tattoos, and freshly close-cropped peroxided hair. His voice, a unique blend of Tennessee grit and Texas twang, pours out as languorously as it does in his songs. Wrapping one hand around a Budweiser longneck, Payne settles into a chair and lights a cigarette, ready to discuss the latest chapter in his life.

“This movie came out of the blue,” he says as an opener, referring to his role as Jerry Lee Lewis in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, which has brought him to Memphis. “My agent called me and told me they were looking for singers, so I went in and read for Waylon Jennings. When I went for a callback, I decided I wanted to play Jerry Lee Lewis.”

Payne leans back in his chair and turns on a piercing gaze that threatens to suck all of the air out of the room. Then he blows out his match and shrugs: “It just kinda happened. Doesn’t everybody want to make it to Hollywood?”

The moment is over as suddenly as it began, and Payne continues his story. “Me and Jerry Lee both have a lot of torment going on in our lives,” he says, laughing. “We both came from religious backgrounds, and we’re both the sons of singers and outlaws. My mama is a pop princess, and my daddy runs with Willie Nelson, so hey!”

He’s glossing over the facts. His mother, the country star Sammi Smith, hit it big in the early 1970s with “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” while his father, Jody Payne, has played guitar in Nelson’s band for more than three decades. He’s also the godson — and namesake — of the late Waylon Jennings.

“But I didn’t grow up in a musical home per se,” Payne adds, explaining that although he was born in Nashville, he was raised by an aunt and uncle in south Texas. “Mama was on the road all the time, and I didn’t meet Daddy until I was 15, because he smoked pot. Music was discouraged, except for singing in church. We were Southern Baptists. I even went to Oklahoma Baptist University for about a minute!

“I was living in Texas, singing at a theme park,” Payne remembers, “when Johnny Russell called me from backstage at the Grand Ole Opry and said, ‘You need to come on back to Tennessee.’ Well, baby, I went! As soon as I got to Nashville, I hit the bars. I thought I was gonna be the next big thing, but years went by. I worked from midnight ’til 8 a.m. as a short-order cook. For a while at least, I was perfectly happy living my beatnik life and playing my guitar in the mornings.”

“I didn’t have a clue,” Payne admits. “I didn’t even realize there was a difference between being just a singer or being a songwriter who could sing.” He credits two unlikely sources — country singer Shelby Lynne and rocker/author Henry Rollins — for the breakthrough.

“Rollins’ book Now Watch Him Die was an inspiration. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone spill out exactly what they were thinking,” Payne says. “And I didn’t think I had anything to say until I met Shelby. Once we became friends, she taught me how to let myself open up. Both she and Rollins showed me how to spill my guts.”

Payne’s debut album, The Drifter, embodies the lessons he’s learned. From the acoustic ballad “Her,” which opens the record, on through the soulful country of “On & On” and the honest desperation of “The Bottom,” Payne delivers his simple truths in an ethereal twang that somehow combines the lyricism of Lucinda Williams with the vocal range of Jeff Buckley.

Payne leans forward. “I am such a romantic,” he confides. “Every song I’ve written has something to do with romance on some level — either the misery caused from it, the elation, the joy, or the suicidal tendencies. I fight with my baby all the time. What’s the point of that? We tear each other down just to get to know each other better so we can love each other more. It’s so sad,” he says, sighing dramatically.

“Every time I open my mouth, I try to make what comes out mine. I don’t bullshit. I sing about the things I’ve been through, and I tell things like they happened. There aren’t any secrets with me. If you want to know anything about me, just listen to my songs.

“I want to say new things. I want to put new spins on old things. I want to write about everything I feel,” he says, blowing the words out with a blast of smoke. “This is my time. If you get the opportunity to clutch that brass ring dangling right in front of you, why not grab the motherfucker? I want to grab it. I want to spin big-time. And I want to explode into a million, billion points of light.”

Waylon Payne is appearing at B.B. King’s Blues Club on Thursday, July 22nd.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Three Way

Pain is Good

“The play is written, I hope, with all the fervor and self-consciousness of true melodrama,” says playwright Doug Wright of Quills. “Events in the play are not cruel; they are diabolical. Characters are not good or bad; they are either kissed by God, or yoked in Satan’s merciless employ.” He asks that his play be performed in a nearly archaic, stylized fashion, with all actors striving for the grotesque. He hopes that these ridiculous conventions taken in conjunction with all the stage blood and fake body parts will lend Quills, a fictional play about the Marquis de Sade, an air of the absurd. Wright, whose wordy script drips with rare and bloody meat, ripe for the chewing, is begging his players to indulge in a gluttonous feast of overacting. But Playhouse on the Square’s production of Quills, staged at TheatreWorks as a part of the POTS at the Works series, embraces a jumble of archaic styles ranging from kitchen sink realism to rococo. It is, by turns, frustrating, fascinating, awful, and astounding.

When Brian Mott takes stage as Dr. Royer-Collard, chief physician at Charenton Asylum, and a man perfectly willing to engage in fraud to protect his reputation as a Christian, he is a black-booted vision of discipline and deceit. Royer-Collard, whose riding crop functions as a natural extention of his arm, has no use for the liberal techniques employed by the would-be reformer Abbe de Coulmier. He runs an asylum not a resort, and if God’s work is to be done properly, torture must abound.

In life, de Sade was a rapist and an admitted criminal of the first order. His behavior made him a troublesome figure for admirers and apologists alike. Suppressed because they challenged the belief that wickedness and wisdom can never co-mingle, de Sade’s pornographic novels predict the rise of Freud and the awful inevitability of social Darwinism. When Dickens writes about the sweatshops of London, de Sade is there. The now infamous tapes of Enron executives laughing about how they are going to screw the poorest energy consumers in California echo with a Sadian contempt for all things weak and prove the dirty old man’s continued demonic relevance. Though it strays far from historical facts, Quills gets de Sade very nearly right. He’s the orally obsessed, fecal-minded child who, raised by a sexually abusive priest, watched as his fellow aristocrats were butchered during the French Revolution. He’s a man who has seen the worst in mankind and sees no need to sugar-coat even the ugliest truth.

In his swan-song performance the Michigan-bound Kyle Barnette underplays the oversexed de Sade. Even when dressed as Jesus and sporting a strap-on device with three silly-looking rubber penises attached, he manages to be strangely understated. It’s almost disappointing during de Sade’s more manic episodes. But when Barnette turns to the Abbe, and quietly announces, “He who sits in the sun is often blinded by it and devoured by the forces of darkness,” we are reminded that understatement is this actor’s particular gift.

Courtney Oliver and John Maness play the sweet-hearted (if dirty-minded) laundress and the accidentally evil (if honorably inclined) Abbe who stand between Royer-Collard and de Sade. Before the play is over the two will be joined in a union which can only be described as “post mortem.” Maness is particularly effective as a man who, faced with de Sade’s obstinate perversity, grows to love the kinds of torture he claims to revile. Oliver is, as the playwright proscribes, “touched by God” as de Sade’s virginal accomplice, sliced to pieces and defiled in every way by a lunatic overly aroused by one of de Sade’s literary obscenities.

Quills is an imperfect pleasure. The acting styles range from the supremely subtle to the positively out of control, and difficult, tongue-twisting lines sometimes come out twisted and difficult to understand. It’s a show that, even at its best, can be painful to watch. But a little pain is good sometimes.

Quills is at TheatreWorks through August 1st.

Have it Your Way

Over the years director Bennett Wood has proven himself to be a master of the musical revue. He’s assembled wonderful, witty tributes to such artists as Harold Arlen, Learner and Lowe, and Stephen Sondhiem, but Broadway by Request at Theatre Memphis isn’t Wood’s best work. Not by a longshot. The theater’s patrons selected the 40-plus songs collected in Broadway by Request, so Wood had very little control over the show’s dynamics. If the audience wants to hear one mid-tempo song after another, there’s only so much a director can do to juice things up.

The cast of Broadway by Request has clearly been selected because of their outstanding vocal skills, not their prowess as actors. Songs such as “Get Me to the Church on Time” from My Fair Lady were intended to be acted not sung. Beautifully articulated, pitch-perfect renditions sort of defeat the whole purpose. There are, of course, some exceptional performances. Georgette Turner’s “Bali Hai” from South Pacific and Jude Knight’s “Memories” from Cats prove that there’s still some life in these old clichés.

Broadway by Request is, in many ways, a victim of its own ambition. It should have been a single, tightly focused act with half the number of songs and a clear through-line. It’s hard enough to reconcile “Oklahoma” with “Brigadoon.” Simple and satisfying numbers from Broadway’s golden years don’t mix with the pop schmaltz of Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

If two hours of show tunes beautifully sung by people in tuxedoes with virtually no acting, dancing, or scenery to support them sounds like your idea of a good time, then Broadway by Request is the show for you. Just try not to recoil in horror as the closing number morphs into a subscription pitch.

To end on a more positive note, the orchestra sounds great. Sadly, that’s not been the standard at Theater Memphis for many years now. Perhaps it’s a sign that, under its new management, things are finally starting to look up.

Broadway by Request is at Theatre Memphis through July 25th.

Germantown Gone Wild

Is hell freezing over? I ask this question because Bash, Neil LaBute’s trilogy of terror, will open at Germantown Community Theatre this weekend as part of an event called The Wild Days of Summer. Bash, which the Homeless Llama Theatre Company will present, is without a doubt the edgiest material to ever appear on stage at the traditionally conservative community theater.

“I had all of these companies asking if we had any openings in our season,” says Cori Stevenson, the theater’s executive producer. “They wanted to know if we had a weekend, or even just a day [open]. It was pretty clear that there was a need for performance space.”

Stevenson’s decision to create The Wild Days of Summer, wasn’t entirely selfless. “It’s a great opportunity for us to look at new directors, new designers, and too look at original scripts,” she says.

In addition to Bash, Pucky Productions will stage The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)”, and local playwright Ruby O’Gray will present her musical The Real, New, New Adventures of Cindy D. Rella about a girl who lives on the outskirts of Memphis and works in a bad-weave beauty parlor with her stepmother and three wicked stepsisters. n

Germantown’s Wild Days last through August 8th.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

postscript

More Local Participation

To the Editor:

After reading Jackson Baker’s article about Mayor Herenton’s role in the MLGW bond deal (Politics, July 8th issue), I thought, What’s the big deal? And in John Branston’s City Beat column in the same issue, he wrote about “a Little Rock firm that made a $25,000 contribution.” That implies that the entire amount came from the law firm. It did not. The law firm hosted the fund-raiser, and that amount was raised.

I’ve worked in the securities industry for 10 years, and my small firm doesn’t have the capability to handle transactions such as the MGLW bond deal, but I have no problem with Mayor Herenton suggesting that more local and minority firms participate. Elected officials and local governments should look at local firms, large and small, to provide the products and services they procure. That would provide opportunities for small businesses like mine to one day participate in large deals such as the one involving MLGW.

Martavius D. Jones

Memphis

History Lesson

To the Editor:

In response to the slipshod history lesson contained in Gary Shelly’s letter (July 15 issue), the historical “precedents” offered fail as examples of preemptive war and show an ignorance of historical fact.

In December 1941, Germany declared war on the United States and, in January 1942, launched U-boat attacks against American ships in the Atlantic. The U.S. did not actually engage German forces until later that year.

U.S. troops entered Korea after a second UN resolution, passed in June 1950, called for all member nations to give military aid to South Korea.

The first shipment of U.S. military aid and advisors to the South Vietnamese government occurred under Eisenhower in 1955. President Kennedy increased the number of U.S. advisors in South Vietnam, but documents from 1963 suggest he was planning to withdraw most U.S. personnel from Vietnam by December 1965.

The U.S. bombed Bosnian Serb forces in 1994 and 1995, under the umbrella of NATO, in response to violations of the no-fly zone and attacks on NATO and UN peacekeepers.

Americans display a shabby disregard for facts. The public swallows what it hears or reads without thinking, without checking the underlying accuracy or truth. How can we have an informed citizenry capable of governing itself unless we understand what is being said and that it is factually correct?

Randy Duncan

Memphis

Ralph’s Strange

Bedfellows

To the Editor:

Joe Conason’s finger-pointing piece about Ralph Nader (“Nader Returns, With GOP Help,” July 15th issue) was predictable, coming from a shill for the Democrats. He starts with the familiar whine about Al Gore’s victimization by Nader in the 2000 election. Democrat flacks have apparently learned from the neocons that the more you repeat a lie (e.g., the Saddam/Osama connection) the more believable it becomes. Never mind that 8 million Democrats, 250,000 in Florida alone, fled the Gore candidacy (10 times Nader’s total vote count), that he lost his own state, or that Republican dirty tricks disenfranchised thousands of arguably Democrat voters in Florida. In the parallel universe Democrat whiners like Conason live in, it’s always easier to point fingers than to take responsibility.

As for attacking Nader for accepting support from Republicans, who are the Democrats to criticize that? If Kerry had gotten his way, a Republican would have been his running mate, not to mention his opportunistic pandering to Republicans by moving to the right on so many issues, and his acceptance of large contributions from traditionally Republican special interests. As for Michael Moore, a bitter critic of the Democrats in 2000, he was co-opted when his Hollywood patrons showed him the money. Hey, Joe, politics makes strange bedfellows, all accross the political spectrum, so get over it.

Marty Aussenberg

Memphis

A Gay Flip-flop?

To the Editor:

President Bush keeps saying that “people,” not the courts, need to decide the issue of gay marriage. Funny, he had no problem with the courts, not the people, deciding the last presidential election.

William Stosine

Iowa City, Iowa

Categories
Art Art Feature

Go With the Flow

Creative Journey,” the current exhibition at Thames Art and Interiors, provides a rare opportunity to track an artist’s progress. Andrea Prince’s series of acrylic ink works on paper evolves from an ornate and graphic style into subtle and intriguing abstract images.

Prince warms up the show by bejeweling a butterfly’s wing in Spiraling Series. She continues to build energy with her signature ellipses in Expansion, Chrysalis, and the exuberant Emerging. She then charges the remaining 16 paintings with complex, contrapuntal tensions.

Through the Looking Glass loops and weaves together stones, bricks, flowers, electrical grids, microscopic life, sky, and layers of memory. This labyrinth of lenses, portals, and transparencies offers the viewer Prince’s fleeting impressions and a look deep into her wider vision.

Up, Down, Round and Round maps a unique geological history of the world: layers of sea beds, salt floes, and rich deposits of ore that are topped off by a ribbon of viscous purple. Here, perhaps, is the flow of lava. Or is it blood? The map’s midsection depicts the surface of the earth as irregular sloping plots of land that bring to mind small communities whose members settled at the bends of rivers, planted hillside gardens, and honored seasonal cycles. Some of the plots are new spring-green. Others are brown from tilled earth or a too-hot summer. Other plots turn rusty orange from the approaching winter. This color is repeated at the map’s top left. Here the earth is stripped down to its ores, and all other nuances of color and life disappear. Top right a series of rectangular grids complete the map as industry transforms the world into planned communities, malls, and parking lots.

Cancan demonstrates Prince’s ability to layer her compositions without muddying colors or chocking flow. In this work, the sky is filled with transparent half-circles edged with blue wings. It’s a dynamic, resonant work, bringing to mind flying or the flip of a dancer’s skirt.

Evocative shapes fill Spaces in Between as well. Tall, lean rectangles look like skyscrapers in a night sky. Other rectangles reach up and morph into circles on the face of a floating icon that could be an egg or a space pod. With energetic form, Prince puts us in a place somewhere between science fiction and the probable future.

Untitled (Tree) tells a story about exploration and discovery. Within a circular format, the deep furrows of a tree flow like rivulets through pale gray atmosphere. At the center of the composition, the tree disappears into an opaque and velvety void created by thick application of blue-black acrylic inks. Lush pink and red flowers at the top of the tree’s canopy become descending, looping, concentric ovals. Prince describes this synthesis of two universal archetypes — ying-yang and the tree of life — as “endless cycles and labyrinths reflecting life’s paths, choices, and search for understanding of self.”

Down Deep, one of the most successful paintings in the show, stands as a visual metaphor for the creative process. Prince’s palette becomes calmer and more Zen as she takes us deep into mind and matter. New moons float in a light taupe sky; lines in gray-brown earth suggest burrowing moles and earthworms. Down deeper you’ll find lotuses at various stages of unfolding. Deeper still are geometric circuitries — the hard wiring of mind and matter. At bottom, the form of a monk in robes bows his shaved head in deep meditation. Here is the place where nothing is coveted but awareness and where prolonged concentration leads to an intimate knowledge of how the mind works. In such a place as this, Prince’s creative ideas flow freely. n

“Creative Journey” at Thames Art and Interiors through July 24th

Categories
Music Music Features

First-Rate Romance<

From Entertainment Weekly to Newsweek, the national media has been rife lately with “return of alt-rock” articles, gleefully lauding a newish batch of left-of-center rock bands actually, you know, selling records. There’s always a little wishfulness in these types of pieces. (“Yeah, maybe we won’t have to pretend to like Matchbox Twenty and P.O.D. anymore!,” you can almost hear the editors and writers exclaiming.) But this time especially, there’s plenty of truth here, as a quick glance at the Billboard charts or a spin across the radio dial attest.

Though it’s truly heartening to see Modest Mouse holding a Top 25 slot on the album charts more than three months after the release of Good News For People Who Love Bad News and to hear the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” getting play on modern-rock radio (one recent local spin of the song transitioned from Karen O’s lovestruck pleas to a mook-mouthed jock making jokes about his latest strip-club visit, so there’s still more than a little Fred Durst in the format), these articles seem a little constricted, a little too indie-rock-tasteful in their selections.

One record that’s missing is Laced With Romance by the Ponys, which might just be the best guitar-band debut of the past year. Yeah Yeah Yeahs aside, the Ponys are a little bit grimier and a little bit more forceful than the more musically polite bands (Postal Service, Shins, Death Cab for Cutie) getting return-of-rock ink. You haven’t seen them on The O.C. or heard them on MTV2, and maybe never will, but this Chicago quartet is certainly one of the most compelling new rock bands around.

Laced With Romance is a bracing listen from the get-go. The lead track, “Let’s Kill Ourselves,” contains the kind of depressive lyrics the title suggests but juxtaposed with rousing sounds –a chiming-and-chugging dual-guitar attack, dance-worthy beats, yelping vocals that blend an entire generation of punk-era New York frontmen (Tom Verlaine/Richard Hell/David Byrne/Joey Ramone) –it becomes less suicide than exorcism, an excuse to pogo one’s blues away.

Indeed, what’s so refreshing and endearing about the band has as much to do with attitude and personality as it does with sonics. Laced With Romance was recorded for vaunted Los Angeles indie In the Red, a label best known for straight-up garage-rock bands such as Detroit’s Dirtbombs and Memphis’ own Reigning Sound. But, along with Memphis friends the Lost Sounds, with whom they’ll share the stage this weekend at Young Avenue Deli, the Ponys are expanding the sound of the label. (The Lost Sounds make their In the Red debut next week with the EP Future Touch, to be followed by a full-length in the fall.) The two bands have been connected for far longer than they’ve been associated with In the Red, according to Ponys’ singer/guitarist Jered, interviewed from a cell phone in New Hampshire en route to a show in Boston.

“I met [Lost Sounds members Jay Lindsey and Alicja Trout] in what was probably one of the first times they played out of town, in my hometown of Bloomington, Illinois. My band at the time opened for them. Then they hooked us up in Memphis, and we’ve been friends ever since. That was probably five or six years ago.”

The Ponys recorded their first single with Lindsey and Trout and released it on Trout’s Contaminated Records label. Since then, the bands have played together frequently, including In the Red’s showcase at this year’s South By Southwest music festival, where both bands stood out amid the more straightforward garage-rock bands on the bill.

The Ponys resist the garage-rock label in part because of a musicality that transcends Nuggets-style riffing (though “Trouble, Trouble” is a quintessential garage rave-up). Instead, they blend artfully entrancing guitar sounds with soul undercurrents and Phil Spector references. (“Fall Inn” borrows the intro to “And Then He Kissed Me.”) But what makes the Ponys perhaps the underground “garage” band most likely to appeal to fans who don’t read scene ‘zines like Horizontal Action is an open-hearted, welcoming personality. This is illustrated by the seemingly irony-free and completely earned album title. But you can hear it in the self-deprecating wail of “Ten Fingers and 11 Toes” (where “I’m tall and skinny and some people think I look pretty weird” sets up “I know what I’d say to all those people walkin’ by/Probably nothing at all, cause I’m kinda shy”) and in “Little Friends,” a sweet love song to house pets.

Apparently, this crossover potential is starting to pay off. The Ponys may not be trendy picks quite yet, but glowing press for Laced With Romance from the likes of Rolling Stone and The Village Voice has certainly raised the band’s profile.

“It’s really just now starting to pick up,” Jered says. “We just toured the West Coast and now the East Coast and it’s been going really well, so we’re pretty happy about that. It’s definitely a lot more fun to play when the room is pretty full as opposed to our first few shows, when there would be about five people. Of course, there are still towns where there are about five people there, so you can’t win them all.”

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News News Feature

My First (and Last) Time With Bill O’Reilly<

It started innocuously enough. On June 21st, a producer from Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor called to ask me to appear as a guest that evening to comment on a front-page story in The New York Times claiming that the Bush administration had overstated the value of intelligence gained at Guantanamo and the dangers posed by the men detained there. I’m generally not a fan of shout-television and I had declined several prior invitations to appear on O’Reilly’s show, but this time I said yes. Little did I know it would not only be my first time, but also my last.

I sat in the Washington studio as the taping of the show began in New York with a rant from Bill O’Reilly. He claimed that The Factor had established the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and then played a clip from Thomas Kean, head of the Senate’s 9/11 Commission, in which Kean said, “There is no evidence that we can find whatsoever that Iraq or Saddam Hussein participated in any way in attacks on the United States, in other words, on 9/11. What we do say, however, is there were contacts between Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Iraq, Saddam … excuse me, al-Qaeda.”

I was impressed. O’Reilly, who calls his show the “No Spin Zone,” was actually playing a balanced soundbite, one that accurately reported the commission’s findings, both that there was no evidence linking Saddam and 9/11 and that there was some evidence of contacts (if no “collaborative relationship”) between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Maybe all those nasty things Al Franken had said about O’Reilly weren’t true after all.

But suddenly O’Reilly interrupted, plainly angry, and said, “We can’t use that! We need to redo the whole thing.” Three minutes of silence later, the show began again, with O’Reilly re-recording the introduction verbatim. Except this time, when he got to the part about Kean, he played no tape, and simply paraphrased Kean as confirming that “definitely there was a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.” The part about no link to 9/11 was left on the cutting-room floor.

Now it was my turn. O’Reilly introduced the segment by complaining that we are at war and need to be united, but that newspapers like The New York Times are running biased stories, dividing the country and aiding the enemy. “The spin must stop. All our lives depend on it,” O’Reilly gravely intoned. He then characterized the Times story that day as claiming that the Guantanamo detainees were “innocent people” and “harmless.” He said the paper’s article “questions holding the detainees at Guantanamo.”

I noted that the Times had said nothing of the sort. And I pointed out that the article relied on a CIA study finding that the detainees seemed to be low-level and had provided little valuable intelligence.

That didn’t convince O’Reilly, however, who again criticized the Times for misleading its readers by terming the detainees innocent and not dangerous. I replied that he was misleading his own viewers by exaggerating what the Times had said. “No, I’m not,” he retorted. So far, the usual fare on news-talk television.

But then I decided to go one step further: “It seems to me like the pot calling the kettle black, Bill, because I just sat here five minutes ago as you re-recorded the introduction to this show to take out a statement from the head of the 9/11 commission stating that there was no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.”

Apparently O’Reilly does not like being called “the pot.” He exploded, repeatedly called me an “S.O.B.” and assured me that he would cut my accusation from the interview when the show aired. He also said I would “never ever” be on his show again. At this point, I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a threat or a promise.

Sure enough, when The O’Reilly Factor aired later that night, both Kean’s statement about 9/11 and my charge about O’Reilly deleting it were missing. All that was left was Bill O’Reilly, fuming at the liberal media’s lack of objectivity and balance and ruing the divisive effect “spin” has on our national unity.

David Cole is The Nation’s legal affairs correspondent and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Left Jab

For years the Rush Limbaughs and G. Gordon Liddys and other knights of the political right had it pretty much their own way as media propagandists of the airwaves. Their radio counterparts on the left ranged from the sonorous (former New York Governor Mario Cuomo) to the stumbling (former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower) to the obscure (North Dakotan Ed Schulz), and audience numbers were nowhere close to those garnered by the conservatives.

Air America, the liberal radio network launched earlier this year, got off to a somewhat shaky, under-financed, and underexposed start, but, with on-air personalities like Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, the network has already risen to second place in the New York talk-show market behind Limbaugh and company.

But it is in the realm of the feature-length film infomercial that liberals may actually succeed in playing catch-up, perhaps even taking the lead in the theater of ideas. The commercial success of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which excoriated President Bush’s conduct of foreign policy and national security matters, was matched by generally positive critical reviews.

Now comes a new film entry, producer/director Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a full-scale effort at debunking the Fox News Channel, a Murdoch-operated behemoth that beats both CNN and MSNBC in the ratings.

Like Moore’s video polemic, Greenwald’s opus is an exercise in artful selection. Images and sound bites from Fox telecasts (some clearly pirated by the filmmaker) are revealingly juxtaposed to indicate how the network slants unmistakably toward the right of the political spectrum. It’s a bias demonstrated in FNC’s on-air talking heads, in its logos and working scripts, even in its favored catch phrases — like the ubiquitous “Some people say …” when introducing sentiments damning to Democrats or supportive of Republicans.

So far, so good. Better than good when ex-Fox news personnel testify to the partisan pressures they were under — or when a long snatch is shown of a pre-interview conversation during the 2000 presidential campaign between President Bush and FNC chief political reporter Carl Cameron. The two chat amiably and almost conspiratorially about the fact that Cameron’s wife is even then toiling for Bush on the campaign trail!

Not so good, though, when the much-vaunted memos of FNC news director John Moody are quoted from in an effort to demonstrate how pervasive is the content control from on high. In fact, the memos when seen collectively and in toto (as they can be on any number of Web sites; just go Googling) are surprisingly “fair and balanced,” calling for frequent live feeds of John Kerry’s campaign speeches, for example — though on issues ranging from Iraq to abortion they do insist that the outlooks generally favored by conservatives be spoken for.

And the long clip of Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s interview with one Jeremy Glick, son of a World Trade Center survivor, is almost disastrously counterproductive. Even someone with an allergy to bullyboy O’Reilly (definitely count me in that number) is tempted toward sympathy for him as Glick becomes a guest from Hell, obstreperously pushing forward an anti-Bush agenda rather than directly responding to the host’s initially somewhat deferential questions. I confess: I wanted to shout “Shut up!” myself.

But these are cavils. All’s fair (and balanced) in love, war, and — it would seem — politics, and Outfoxed, so far mainly available on DVD (I saw it at a weekend showing at First Congregational Church), is a worthy response to Fox, Limbaugh, and the rest of those right-wing heavyweights. At least we know the left has some fight left in it. n

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Dinner Theater<

Shelby County Democrats managed a hearty turnout at last Saturday’s annual Kennedy Dinner at the Central Avenue Holiday Inn. Principal speaker was former Georgia senator Max Cleland, who roused the crowd of some 300 with lines like this one, comparing Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry‘s service in Vietnam with President Bush‘s conduct of the war in Iraq: “John Kerry knows how to save lives in war; George Bush knows how to lose them.”

Other speakers included actor David Keith, considered a likely candidate for statewide office at some point; state representative Kathryn Bowers, the local party chairman; state chairman Randy Button; and U.S. representative Harold Ford Jr. (toasted by various other speakers as a future president of the United States). Present were Tennessee Lt. Governor John Wilder and several state constitutional officers.

Recipient of the first William “Bill” Farris Award for meritorious political service was state senator Steve Cohen. Longtime activist John Freeman received the annual Chairman’s Award for service to the party.

· It is the Republicans’ time to muster ranks this week. On Saturday night, the East Shelby County Republican Club will hold its annual Master Meal at Appling Manor in Cordova. Featured will be impressionist Paul Shanklin, whose recorded takeoffs on politicians (mainly Democrats) have been a staple of Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated radio talk show. Tickets, at $40 a head, cover dinner, reception, and a silent auction.

· Syndicated columnist Robert Novak reports disquiet among Senate Republicans concerning the leadership of Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. A grain of salt: Novak was one of the diehard defenders of former GOP leader Trent Lott, whom Frist helped shove aside after Lott’s careless remarks in late 2002 seeming to praise the segregationist past of former (and now deceased) Senator Strom Thurmond.

· Shelby County Commissioner Joe Ford is regarded as a likely candidate to succeed his nephew in the 9th District seat if Representative Ford makes a U.S. Senate run in 2006. Other names that have received some play are those of Calvin Anderson, a state election commissioner and lobbyist for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and state representative Lois DeBerry of Memphis, longtime speaker pro tem in the state House of Representatives.

· Though it could end up having only token importance, a write-in challenge to District 92 state representative Henri Brooks is emerging in the person of former state representative D. Jack Smith.

Smith, who served in the legislature as a Democrat in the 1960s, is hoping to get enough votes from Republicans on August 5th (five percent of the total primary vote) to become the official GOP opponent in November for Democrat Brooks. He is being assisted by former legislator and county commissioner Ed Williams, who owns the largely honorific title of county historian. ·

Next week: a preview of the August 5th election ballot. Also next week on the Flyer Web site (MemphisFlyer.com), a running blog from the Democratic convention in Boston.

JACKSON BAKER

What Ford Really Said

U.S. representative Harold Ford Jr. has objected to this sentence from last week’s report on his June 10th appearance before the Germantown Democratic Club as inaccurate: “Moreover, Bush had ‘done nothing’ since to ensure that the country would be able to withstand another crisis like that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

Upon reviewing the tape I made of those remarks, I must concur. Here, in a portion of his remarks reviewing the current state of the nation’s security under President Bush, is what he actually said (including one of the longest and most complicated sentences this side of Henry James):

“It was this president who in many ways moved forward and, we’ve learned now, acted on faulty intelligence that has done, I dare say and should say, in all honesty and credibility I can muster, has done nothing to ensure that the next time we are faced with these kinds of threats that we are faced with today, in North Korea and Iran, we’re faced with today as we try to prevent countries in Africa from becoming havens and training grounds for al-Qaeda and all its subsidiaries, we’re faced with today as we try to convince our friends around the world, even those who don’t like us and didn’t like us before, to join us in an effort to fight back those who would disrupt and cause violence and pose violence in our country.”

Got it? That was followed by this simple and straightforward line: “As strong and powerful as we are, we are despised around the world.”

Ford, who has recanted his October 2002 vote for a War Powers resolution authorizing military action in Iraq, said Saturday night at the Democrats’ Kennedy Dinner in Memphis that “I was one who was snookered.” — J.B.