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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Tough Titty,” the newspaper column that does everything it can to capture the energy of talk radio and the excitement of cable news. Today we have Kelly Jacobs, a full-time mother and a full-time activist for the Democratic Party. She lives in north Mississippi, but she’s become a fixture on Memphis roadsides where she’s been known to loiter, waving around a sign that says “Fire Bush.”

Now folks, you see the out-of-focus picture of Ms. Jacobs on this page. You see that she wears a fringed leather jacket like it was 1968 — and this is in the summertime. So she’s the kind of person who wears a leather jacket in the summertime.

Anyway, you see that her jacket and the dress underneath have anti-Bush buttons on them. And I’m talking dozens. But to really understand how thoroughly freakish this is you you would have to hear the awful clanking racket she makes when she walks into the room.

Flyer: Ms. Jacobs, welcome to “Tough Titty.” Let’s get right to the interview. How does something like THIS happen to a person?

Kelly Jacobs: How did I become an activist? Well, I’d always heard if you were going to be a good parent you had to join the PTA and you had to go to school-board meetings

So you decided to fire Bush at a school-board meeting, okay

I was the only parent sitting at this meeting when a new school-board member stood up and said, “I haven’t read them, but I understand if young boys read books from the Goosebumps series, they become violent, and if young girls read Babysitter Club books, they become pregnant, so I want the books taken off our shelves.” And everybody agreed and that was the end of it.

So you think little girls getting pregnant from a smutty book is a good thing?

They didn’t let the public make any comments. That’s just outrageous. I got parents whose kids were hooked on this series to join me.

Hooked? Interesting choice of words.

I got them to join me so we could investigate this allegation

Shut up! Shut up or I’ll turn off the tape recorder! None of this has anything to do with wanting to fire George W. Bush. Now Ms. Jacobs, we know you’re a partisan Democrat. You were a DNC delegate from Mississippi. You’ve been a civil rights activist and won Mississippi’s Fannie Lou Hamer Award.

At my son’s school, they had elections to vote for class favorites

I wasn’t finished.

Look at the ballot. They wanted the kids to vote for one black child and one white child. Black and white. Is that all there is?

Okay, okay, we get the idea.

Here’s the thing. In 2000, I thought Al Gore would win. So I didn’t do anything. I never donated money. I just went and voted. So when Gore lost, I felt like I’d failed him.

Gore lost. Get over it! Besides, you’re not a public official. You’re not EVEN a celebrity. You’re just some Mississippi windbag who thinks she has the right to tell people what to think.

The right is in the Constitution. And it’s the right of other people to either listen to me or not listen to me. You don’t have to be a celebrity to have an opinion.

But celebrities don’t do the most effective campaigning, anyway. Average citizens who just walk up to your door and say “Would you please vote?” do the best campaign work. Volunteering is all about finding out what you like to do. Maybe you share important documents on the Internet. Maybe you register voters or maybe you stand beside the road getting flipped off and called a whore, and a crackwhore, and a [censored], and a terrorist, and a communist, but never, NEVER called a Democrat!

And all this anger doesn’t tell you you’re not wanted? You’ve even had run-ins with the police.

I’ve had confrontations with the police a lot. Not African-American officers, only white officers.

The race card. Coulda seen that coming.

Lamar and Winchester is a great place to work because of the truck drivers. They get into it and honk. Anyway, this officer (who I’d had run-ins with before) pulls up with his partner. He gets out of the car and gets toe-to-toe with me. Puts his face in my face and says, “I thought I told you to leave. You are nothing but a prostitute, and you’re going to get murdered, and you’ve got no business being where you are doing what you’re doing.” I said, “Unless you tell me I’m breaking the law, I’m not leaving.”

What about guns? I’ve heard there were guns?

One time someone, probably a Republican, saw me, called the police, and told them I was waving a gun and obstructing traffic. That was all a lie. Five police cars came with their sirens on. But that was ridiculous. I didn’t have a gun.

So you constantly ignore the police and your fellow citizens.

The police know me now. If somebody calls to complain they say, “Oh, that’s just the ‘Fire Bush’ lady.” Sometimes they’ll come out because they got a call. They’ll say, “We just wanted to make sure it was you,” or “We thought it was you. We just want to know where you are.”

Yeah, I’ll bet they want to know where you are. And, there you have it, folks. Crazy Kelly Jacobs. We need more liberal loonies like her to scare conservative Democrats into the Republican Party. Keep up the good work, Kelly. This has been “Tough Titty.” •

One of my strangest all-time experiences was becoming a fan of a weblog — the now-defunct, or at least moribund, halfbakered.blogspot.com, operated by one Mike Hollihan and named in my, er, honor. Actually, the blog’s stated purpose was to counter me in my role, as Hollihan saw it, as “liberal shill.” Alternately, “Democratic shill.” Never mind that I also get e-mail accusing me of being a “GOPer” and that conservative Republican firebrand Jeff Ward of Tipton County is kind enough to brag about me in his TeamGOP e-mail bulletins as the “best” and “fairest” political reporter in the state. High praise and much appreciated. The fact is, I try to be phenomenological; i.e., I try to see the world as my subjects see it and to render their vision pure. Anyone looking straight down the road is going to see that, for better or for worse, I leave a lot of margin on either side.

The difference between Ward and Hollihan, by the way, is that Jeff is actually in the arena and knows how things work. Politics, with all its deals and leaks and trade-offs and quirks and feuds and cozy relationships, is a machinery that requires some hands-on experience in order to understand. You can’t grasp it from your living-room chair, not even with the best how-to manual in your lap.

Or to put that another way, employing a metaphor that I had ready to go when Hollihan not long ago boasted on his site of a wholly imaginary “takedown” he claimed to have done of my coverage, in 2001, of the income-tax fight in Nashville. It reminded me, I was about to say, of those sad old men in rooms at the Y, pants down around their ankles, one hand clutching a copy of the latest Playboy, the other assuring them they had just made love to Britney Spears.

In truth, though, I don’t see Mike that way at all. He is (was?) a damned fine media critic, by and large, and I didn’t turn my polemical guns on him for several reasons — not least of which was that he did some compelling work in analyzing several local situations and personalities and the coverage of them. The problem was that, as soon as Hollihan stopped trying to figure everything out in his head and made an effort to do some real reporting, he discovered that a variant of Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle governs all true journalism. As the 20th-century German scientist found in looking at sub-atomic matter — or any variable, for that matter — the very act of observing something changes it. Among the implications of that, for political journalists, is that no preconception — count ’em, none — holds up when you’re looking squarely and fairly at your subject.

Hollihan, for example, had City Council member Carol Chumney pegged as a grandstander and ego-tripper — a case easy enough to make, even for those who watch her closely — but he made the mistake of actually getting in touch with her and discovered that he’d been charmed. Thereafter, his certainties seemed to fade. Join the club, Mike. Something of the sort happens all the time.

It’s that kind of experience — actual contact with the amorphousness of reality — that, I believe, caused Hollihan to throw up his hands recently and scrap his blog. In a final cri de coeur, he said, among other things, “I don’t know much more than the average Joe or Jane here in Memphis. Yet I am more than happy to tell paid, experienced, credentialed people how to do their jobs. Who the hell am I to think that?”

That’s a sobering insight, Mike, but it shouldn’t stop you in your tracks. Real-deal journalists go through the same manner of angst several times a week. In its way, it’s no worse than having to make some kind of sense against the pressure of never-ending deadlines. Work through the pain and the confusion. Come on back to work.

But, lookit, the next time I cite Woodrow Wilson on “open covenants, openly arrived at” (as I did during the course of an encomium on Governor Phil Bredesen’s public budget process), I’m not thereby confessing membership in some sinister secret society of the Illuminati, as you supposed in one of your elongated, dead-serious postings. I’m just cribbing a quote to fill a hole in my copy.

Lighten up. The world is not the dogmatic, Manichean place you imagine (though we for damn sure have international enemies now, and even some domestic sorts, who want to see it that way).. By all means, go back to blogging. And, if you have to take shots at me, so be it. You and your ilk are pioneers on a new frontier, and what you do is necessarily going to be as imperfect as what us other muckers do.

“The blog is closed. No need to keep checking in. Y’all take care,” you say, in your last posting. But I’ve got you bookmarked on my computer, and I’m going to keep it that way until I’m sure you’re not coming back. •

The thinking went something like this: We’ve already got two mayors. Why not three? And just like that, Jim Keras became the mayor of Covington Pike.

The mayor’s domain, as the name suggests, is Covington Pike, that northeast Memphis street bulging with car dealerships. He grew up in Nashville and moved to Memphis in 1972. He owns five car dealerships: Buick, Nissan, Subaru, Chevrolet, and Pontiac. He’s been married to his wife, Penny, for 33 years, has three children, and is, happily, a first-time grandfather. He explains his background in cars this way: “The only way I got into this business is that I married the boss’ daughter. That’s the truth. I was a 2.0 student at the University of Tennessee.”

A cartoon character (and doll) — a round-headed, top-hatted, bow-tied little guy with absolutely no lower body, save his feet — serves as the logo for the mayor of Covington Pike. It’s inaccurate. For one thing, the toon’s dark hair does not match Keras’ own curly gray locks. And, chiefly, the mayor of Covington Pike does have a torso and legs.

The mayor recently sat down to discuss his time in office. With him was his son, Ben, general manager of the Buick/Subaru operation, who, for these purposes, we called the deputy mayor.

Flyer: How many years have you been mayor of Covington Pike?

Mayor of Covington Pike: I was appointed in the early ’90s.

How did you become mayor?

As you know, Covington Pike is a cluster of automobile dealerships. We were trying to come up with a character or a theme that would set us apart from the other dealerships. So, John Malmo, and I want to give credit to him, was doing our advertising, and he came up with this idea — that the mayor could make a lot of proclamations and do a lot of events. He came up with a drawing of what the mayor should look like — a little man with a top hat and a bow tie and glasses. We made big balloons [of the character] and put them on top of our building, used him in all our advertising, and it caught on.

You’re wearing a bow tie.

That’s for you.

Do you always wear a bow tie or are you following the character?

I follow the character, some, some.

One time we had a customer who called me, came to me to complain about one of my fellow dealers. I said, “I don’t sell that make and model,” and he said, “Well, you’re the mayor. You need to go straighten that out.” He was serious.

And did you?

I think I called them. I may have. I certainly directed the customer to the right channels.

Who are your constituents?

All my customers and managers.

Deputy Mayor Ben: The greater Mid-South. All individuals with a driver’s license.

What’s your platform?

[The mayor has prepared a written statement on this topic.]

· In my years as mayor of Covington Pike, we have had no tax increases.

· As mayor of Covington Pike, I have had nothing but good relations with the City Council.

· As mayor of Covington Pike, there have been no controversies about my appointees. All of my directors have performed without controversy or legal problems.

· My time in office has been so popular that I have been unopposed in each of my reelection campaigns.

· At no burden to taxpayers, I am building a brand-new “Covington Pike City Hall” as we speak.

· At no cost to Covington Pike taxpayers, my advertising has greatly increased Covington Pike tourism.

· Also at no cost to taxpayers, I have extended Covington Pike services to Summer Avenue, Mt. Moriah, and Somerville.

What’s the best thing about being the mayor?

It’s a lot of fun. It’s just light-hearted. It’s a positive thing. The awareness factor is tremendous. Because of our advertising, people recognize the name. In fact, Mayor Herenton calls me the mayor when I see him.

Have you ever thought of branching out? Maybe be the mayor of the I-40 loop?

Well, I’ve thought about maybe just being the mayor. [Laughs] No.

We have a dealership out on Highway 64. We have a small presence on Summer Avenue and a small presence on Mt. Moriah, so we are absolutely encompassing all. That might be in our future plans. We need a good campaign strategist. I haven’t been able to find one yet. I’m working on that. I do plan to expand my mayorship all over the city.

Oprah recently gave away 276 cars. Don’t you think you should do her one-better by giving away 300 cars?

Deputy Mayor Ben: Actually, Oprah didn’t give them away. General Motors gave them away. It was a ploy. We welcome General Motors to offer Jim Keras Automotives the same ploy on our campaign behalf.

Mayor of Covington Pike: I plan to contact General Motors to make sure I’m not being slighted.

Anything else you want to add?

That I’ve got all the power. No one would try to unseat me when I’m doing such a great job. Just ask my councilmen up and down the street. •

by

One of the crummier ideas going around is that politics and government are bad things. Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s, recently illustrated how this idea has been pushed, with much success, by conservative groups, publications, and wordsmiths that are often funded by wealthy individuals and foundations. In Memphis, the government-is-bad disciples are talk-radio hosts, serial authors of grumpy letters to The Commercial Appeal, and even some politicians and wannabes.

Politics can be ugly and distressing, but politics is a good idea. How else would you govern a diverse city like Memphis? And government wastes some money but probably no more than most corporations. But government does some good things too, in one man’s view, such as:

· The best voice of local liberalism is Shelby County commissioner Walter Bailey, who happens to be our longest-serving public official. Picks his spots and gets to the point. Consistent and articulate, takes on the big dogs and doesn’t mince words.

· The best voice of local conservatism is Shelby County commissioner David Lillard. I find myself agreeing with him even when I don’t agree with him. A close second, with a completely different personality and speaking style, is city councilman E.C. Jones.

· The best idea on the near horizon is term limits. They should apply, though, to mayors and appointed boards as well as members of the school boards, Shelby County Commission, and Memphis City Council. Eight years sounds about right. Some talented people would be missed, but it is a mistake in politics, as in the news business, to think that you can’t be replaced. Sorry, Walter, that means you too.

· The best advice to local politicians on the commission and council that doesn’t require legislation or a referendum is make your point and shut up.

· The best change of personnel on a public board was at MLGW, where Willie Herenton waited far too long to get a grip on things. Term limits won’t have real meaning until they apply to appointed boards as well as elected offices. The Agricenter, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Center City Commission ought to be next on the list for fresh horses.

· The best addition to Memphis, owing to the work of the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development, is the demolition of the Coach and Four Hotel and Restaurant on Lamar. How did this dump survive so long with immediate neighbors such as the University Club, Snowden mansion, and Central Gardens?

· The best future addition to Memphis would be more demolitions, including Baptist Hospital, most of the Mid-South Fairgrounds, Crump Stadium, the Sears building in Midtown, and the Sterick Building downtown.

· The best ongoing road project is the widening of Interstate 240 from Union to Chelsea and the removal of the never-used Midtown interchange ramps. Better 30 years late than never.

· The best urban pedestrian project, maybe anywhere in the South, is the downtown Bluffwalk, Mississippi River Greenbelt, and Tom Lee Park. They probably overspent, but so what? This really is the front yard of Memphis. Stunning.

· The best suburban pedestrian project is the network of parks and walking trails in Collierville, which shows what a community can do when it emphasizes participant rather than spectator sports.

· The best new public park policy is Mud Island’s free admission for bike riders, with elevator transportation to the walkway above the monorail.

· The best new idea in an old part of Memphis is the Home Depot going up in Midtown at Poplar and Avalon. Midtowners are understandably proud of local merchants and wary of big-box stores, but this is a recognition of how people live in the modern world and the waste involved in driving 30-40 minutes every time you need some lumber and plywood.

· The best community redevelopment project is the Midtown Corridor, where the expressway was halted 30 years ago. There isn’t another one like it in America. A lot of unsung government employees, builders, and homebuyers made it work.

· The best idea in public housing in many a year is replacing density with elbow room and duplexes and fourplexes like you see in College Park across from LeMoyne-Owen College, Uptown north of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Lauderdale Courts, where Elvis used to live.

· The best voice of news about local government is Mike Matthews of WREG-TV Channel 3, the Barry White of local news, with a dose of Raymond Chandler.

· The best boost to education and community spirit in Memphis is The Commercial Appeal‘s consistently strong and thorough coverage of prep sports.

· The best water is Memphis water. As good as the stuff that costs $1 a bottle. Yes, it was there anyway, but somebody had to pump it to your sink.

· The best thing about Willie Herenton is that he is always on the record. He says things on the record that other politicians, past and present, believe but only say or said off the record.

· The best thing about A C Wharton is he raises hopes.

· The best new policy is school uniforms. Neat, simple, affordable, and compatible with freedom and individual liberty.

· The best outdoor concert in Memphis is the series at the Memphis Botanic Garden. Concert as baseball game. You watch a little, eat a lot, talk a little, get up and walk around, leave when you’re bored. And you can bring your own food and drink.

· The best candidate in city government for a kick in the butt and a major infusion of fresh faces and fresh ideas is the Memphis Park Commission. •

“This movie doesn’t really have an ending. The ending of this movie takes place on November 2, 2004.”

— Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore in an interview in the July/August issue of Film Comment

Who are swing voters anyway? How is it even possible to still be undecided about the most bitterly contested and most momentous presidential election in most, if not all, of our lifetimes? This is why I don’t worry that the battalion of entertainers and artists — writers, filmmakers, musicians, comedians, etc. –assaulting this disastrous presidency is merely preaching to the choir. It seems far less important at this point to change minds than to mobilize a base whose collective mind has been made since the moment Bush took office. (Sadly prescient Onion headline from Inauguration Day 2001: “BUSH: ‘OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY IS OVER.'”)

Despite perpetual laments about voter apathy, this unprecedented insertion of popular art into a political election suggests an electorate more tuned in than ever before. As this is being written, half of the top 30 hardcover nonfiction books on The New York Times bestseller list, including the top four, are political titles.

Musically, the Billboard charts may be mostly politics-free, but from hip-hop (Beastie Boys, Russell Simmons’ Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ “Vote or Die” campaign) to indie-rock (Rilo Kiley’s Bush-baiting “It’s a Hit”) to punk (Fat Wreck Chords’ Rock Against Bush compilations) to mainstream rock (the Vote for Change tour, which participant Bruce Springsteen calls “an emergency intervention”) to roots music (the ubiquitous Steve Earle and political records of the year from Todd Snider and Jon Langford), American pop music is perhaps as protest-oriented as it’s been since the Nixon administration.

As for film, 2004 has witnessed political documentaries getting wider distribution than ever before. Michael Moore’s record-busting Fahrenheit 9/11 is clearly the colossus standing over this shifting film climate, but it isn’t alone. On local screens, Fahrenheit was preceded by Errol Morris’ brilliant The Fog of War, a profile of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that has enormous relevance to our current foreign misadventures. And it’s been followed by Control Room, which profiles Arab news network Al-Jazeera as it covers the invasion of Iraq, and The Hunting of the President, which (rather clumsily) documents the right-wing fire-breathers who conspired to bring down the Clinton presidency. Meanwhile, independent-minded folks at the Memphis Digital Arts Co-operative have hosted several screenings of recent political docs, including the Fox News exposé Outfoxed.

There’s more on the way between now and Election Day: The much-heralded documentary The Corporation and the Vietnam-rehashing Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry are both expected to receive local bookings. Fictional films set to weigh in will include John Sayles’ Silver City, with actor Chris Cooper as a Bushlike pol, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s gonzo satire Team America: World Police.

I tend to think that Jon Langford’s big-hearted, wide-eyed but gently sarcastic record All the Fame of Lofty Deeds is the political artwork of the year, but I’d be surprised if it’s sold more than 20,000 copies, which won’t move many bodies to the ballot box. Instead, this year belongs to Fahrenheit 9/11. After it opened, some around the Flyer offices predicted it’d be gone in a couple of weeks, but according to Jeff Kaufman, vice president of film for Malco Theatres, it’s the only film that stayed on local screens the entire summer, enjoying a longer local run than Harry Potter or Spider-Man 2, for example. And even as its run ends, the documentary might reappear as part of a planned re-release by its distributor.

“The country is not stupid/Even though it’s silent/It still has eyes and ears/It just can’t find its mouth,” Langford sings hopefully on his underdog of a record. And Moore’s film is nothing if not an attempt to answer him — a way to give a voice to the outrage and disbelief of a segment of the citizenry that feels the country slipping away.

The $100-million-plus grossing Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a movie about something; it’s a movie trying to do something. That something is to defeat a sitting president intent on driving the ship of state right over a cliff. (Unless, of course, the Rapture comes first.)

It’s difficult to come up with commensurate examples of truly popular entertainers directly taking on a sitting political leader. The best I can do is the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Like those two works of art, Fahrenheit 9/11 is often crude, using any and all recourses to attack its subject — pies in the face, upturned middle fingers, outright mockery, whatever it takes. Yes, it’s as much a howl of anger as a reasoned argument.

This lowbrow nose-thumbing rubbed some gatekeepers on the left the wrong way, as did some of the film’s relatively minor fact-bending and perhaps misleading low blows, which some employees of this paper have criticized in print. The same kind of hand-wringing and honorable self-criticism has been virtually absent on the right side of the political divide this year. (Oh, and memo to John McCain: Moore isn’t suggesting that life under Saddam Hussein was an idyllic paradise, only that the country was largely populated by innocent civilians trying to lead normal lives, not TV-news caricatures of angry Arabs, and that these people died in the bombing as easily as Saddam’s henchmen.)

Frankly, I was more put off by the few distracting tangents (the lone state trooper guarding the Oregon coast — somehow I doubt that al-Qaeda is preparing to storm the beaches, Normandy-style) than Moore not letting viewers know that Al Gore had spoken to the same crowd of high-rollers Bush jokes is his base or even the unfortunate suggestion that just-passing-by Tennessee congressman John Tanner was a hypocrite on the war.

Sometimes facts can be sketchy without negating essential truths: The Bush administration does pander to its wealthy supporters in ways even more extreme than politics-as-usual. The people who decided to allow this war are not the people sending their kids to fight it. These truths and so many others need to be shouted as loud as possible from the highest mountain. By any means necessary. And that’s precisely what Moore has accomplished.

Besides, what Fahrenheit 9/11 gets right is so much more important than what it might get wrong. Moore is not a technically brilliant filmmaker or a precise thinker. (See The Fog of War for topical political filmmaking with both traits.) The work is like the man — big and messy and garrulous. But with Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore’s juxtaposition of found footage is filmmaking at a level that dwarves his previous work. By following a callow, smirking Bush telling NBC’s Tim Russert that he doesn’t intend to testify before the 9/11 commission with a tough but tearful confession by a 9/11 widow that the investigation is all she has left to live for, Moore comes up with the most damning political ad of the year. And by undercutting Donald Rumsfeld’s bluster about the military’s precise targeting with footage of a hysterical Iraqi woman in front of her demolished home, praying for vengeance from Allah, Moore suggests the self-delusion and awful pointlessness of the war in Iraq.

But even those bravura moments are only set-ups for what is most compelling about the film: its portrait of an American military misused by civilian leaders, where the least among us sacrifice the most and do so proudly. For their sake, and your and mine, let’s hope Moore’s movie has a happy ending. •

From the Right

By Davis Christopher

Best advice to the GOP: Don’t lose the white vote.

It’s been widely noted by a distinguished roster of clear-eyed bipartisans that Democrats have one principle weakness: a piss-poor excuse for a party so economically, ideologically, metaphysically, sexually, and ethnically diverse they can never present a unified front. Like a leaky liberal lifeboat adrift on swelling conservative seas, the storm-tossed Dems are nothing more than a loose confederation of disagreeable misfits who hate freedom, fetuses, and the natural state of motherhood. Common interests in faggotry, flag-burning, and mocking God’s faithful are all that holds them together.

But Republicans shouldn’t believe for one second that their treasonous adversaries will do the morally right thing by rolling over and expiring. Oh no. Though morally bankrupt and spiritually beyond the brink of salvation, they are deceptively book-smart, wily, and capable of striking at the very heart of this magnificent Party so Grand and Old. That’s right, patriots: the donkey-boys want to put whitey back in their corral.

Democratic hatemeister Howard Dean once said that his party — the official party of black folks and baby-killers — needed to reach out to poor, rural rednecks with Confederate flags on their truck bumpers and license plates that say “Forget, Hell.” Dean’s shocking comment invited ridicule from all sides and damaged the poor man’s reputation so badly that most Republican trend-watchers quickly forgot Dean’s tragic misfire was originally aimed at their own modestly fortified bow. Bad move, trend-watchers!

John Kerry wants to blame Commander in Chief Bush and not the Iraqi terrorists for America’s first net job loss in 11 presidencies. He wants to blame President Bush, not the terrorists, for eliminating overtime pay for six million American workers. John Kerry wants this country to believe that problems with health-care and the grave financial burden born by the middle class is somehow President Bush’s fault and not the inevitable result of that horrible moment frozen in the memory of time and the universe when suicide-bombers, drunk on Allah and blind with hate, attacked the United States, and 3,000 innocent Americans perished on 9/11. It’s as if John Kerry refuses to admit that evildoers even exist. And whenever a Democratic presidential candidate talks about the middle class without mentioning evildoers in the same breath, you can be certain he’s not really talking about the middle class at all. He’s using a not-so-secret liberal code meaning “white Christian males.” Look it up, folks. It’s all happened before. And when white males go Democrat, Democrats go to the White House. It’s as simple as that.

Since they were first given the right to vote without fear of violent repercussion, it’s been inarguable: Without the blacks, Democrats are whack. But conservatives must now face an even colder, harder, darker reality. So what if Republicans win over some homos, cripples, pygmies, firemen, gooks, squaws, Samoans, simpletons, and even Harold Ford Jr.? Isn’t it all for nothing if they lose straight white male voters in the process?

Like the Good Book says, “You win the world, but lose your soul? Where’s the payoff?” Be vigilant.

From the Left

By Christopher Davis

Best advice to the Dems: Surrender. Hail, Caesar!

The two Johns, Kerry and Edwards, are entirely correct when they talk about two Americas. One America subscribes to The New Yorker or maybe to The New Republic. The other America subscribes to T.V. Guide or maybe buys T.V. Guide at the newsstand, depending on who’s on the cover. One America scours the Web searching for as many reliable news sources as it can find. The other America thinks “Howard Huge” is the best thing about Parade magazine and the second-best thing about Sunday morning. One America is bipartisan, more or less informed, and relatively small. The other America does as it’s told or does nothing at all. Message to Democrats: Your posse is insubstantial.

It’s impossible for John Kerry to win the presidency, because he looks like Herman Munster. Even liberal journalists who watch too much E! find the hilarious visual comparison totally irresistible. Message to Democrats: Do you boneheads really want the face of America to look like Herman Munster?

So Senator Kerry proves his patriotism by flaunting his battle scars and brandishing all those shiny medals he earned in Vietnam like he was so fine, and all that, and shit? Not! His show-offishness only underscores how badly the Democratic candidate failed to use his Ivy League intelligence to keep his rich white ass out of harm’s way, thus proving once and for all that John Kerry is dangerously out of step with mainstream America’s viciously self-serving values. Message to Democrats: Your bling bling has blung blung.

So, yes, Virginia, there really are two Americas. One watches Frontline, the other can’t resist reruns of What’s Happenin’ Now. There’s an America that listens to Rush, and there’s an America that shakes its head and wonders, “What happened to the news?” “Why’d we pull resources out of Afghanistan and invade Iraq?” And most importantly, “Why in bloody hell did the Democrats go off and nominate that uptight guy who is pretty good on domestic issues but who also looks like Herman Munster?” Message to Democrats: America loves a winner.

The conventional wisdom has spoken to the general punditry much in the same way Jesus sometimes speaks to our president. It spoke to me personally, saying, “Chris, my man, John Kerry’s screwed like a Dade County hooker at an all-night beer-and-roofie party.” As a liberal columnist — one of the last of a dying species — it’s my duty and privilege to repeat what the conventional wisdom tells me as if my gentle master possessed both soul and body. If John Kerry doesn’t listen to the hypnotized masses before they transmogrify into an angry mob armed with newly legalized Uzis and Kalishnakovs, he’s going to get faced like a punk and become another lonely, bitter, girly, utterly irrelevant sore-loserman. And that’s if he’s lucky. The crown sticks where it fits. Somebody drop the curtain. I can’t bear to watch another thing. •

Every year, when the Best of Memphis issue hits the city’s bars and restaurants and the winners start to plan what they’ll wear to the big awards party, inevitably, the tears begin to fall.

All around the city, those not voted Best of Memphis laundromat or pet groomer or whatnot open their papers and see … someone else’s name. Perhaps their competitor’s. Worse, perhaps, someone they’ve never heard of.

Oh, it smarts. It really smarts.

But it’s no good dwelling on this year’s results. Instead, it’s time to plan for next year’s contest. So how do you sew up a Best of Memphis distinction?

We talked to Layne Provine, political consultant to candidates, including Joyce Avery, a county commissioner, and Brent Taylor, a City Council member.

Follow these easy steps and by this time next year, you’ll be dressing up for that awards party.

First, make a name for yourself.

“If they’ve never heard of you, they’re not going to vote for you,” says Provine. When Avery ran against incumbent Clair VanderSchaaf, there was some evidence that people wanted change.

“In Joyce’s race,” says Provine, “the challenge was to make sure people knew she was the alternative to VanderSchaaf. They had to know there was a challenger. People will vote for the devil they know over the devil they don’t.”

So you want to be the devil they know. Unfortunately, there are tons of devils, um, Memphians who have plenty of name recognition already. How can you compete?

Design a logo and come up with a catchy slogan and put it on everything from yard signs to T-shirts. Political candidates usually try to run TV spots at least three to four weeks before the election. Get your friends to spread the word to their friends.

Experienced politicos also know the value of face time, door-to-doors, and kissing babies. You just need to figure out why you are the Best of.

“Candidates craft a message to what people want to hear,” says Provine. “If they don’t, [the people] aren’t going to listen.”

You could also hire someone to help. One regular mistake Provine sees candidates make is trying to do it all themselves.

“If your car breaks, most people don’t try to fix it themselves,” he says. “If you’re going to spend $50,000 or $100,000 on a race, hire someone to help you. Just because you’re a good candidate doesn’t mean you’re a good strategist.”

Provine advises a little investigating, the same way companies do market research. That way, you’ll know your audience.

As a candidate for Best of, you need to hit your target audience. Some are easy calls. Your Aunt Maude in Michigan? No. Your friends who can’t even return a phone call? No. They’ll never finish a ballot, much less send it in.

Provine uses voter files to plan a candidate’s strategy. If someone’s not registered to vote, they’re not going to receive information on a candidate. If Provine suspects voter turnout will be low — like last August’s local election — he’ll look at voter histories and target those people who are most likely to go to the polls.

The Flyer doesn’t keep information like that (so don’t call us for it, okay?), but you should ask around and see who fills out their ballot every year. Those are the people you want to bombard with kindness and cookies.

The week before the ballots are due, you’ll want to follow up with your supporters. You wanna equate liars and politicians? Well, Provine says the voters are just as bad:

“Everybody tells the candidate that they’re going to vote for him. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re really hurting the candidate.”

You can’t believe everybody who says, “Sure, man, I’ll vote for you.” Provine says that even people who really are intending to vote for someone sometimes won’t because they won’t bother voting at all.

When a candidate is going door-to-door, they keep track of the people who have promised them the vote. Then they try to make sure those voters get to the polls.

“It’s very important that they know where and when to vote and how they can vote,” says Provine. “At the end of the campaign, we call the people who indicated they would vote for our candidate, and we’ll call and pester them until they get out and vote.”

And don’t forget to vote for yourself. •

Richie Pierce was once just some guy who lived in Frayser and spent his days getting high on the porch with his “fools from the neighborhood.” These days, Pierce still gets high on his porch, but larger responsibilities rest on his shoulders as the self-proclaimed mayor of Frayser. His Web site, Frayser.IsFun.net, outlines a plan to turn his Memphis community into the coolest place in the city. The mayor took a few minutes from his busy schedule to talk with the Flyer about that plan.

Flyer: How’d you become mayor of Frayser?

Mayor of Frayser: Frayser’s always been the butt of a bunch of jokes. I don’t see where it’s much different than any other place in town. I used to get pissed off about it and try to defend it. One of my buddies started calling me the mayor of Frayser as a joke, and it caught on.

When did Frayser.IsFun.net come about?

Me and Forrest [Pruett, the Web master] got together and worked on it in 2001. It started off as my platform on certain issues. Now it’s almost become a character. I spoof on shit that happens and make fun of what goes on, but I’m still right there with [the people of Frayser]. They’re some of the best people in the world, and if we can laugh at ourselves, then what other people say can’t fuck with us.

So what’s so great about Frayser?

There are so many diverse people who live together and get along. You can see three gangster guys and three redneck guys all wearing overalls and hanging out drinking Busch 40-ouncers. That’s Frayser. It’s beautiful. It’s God’s country.

What are some things you’re trying to improve in Frayser? Do you have a plan for the homeless?

With my Mini-City Project, we’ll take all the broken-down vehicles in Frayser and park them in one big lot. Then homeless people can live in them. If you want to be a crackhead and out of work, at least I’ll know you’ll have a roof over your head.

What do you plan to do to boost Frayser’s economy?

On my Web site, I talk about trying to get more liquor stores and adult-video stores and stuff like that in the community. There have been two new liquor stores in Frayser since it was launched. In Frayser, we don’t cash our checks at banks. We cash them at liquor stores.

Don’t you have an annexation plan?

I was looking on the map one day. It looks like if you crop Mud Island into where it would have broken off, it’d be in Frayser. I’m going to try and take it back. I could put a 24-hour craps game down there.

Is it true that you want to change Frayser’s beer laws to allow beer sales 24/7?

Having a limited time when I can purchase alcohol is stupid. If they’ll let you drink until 3 a.m. and then re-buy at 7 a.m., I don’t see what the difference is. As for Sundays, I don’t know why one day of the week I’m not allowed to buy anything until noon. Plus, church gets out at noon, and you’ve got every drunk in Frayser racing to get to the store. You’re just waiting for an accident to happen. Let us get it at 9 a.m. while they’re in Sunday school, and there won’t be anything to worry about.

What’s your beautification plan for Frayser?

A lot of people get on people in Frayser for leaving their Christmas lights up, so I say, hell, turn them on every night. Let’s light that son of a bitch up. People have a habit of hanging their laundry on the fence. There’s no problem with that. Just make it color-coded– red, white, and blue or something. If you’re going to be trashy, you can still coordinate and make it look okay.

I’ve heard you have a plan to increase law enforcement by building more Mapcos. Could you explain?

You go into these convenient stores and there’s always cops around. I say, hell, let’s just get one built on every intersection. That way if you ever need a cop, you can just holler at them. They’re there anyway, so they might as well work out of there.

What’s the Frayser Blunt Recycling Program?

That’s my biggest initiative right now. There’s a lot of marijuana smoking in my neighborhood, and the preference is you buy Swisher Sweets or Phillies and you split them down the middle and knock the tobacco out. If you look on the ground in Frayser, that shit is everywhere. So if we made little recycling cans that you could put in your mailbox, you could just empty it in there. Then we can re-sell the tobacco to tobacco companies, and they can re-roll it. We can put the money into the beautification project.

I’ve heard you’re considering running for the mayor of Memphis in the next election. What can you do for the city?

I think it’s bullshit when any politician talks about what they can do. There’s not shit they can do. You’ve got so many other people who have to vote things in, in the first place. I’ll run shit the way I want my shit to be ran, and I’ll try to put those initiatives into place. If it’s voted down, then there’s nothing I can do with that. If it’s voted for, well, good for that. But I ain’t going to promise you shit ’cause it ain’t going to happen.

You know, we’re also interviewing the mayor of Covington Pike for this issue. Is there any rivalry?

I’d like to issue a wrestling challenge to the mayor of Covington Pike. We’ll wrestle for titles, and if he wins, he can be the mayor of Frayser. If I win, I’ll be the mayor of Covington Pike and I want a new car. Shit, I’ll even give him a $20 gift certificate to Harpo’s [if he wins]. You know how much beer you can get for $20 at Harpo’s? You can buy a woman, a bag, a 12-pack of beer, and still have some left to play on the gambling machines. •

President Nixon had been twisting slowly in the breeze for months, denying any direct connection to the Watergate break-in. But on August 5, 1974, the hammer fell. The “smoking gun” was a transcript of a secret Oval Office tape that showed that six days after the burglary, Nixon had tried to use the CIA to block the FBI from investigating the incident. The tape directly linked the president to obstruction of justice, and Nixon knew the jig was up.

Three days later, word of Nixon’s forthcoming resignation hit the street and spread like a barrel of spilt mercury. Horns honked, people shouted the news, and below my apartment window, hippies did the happy dance in the streets of Haight-Ashbury.

The bastard, the evil one, the man who walked the beach in a suit and wingtips, the very face of the Vietnam insanity, was finally leaving. He was too a crook. We’d won … something. Something big.

We were suddenly riding a wave, surfing gleefully into a golden age where all would be made new. Politics would be about principles. Human decency would prevail. Racism and sexism and corporate greed would fade away, replaced by an Aquarian idealism that seemed at that moment ready to take over the world. Talkin’ ’bout my generation.

Cool, man.

And so my girlfriend Autumn and I joined Americans everywhere and settled in front of our television to watch Nixon’s final chapter. I remember we smoked a fat joint out on the fire escape just before the president came on, which might seem stupid in hindsight, but it makes more sense if you know that many of us in my generation smoked a fat joint before doing anything in those days. And afterward too.

I turned the on/off knob (remember those?) and the television made that low sizzling whump televisions used to make and flickered on. There he was. Nixon. He stared out at me, and I remember feeling a bizarre combination of queasiness and exhilaration.

“This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this nation,” he began.

“That means at least 37 lies you’ve told us, you asshole,” I riposted.

“Each time,” the president continued, “I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest.”

“Get to the point, man!” I hissed.

“Calm down, man,” my girlfriend said, stroking my shoulder soothingly.

“In all the decisions I have made in my public life,” the president droned, “I have always tried to do what was best for the nation.”

“Like hell you have, you lying sack of …”

“Baby,” my girlfriend said, rubbing my neck, “you need to mellow out.”

“In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort …”

“Political base?” I screamed. “You got caught by your own tape recorder!“”You know, Bruce, this is really bad-vibing me,” said Autumn, removing her halter-top.

“But the interests of the nation must always come before any personal considerations …”

“The interests of the nation had nothing to do with it, you creep!”

“Honey, turn that thing off,” Autumn said softly but firmly.

“But this is historic and …”

“Turn that off, and I’ll take something off,” she said, fingering her Indian-print skirt.

“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body …”

“I said Turn. It. Off.”

So I did.

Ten minutes later, I turned it back on. (Hey, I was young.)

” … whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

“I pledge to you that as long as I have a breath of life in my body, I shall continue …”

“Bruce.”

And then I turned it off again. (Hey, I was young.) Thus began my lifelong love affair with American politics. •