Month: August 2005

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News

CITY OFFERS ASSISTANCE TO KATRINA VICTIMS

UPDATE (Thursday P.M.) –Beginning Thursday evening, The Mid-South Coliseum was to have begun taking in 2,000 Mississippi refugees with special medical needs. But shortages of fuel left these Hurricana Katrina Survivors domiciled overnight at points in North Mississippi.

Presumably the refugees’ journey into safe haven in Memphis will be accomplished sometime Friday, fulfilling a plan announced Thursday by Mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton.

The mayors made the announcement of the Coliseum’s proposed role on Thursday, saying Memphis and Shelby County are “in it for the long haul” with no idea when the refugees being brought in by bus will leave. The mayors have asked Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen for state funds for hurricane assistance.

“We are planning as if a new city is coming to town,” Wharton said.

On Friday afternoon the mayors will call a meeting of Memphis clergymen to coordinate relief efforts. The meeting will be at 3 p.m. at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Midtown.

There are approximately 10,000 storm refugees in Memphis already, officials say. Local hotels are near capacity, with 25 percent of the occupants being storm refugees, said Kevin Kane, head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. City officials are looking for vacant apartments and other housing for them as they run out of money.

Herenton stressed that opening the coliseum to storm victims is going to be difficult and is “fraught with complexities.” The facility shares the Mid-South Fairgrounds with the annual Mid-South Fair and Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, host to the University of Memphis-Ole Miss football game Saturday afternoon.

Memphians who want to volunteer are urged to contact the Red Cross or The Convention and Visitors Bureau.

PREVIOUS (Wednesday, Thrusday A.M>.)
Memphis governmental agencies, churches, and businesses are prepared to offer victims of Hurricane Katrina assistance ranging from shelter and food to school enrollment for displaced children.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton said Memphis is “ready to respond” and that some 10,000 displaced people are already in the city, with more expected. He characterized the response so far as “a band-aid approach” but promised a “comprehensive response” from hospitals, churches, schools, MLG&W, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

People who need help can call 543-5300. Victim assistance centers have been set up at the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau office at Front and Union, at the visitors center on Interstate 40 near Arlington, and at the visitors center on Interstate 55 at the Mississippi state line.

Gary Shorb, chairman of the board of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce, said there has been an outpouring of interest and concern from local businesses that want to help. Medical care is the most urgent need. New Orleans officials have asked Memphis to do an inventory of available hospital capacity.

Wanda Halbert, president of the Memphis City Schools Board of Education, said city schools that were recently closed for excess capacity will be used for housing victims of the hurricane. She also said Memphis City Schools will educate children from New Orleans whose families will be displaced for long periods.

“Our doors are open,” she said.

Herenton urged Memphians who want to help to contact the American Red Cross. He did not say which public buildings might be used to house refugees. But the scope of the disaster suggests Memphis will play a large role in the recovery.

“In 24 hours, we went from callers asking how to find a hotel room for 24 hours to how to enroll a kid in school for six to nine months,” said Kevin Kane, head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear how many Katrina refugees had found their way to Memphis. Television news reports featured interviews with managers of overcrowded motels where, in at least one case, a Memphis company (Smith and Nephew) donated free lodging for several families for multiple nights. But American Red Cross officials had not set up any shelters in Memphis. There were five Red Cross shelters in Tunica, Mississippi, however, including the convention center of the Grand Casino, which had about 400 occupants.

Shelby County Health Department was lining up volunteers to staff shelters, but spokesman Brenda Ward said Wednesday that was a case of advance planning.

Bill Hildebrandt, CEO of the Mid-South American Red Cross said he would not know until late Wednesday at the earliest whether shelters would be set up in Memphis. Hildebrandt said Tunica was closer to New Orleans, and therefore more convenient, although most motorists take Interstate 55 into Memphis rather than U.S. Highway 61 through Tunica. He said the best thing Memphians could do to help is to send cash donations to the Red Cross since supplies may not reach the Gulf Coast for several days. The Red Cross does not match families in need with local families willing to help because of liability issues.

Meanwhile, some politicians were either second-guessing the local response or suggesting alternatives. City Councilman Carol Chumney suggested the city should have looked into using gyms and churches to house refugees without waiting for the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau to take the lead.

“It seems to me the city of Memphis should some offer of assistance,” she said in an email to city officials Keith McGee and Keenon McCloy 24 hours before the Wednesday news conference at City Hall.

Shelby County Commissioner George Flinn suggested the city and county use The Pyramid and Mid-South Coliseum to house storm victims. Flinn also said that several abandoned or unused warehouses in New Chicago, a North Memphis neighborhood that he toured last week, would be suitable for short-term housing of refugees.

Earlier Wednesday, New Orleans officials began moving thousands of people out of the New Orleans SuperDome into buses to take them to the Astrodome in Houston.

Appeal for Help from Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald

Editor’s Note: In response to a direct appeal for communications assistance from the editors of the Biloxi Sun Herald, we append the following editorial from the newspaper.

South Mississippi needs your help

The coastal communities of South Mississippi are desperately in need of an unprecedented relief effort.

We understand that New Orleans also was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but surely this nation has the resources to rescue both that metropolitan and ours.

Whatever plans that were in place to deal with such a natural disaster have
proven inadequate. Perhaps destruction on this scale could not have been
adequately prepared for.

But now that it has taken place, no effort should be spared to mitigate the
hurricane’s impact.

The essentials — ice, gasoline, medicine — simply are not getting here fast enough.

We are not calling on the nation and the state to make life more comfortable in South Mississippi, we are calling on the nation and the state to make life here possible.

We would bolster our argument with the number of Katrina casualties confirmed thus far, but if there is such a confirmed number, no one is releasing it to the public. This lack of faith in the publics’ ability to handle the truth is not sparing anyone’s feelings, it is instead fueling terrifying rumors.

While the flow of information is frustratingly difficult, our reporters have yet to find evidence of a coordinated approach to relieve pain and hunger or
to secure property and maintain order.

People are hurting and people are being vandalized.

Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn’t every able-bodied member of the
armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?

On Wednesday reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.

Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!

When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris.

Litter is the least of our problems. We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster.

We need the governor to provide whatever assistance is at his command.

We certainly need our own county and city officials to come together and identify the most pressing needs of their constituents and then allocate resources to meet those needs. We appreciate the stress that theses elected and appointed officials have been under since the weekend but they must do a better job restoring public confidence in their ability to meet this challenge.

This editorial represents the view of the Sun-Herald editorial board:
President- Publisher Ricky R. Mathews, Vice President and Executive Editor
Stan Tiner, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Flora S. Point,
Opinion Page Editor Marie Harris, and Associate Editor Ed. Tony Biffle.

Categories
News

UPDATES: HOOKS INDICTED; BROOKS REJECTED

UPDATES: HOOKS AND BROOKS

Hooks Indicted: Shelby County Commission chairman Michael Hooks Sr., long under a cloud after his name surfaced in connection with the first “Tennesse Waltz” revelations, was formally charged Tuesday by the Shelby County grand jury with taking $24,000 in bribes from the FBI’s sham “eCycle” electronics firm.

Hooks, who had acknowledged having some involvement with the firm when the news of the FBI sting broke in May, turned himself in at the federal building Tuesday after releasing this statement to his fellow commissioners: “You will undoubtedly hear in the media today news of my indictment. I want to apologize to you for any cloud this issue may put over the County Commission and staff. I ask for your prayers.”

The indictment charges Hooks with receiving money from eCycle in several installments, beginning in September of last year and continuing through March of this year, months during which he was preparing and launching what proved to be an unsuccessful bid for a state Senate seat – ironically, one that had been vacated by fellow indictee Roscoe Dixon and that was ultimately won by another indictee, Kathryn Bowers.

Hooks will make a formal plea regarding the charge on September 7 – the anniversary of the first sums received by him from an undercover agent last year.

Brooks Election Appeal rejected: In the course of an hoc meeting of the state Democratic Party executive committee, one conducted partly by conference call from Nashville, the protest by state Representative Henri Brooks of her 20-vote defeat by Ophelia Ford in a special state Senate race was rejected.

A member of the committee said afterward that no formal motion was ever made, and thus no formal vote was taken, on Brooks’ charges that several potential voters had not been apprised of their eligibility and opportunity to vote in the election, held on August 4th, following a change in address. “She just didn’t make the case, and there was evidence refuting her,” said the committee member.

No information was immediately available on Brooks’ further intentions and her possible recourse in the judicial system.

Tuesday’s decision means that Ford, who was thereby formally certified by the committee as the Democratic nominee, will go on to face Republican Terry Roland and independent Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges in the special District 29 general election on September 15. The seat being contested is the one vacated in late May by ‘Tennessee Waltz’ indictee John Ford.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS

IMPERFECT STORM

Whether or not some oversight by a staff person was responsible for the ill-fated letter to the state Parole Board on behalf of convicted murderer Phillip Michael Britt — sent out over 9th District U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. ’s signature and later disavowed by the congressman — anyone who has logged any time at all in a congressional office is aware that most mail is staff-written and signed either by auto-pen or by staffers emulating the boss’s signature.

The greater part of such correspondence is in response to somewhat standard requests for information or assistance or for an elaboration of the congressman’s or senator’s views on this or that topic of the day. And the sheer volume of incoming mail means that most inquiries are met with form letters.

For whatever reason, Britt’s appeal to Ford must have found itself in a pile of such mail destined for routine treatment and was not, as it clearly should have been, directed to Ford for a discretionary response by the congressman himself. The odds for such a mischance occurring were no doubt increased by a stepped-up travel schedule on the part of Ford, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate. It is difficult to believe that the congressman, who is nothing if not cautious in his rhetoric (often elaborately so), would have knowingly written a letter of even qualified support for Britt, who was a principal in the brutal and notorious murder-for-hire of Memphian Debbie Groseclose in 1977.

Whatever the case, it was a Class A boo-boo — and though Ford has manfully taken responsibility for the error (enduring in the process a severe reaming-out over the air by local radio talk-show host Mike Fleming), it has already impacted his Senate race, overshadowing his endorsement by the state AFL-CIO earlier in the week that the story broke.

Sooner or later, somebody on the Ford staff will have some serious ‘splaining to do. Most likely, that moment of truth has already occurred — and not, one would assume, to the offending staffer’s gratification. Expectations governing work in the congressman’s office, as previously in that of his father and predecessor, a zealot for constituent service, are exacting, even by congressional standards.

Simultaneous with the Parole Board flap, but presumably unrelated to it, Rep. Ford has been breaking in a new press secretary, Corinne Ciocia, who succeeded Zac Wright early in August. Wright had returned to his Tennessee home, it was said, as the consequence of back problems and other assorted physical complaints.

Thus did the revolving staff door swing again in the Ford congressional office.

Wright’s immediate predecessor, the short-lived Carson Chandler, was reportedly fired in late 2004 for divulging to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill publication for insiders, that the congressman was a frequent weekend visitor to Florida. Disclosed the periodical on November 22 of last year: “Ford’s press secretary says the Congressman goes to Miami often to visit his father, former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.), and his brother.”

That sort of candor, which clashed somewhat with the stereotyped notion of dutiful back-and-forthing to the district, was bad enough. But what apparently cut it with the congressman were two further revelations in the Roll Call story — one that began this way: “Ford was chilling poolside recently at the schwanky [sic] Delano hotel in Miami. He wore a bathing suit and Washington Redskins baseball cap, puffed on a stogie, and sipped a fruity frozen drink….,” and another that dished on the congressman’s alleged penchant for pricey pedicures.

Although Chandler was specifically ruled out as the source for the latter item, his name was all over the rest of the column, and the effect of the whole was to get him shown the exit.

During his tenure, which lasted a tad longer than six months, Wright committed no such gaffes. He churned out press releases and doggedly monitored Ford’s press availabilities so as to exclude potentially embarrassing or unfriendly questions. But the wear and tear of his high-pressure job began to show on Wright — or so it seemed to some who remembered him from his prior service as chief press aide to the state Democratic Party — and his departure was not altogether a surprise.

For the record, the hard-working Wright’s last press release on Ford’s behalf, dispatched on July 27, was entitled “Ford Stands Up for America’s Future.”

Frist-Lott (cont’d) : As fate would have it, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississipppi was due in Memphis this week for a book-signing, one week after an appearance here by his partner/nemesis/successor Bill Frist, subject of a decidedly unfriendly reference in the newly published memoir by Lott, Herding Cats. [UPDATE: Lott, stranded in his home town of Pascagoula, Mississippi, was prevented from coming when his flight to Memphis was cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina.]

In the book, the Mississippian accuses former protege Frist of “betrayal” for taking advantage of Lott’s impolitic praise of centenarian Strom Thurmond in late 2002 in order to take over as Majority Leader. As noted here last week, Frist had told the Flyer as far back as 1998 that he intended at some point to make a bid for the job.

After a luncheon appearance before the downtown Rotary Club at the Convention Center last Tuesday, the Tennessee senator was asked about what Lott had written.

“I’ve not read the comments, I’ve not read the book,” Frist answered, then did his best to pour honey on the wound. “I have tremendous respect for Trent Lott. I’ve worked with him very closely. I have lunch with him two days a week. He helped me on the energy bill. He helped move America forward on the highway bill, on the recent CAFTA bill. I look forward to working with him constructively. And that’s pretty much where it sits. I know that it was very difficult in the past when he, uh, sat down, and I respect his interpretation of the events that led to that. I’m really looking to the future and to my continued close work with a man who I respect tremendously, Trent Lott, who’s served the people of Mississippi in a very positive and constructive way.”

And what about the resolution of the filibuster battle some months back, which was ended in a compromise solution proposed by his likely presidential rival, Senator John McCain? Did he regard this alternative as a defeat for his own hard-line position?

Frist was determined to be upbeat about this, too: “You know, being the elected majority leader of the United States Senate means you do certain things, and I have led on principle. I have led on the basis that I say I’m going to do something, and then I go ahead and do it. I feel strongly on behalf of that principle that nominees deserve and up or down vote. It is our responsibility to treat these nominees with respect, all these nominees, and with advice and consent, and in doing that, I stood on principle to give them an up or down vote.

“Other people felt that not all candidates deserve an up or down vote, and I, you know, respect that, but I don’t agree with it. In terms of was I successful or not, in standing on principle, six nominees who were filibustered in the last Congress by the other side of the aisle, who thought that they had no chance in the future, because of my standing on principle are now sitting federal judges serving the American people.”|

Hurricane Kurita: The field of would-be successors to Frist, who will vacate his seat next year to prepare an expected bid for president, includes Rep. Ford, a Democrat, and three Republicans — former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary and former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker. It also includes another Democrat, state Senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, who continues to hang in there with an innovative advertising campaign on Web sites and blogs, despite some staff losses and slowdowns in her more conventional fundraising.

Kurita, who has gained adherents among Democrats who consider Ford too ambiguously conservative, will blow into town this weekend. Her several local appearances include one before the Germantown Democratic Club at the Germantown library on Saturday morning.

New Dance Moves

Since former state senator John Ford has indicated he still intends to plead not guilty of extortion and bribery in the Tennessee Waltz scandal (and to demonstrate in the process that his government accusers were in fact the Bad Guys), it was probably inevitable that one of his fellow indictees should work things in exactly the opposite direction.

When state representative Chris Newton of Cleveland came to Memphis Tuesday morning to change his not-guilty plea to guilty in federal court, he did his best not only to present himself as an innocent in the general, not the legal, sense of the term but almost as a de facto member of the prosecution. (If he turns out to provide state’s evidence in cases against others, that could turn out for real.) While praising Newton (who resigned his legislative seat last week) as having been “forthright,” however, assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza indicated Tuesday that no plea bargaining had been pursued in the case.

First, Newton responded to Judge Jon McCalla’s lengthy reading of the indictment with a highly qualified plea of guilty, alleging straight-facedly that he had intended only to accept a campaign contribution but conceding that he accepted money from the bogus FBI-established eCycle firm “at least in part” to influence the course of legislation.

Talking to members of the media later, Newton lavishly praised both the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office and proclaimed that “the process of rebuilding public trust in our institutions of government, especially the Tennessee General Assembly … begins here with me today.”
Though Newton has now copped to being a felon, he was within a few dollars and a few procedures of actually being legal. DiScenza alluded in court Tuesday to a scandal within the scandal — the fact that lobbyist/co-defendant Charles Love of Chattanooga, one of the “bagmen” in the case, had admitted skimming most of the eCycle money intended for Newton. Of the $4,500 routed his way, Newton only got $1,500 — just $500 more than the legal limit for a contribution.

Asked by a reporter how he felt about being skimmed, Newton beamed good-naturedly and pantomimed his answer: “You’re bad!”

Newton’s change of plea follows that of Love’s fellow bagman Barry Myers and puts pressure on the other accused — besides Ford, state senators Kathryn Bowers and Ward Crutchfield and former state senator Roscoe Dixon — to follow suit. This dance could be over before it really gets started good.

UPDATES: HOOKS AND BROOKS

Hooks Indicted: Shelby County Commission chairman Michael Hooks Sr., long under a cloud after his name surfaced in connection with the first “Tennesse Waltz” revelations, was formally charged Tuesday by the Shelby County grand jury with taking $24,000 in bribes from the FBI’s sham “eCycle” electronics firm.

Hooks, who had acknowledged having some involvement with the firm when the news of the FBI sting broke in May, turned himself in at the federal building Tuesday after releasing this statement to his fellow commissioners: “You will undoubtedly hear in the media today news of my indictment. I want to apologize to you for any cloud this issue may put over the County Commission and staff. I ask for your prayers.”

The indictment charges Hooks with receiving money from eCycle in several installments, beginning in September of last year and continuing through March of this year, months during which he was preparing and launching what proved to be an unsuccessful bid for a state Senate seat – ironically, one that had been vacated by fellow indictee Roscoe Dixon and that was ultimately won by another indictee, Kathryn Bowers.

Hooks will make a formal plea regarding the charge on September 7 – the anniversary of the first sums received by him from an undercover agent last year.

Brooks Election Appeal rejected: In the course of an hoc meeting of the state Democratic Party executive committee, one conducted partly by conference call from Nashville, the protest by state Representative Henri Brooks of her 20-vote defeat by Ophelia Ford in a special state Senate race was rejected.

A member of the committee said afterward that no formal motion was ever made, and thus no formal vote was taken, on Brooks’ charges that several potential voters had not been apprised of their eligibility and opportunity to vote in the election, held on August 4th, following a change in address. “She just didn’t make the case, and there was evidence refuting her,” said the committee member.

No information was immediately available on Brooks’ further intentions and her possible recourse in the judicial system.

Tuesday’s decision means that Ford, who was thereby formally certified by the committee as the Democratic nominee, will go on to face Republican Terry Roland and independent Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges in the special District 29 general election on September 15. The seat being contested is the one vacated in late May by ‘Tennessee Waltz’ indictee John Ford.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

WILLIAMS FINDS SUCCESS OFF THE BEATEN PATH

ESPN.com

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The secret to DeAngelo Williams’ gift — and it is a gift, really — is his ability to see what’s in front of him and pick the right crease, even if no one else sees it. That might seem obvious, given that the senior tailback at the University of Memphis ran for 1,948 yards and 22 TDs last season, if that gift was limited to when Williams is in uniform.

But it’s Williams’ ability to pick the right hole off the field that has made him a preseason All-American and the first Heisman Trophy candidate in school history.

To read rest of article, CLICK HERE.

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Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT

FORECAST…FOOTBALL!

Labor Day will take on new meaning for the University of Memphis football squad when it takes the field at the Liberty Bowl next week for the 2005 opener against Ole Miss. Herewith, a look at the season ahead.

OFFENSE

Known quantities: running back DeAngelo Williams, receivers Maurice Avery and Ryan Scott, tight end John Doucette, center Blake Butler

Variables: three rookie offensive linemen, rookie quarterback

As goes Heisman hopeful Williams, so goes the U of M offense in 2005. With junior Patrick Byrne taking over the quarterback duties from Danny Wimprine, coach Tommy West’s approach will be run first, pass when necessary. Which makes the development of this year’s offensive line so critical. The return of Andrew Handy at one guard position (he sat out 2004 with an ankle injury) will help ease the transition from guard to center for Butler. The three rookies — tackles Willie Henderson and Abraham Holloway and guard Andy Smith — each weigh more than 300 pounds. Will their feet be quick enough to open the kind of holes Williams attacks? This could well be the biggest question for the season ahead, particularly for any Heisman aspirations among Tiger faithful.

If the line develops and Williams stays healthy, life is going to be much easier for Byrne, who has a rather deep receiving corps to target. Senior tight end John Doucette converted three of his 11 receptions last season into touchdowns, not bad for a guy who pushes 270 pounds. It’s unlikely the Tigers will average 35.8 points as they did a season ago. Wimprine’s talent and experience at the most important position on the field are too much to replace in one season. But with an All-America tailback as the engine, this machine should eat up ground, even with a few new parts.

DEFENSE

Known quantities: end Marcus West, three starting linebackers, safety Wesley Smith


Variables: freshman nose guard, heightened expectations

I’m of a mind that the nose guard in a 3-4 defensive scheme is the most underrated player on the field. He won’t pick up sacks, won’t even accumulate many tackles, but he’s the first domino in a snap-sequence that determines if an opponent has the opportunity for a big play. If he can occupy a pair of linemen and prevent an interior gap, the nose guard allows the linebackers behind him to chase down ball carriers instead of fend off blockers themselves. That said, defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn appears to be trusting the position to a redshirt freshman, Ryan Williams. A 278-pound product of Christian Brothers High School, Williams replaces Albert Means and will be sandwiched between seniors West and Rubio Phillips.

As Rickey Ricardo would put it, the Tigers’ veteran linebackers have some ‘splaining to do. Carlton Baker, Tim Goodwell, and Quinton McCrary return from a unit that gave up 31.2 points per game in 2004. This figure is going to have be shaved for Memphis to compete for the C-USA title. Veteran defensive backs Wesley Smith and O.C. Collins will be invaluable as the unit’s watchdogs.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Known quantity: place-kicker Stephen Gostkowski

Variable: punter Michael Gibson

Gostkowski — the school’s career scoring leader with 268 points — may get some All-America votes if Williams doesn’t score so many touchdowns that his field-goal skills become a moot strength. As for Gibson (originally an Auburn signee), the junior-college transfer averaged 44.6 yards per punt at Itawamba Community College. He’ll be an improvement on Wimprine’s fourth-down rugby kicks.

OUTLOOK

The Tigers have essentially five gimmes on their schedule: Chattanooga, Tulsa,UCF, Houston, and East Carolina. If they can win two of three games against UAB, Southern Miss, and Marshall, they’ll likely play in the first C-USA championship game December 3rd. And if they can at least split their two games with SEC opponents — Ole Miss and Tennessee (November 12th) — they’ll be on their way to a third consecutive bowl game.

FORECAST: 8-3

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Editorial Opinion

Harold Ford Jr. for Senate?

Current opinion polls suggest that the Republican Party may be in trouble going into the 2006 mid-term elections, largely as a result of the public’s increasingly acute perception that the administration’s Iraq war follies are, well, just that. But the numbers also show that the Democratic Party is getting virtually no benefit from the fact that President Bush’s approval rating is sinking like a stone.

Why are we not surprised? Since 2002, when then-leaders Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt lined up a majority of their colleagues to join with Republicans in giving Bush war-making powers in Iraq, the Democratic Party has been badly split between those who continue to “go along to get along” and those who believe that forthright opposition to the Bush administration’s illegal and immoral Iraq war is not just the party’s only ethical alternative but its only long-term path to electoral success.

Democratic Party pragmatists have managed to hold the upper hand, but indications are that reality is finally catching up with them. Two crushing national election defeats have proven the eternal wisdom of Harry Truman’s observation that “When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they’ll vote for the Republican every time.”

Now the public is restless. The negativity extends directly to every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, who lacked either the intestinal fortitude or the common sense to stand up to this administration’s mad rush toward war.

Here in Tennessee, Democratic candidate for senator Harold Ford Jr. not only supported the Iraq War Powers Act, he was one of the co-sponsors! To his credit, Ford has stuck to his guns. (“I support this war in Iraq,” he reiterated last week. “I supported it from the beginning for one reason: Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.”) And since that 2002 vote, Ford has continued to ignore Truman’s dictum. He has been the very model of a “Democrat who acts like a Republican” by supporting the Terry Schiavo bill, by failing to show up to vote against this year’s heinous budget, and by voting for the administration’s corporate-friendly bankruptcy and energy bills.

Cynics suggest that Ford is simply trying to strike the kind of “moderate” pose that enhances his chances in Republican East Tennessee. The facts suggest otherwise. Indeed, the vehemence with which Congressman Ford defended the administration last Friday (“I love my president. I love him personally,” the congressman avowed) inclines us to suggest that Ford take President Truman’s advice to its logical conclusion:

Congressman Ford, we suggest you immediately declare your candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Senate. Your words, your political contributors, and your votes make it clear that’s where you belong. As the Republican nominee, you would become the favorite to be Tennessee’s next senator. And you could go before the voters as what you are: a centrist who believes in the war in Iraq and who favors the budgetary, economic, and environmental policies of the Bush administration.

Best of all, your move to the Republican Party would clear the air in state politics. In 2006, the voters of Tennessee might be given a real choice at the polls: between a Republican candidate who stands on his record and for the status quo and a real Democratic candidate who might have the political courage to articulate a viable alternative to the mess in which we presently find ourselves at home and abroad.

Let’s make Harry Truman proud and give Tennessee voters a real choice.

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We Recommend

Thursday, 25

Well, now. This column, for me anyway, is sort of the end of an era. It’s the last time I’ll be writing this part of the paper, in which I try to offer up recommendations about what to do around town each week, and it’s probably a good thing for everyone, since I have become such a hermit that I don’t actually go anywhere other than work, my nearby neighborhood bar, and my other nearby neighborhood bar. Bands start too late for me. I can’t get to anything outside Midtown because it involves driving over viaducts. And my bedtime is 10 p.m. Since 1989, I’ve written this column almost every week, except for the weeks when I’ve been just too tired and out of it to do it. Or when the thought of someone actually thinking of making plans based on what I might recommend scared me too much. Oh, I’ve found and promoted some fairly interesting people, places, and things and have taken great delight in helping give them exposure in order for them to be more successful. And I have been, more often than not, sincere about wanting to let readers know about these things, whether free drinks and other forms of payola were in it for me or not. I can think of a few standouts. If any of you ever paid attention to my ramblings and visited the Big S Lounge and tasted the late Mr. Hardaway’s barbecue and drank the coldest beer on the planet from little milk glasses and listened to the juke box there that has perhaps the country’s best collection of R&B music loaded into a machine, I feel honored that you took me up on the tip and just hope that you got to meet not only Mr. Hardaway but also everyone else who ever sat in that magical place. If you’ve ever ordered a martini and lit a cigarette upstairs in the “Heaven Room” at Cielo in Victorian Village while Di Anne Price wails torch songs from her seat at the baby grand piano, you might just have a good idea of what it’s like to be in, well, heaven. Ditto for Mr. James Govan at Rum Boogie Café. In looking back at my bound volume of the first 52 issues of the Flyer, it appears that the first “We Recommend” column appeared in the second issue, on February 23, 1989, as a simple listing of some of the things going on around town that week. Not sure when it turned into a venue for bashing the right wing on a weekly basis, but at that time it was pretty harmless, innocent, and naive. It mentioned blues legend Mose Vinson playing a gig at the Oak Court Mall. What was up with that? It also featured, and I quote, “the National Field Trial Championship, the country’s foremost championship for bird dog competition. An annual event since 1896, pointers run 35 miles a day, sniffing out quail while followed by judges on horseback.” I must have still been in AA when I wrote that! In that same issue, longtime FM 100 deejay Tom Prestigiacomo (whose name I can still spell off the top of my head), in his “Let ’Em Cake! Birthdays” column, wished a happy b’day to “actor Jim ‘Lovey, I think I left my diamond cuff links in the lagoon’ Backus, born in 1913.” In that same issue of the Flyer, yours truly seriously reviewed a few artsy video releases but loosened up in the following edition with a thumbs-up salute to John Waters’ classic film Polyester, stating that “Housewife and mother Francine Fishpaw (played larger than life by the late Divine) becomes a dismal alcoholic when her porno-theater-owner husband runs off with the secretary; her teenage daughter gets pregnant in between go-go dances and decides to turn Hari Krishna rather than have an abortion; and her glue-sniffing teenage son turns out to be the infamous Baltimore foot-stomper.” It was like being set free to really write anything I wanted to convey. In that same issue, the evolving “We Recommend” column mentioned catching a show by comedian Dennis Phillippi (who is still not one bit right) and the opening night of a production of No, No, Nanette at Germantown High School’s Poplar Pike Playhouse. I think at that point I had dropped out of AA. Or at least I would like to believe that was the case. And then at some point during that first year of the Flyer, I became a real smart-ass, or at least took on that persona. And, unfortunately for many of you, I’ll still be writing that kind of column and it will appear on the inside back page of the paper. Maybe not every week and certainly not forever but as often as possible (starting next week) and until I’m either in prison or a nursing home. So, without further ado, and for the last time, here’s a quick look at what’s going on around town this week. At the Brooks Museum tonight, there’s Girls’ Night Out at the Brooks, a closing reception for “Patrick Kelly: A Retrospective,” with cocktails, door prizes, and hair and makeup demonstrations by Pavo Salon. And Vicky Loveland is playing at tonight’s Sunset Atop the Madison series.

Friday, 26

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. There are some plays opening this weekend. Flip over to the “Theater” listings and you’ll find them! That’s what I always did, only I got them before you did! Art openings? Well, just check out the “Art Happenings” listing. They are all there. There are about a dozen or so and I — ha ha ha — don’t have to type them in! As for other fine entertainment, tonight’s Fresh Air Flicks Film Series movie is Make It Funky! and is showing outside on South Main next to Earnestine & Hazel’s. Yamagata is at the Beale Street Tap Room. The Gamble Brothers Band is at the Full Moon Club. And at the Blue Monkey Midtown, there’s a very special benefit tonight for the family of Holly Abbott, a dear, sweet Blue Monkey bartender who was killed a few weeks ago in a motorcycle accident. There will be live music by Los Cantadores, Susan Marshall, the Circus Bears, and other special guests. So come, donate, and support this event.

Saturday, 27

Tonight’s Hands on Memphis “Summer in the City” fund-raising party at The Orpheum features entertainment, a cocktail party, food, and a big silent auction of items including airline tickets, jewelry, artwork, hotel stays, and much more. Tonight’s Heartlight Gala at the Cannon Center to raise funds for Agape Child and Family Services features a live performance by Steven Curtis Chapman. Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround is at the Buccaneer. And Drew Holcomb is at the Hi-Tone.

Sunday, 28

Di Anne Price & Her Boyfriends are at Huey’s Downtown this afternoon, followed tonight by the Soul Shockers. And Chip Googe and Dave Norris are at Café Ole.

Monday, 29

It’s the last Monday of the month, which means it’s time again for the Last Mondays in Studio A concert series at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Tonight’s show is by Barbara Blue and her five-piece band. 7-9 p.m.

Tuesday, 30

Preston Shannon at B.B. King’s.

Wednesday, 31

Court Square Concert Series from 5 to 8 p.m. with The Dempseys. And now I really must go. It’s been a great 16 years, and I need a drink. BIG TIME. I’ll be back next week, but in a different life.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Keeping It Real

As part of a Leadership Memphis panel about a year ago, I was asked some questions: What makes Memphis different? What can contribute to our city’s success? And what is authentic about Memphis?

I thought about these three questions again after I heard that Target wanted to open in Midtown. Then, as now, I think the answers are intertwined.

Right before I moved to Memphis, I spent a short time in Austin. Dotcom was still very much a bubble. Austin was being called the next Silicon Valley and there was a commonly reported statistic that 100 new cars were moving to Austin daily. But aside from the local music scene and the incredibly gringo pronunciations of Spanish-named streets, there wasn’t an abundance of authentic local flavor. How could there be? People were flocking in droves to the city, and corporations from all over the country were opening store after store to serve those consumers. At the core of Austin, there was something wonderful, but as I drove around, I got the sense that it was being plastered over by Wal-Marts and Targets and other big-box – and not so big-box – retailers.

I’m not saying the big boxes are necessarily bad (and if I said I didn’t shop them, I would be lying through my teeth). However, I think most American cities are going through a similar identity crisis. As each local mom ‘n’ pop gets bulldozed, a bit of Gotham rises up in its place.

But if the bare bones of a city are its buildings, ours haven’t been broken. Just think of all the businesses in Midtown that operate out of renovated houses, or the downtown warehouses converted to lofts.

In many ways, Memphis has escaped urban homogenization. This is due in part, I would assume, to the amount of poverty here. When Home Depot opened in Midtown last year, the U.S. home-improvement market was about 80 percent saturated. The company had already announced it was expanding to China to find new markets.

I don’t like to read too much into things, but how attractive is the Memphis market if we’re in the last 20 percent of the country to be developed? And – just barely – ahead of China?

We could lament being left behind (and I know I have) but our authentic nature is as much an asset as a curse – no matter how it happened. It seems as though everything comes in a virtual version now.

Which is why authenticity matters so much. I think it’s safe to say we have an authentic music scene, rooted both in Elvis and Al Kapone, among others. And it doesn’t have a lot of street cred because it’s not “art,” but we also have a certain authenticity in our retail and restaurants (the upside of being ignored by national companies is fewer barriers for local retailers entering the marketplace).

What we have is real. It wasn’t test-marketed in four major cities and then imported here. And that authenticity sets Memphis apart and can be used as a selling point. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that several movies have been shot near South Main. No matter what Craig Brewer or Linn Sitler do (and it’s a lot of work, I know), you can’t sell something you don’t have.

I think Memphis – and the surrounding area – is a place with heart and soul. It’s scrappy; it’s exciting; and it’s strange, but it’s down to earth. I hope that we can keep growing, but I hope we don’t lose ourselves along the way.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

1. Harding Academy, a landmark near the corner of Park and Cherry for half a century, wants to move part of its campus to Lakeland. School officials apparently couldn’t resist the chance to have such a classy address as Huff ‘n’ Puff Road.

2. Open auditions are held at The Pyramid for Craig Brewer’s next film, Black Snake Moan, which will be filmed in Memphis. Let’s see. District attorney Bill Gibbons made an appearance in The Firm, Memphis City Schools board member Michael Hooks Jr. showed up in Hustle & Flow. Looks like quite a few Memphians would rather be in the movies than doing their day jobs.

3. City officials once more turn up a $10 million budget “shortfall,” as they call it. We guess that sounds better than admitting, “Uh, we lost $10 million.” Even so, they assure citizens that the money can be made up without cutting services. Didn’t we hear this last year? And the year before?

4. A Harley-Davidson police motorcycle stored at the West Precinct is discovered stripped of just about everything but its frame. This is the first time we’ve heard of someone operating a chop shop out of cop shop.

5. Mechanics go on strike at Northwest Airlines. There were two horrific airplane crashes last week, neither of them involving Northwest, thank goodness, but this is not exactly news a nervous flyer wants to hear.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Aristocrats and Brothers Grimm

Ten minutes into a local promotional screening of The Aristocrats a few weeks ago there was nervous laughter echoing around the theater, quickly followed by squeals and gasps, and then a few walkouts.

Produced by comics Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (the taller, talking half of Penn & Teller), The Aristocrats is essentially a document of more than 100 comedians of different types and levels of fame telling variations on the same joke. Jillette has said – warned, really – that the film contains no violence or nudity but does contain “unspeakable obscenity.” And if you think that’s an exaggeration, trust that it isn’t. I’ve seen people walk out of movies before – from boredom or outrage – but never in response to language.

The title of the film is also the title – and punchline – of the joke each comedian tells, an old vaudeville set-up about a family act being pitched to a talent agent. Between premise and punchline, the joke is a blank slate meant to be filled with the vilest content (scatological, transgressive, whatever) the teller can imagine. Because the content is too blue for most audiences, the joke is most often told backstage among comedians, a “secret handshake” between pros.

The argument being made by The Aristocrats is that the blank slate and the improvisation required to fill it make the joke akin to jazz. It’s a basic melody that anybody can riff on. Watching so many comedians spin their variations on the same set-up is, the film suggests, an ideal way to demonstrate the jazzlike virtuosity and individual expression of stand-up comedy.

The problem with this assertion is that most variations on the joke aren’t funny, just shocking. And the shock factor detracts from the ostensible point of the project: The audience is too taken aback by the what that’s being said to notice the how, to notice the personal nuance each comedian brings to the telling. The content obscures the artistry.

What The Aristocrats – the film and the titular joke itself – seems to really be about, though none of the film’s participants directly acknowledge it (George Carlin comes close), is overcoming the self-censorship impulse. It’s this negation of self-censorship that drives the best and most important stand-up comics, from Carlin to Richard Pryor to Chris Rock. The willingness to say anything at any time to anyone, to violate any verbal taboo, is often more important than the simple act of doing so. And this explains why “The Aristocrats” (the joke) is largely a backstage exchange. It’s the equivalent of a singer doing vocal exercises to keep his or her performances sharp.

Unless you’re into prurience or transgression for its own sake, the joke itself soon ceases to be interesting, but there are still variations and elements tangential to the premise that satisfy: Relatively unknown comic Wendy Liebman gently inverts the joke, while Kevin Pollak tells it in the form of a Christopher Walken impression. There’s the pure spectacle of the dirtiest language coming from the most unlikely sources: a very pregnant Judy Gold, the Smothers Brothers, or ostensibly wholesome Full House/America’s Funniest Home Videos star Bob Saget.

The discussion of the joke – its parameters and politics – is often more interesting than its telling: that there seem to be different rules for women comedians; that it isn’t quite the same shibboleth among black comics. (As Rock explains, black comedians never dreamed of mainstream success, so they just told their dirtiest stuff on stage.) And there’s a very funny discussion of alternative punchlines: The Sophisticates, The Royalty, The Republicans.

But other pleasures are more incidental. The Aristocrats offers an irresistible tour of a clubby comic subculture, one that admits not only stand-up practioners from the well-known to the unknown but also writers, magicians, jugglers, and mimes, the staff of The Onion and the animated cast of South Park. Where these participants are filmed is almost as interesting as why they care. Shot over the course of two years on consumer-quality video cameras, The Aristocrats documents these comics wherever they can be corralled: homes, offices, backstage dressing rooms, empty sets, cafes, even – in the case of Robin Williams – the beach.

There’s a fascinating documentary in here somewhere, but “The Aristocrats” gets in the way. The film is meant to be an exhibit of the musical notion “it’s the singer, not the song.” But in this case, the song too often obscures the singer.

– Chris Herrington

In following his doomed attempt to adapt Don Quixote to the big screen, the documentary Lost in La Mancha proved there may be no figure more quixotic than Terry Gilliam himself.

The Brothers Grimm, Gilliam’s latest feature, confirms him as a director who has lost control of an overeager imagination. The film features Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, respectively, who make a business of eliminating monsters and ghosts at the behest of spooked villagers. Jacob truly believes in the folk tales, while Wilhelm sees them as a way to fleece the populace. The movie careens through the Brothers Grimm catalog, occasionally pulling out interesting visuals but failing to maintain any sense of coherency.

Part of the issue is Gilliam’s obsession with mise-en-scène. A look at Gilliam’s other films reveals that plot is often secondary to spectacle.

Gilliam got his start as a cartoonist for Monty Python, coming to define their zany style of animation. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is either the best or worst film Gilliam has made so far, is similar to The Brothers Grimm – an over-the-top amalgamation of fairy tales and wondrous set pieces in which the narrative feels mostly like an excuse.

The Brothers Grimm, like many Gilliam films, is dedicated to protecting the imagination and resisting the specters of the Enlightenment. In this film, the theme takes the form of nationalist conflicts between the rational French and the superstitious Germans. The film begins by acknowledging the danger of this conflict. A young Jacob is sent to get medicine for his sister. Instead, he returns with magic beans and his sister perishes, a mistake the older Wilhelm will never forget.

Gilliam does not seem interested, however, in heeding his own warning. The film is keen on presenting a series of fascinating and refreshingly dark snippets from the Grimm catalog. The film does have some memorable moments, such as when a demon horse swallows a young child whole. The enchanted forest is wonderfully done, with trees that creep and shift.

Yet the film also has major continuity errors, which are jarring to the viewer. At one point a young girl is kidnapped by the evil forces in the woods, then is somehow present in the village the next day, when she is kidnapped a second time.

The three main characters, the brothers Grimm and their shared love interest, a sexy German woods-woman played by Lena Headey, are all interesting and well played. The supporting cast, however, which includes an Italian torture expert and a stuffy French general, never really find their place in the story. The malevolent Italian, Cavaldi, is especially frustrating, spewing stilted jokes and whining, as I imagine Gilliam would, for a chance to play with his exquisitely intricate torture machines.

The film, while dark, might appeal to children. Gilliam’s flights of fancy have always had a childish bent, and the plot difficulties that bother an adult probably wouldn’t distract a younger viewer from the eye-candy. It is frustrating to see this film, knowing that if Gilliam could only rein himself in he might be able to make a work that is simultaneously imaginative and dense but also coherent. – Ben Popper