Month: August 2005

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

BARNSTORMING

EATING KUHN

Congressman Harold Ford Jr, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat has learned a most excellent lesson from his Republican role models in the Bush administration: don’t answer to criticism, dismiss all commentary as the reflexive chatter of cyber-cafe society. Saturday, at a unity-themed breakfast for Shelby County Democrats–minutes before that ill-fated event morphed into a pep rally for Ford’s Senatorial campaign– the famously pedicured Representative broke away from his awkward stumpafications to acknowledge recent criticism and to hurl a rhetorical, “eff you” at counterproductive information-jockies who aren’t nearly as important as himselvis.

“I don’t have the luxury to just sit back and write about [the problems facing America],” Ford said with the tone of an aristocrat bemoaning the neverending dearth of good cheap help. And if the super-busy, results-oriented, 21st-Century congressman hadn’t missed a razor thin vote on the pork-laden, deficit-bloating, generally disastrous if clearly trivial federal budget because he was too busy slurping down coon with Jimmy Naifeh he might be taken seriously. If he hadn’t roamed far outside the party mainstream on issues like the Bankruptcy bill, and Terri Schaivo, his arogance might even be tolerated. Stranger still, Ford’s declaration of self-importance came at a breakfast honoring Matt Kuhn who, a week earlier, soundly defeated David Cocke, Junior’s preferred choice for chairman of the Shelby County Democrats. Kuhn’s victory had been considered by many to be, to some degree, a criticism of the Ford faction, and a victory over dynastic rule. And then Kuhn started talking.

“It is so good to see everybody here together,” Khun began earnestly enough–and then he turned incomprehensible.”Jack Kennedy once said that a rising tide raises all boats. I don’t know a whole lot about sailing, but I know something about politics, and I just want to say that the rising tide we need to understand and we need to realize this in Shelby County, the rising tide in next year’s election is sending a Democrat from Shelby County to the United State Senate.”

WTF? Was Kuhn, who got so much support from the anti-Ford faction, and whose position absolutly demands neutrality really endorsing Junior? Probably not. Abundant cheerleader-like enthusiasm and abundant cheerleader-like dizziness leads to abundant cheerleader-like errors, and Kuhn, jacked up on adrenaline and the jet-powered coffee from Cafe Francisco was clearly talking faster than he could think. He was all wrapped up in “unity” and thanks to some clever Fordites 90% of the room was wearing a blue Ford stickers on their lapels. In other words, Kuhn let himself be played and turned the unity breakfast into a campaign rally. Or maybe he really thinks Junior’s the rising tide and is looking to get his dinghy up, it’s hard to say this early in a brand new ballgame.

One last note. Some local bloggers have gotten all giddy over Junior’s $2500 donation to Shelby County Democrats which was followed by a $2550 donation by A.C. Wharton. C’mon guys. Why would you get excited about a career politician donating to their party? For them it’s like dropping a couple of thou into their checking account. Jeez!

Categories
News

HERENTON SHIFTS PARKS ISSUE TO RDC, UT

“The buck stops here” is how Memphis mayor Willie Herenton began a keenly awaited press conference in the Hall of Mayors at City Hall Wednesday. That was his preamble to distancing the City of Memphis from any formal response to the current name-change controversy raging about three downtown parks that have associations with Confederate history.

By the time he had finished, the mayor seemed clearly, in the judgment of most news media present, to have passed that buck.

What he did, basically, was to propose deeding over Forrest Park to the neighboring University of
Tennessee medical school and Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park to
the Riverfront Development Corporation which now maintains them.

The mayor said the park issue had become “a distraction” and that the city should neither rename them nor associate itself with a recent proposal to disinter the remains of General Nathan Bedford Forrest from the park that bears his name.

“In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in our city, we do not need another event that portrays Memphis nationally as a city still racially polarized and fighting the Civil War all over again,” the mayor said. Herenton pointedly added that “digging up and moving graves or renaming parks is not the proper way of dealing with the issue,” but just as pointedly left the door open for agencies other than city government to do just that.

“If somebody else wants to do it, that’s fine,” he said, in response to repeated questioning on the point.

A century after Forrest Park became the resting place of Confederate Forrest, the battle has been joined again. Local
black leaders have invited Rev. Al Sharpton to come to Memphis and lead a
march through Confederate parks on August 13th. But Herenton made it clear he won’t be marching with “national hell-raisers” or “local hell-raisers,” either.

“During the last decade, our city has made great strides in race relations, economic development, rebuilding neighborhoods and improving the quality of life for our diverse citizenry,” Herenton said. “We will continue to build this city and not tear the city down with needless controversy.”

Ironically, in light of the spreading controversy, Forrest Park, which Herenton says he recently learned was once a cemetery and may include other graves besides those of Forrest and his wife, is more debated than used. Herenton said he wants the City Council to consolidate and reinvent some of the city’s 187 public parks ecompassing 5,300 acres.

Also ironic, given the buffeting the mayor went on to take from skeptical reporters on the matter of buck-passing, was Herenton’s assertion that the Forrest Park question was “a tough issue” and that some normally outspoken council members, including “some who want to be mayor,” haf ducked it and were “shaking in their boots.”

An unusually large crowd of about 50 people attended the press
conference in the Hall of Mayors, where portraits of past mayors hang on the walls.

“See anyone who looks like me?” Herenton joked by way of establishing his own civil rights credentials. A final irony? Several of the bearded gentlemen in the
portraits actually look like Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Categories
News

LOW COMEDY IN FEDERAL COURT

When Chattanooga’s Charles Love turned up in federal court in Memphis Tuesday to change his plea to guilty in the Tennessee Waltz matter, he might as well have come straight from Central Casting. Love looked just like what he was charged with for his role in the scandal – a bagman.

Dressed in a literally baggy brown four-button seat with cuffs that buckled low and overflowed onto the floor, Love let his attorney, Brian Hoss, do all the talking for him as the two of them listened to Judge Daniel Breen read from the inductment and, later, assistant U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza detail portions of the government’s proof against Love.

The reading of the two documents and Love’s appearance together created a scenario that hinted at every sordid thing one could imagine, not only about the specific crimes of bribery and extortion but about the increasingly disgraced Tennessee legislature itself.

Love had after all led the FBI’s make-believe “eCycle” moneybags men to one of the state Senate’s presumed pillars, the venerable Ward Crutchfield, also of Chattanooga, whose legislative influence could be had, he told them, if they had “gifts to bear.”.

And what the courtroom audience learned about Crutchfield, a co-defendant who has (so far) not changed his plea of not guilty, was in some ways more embarrassing to the senator’s reputation than the offenses he was charged with.

Crutchfield, said DiScenza, fastidiously avoided being so gross as take in the eCycle bucks he got and kept asking for with his own hands. He let his unnamed secretary do that, and when the FBI’s “undercover informant” (presumably the now infamous Tim Willis) came inquiring as to whether the main man had got his money, she was instructed to say that bagman Love had been “mighty nice to us today” or “mighty good to use today.” On those occasions when Crutchfield himself was coaxed into saying something for the FBI’s ubiquitous video- and audio-tapes, he acknowledged receipt with words like “Thank you for being my friend.”

Right. Some friends you got there, Senator.

But the tale of ignominy became pure slapstick when DiScenza’s account got around to the part of the sage involving another co-defendant, state Rep. Chris Newton of Cleveland.

It was not just that Newton the sole Republican bagged in the FBI operation, was charged with taking the bottom-dollar sum of $4500 for his promise to expedite legislation favorable to eCycle, it developed that Love had repeatedly skimmed from Newton’s payoffs, sometimes halving them. So the poor shlepper ended up, as compensation for the fate that now awaits him, with roughly enough change to run a bar bill at the downtown Sheraton in Nashville.

Afterward lawyer Hoss met with reporters and assured them, among other things, that despite what they’d heard in court, his suddenly repentant client had “never done anything like this before.”

Right.

Like the other defendants, who include ex- Memphis legislators John Ford and Roscoe Dixon as well as current state Senator Kathryn Bowers, Love was accused with a series of “offenses against the United States.” If Love turns state’s evidence, which seems likely, he might get off light on those charges, but his offenses against credibility will be a little harder to expiate.