Month: September 2005

Categories
Opinion

Can’t Touch This

Efficiency studies and image consultants. The U.S. attorney and the FBI. Tennessee Waltz and Tarnished Blue. Memphis Tomorrow and the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce. Leadership Memphis and the Leadership Academy.

Put them all together and many of the big things that vex Memphis, divide Memphis, and define young and old in Memphis would probably not change much.

Separation of church and state. Forty years after the infamous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s lawsuits against Bible readings and prayer in school, she might be surprised at some of the ways schools and churches are linked. Many parents could not have raised children without churches that provided daycare centers, after-school care, gyms, playing fields, and transportation, and groups such as Young Life that provide social life, diversity, summer camps, and trips.

Free speech. The word “m—–f—er” looks awful, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t, depending on your age, race, or level of sensitivity. Ten-year-olds can hear it in movies and songs every day. Everyone’s George Carlin. Oops, sorry. He was a comedian who had these seven words and …. oh, forget it.

Integration. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education and with the benefit of 40 years of affirmative action and minority recruiting, the story is resegregation. And not only in elementary and secondary public schools in the city of Memphis. It’s less acceptable to talk about self-segregation at Rhodes College, MUS, Hutchison, Tennessee State University, Morehouse, Jackson State University, or the Southern Heritage Classic.

Ford and Herenton. Willie Herenton and Harold Ford Sr. are giants in Memphis political history. The Ford dynasty is familial, the Herenton dynasty personal. How long can they last?

Drugs and binge drinking. Medical marijuana? Never heard of it during the recreational-drug haze of the ’60s and ’70s, when college towns imposed a $5 fine for possession of marijuana and drinking 21 beers at the campus hangout was a ritual on your 21st birthday. Talk about diminished moral authority.

Democracy. Free exercise of democracy in Iraq? How about democracy in Memphis? Single-digit percentage voter turnouts are the norm in many elections.

Taxes. Tennessee is a low-tax state relative to, say, New York and Connecticut, the former homes of International Paper. But Memphis is a high-tax city relative to Nashville and the rest of the state, especially for homeowners. You can blame regressive taxation on competition from border counties in Mississippi and opposition to a payroll tax. But if a Republican governor, Don Sundquist, could stake his career on tax reform and lose, what are the chances of significant changes?

Big-league sports. Maybe there’s a connection and maybe there’s not, but after Memphis got an NBA team and a new arena, the grass stopped getting cut on public property and property taxes and the cost of utilities went up. No payroll tax and no state income tax makes every year an all-star year for pro jocks in Tennessee. A “jock tax” or luxury tax and an NHL-style salary cap would restore some sanity in a business that depends on subsidized stadiums and free-agent players who stay a couple years then move on.

Prosperity pockets. From the riverfront to Collierville, our best neighborhoods, public and private schools, colleges, and parks have never looked better. Wealth begets wealth, but sometimes it’s a mile deep and an inch wide.

Philanthropy. You say charity isn’t controversial? A few years ago, some wealthy Memphians with nothing personal to gain tried to turn Shelby Farms over to a conservation trust but were rebuffed by the Shelby County Commission. In his book Is Bill Cosby Right, “hip-hop intellectual” Michael Eric Dyson describes the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy few as an American “philanthocracy.” Will some far-sighted multimillionaire revolutionize philanthropy and, knowing full well some of it will be wasted, write a big check to … the city treasury?

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Reform Issue

On the matter of legislative ethics reform, the kindest thing that can be said about both political parties in Tennessee is that they are being disingenuous. It might even be said they are making whoopee with the issue. In any case, as plans for a special legislative session on ethics reform go forward by fits and starts, the sincerity of both parties leaves something to be desired.

Public consciousness of the need for ethics reform has been heightened as never before — first, by the nonstop attention paid to former state senator John Ford, who became embroiled in a variety of investigations and accusations, and then, most crucially, when Ford and several other legislators were arrested, along with a couple of bagmen lobbyists, in the FBI’s “Tennessee Waltz” sting operation.

A number of proposals for internal reform that had been in the hopper for a year or two finally got acted upon this year, but in the wake of the sting — which came at the tag end of the regular legislative session — more action was clearly needed. Hence, Governor Phil Bredesen’s call for the special session, which may not come to pass until next year, it now appears.

Regrettably, both parties, each now led by an aggressive new chairman, have been grandstanding for weeks. Both have made useful suggestions, but their chapter-and-verse citations have somehow always managed to focus exclusively on the other party’s derelictions, real and imagined. Things reached a climax of absurdity recently when the same legislative Republicans who had been denouncing Democratic Memphis state representative Lois DeBerry for accepting a “birthday” gift of $200 from an FBI agent masquerading as a lobbyist declined to criticize Bartlett state representative Tre Hargett, the GOP’s leader in the House, for resigning to accept a “revolving door” job as a lobbyist with the Pfizer pharmaceutical firm.

Hargett was only “operating within the rules” as they existed, confided a couple of GOP sources, safely off the record. Well, so was DeBerry (the agent/”birthday” donor had never formally registered as a lobbyist), but that didn’t forestall the barrage of legitimate criticism aimed at her from Republicans.

We can foresee a need for two additional special sessions, actually — one to curtail excessive partisanship and the other on the issue of hypocrisy itself.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Cindy’s Wrong

I read with great interest Cheri DelBrocco’s account in last week’s Flyer of her visit to Cindy Sheehan’s protest site in Crawford, Texas. I used to live in Memphis and write for the Flyer. Fast-forward a few years and I’m now married to a soldier and living just outside the gates of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. And I have some pretty strong feelings about this war too.

As a mother and a military wife, I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan. She lost her son. I can’t imagine many things worse than that. Since the war began, my husband and I have lost several friends. Just a few months ago, the husband of one of my closest friends was killed in Iraq. I miss him terribly, but his death has not made me, or his widow, demand that the war end.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love for my husband to not have to go to war again. He’s already been gone for half of our marriage. Where I live, there’d be dancing in the streets if the war were truly over. But forcing our politicians to bring the troops home before the job is done is dangerous, reckless, and selfish.

The Vietnam War ended because U.S. politicians gave in to anti-war sentiment, and, as a result, the Vietnamese suffered horribly. That war is widely considered an American defeat, though, militarily speaking, it was an unprecedented success. U.S. forces won every single engagement but lost the war because the American people turned against it.

As the protest movement grew in the early 1970s, politicians made decisions designed to achieve, as President Nixon said, “peace with honor” — in other words, ways to appease protesters and get us the hell out of Vietnam without making us look like losers. But when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese hours after the last U.S. troops left in 1975, losers we became.

After the war, North Vietnamese forces used firing squads, torture, and concentration camps to punish people believed to have helped us. Between 1975 and 1978, nearly all of the Montagnard tribal leaders were imprisoned or executed. To this day, Montagnards are being tortured and killed by the ruling government. Two million Vietnamese refugees have fled persecution and poverty in their homeland since the U.S. withdrawal. Things were just as bad in neighboring Cambodia, which fell to the Communist Khmer Rouge in 1975.

In all, it is estimated that 2.5 million peasants in Vietnam and Cambodia were murdered when the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam.

Now consider Iraq. Before the U.S. invasion began in March 2003, Iraq was under the control of the stable, if tyrannical, Saddam Hussein. It was a country where women enjoyed more freedoms and people were more educated than elsewhere in the Middle East. And, for the most part, it was an orderly country. Still, in that orderly country, Saddam killed thousands of Kurds, Iranians, and Shiite Muslims. Whole villages were razed, and property was confiscated and turned over to Saddam’s supporters.

Iraq is not orderly today. If we “bring them home now,” we leave 26 million Iraqis vulnerable to the bullying tactics of terrorist groups. Iraq might fall into chaos as rival groups battle for power; the people might choose to install a Taliban-type fanatical government just to restore order — as the Afghans did after their country was devastated by war with the Soviets; or Saddam’s allies might resort to the familiar tactic of genocide. Undoubtedly, anyone who helped U.S. forces during the war would be killed.

That’s my problem with the demand that the U.S. withdraw immediately. Doing so is immoral and inhumane. It’s the equivalent of condemning millions of people to a brutal death. By trying to force politicians into making “peace with honor” decisions, Cindy Sheehan and all those who protest with her will share the blame for the millions who stand to suffer if we leave Iraq too soon.

Bringing our soldiers home might save a few hundred, even a few thousand, American soldiers in the short-term. But it will condemn all of us to fighting Middle Eastern terrorism for generations.

Categories
Cover Feature News

First and 20

In honor of the jersey number every University of Memphis football fan — and every opponent, for that matter — will be watching this fall, here are 20 points of interest as the Tigers prepare to kick off the 2005 season.

1 Keep your eye on the record-breaking All-America candidate. Yeah, the kicker.

The U of M has suited up some talented placekickers in recent history. Joe Allison was a first-team All-America in 1992 and received the very first Lou Groza Award. Ryan White was named to Playboy’s preseason All-America team in 2000 and once kicked five field goals in a single game. But Allison, White, and every other Tiger kicker now take a back seat to Stephen Gostkowski. Entering his senior season, Gostkowski is already the school’s alltime leading scorer (268 points) and needs just four field goals to break Allison’s career record of 51. Ironically, Gostkowski may be in a race with his poster-boy teammate, DeAngelo Williams (248 career points), for a scoring mark that may not be broken for a generation or two.

2 Who says defense wins championships?

During Tommy West’s one season as defensive coordinator under Rip Scherer (2000), his Tiger defense gave up only 182 points for the season (16.5 per game). They went 4-7. Last year, Memphis gave up more than twice as many points (375, or 31.2 per game). They went 8-4 and finished the season in a bowl game. Scary to think where the 2005 Tigers might go if the defense could lower last year’s average by about 10 points.


3 Tommy West is becoming “the face” of Memphis football.

Longtime Tiger faithful will scoff at this, citing Billy Murphy and his 91 wins over 14 seasons on the Memphis sidelines. And credit is due Murphy, for he coached in an era when there weren’t 28 bowl games, cable television, and the Internet to splash a head coach’s face on the consciousness of football fans near and far. Nonetheless, West has seized command of what had been a moribund, even neglected program. Over the past two seasons, behind the efforts of the now-departed Danny Wimprine and Williams, West made the University of Memphis at least a peripheral threat to the Mid-South’s SEC behemoths. (Can you imagine during, say, the Chuck Stobart era an Ole Miss coach talking about “building a fence” around Memphis for recruiting purposes?) Best of all, West has acted since day one like this is precisely where he wants to be. Give him another decade and a few more bowl appearances, and Tommy West will be to the U of M what Woody Hayes is to Ohio State.


4 Who’s the next Danny?

Okay, young Tiger quarterbacks, here’s your mission should you accept it. Fill the shoes of the recently graduated Wimprine, the first Tiger passer in history to accumulate 10,000 yards, a guy who threw 50 more touchdown passes than the next most prolific Memphis signal caller, a leader who played in as many bowl games (two) as the program had seen over its first 90 years.

West has chosen junior Patrick Byrne to take the torch from Wimprine, backed up by a pair of freshmen in whom the coach has shown some confidence (Will Hudgens and Billy Barefield). Byrne has lettered the last two seasons but primarily as a kicker. (He handled kickoff duty, with Gostkowski focusing on field goals and PATs.) Need some passing stats? Byrne completed 12 of 17 throws in the spring Blue-Gray intrasquad game and was named co-MVP. I asked Williams about his thoughts on the quarterback transition, and his answer says a lot about how “critical” this element may be to the Tigers’ fortunes this season. “As long as he can hand me the ball,” deadpanned Williams, “I think we’ll be fine.”


5 Eleven — maybe 12 — circles on the calendar.

Add up the 2004 records of the Tigers’ opponents and you get 53 wins and 75 losses. Hardly the kind of gauntlet a BCS power must face on its way to New Year’s Day. But West would be the first say that you have to outscore your opponent, whether it’s Louisville or Tulsa. There will be some hot spots on this schedule, starting with Ole Miss on Labor Day and cresting during a three-week stretch in November with games against UAB, Tennessee, and Southern Miss. With health and some good fortune, a nine-win regular season is a possibility.


6 About that 12th circle.

For the first time, Conference USA will hold a championship game, to be played between the conference’s East and West division champs on December 3rd. (The Tigers are in the East division, along with Southern Miss, UAB, East Carolina, UCF, and Marshall.) If you’ve ever watched the Big 12 or SEC championship games, you know these tilts are as close as the convoluted world of college football comes to “winner-take-all.” The Tiger coaching staff will have this game on their minds just as much as any bowl aspirations.


7 If you visit the Liberty Bowl, expect a Tiger bite.

Don’t look now, but Memphis is 9-3 at home over the last two seasons. And one of those losses — the 56-49 shootout with Louisville last season — was one of the 10 greatest games ever played at the Liberty Bowl. Having averaged more than 40,000 in home attendance two straight years (a first for the program), the U of M is building the kind of home-field advantage expected of college football’s elite. With six games on home turf this fall, this is an advantage the Tigers must retain.


8 Where did the grass stains go?

Memphis will play its first season on FieldTurf, the latest in artificial-surface technology, a “rug” already used by several NFL teams. It’s a mixture of fake grass, sand, and rubber. And it will not give when certain ball carriers utilize their cutting ability to make defenders do that ballet-in-shoulder-pads called “grasping at air.” Asked if he had any concerns about playing on artificial turf his senior year, Williams said, “No. This actually fits my style.” He wasn’t smiling. Neither will opposing linebackers when facing Williams in the open field.


9 A secondary star

Secondary, as in defensive backfield. Wesley Smith enters his junior season having already twice been named first-team All-Conference USA. He is rightfully on the Jim Thorpe Trophy watch list (an honor that goes to the country’s finest defensive back). A native of Oxford, Mississippi (what was that about fences?), Smith nursed a shoulder injury in spring practice, and his health will be critical to a defensive unit he will anchor from 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Smith joins a lineage of great Tiger defensive backs that includes Jerome Woods, Ken Irvin, Idrees Bashir, Mike McKenzie, and Reggie Howard. If Tennessee can call itself Wide Receiver U, when does Memphis become DBU?


10 Labor Day turf war.

Has there been a bigger opening game in Tiger history? Ole Miss and their first-year coach, Ed Orgeron, will be trying to establish — for a national audience watching on ESPN — which school is the Mid-South’s preeminent football institution. Memphis will raise the curtain on its first legitimate Heisman Trophy campaign, all the while trying to beat the Rebels for the third straight time (last accomplished in 1976). Oh yeah, and this will be the first Memphis game not started by one Danny Wimprine since 2001.


11 DeAngelo’s five favorite players.

Perhaps the most charming element of the DeAngelo Williams phenomenon has been the star’s insistence on greeting the postgame media contingent with at least one of the giant men who open holes for him week after week. The 2005 U of M offensive line will feature precisely one player — junior center Blake Butler — who started last season. Left guard Andrew Handy (a two-year starter) returns after sitting out 2004 with an ankle injury. The three rookies on the line — right tackle Abraham Holloway, right guard Andy Smith, and left tackle Willie Henderson — average 314 pounds. It’s a line built for the running game. Not to mention some face time on the local news.


12 Slay that dragon!

Considering the UAB program has existed for all of 14 seasons (and only nine in Division I-A), the Blazers’ recent dominance in their series with Memphis is perplexing. The Tigers have dropped their last five meetings with UAB and only last season scored as many as 20 points (falling 35-28 in Birmingham). Last season’s defeat was especially disheartening, as it prevented the Tigers’ first 4-0 start since 1961. (Memphis would have been 6-0 entering the Cincinnati game in late October.) Every football program has benchmarks. You can be certain Tommy West considers beating UAB primary among his. UAB plays at the Liberty Bowl on November 1st, a Tuesday-night game to be televised on ESPN2.


13 When DeAngelo’s not running the ball …

No, don’t head for the hot dog stand. The Tigers have a solid receiving corps, led by senior Maurice Avery, who has quietly climbed into the Memphis top 10 for career receptions (87) and receiving yards (1,177). Byrne will also be targeting juniors Ryan Scott (15 catches for a 21-yard average in 2004) and Mario Pratcher. Then there’s Taz Knockum, already a member of the C-USA All-Name Team (though it seems he’s a receiver with a linebacker’s tag).


14 Magic number: 8

Not since the peak of the Billy Murphy years (1960-63) has Memphis won as many as eight games in three consecutive years. With six home games this season, such an achievement should be expected.


15 New conference neighbors.

Spinning positive in basketball terms on the revamped C-USA is going to be a chore. But when the likes of Louisville and South Florida are replaced by old Southwest Conference stalwarts like SMU and Rice, the football conference honestly doesn’t suffer. Granted, SMU has its bruises, and Rice will be most valuable for what it does to the league’s academic rating. But Texas football being Texas football (and let’s not forget UTEP), C-USA is a step higher on the pigskin charts.


16 A West by any other name …

Marcus West’s value to the Tiger defense this season can’t be overstated. Considering his partners on the line may well be Ryan Williams (a redshirt freshman) and Rubio Phillips (nary a career start), West will be critical, particularly for the Tigers’ defense against the run. A second-team all-conference pick in 2004 when he led Memphis with six sacks, West must occupy opposing linemen in order for the speedy Tiger linebackers to fill gaps and make plays. Furthermore, whatever attention West attracts from opposing lines will ease the growing pains for his linemates.


17 November 12th is worth highlighting.

Doesn’t November 9, 1996, seem like a long time ago? Memphis and Tennessee have played three times since Chris Powers caught that Orange-squeezing pass to beat Peyton Manning and friends. The U of M lost by a single point in Knoxville in 1999, by two at home a year later, then got buried in Knoxville in ’01. Williams was a senior at Wynne High School in Arkansas the last time these two met, so it should be an interesting introduction when 100,000 orange-clad fans fill Neyland Stadium to make his acquaintance. If Williams is still in the running for the Heisman as Thanksgiving nears, this is the game where he can win it.


18 The black-and-gold standard.

Louisville won the C-USA championship last season, but year-in, year-out, it’s Coach Jeff Bower’s Southern Miss Golden Eagles that set the pace for this conference. USM has had 11 consecutive winning seasons under Bower and has won four C-USA titles since 1996. Memphis won the Black-and-Blue game last year for only the second time since 1994. (Williams’ 75-yard touchdown scamper to clinch the victory was the Tigers’ single biggest play of the year.) The U of M will travel to Hattiesburg — where they haven’t won in 21 years — the week after facing Tennessee.

19 Tune in to the O.C.

Smith and West are the defense’s primary all-star candidates, but let’s not overlook senior cornerback O.C. Collins. A rare four-year starter, Collins has compiled 191 tackles and six interceptions since his arrival in 2002. He’ll be the only senior in the Tigers’ secondary.


20 The last time you’ll see this number on a Tiger’s back.

What more can be said to hype a player who has his own customized race car, miniature and full-size? DeAngelo Williams may win the Heisman Trophy, though he probably won’t. (Need some motivation, D? In ranking the top 10 Heisman hopefuls, Sports Illustrated didn’t so much as consider you a dark horse.) He may rush for 2,000 yards this season. Again, he probably won’t. What he will do is add to his career total of 4,062 yards and 41 touchdowns, already school records, to the point where the “Greatest Tiger Ever” conversations skip to second place on the list. Better yet, he’ll exemplify student-athlete, playing his fourth season when he could easily be playing in the NFL. And he’ll personify what Tiger football can be for every 10-year-old pigskin dreamer in the Mid-South.

I had a chance, last July, to walk on stage at The Orpheum with Williams. (He was part of a backstage cover shoot for Memphis magazine.) There wasn’t a single person in the theater, other than staffers making arrangements for the next show. Williams looked way up to the ornate ceiling of the Bluff City’s most famous entertainment hall, shook his head slightly, and said, “I’ve never been here before.” If there could be a single statement from the collective voice of all those Tiger fans to have thrilled at Williams’ play in Memphis, it would probably be just that. We’ve never been here before.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Intoxicating Politics

“Jon Stewart is the most powerful liberal in America, and there’s nothing Washington can do to stop it!” shouts Zach Whitten, pounding his fist on a table at Celtic Crossing, the new Irish pub in Cooper-Young.

The young, curly-haired man is seated with about 10 others in the bar’s back room. The room is usually reserved for nonsmokers, but on Thursday nights, a different crowd gathers here: the new drinking club for Democrats, Drinking Liberally.

Everyone laughs at Whitten’s comment. Then someone brings up Air America Radio, and soon Whitten & Co. are deep in conversation.

“Those people probably wouldn’t normally just start talking to one another in a bar,” says the club’s co-founder Sarah Rutledge during its second meeting. “That’s what this is all about.”

The social drinking club for left-wingers was started in New York in May 2003 by friends Justin Krebs and Matthew O’Neill as a way to offer Dems support and a place to strategize. But mainly it was formed to give Democrats a place to discuss politics over a few beers and meet some like-minded people. As their Web site states, “You don’t need to be a policy expert and this isn’t a book club — just come and learn from peers, trade jokes, vent frustrations, and hang out.”

Rutledge and her husband Brandon Fischer started the local chapter of Drinking Liberally about a month ago. Rutledge had run across something about the national group on the Internet and felt Memphis could use its own chapter, one of around 60 nationwide.

“Our point is not to take action or organize rallies,” Rutledge says. “This is just a place to discuss politics in an anxiety-free environment.”

In their first week, discussion topics included Harold Ford Jr., gay adoption, the city’s lax park maintenance, and why people should scoop their dog’s poop.

“I actually started scooping!” one guy exclaims.

At the second meeting, there’s less politicizing and more socializing, although Ralph Nader comes up as do questions over third-party voting. There’s also some talk about the rumor that Christopher Walken may run for president and why Oprah would be a good candidate.

Some chapters are more structured than others. One in Washington, D.C., hosts a speaker each week, and while Rutledge hopes to have some local politicians join in, she says she won’t push the group to have any certain structure.

“If someone shows up and doesn’t want to discuss politics but wants to talk about the latest style of blue jeans, they’ll still be hanging out with people who share their ideals, even if we’re not directly discussing them,” Rutledge says.

With a name like Drinking Liberally, one might expect the night to result in some drunk Democrats and heated discussions. So far, no one’s gotten out of hand.

“After a cocktail or a beer, you really open up,” Ray Rico says, as he sips his drink.

The national group’s site even has a “Guide to Politically Correct Drinking” that outlines which companies have donated to Republican causes and which ones support the Democratic way. For instance, did you know Bacardi is a contributor to Tom DeLay’s political action committee? Or that V&S Spirits, the makers of Absolut Vodka, tend to be progressive in their views?

In any case, Rutledge finds the guide overwhelming so she doesn’t use it. Most of the people at this meeting are drinking pints of Blue Moon or Guinness, while a couple others sip vodka tonics.

She picked Celtic Crossing because it serves pitchers of beer but isn’t a dive. “I was looking for convenience and something comfortable,” she says. “But it had to be nice enough for people in Germantown. I don’t want to drag them to some ill-repaired corner on Madison.

“Memphis is so isolated. It’s a strange social environment, and I want this club to offer a way for people to meet people from all over the city,” Rutledge says. “People may be from different neighborhoods, but we share the same beliefs. Here we can get together and talk about them.”

www.DrinkingLiberally.org

Drinking Liberally

meets every Thursday, 6:30 p.m.

Celtic Crossing (903 S. Cooper)

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Constant Gardener

A couple of years ago, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles was nominated for an Oscar for his first film, the Rio gangster yarn City of God. A sensationalistic tale of street violence among youth gangs, City of God was emotionally blank, but as an exercise in pure film style it was undeniably gripping, pitting a neorealist mise-en-scène against a phalanx of post-digital effects.

Now Meirelles has parlayed that achievement into a second film that comes with a more upscale pedigree: The Constant Gardener is adapted from a John Le Carré bestseller. It stars Ralph Fiennes, who steered the ostensibly similar The English Patient to Oscar glory. It has a global sweep and a bigger budget.

The Constant Gardener, a message-movie thriller about the connections between corporate corruption and Third World misery, is a more conventional film than City of God. Its narrative and thematic broad strokes — a man overcoming his complacency (or neutrality) to spring into action; political upheaval seen through the prism of one-on-one romance — are longtime tendencies of English-language cinema, with Gone With the Wind and Casablanca only the most notable examples. But in this case more conventional doesn’t mean less successful. The Constant Gardener may be less immediately bracing than City of God. It may have less surface spectacle. But it digs deeper. In Meirelles’ debut, style tended to overwhelm story. Here he finds a better balance.

Fiennes is Justin Quayle, a mild, mid-level career British diplomat stationed in Kenya. He meets Tessa (Rachel Weisz), a younger, fiery would-be human-rights activist, while giving a speech back home in London. Later married, Tessa joins Justin in Africa. There, while he’s performing his diplomatic duties, she takes a more hands-on approach to helping a populace wracked by poverty and AIDS.

The film opens with Justin seeing Tessa off at the airport. She disappears into the background blur as he stands rapt. It’s a lovely scene and the last time he’ll see her alive. From there, Meirelles tells the story by cutting between two narrative lines. One is a flashback that follows Justin and Tessa’s meeting through their relationship and her murder. The other follows Justin’s investigation into that murder, in which a conspiracy is discovered that implicates international pharmaceutical giants and his own government.

Even though Meirelles’ visuals are subservient to the story, he remains an active stylist. Justin and Tessa’s first sexual encounter is dreamy — filmed in tight close-ups against a white background that banishes the world outside. When the film lands in Kenya for the first time, Meirelles uses a hand-held camera to follow along the top of a child’s head as he weaves through a colorful, noisy shantytown crowd. In City of God, these flourishes would have been ends in themselves. Here they merely enhance the narrative or emotional information Meirelles is trying to impart.

It’s less showy, but with The Constant Gardener, Meirelles has found a way to unify form and content, which is what the best narrative filmmaking is all about.

The Constant Gardener

Opened Wednesday, August 31st

Highland Quartet

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Spotlight on: Film Festival Season

For years now the Memphis area has had “blues festival” seasons, when a rash of regional music fests dot the calendar at the same time. But now we’re entering relatively new territory: Welcome to film festival season.

The annual Indie Memphis Film Festival, scheduled for October 21st-27th, is currently putting the final touches on its lineup. But local movie buffs who don’t want to wait can get their film-fest fix this week at the third Oxford Film Festival, which will run from Tuesday, September 6th, through Sunday, September 11th, at the Gertrude Ford Center on the campus of the University of Mississippi.

Nearly 100 films were chosen from the more than 300 that were submitted, according to festival director Elaine Abadie, and the selection ranges from local interest to international concerns. The festival opens at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday with the documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown, which won the best documentary award at the inaugural festival in 2003. Abadie says that this year’s festival is being dedicated to Brown, a renowned Oxford-based writer who died last fall.

Memphis will be represented in the form of local director Chris McCoy‘s Automusik Can Do No Wrong, the comic mockumentary that won the Hometowner Award for best narrative feature at last year’s Indie Memphis fest. McCoy is scheduled to appear at the screening, which takes place at 9 p.m. Thursday. Much to McCoy’s delight, his film is screening immediately after Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a guerrilla filmmaking effort by three boys from the Mississippi Gulf Coast who spent seven years — starting at age 12 — producing the shot-by-shot remake of the Harrison Ford blockbuster. McCoy saw Raiders in February when both films were screening at the Magnolia Film Festival in Starkville, Mississippi, and raves about it.

“Raiders is great,” McCoy says. “Anybody that wants to make a movie should watch this.”

Other potential highlights include a slate of music documentaries, including the North Mississippi blues survey You See Me Laughin’: The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen and Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, about the late instigator of the alt-country genre. The festival will also include panels on screenwriting, casting, producing, and documentary filmmaking. Single-day passes are $10, full-festival passes $45.

As for Indie Memphis, the festival’s lineup is clicking into place thanks to an earlier submissions deadline, according to festival organizer Les Edwards. With the attention garnered for regional Southern filmmaking at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the timing couldn’t be better for a big splash from a festival that dubs itself “The Soul of Southern Film.”

Though the submission period has closed for the primary portions of the festival, there are still a couple of programs accepting entries: a youth showcase for area filmmakers 18 and under and a music-video showcase sponsored by LiveFromMemphis.com. The submission deadline for both of these programs is Thursday, September 15th.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

You know, you almost have to love Pat Robertson, bless his heart. He’s a man who says what’s on his little mind. Like claiming hurricanes will hit Orlando, Florida, because

Disney World hosted a “gay day.” Or claiming equal rights for women would turn them all into home-wrecking

lesbians. And claiming that equal rights for women — and homosexuals — were the cause of 9/11. You just have to love him. I’ve looked at many so-called left-wing Internet sites to find out the general reaction to his suggesting that covert agents of the United States government murder the president of Venezuela — that’s the way to bring down gas prices! — and it’s all pretty funny. Letter-writing campaigns calling for his evangelical television show to be yanked from the airwaves! Angry groups denouncing him as a threat to the good old U. S. of A! People seriously worried about why the Bush administration isn’t jumping up and down and screaming, “We are not like him! We don’t believe in murder!” There might be a good reason they aren’t jumping up and down to distance themselves: They probably agree with him, and they probably are plotting to kill or overthrow Chavez. After all, he is trying to help the poor in his country, and they love him. I’m quite certain there are thousands of PR spinners out there spinning around in anti-gravity circles and crapping their pants with brilliant ideas about what all camps should do over this snafu. I say, big woo-hoo. I just wonder how Pat is doing today. And I wonder what next he might say! Okay. I’ll stop. Look, we have bigger things about which to worry, what with a president of our own with an IQ of a lentil. Still, my favorite thing so far is Pat’s apology. Even though he couldn’t come up with an alternative meaning of assassination, he played the only card he could and said that when he suggested that the U.S. government could just “take [Chavez] out,” he could have meant that instead of murdering him in cold blood as he previously encouraged us to do, agents of our government could have merely “kidnapped” him. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. I love this man. So much so that I did some research, and I found out why Robertson hates Chavez so much. See, they used to date. Each other, that is. This is no lie. They had a house in the Hamptons and a huge collection of Sylvester records to which they regularly danced before going out on the town and day-tripping to Fire Island. Well, one day Hugo came home to their tony little cottage and asked Pat to buy something that would take him from 0 to 200 in five seconds, and Pat bought him a pair of scales! Okay, so those are all lies. I apologize. Smack makes me say weird things and taints the way I see things. (Does anyone know of a psychiatrist who won’t try to heal me by asking me to say five positive things about myself in the mirror in some kind of creepy self-affirmation exercise?) But Pat’s apology was priceless. It was almost as good as something I read the other day in a full-page Commercial Appeal advertisement from some organization formed to save the historic name of our beloved Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. This isn’t an actual quote, but one of the reasons the people were asking readers to send them money — allegedly to save the park’s name — was that Forrest wasn’t such a bad guy after all because he took 44 of his slaves with him into battle! I’ve never spit out an Amoco-bought sandwich in laughter that fast in my life. Yes, goooood Nathan Bedford Forrest. That was so kind of you. After inspecting their teeth and purchasing those human beings, he was good enough to them to take them into a war he was fighting to maintain the right to keep owning them. At least the ones he wasn’t raping and impregnating. Hell yeah, leave his statue there. Not many people can pull off something like that. Except for maybe Pat Robertson, my new hero. Now that he’s suggested killing Chavez and Chavez is thinking of ways to sell oil at a reduced price directly to poor communities in the United States and cut everyone else here off, maybe he’ll lay a few barrels on Memphis and we can just burn the statue down. Oh, don’t frown. I’m just clowning around. I’m just freaked out that there are bodies down there in the park in the ground. How creepy is that? Almost as creepy as Pat!

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

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. representative 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 many 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, 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 Deborah 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 on 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 congres-sional standards.

Simultaneous with the parole-board flap, but presumably unrelated to it, 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 22nd of last year: “Ford’s press secretary says the Congressman goes to Miami often to visit his father, former Representative 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, and his departure was not altogether a surprise.

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 booksigning, one week after an appearance here by his nemesis/successor Bill Frist, who was the subject of a decidedly unfriendly reference in Lott’s newly published memoir, Herding Cats.

In the book, the Mississippian accuses former protégé Frist of “betrayal” for taking advantage of Lott’s impolitic praise of centenarian Strom Thurmond in order to take over as majority leader. As noted here last week, Frist 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 I respect tremendously, Trent Lott, who’s served the people of Mississippi in a very positive and constructive way.”

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 Representative 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 fund-raising.

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 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. — JB

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q & A: Abdel Darras

As gas prices continue to soar, the squeeze is on both consumers and merchants. Abdel Darras is owner and part-time operator of the BP station at Union and Myrtle. On a recent afternoon, he is busy as customers stream in and out to pay for gas, buy hot food, and purchase cigarettes and lottery tickets. But Darras is concerned that his customers don’t understand the situation that gas prices create for businesspeople like him. — By Ben Popper

Flyer: Have you noticed a drop in the number of customers purchasing gas?

Darras: Oh yes, definitely. It has been a gradual decline, but once the prices started climbing over $2.40, I started to see a change. I would say that now I’m doing about 20 percent less business than before. Of course, a lot less people are buying premium gas and everyone is spending less money inside the store.

Do people blame you for the cost of gas?

A lot of people come inside and complain because they think it’s my fault. I don’t set my own prices. I used to see a profit of maybe 5 or 6 cents a gallon. Now I’m lucky to get 1, maybe 1 and a half cents. People think we’re gouging them, but it’s just the opposite. How do you set your price?

The refinery sets our price; they call us every day.

What do you think is causing the price increase?

Well, I think a part of the problem is not enough supply, but I think the main problem is the market. We have to go by the price of petrol, and overanxious investors are causing a lot of the price inflation.

Are you worried?

I’ve been in the gas business for 15 years. I am worried because I don’t think the prices will ever go back to their original levels. I was selling gas in 2000 at 77 cents a gallon. That will never happen again.