Month: September 2005

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Government by Pique

So here are all the liberals going into a giant snit just because President Bush appointed a veterinarian to head the women’s health section of the Food and Drug Administration. For Pete’s sake, you whiners, the only reason he chose the vet is because Michael Brown wasn’t available.

Now the veterinarian doesn’t get the job — just because those professional feminists raised such a stink. What’s wrong with a vet? If the mother is having trouble giving birth, you grab the baby by the legs and pull it out — it’s not brain surgery. Then you worm ’em, you tag ’em, and you spray for fleas. Why the fuss?

The only reason Bush even needed a new head of the Office of Women’s Health is because the last one, Susan Wood, quit. She was upset because the political hacks who run the agency refused to allow over-the-counter sale of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B.

True, that decision was made against the advice of the FDA’s own scientific advisory panel and will unquestionably result in more abortions and almost certainly damage to some women’s health. But why would anyone expect the Bush hacks to pay attention to scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended by the professional staff?

There’s a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration’s frequent fits of pique. These appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of “nanny-nanny boo-boo, I’ll show you.” Susan Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women’s health care? Ha! We’ll show her — we’ll put a vet in charge!

These pique-ish appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyah-nyah spirit. You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement, but there is a certain flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner of the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers’ health and safety.

Here’s another one: Put a timber-industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining-industry lobbyist, who believes public lands are unconstitutional, in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean-air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what?

The lesson of Katrina is that public policy is not a political gotcha game. The public interest is not well-served by appointing incompetents or anti-competents to positions of responsibility. Public policy is about our lives.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Illustration by Greg Cravens

1. After Hurricane Rita smacks into the Texas and Louisiana coasts, The Commercial Appeal runs a huge photo of buildings aflame in Galveston with the headline “Say a Prayer” and another headline below declaring, “Worst Fears Come True.” Turns out, despite a lot of flooding and some wind damage in both states, reports show that Rita causes few fatalities. Look, we’re already rattled by Katrina. You don’t have to scare us to death.

2. The University of Memphis Tigers lose a heartbreaker — a 37-31 overtime match with the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricanes. And for the second time in a season, the opposing team breaks our quarterback’s leg. Jeez, we’re running out of quarterbacks. Maybe training should include milk breaks.

3. Workers began dismantling the Memphis Belle for its removal to the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. One of the most famous planes of World War II, the Belle had been on display in Memphis since 1946, but the owners (as it turns out, the Air Force) decided we weren’t taking good enough care of it. Doesn’t the Air Force have enough planes?

4. Developers announce plans to build a whopping 300-acre shopping center in Collierville. Alderman Buddy Rowe opposes the concept, saying, “You’ll see an aircraft carrier come up the Wolf River before you see that large a development approved on that corner.” Oh, please. Since when have we ever said NO to development in Shelby County?

5. Uniformed FedEx pilots march outside The Peabody during the company’s shareholders’ meeting. It might have been to protest the pace of contract negotiations or it might have been the return of the flash mob.

Categories
News News Feature

Active Retirement

If it happened in a John Grisham legal thriller, readers might shake their heads.

How likely is that, they might wonder: A big federal investigation of political corruption in Memphis and Tennessee. The FBI and federal prosecutors hot on the trail of some of the most powerful and well-known politicos in town. In guarded secrecy, federal grand jurors meet with prosecutors to hear their case and make the fateful decision to indict or not indict. And the foreman of the grand jury is the crusty, battle-hardened, retired editor of the daily newspaper that investigated many of the same politicians.

Well, it’s not fiction.

When indictments by federal grand juries are returned to the clerk’s office, it’s usually the names of those indicted that attract attention. But in the paperwork for the recent indictment of Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks, the signature of the grand jury foreman was also notable: Angus McEachran, former editor of The Commercial Appeal.

Grand jury members are chosen from the randomly selected pool of people called for jury duty in the federal system. As anyone who has ever been on jury duty knows, the odds of being called are long but not all that long. Once called, many people are rejected or passed over for one reason or another and do not serve. The odds of being on a federal grand jury are longer, and the odds of being foreman of a federal grand jury investigating the Tennessee Waltz are longer still, given that there are four active federal grand juries. Moreover, both McEachran and Tennessee Waltz prosecutor Tim DiScenza are Harbor Town residents.

Federal court officials say this turn of events is simply a coincidence. McEachran declined to comment.

If grand jurors for political-corruption investigations were selected by committee instead of being chosen randomly, McEachran would be on anyone’s short list. He was editor of The Commercial Appeal for 10 years and held other editing jobs at the newspaper earlier in his career. While he was editor of The Pittsburgh Press before coming back to Memphis, that newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting. The Commercial Appeal broke several stories about state senator John Ford, who has been indicted in the Tennessee Waltz sting. McEachran had a reputation as a demanding editor with a taste for hard-hitting, well-sourced stories.

Grand jury sessions are secret, but McEachran might be either a barrier or a boon to prosecutors. The decision to indict is not unlike the decision to publish an unflattering story. Because of his 45 years of professional training, McEachran could be more skeptical and have a higher standard of probable cause than other jurors. At the same time, he is more knowledgeable about Memphis politics and the Ford and Hooks families than the average person. As an editor who supposedly once tied a reporter to a chair to get him to finish a story, he is unlikely to be a rubber stamp for the government.

According to U.S. District Court clerk Tom Gould, this is how the process of picking a grand jury foreman works. Every January and July, federal jurors are chosen at random from the pool of eligible voters in Shelby County. It is “purely random” whether they move to trial jury or grand jury duty. Grand jurors serve for 18 to 24 months. At any given time, there are four active grand juries in session, each with 23 members and 12 alternates.

Gould said he recommends two or three people for foremen of each grand jury, based on their work experience, education, and who he thinks would be a good person to head up an organization that could have to operate for as long as two years.

“It is not a volunteer situation,” he said. “They are designated by federal court.”

Gould, who took over the job earlier this year, said it was actually his predecessor, Robert DiTrolio, who recommended McEachran and the other foremen named prior to July.

As far as where the Tennessee Waltz investigation is headed — and our sources assuredly do not include McEachran — speculation among local officials is that the focus has turned from state lawmakers to members of the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission and possibly local developers. DiScenza has said in court that more charges are forthcoming against former state senator Roscoe Dixon, who resigned to become a top aide to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton and was indicted in the Tennessee Waltz sting six months later.

Categories
Opinion

The Next Big Thing in Sports

Memphians are used to seeing stories about big-dollar sports facilities such as Liberty Bowl Stadium, AutoZone Park, The Pyramid, and FedExForum. Now there’s serious talk of one that could make Memphians players instead of spectators.

Last week, the Salvation Army announced a $48 million gift from the estate of Joan Kroc, whose husband Ray was the founder of McDonald’s. Danny Morrow, area commander of the Salvation Army, told the Flyer that the Mid-South Fairgrounds is under consideration as the site of a 103,000-square-foot community center.

The Salvation Army was the favorite charity of Ray Kroc, and his wife’s $1.6 billion gift to the National Salvation Army for community centers across the country is one of the largest donations ever to a nonprofit organization. The Memphis grant includes $24 million for construction and $24 million for an endowment and operations, with the requirement that the local Salvation Army raise another $24 million.

Morrow said the community center would be modeled after the Kroc Center in San Diego, except that it would not include an ice-hockey rink. It would have indoor swimming, a gym, fitness room, performing arts center, child care, a Head Start program, a Salvation Army Corps (a church), and outdoor recreation and fitness.

“This will serve the neighborhood and the community at large,” he said.

A site has not been chosen, but the fairgrounds is getting serious attention in pre-development talks led by Kerr Tigrett, son of Pat Kerr Tigrett and the late John Tigrett, the driving force behind The Pyramid. Tigrett confirmed that the fairgrounds is being considered but declined to do an interview at this time.

Current tenants and buildings in the fairgrounds include the Memphis Children’s Museum, Liberty Bowl Stadium, the Mid-South Coliseum, the annual Mid-South Fair, Libertyland amusement park, flea markets, and a track and football field used for high school events. The old Tim McCarver baseball stadium was recently torn down.

The fates of the Coliseum, Libertyland, and the Mid-South Fair are uncertain. All are past their prime, and there was talk of closing or moving them before the Kroc Center came up. But they also have their defenders and their customers. The Kroc Center could force the issue and raise at least three new ones:

* Will public officials and their constituents be comfortable with the Salvation Army, a Christian organization, playing a major role on a public site, probably in partnership with other faith-based organizations and nonprofits?

* Can another $24 million be raised? Or even more than that if the community center is only part of an overall redevelopment of the fairgrounds?

* In a new master plan for use of the fairgrounds, should private residential development be part of the plan or should public property only be used for public purposes?

* Are other sites equally attractive, including the privately owned site of the old Mall of Memphis?

By way of disclosure, I am a contributing author of a five-year-old consulting report (and a bumper sticker promoting Midtown) recommending that the fairgrounds be turned into a community sportsplex modeled after Centennial Park in Nashville, the Mike Rose Soccer Complex, the Snowden Grove youth baseball fields in DeSoto County, or any other park or center that encourages people to participate in sports instead of watching them.

You don’t have to be a Midtowner or a futurist to connect the dots and to see the appeal of the fairgrounds as the site of the Kroc Center. The immediate neighbors are diverse, including Christian Brothers University, Chickasaw Gardens, Orange Mound, and the Cooper-Young neighborhood and commercial district.

The fairgrounds is reasonably accessible by car or MATA bus. If gas goes to $4 a gallon and sentiment builds for a light-rail extension of the existing trolley to nowhere that ends at Madison and Cleveland, one of the two proposed routes for an extension goes right past the fairgrounds.

Let the debate begin.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Flyer’s Redesign

I continue to be amused and amazed at readers’ responses to the Flyer‘s redesign. It’s almost like the fable of the blind men and the elephant, as famously recounted in a poem by John Godfrey Saxe that began thusly: Six men of Indostan went to see an elephant/(Though all of them were blind.)/That each by observation/Might satisfy his mind.

The first man felt the elephant’s side and thought the elephant must be “very like a wall.” The second man, who felt the elephant’s tusk, thought the elephant was “very like a spear.” And so forth. The point being, I suppose, that we each see things from our own perspective and are often blind to things that seem obvious to others.

Those of you who’ve written or left voice-mails about the “new” Flyer have been similarly divided in your opinions. Some of you apparently think we are “very like idiots” for messing with your “good old Flyer.” And yes, we’ve even been accused of the quintessential colloquialism: “fixing what ain’t broken.” Others of you have expressed delight and admiration at our good taste and splendid judgment. (You folks are “very, like, cool.”)

One rumor that apparently spread through the art community like fertilized kudzu was that due to the redesign we had reduced our coverage of the visual arts. I received numerous letters about this “decision” from gallery owners and painters. Let me shine a light on that part of the elephant. Such a thing was never even considered. We love artists and art and we’ll continue to cover the Memphis art community as we always have — maybe even a little better than we always have.

And that’s not elephant doo.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Music Music Features

Blue Notes

When Memphis International Records co-founder David Less read the script for Forty Shades of Blue, he immediately knew what he had to do: load the film with good local music.

“I wrote an e-mail saying if you’re gonna make this movie about a legendary Memphis producer, it needs to have the thing that Memphis itself has — the music,” Less recalls. “Ira [Sachs, the film’s director], who I didn’t know at the time, wrote back saying, ‘Exactly, exactly.’ He and Susan Jacobs, the music supervisor, came down from New York, and we had a lot of listening sessions, talking about what the movie might sound like.”

At one of those meetings, Less dredged up a memory of Jim Dickinson and Sid Selvidge, performing together at the Brooks Museum in 1976. “The museum had asked me to put together an exhibit of Memphis music, and we staged a remarkable concert series, stuff like Phineas Newborn Jr. and Furry Lewis,” he explains. “One was just Sid and Jim trading songs on guitar and piano. I kept thinking about the repartee between the two of them. They were like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in that movie The Sunshine Boys, and I wanted to try to recapture that.”

He sensed that Dickinson and Selvidge were perfect for a particular scene in the film, playing a party hosted by Alan James, the fictitious “legendary” producer who was loosely modeled on Sam Phillips. But the iconoclastic duo — famous for anchoring the group Mud Boy & the Neutrons — hadn’t performed together since their friend and bandmate Lee Baker was murdered in 1996.

“They wanted to do it, but they didn’t want to, because of Lee,” says Less. “I’ve known these guys for a long time, and I felt like I could say you really need to play together again. It’s not constructive not to.

“We’d done a couple of impromptu things that weren’t totally official because [Mud Boy member Jimmy] Crosthwait wasn’t there,” Dickinson says of the years since Baker’s death. Of the Forty Shades of Blue sessions, he drolly notes, “It was a payday.

“It was also was a warm-up for the Barbican thing,” Dickinson adds, referencing the concert he, Selvidge, and Crosthwait played during the It Came From Memphis festival held at London’s Barbican Arts Center last April.

Such comments aside, Dickinson says that he thoroughly enjoyed the process.

“Let’s do something that’s not Mud Boy,” Less suggested. “Let’s find some old songs, not Mud Boy songs, and let’s play without your children [guitarists Steve Selvidge and Luther Dickinson and drummer Cody Dickinson, who rounded out Mud Boy & the Neutrons in its later incarnations]. Let’s make it about just the two of you.”

The party scene, Less says, was originally scripted with actors Rip Torn (as Alan James) and Darren E. Burrows (portraying James’ estranged son, Michael) playing in the band. “We did an arrangement of ‘No Room for a Tramp,’ an old train song from the Depression. I brought in Sam Shoup on stand-up bass and Tommy Burroughs on fiddle and mandolin. Musically, it all worked together really well,” he says.

“Rip Torn was great,” Dickinson says, “someone I’ve considered impressive since I saw him on TV back in the ’50s. They tried to get me to piano coach him, which I thought I could do, but they were looking for something very specific. I had to tell him that I hadn’t read the bass clef in 30 years. I ended up turning him on to Tony Thomas instead.”

The first sessions for Forty Shades of Blue were cut at Ardent Studios, while overdubs were recorded at Memphis SoundWorks. After filming was finished, British musician Dickon Hinchcliffe composed the evocative score.

“My role was to produce the original music, not license stuff,” Less clarifies. “We knew the music was going to come out on Memphis International, so I suggested some of our artists, like The Red Stick Ramblers and Earl Thomas. The version of ‘A Little Bit of Soap’ that’s on the soundtrack was cut after the movie was finished. We couldn’t use the original version, sung by one of the actresses, so we had Reba Russell re-record it. Honestly, I don’t think this is gonna change anybody’s life, but I do think that the music in Forty Shades of Blue says Memphis.

“Craig Brewer‘s movie got a huge spin on Memphis,” Less says of Hustle & Flow, “and we’ll get another big spin off this. All of these projects work together as components building the [entertainment and tourism] industry. Memphis music — you just can’t say it enough.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Move It

Pilobolus is a small fungus that reproduces by generating a spore-filled bladder that ripens and then explodes with incredible force. Jonathan Wolken, co-founder and artistic director of the dance company Pilobolus, wants the company to be similarly awe-inspiring.

“When the company is creating a dance or experimenting with a movement,” Wolken says, “I ask myself, Will this make people’s eyes pop out?”

Pilobolus will be at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre on Saturday, October 1st, and will hold two master classes, in the morning and afternoon, before performing later that evening.

Wolken claims to have lost some of his physical energy with age, but his imagination seems to be running at a fever pitch. “Creating a dance is like cooking food,” he says. “You just keep adding flavors, keep spicing things. You never want to limit yourself.”

Wolken describes Pilobolus as an amalgam of theater and movement. This notion of multiple ideas building to a more powerful whole has been part of the company since the beginning. The group, which was founded in 1971 by students at Dartmouth College, has always relied on a collaborative choreographic process to generate its work. “To create a piece we go into the studio and we simply play. The process is intended to be less dictatorial than most choreography,” says Wolken.

Pilobolus’ GPAC performance will feature four pieces, one of which, Aquatica, is brand-new and another, Walklyndon, is one the company’s earliest works. “I think we benefit as a company by returning to these touchstones, these seminal works in our history,” says Wolken.

Walklyndon was designed as a colorful romp, performed without any music, only the sounds of the troupe’s rollicking action. The attention to slapstick and vaudeville and the sheer physical intensity mark Walklyndon as a classic within the Pilobolus repertoire.

The bill also features Day Two, a work created nearly a decade after Walklyndon. This work follows life’s trajectory, from its earliest appearance on earth to the moment when life took flight. The piece has strong narrative elements and was created through collaboration. “Most of the time we don’t come into the studio with a fixed idea of what we’re going to produce,” Wolken explains. “The dances are created first, without music.” The plot and music are then layered onto the dance. In the case of Day Two, Brian Eno and the Talking Heads provide the soundtrack to the primal atmosphere.

“I may be a lot older than I was when I started this, but I’m still in love with the insanity of movement, ” says Wolken. Insanity may seem like a strange word to use, but seeing Pilobolus live changes the way you think about your body. Pilobolus is a company that defies expectations.

Having been in the business for 30 years, Wolken knows the importance of creating a dance that can stand on its own. “The people in the company change over time, the river flows on. As we get older, we get wiser, and we have to start to let some of these pieces speak for themselves.”

Indeed, Pilobolus, based in Connecticut, is a great company because its appeal is self-evident. You don’t have to be a hard-core dance enthusiast to appreciate the power and ingenuity of form that Pilobolus prides itself on. This is dance that revels in the appeal of movement, not the conceptual framework that may surround it.

“We are a company that never employs smoke and mirrors,” Wolken says.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Listening Log

Orphan Teeth

Organ Thief

(self-released)

Sometimes on this debut album from four-piece local rock band Organ Thief, the guitars rev coolly and the vocals yammer distractedly and the band sounds pretty indie-rock, somewhere between the Strokes and Spoon maybe. And then sometimes a heavy bottom and fast, prominent guitars suggest metal. More often the band’s jerky percussive sound and jazzy tinges evoke Morphine minus the horns. Throw in plentiful sound effects, some acrobatic, flowery vocals, and song lengths that range from 2:49 to 10:50, and this is a band that’s all over the place, yet they never sound like they’re trying on musical costumes. They always sound like themselves. The songs don’t connect — at least not with me — but it’s a promising start. (“Seasick Sing-a-long,” “Sound of Sarcasm”)

— Chris Herrington

Grade: B

Organ Thief plays Young Avenue Deli Friday, September 30th, with Augustine and the

Color Cast.

Can’t Remember

the Last Time

The Central Standards

(self-released)

This acoustic-based four-piece band is more folk than country and not alt-anything, though their ever-present harmonies and jangle-folk songcraft are reminiscent of onetime alt-country standard-bearers the Jayhawks. The straightforward formula can get a little same-y, so Can’t Remember the Last Time works best when the band adds a musical flourish — the solo piano of “Teenage Heart,” the pedal-steel and percussion effects of “Nothing To See Here,” the galloping rhythm of “Gumball Machine Diamond Ring.” (“Nothing To See Here,” “Teenage Heart,” “Rosemary,” “Don’t You Stare”)

— CH

Grade: B

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the editor

Tim, Tim, Tim

Somebody needs to send Tim Sampson on a vacation. His “rants” have disintegrated into the same old Bush-hating crap week after week. Sampson used to tell jokes. He used to write about local stuff. He used to recommend stuff. Hell, even if it was the same crap every week, it was still funny. Now, it’s all Bush-bashing all the time. Take a breath, Timmy. Lighten up.

Marcus Powell

Memphis

Regarding Tim Sampson’s “rants”: I’d like to say how refreshing it is to finally hear someone stand up and be a voice in the darkness. So much of the mainstream media pussyfoots around what’s really going on, desperately trying not to offend readers and viewers.

Let’s face it, people: You voted a problem into office, and Sampson tells it like it is. Thank you, Flyer, for allowing him to rant.

Kristina A. Kennedy

Memphis

Government for

the People?

Abraham Lincoln said that we have a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people.” We as citizens should exercise our democracy by changing the mindset of citizen boards and commissions and elected representatives regarding the time that they have their meetings. While all of the meetings listed below are open to the public, these meeting times give special interests unfair access and effectively shut out participation by the majority of the working public.

The last two recorded meetings of the Air Quality Control Board have been at 1:30 p.m. on a Friday.

Memphis Light, Gas, and Water Division Board meetings are the first and third Thursdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

The Shelby County Groundwater Control Board meets the third Tuesday of each month at 3 p.m.

The Land Use Control Board meeting starts at 10 a.m. on the second Thursday of the month.

The Memphis City Council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month at 3:30 p.m.

The Shelby County Commission meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

I believe that the public should be able to fully participate in government decision-making.  Perhaps it is time to have a “civic plaza” constructed in the geographical center of Memphis. All the above meetings would be required to occur in the evenings and on weekends at this plaza. This would be a positive step to restore our local government to the people.

James H. BakerMemphis

The Redesign

The new layout? The Memphis Flyer turns 30, gets a real job, moves to the suburbs, and immediately becomes old and boring? Or maybe it’s ironic professionalism? Everyone wearing suits in the office now? Ummm, so the joke’s over next week?  Chris Wood

Memphis

Editor’s note: Actually, we’re only 15. Think of it as teenage rebellion — going against type.

Cohen is Right

In Jackson Baker’s recent article (Politics, September 15th issue), I agree with everything Senator Steve Cohen says about Governor Bredesen and health care. TennCare roles should not be cut, and the war on drugs is primarily a war waged for the protection of the pharmaceutical companies. It is only a well-funded lobby that keeps this issue out of the press. Those with the most money always win. Like Cohen, I too despair of our local, state, and federal government.

Beverly Lowe

Memphis

Our Kind of Guy

In “Liberal Bias” (The Fly-by, September 15th issue), Bianca Phillips quoted Jonathan Lindberg as saying: “There is no balance in the Flyer.”

That is simply not true. When I defended Mike Fleming after someone wrote a not very nice letter about him, you printed my letter. And you have printed countless letters criticizing your views. If that’s not balance, then what is it?

I could go on and on, for I have saved every issue of the Memphis Flyer, so I would have no problem backing up my argument.

Arthur H. Prince

Memphis

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Triple Jeopardy

Exit Fields? Pity the Shelby County Democrats, if you will. They just barely managed a show of unity two months ago after the election of a new chairman (compromise candidate Matt Kuhn) amid a three-way power struggle. And in a special election two weeks ago, they held on to John Ford‘s old state Senate seat by the squeaker margin of 13 votes for Ford’s sister Ophelia.

Now they have new worries. Richard Fields, an influential Democrat who won a seat on the party’s executive committee back in July, is in danger of losing it this month. The reason? Lawyer Fields has had the temerity to provide pro bono representation to Republican Terry Roland in Roland’s ongoing legal challenge to Ophelia Ford’s victory, which was formally certified Monday by the county Election Commission along 3-2 party lines.

In doing so, Fields may have transgressed against party bylaws. Or so maintains fellow committeeman Del Gill who has filed a resolution forcing a vote on whether to expel Fields at next week’s regular monthly meeting of the executive committee.

Gill’s resolution, which chairman Kuhn has agreed to put on the next week’s regular agenda of the executive committee, would present Fields with three choices:

1) He can “repudiate his support” of Roland and “dissociate his legal representation.”

2) He can voluntarily resign from the committee and remain a “bona fide Democrat.”

3) He can face a committee vote to remove him, which, if successful, would cause the term “none bona fide Democrat” to be attached to his name.

Gill’s co-signers on the resolution include William Larsha, Derrick Harris, and party vice chair Cherry Davis. More importantly, a brief survey of opinion indicates that he may have at least the tacit support of a broad array of Democrats, cutting across the usual party dividing lines.

The local party bylaw, Article III, cited by Gill could be subject to some legal parsing, however. While it prohibits, on pain of expulsion, “supporting candidates running against Democrats in General Elections,” either financially or otherwise, it makes no specific reference to legal representation.

Enter Loeffel. A month or two back, Debbie Stamson, an assistant and protégé to retiring Shelby County clerk Jayne Creson, was attending a meeting of the Shelby County Commission and wondered out loud if commission member Marilyn Loeffel still harbored ambitions of running for Creson’s job next year.

At the time, the commissioner, though not a signatory to the anti-term-limits suit pressed by three of her colleagues, must surely have been wondering if the courts would permit her to run again, if she chose to, in her Cordova district. So far they hadn’t, and, when asked, Loeffel confirmed that she had an undiminished interest in running for the clerk’s position.

That was despite the fact that Stamson had just held a well-attended monster fund-raiser at the Germantown home of supporter Wayne Mashburn, son of semi-legendary former clerk “Sonny” Mashburn.

Loeffel was undeterred by that show of force. The commissioner, who was first elected in 1998 on a tide of socially conservative votes, remains confident that that army will rise again to support her in what shapes up as a hotly competitive Republican primary campaign against Stamson, whose husband Steve will simultaneously be running for reelection as Juvenile Court clerk.

In her official announcement of candidacy Monday, Loeffel made brief reference to her two terms as a part-time commissioner and said: “I’ve chosen to ask Shelby County residents for the opportunity to serve them in a full-time capacity.”

Meanwhile, sometime radio talk-show host and former City Court clerk candidate Janis Fullilove looms as a potential Democratic opponent for either Loeffel or Stamson.

Enter Thaddeus. Another entry in next year’s political sweepstakes is broadcaster/blogger Thaddeus Matthews, the scourge of numerous politicians, including all members of the Ford family and, from time to time, Mayor Willie Herenton.

Matthews announced last week that he would seek the District 3 County Commission seat now held by the outgoing Michael Hooks, who has the misfortune of being both term-limited and indicted in the Tennessee Waltz extortion scandal.• Gibbons fund-raiser: District Attorney General Bill Gibbons filled the upstairs room at the downtown Rendezvous restaurant Tuesday night for a fund-raiser/reception that drew many of Gibbons’ fellow luminaries in addition to a large crowd of other supporters.

Among those attending in support of Gibbons’ 2006 reelection effort were both Memphis mayor Herenton and Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. Reaffirming his previously announced endorsement of Gibbons, the often-controversial Herenton joked, “I hope I do him more good than harm.” • It only hurts when he laughs: At a fund-raiser here last week at the home of city councilman Jack Sammons, Governor Phil Bredesen kept a smiling and relaxed demeanor despite the presence across the street of demonstrators protesting his paring of the TennCare rolls, a move he has defended as necessary for budgetary reasons.

“Inviting me is one way to get demonstrators to show up at the end of your driveway,” joked the governor, who said he had spoken with several of the protesters and urged the attendees at the fund-raiser to do so. “These are good people,” he said.• Focus on lobbyists: The governor’s appearance in Memphis came at the end of a day in which the members of his recently appointed Citizens Advisory Panel on Ethics held the last of several statewide meetings at the University of Memphis’ Fogelman Center.

Presided over by former state attorney general Mike Cody and former state senator Ben Atchley of Knoxville, the meeting was attended by several local legislators, including state senators Steve Cohen of Memphis and Roy Herron of Dresden and state representatives Paul Stanley and Brian Kelsey of Germantown and Dolores Grisham of Covington.

Cohen called for ratcheting up the current “cup-of-coffee” law to eliminate all lobbyist-funded favors for members of the General Assembly — a point that was seconded by Stanley and Kelsey. Asked how much legislation was initiated by lobbyists rather than members of the Assembly, Cohen answered bluntly, “Almost all of it.”

Grisham, who said she and two other relatively short-term Republican legislators shared the services of a single staffer, called the absence of adequate staffing for legislators “unacceptable.” It meant, she said, that increasingly legislators are forced to use lobbyists as sources of advice on legislation. “The good ones will give you both sides,” she said.

Current lobbyist and former legislator Rufus Jones of Memphis got the day’s best laugh when asked what the duties of a lobbyist were.

“The first thing you’ve got to do is get a client,” Jones said. “You can go up there and lobby all day long, but if you don’t have a client, you’re in trouble!”

The panel is scheduled to report its recommendations to Bredesen this week.• Taking the bitter with the sweet: Two Tennesseans hopeful of advancing themselves politically faced criticism last week.

Ninth District congressman Harold Ford Jr., who aspires to the U.S. Senate, was named “worst black congressman” by the “CBC Monitor,” a group that performed an analysis of the voting records of members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Ford was assigned a 5 percent satisfactory rate on nine selected “bright line” issues, including his vote for the stringent bankruptcy bill passed by Congress this past spring.

Tennessee senator Bill Frist faces insider-trading inquiries from both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning his sale of Hospital Corporation of America stock just before it took a nosedive on the stock market.

HCA was founded by Frist’s extended Nashville family, but Frist has said he had “no information about HCA or its performance that was not publicly available,” and supporters maintain that his action was related to a need to avoid potential conflicts of interest prior to his presidential run.