Month: November 2005

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The Poker Lounge has been spreading the game of No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em all across the Memphis area. The local company has set up poker tournaments from downtown to DeSoto County. They’ve even worked a few bar mitzvahs.

“You have parents setting up tournaments for 12- and 13-year-old boys,” says Ira Lipsey, one of the founders of the Poker Lounge. “It’s strange, but the kids see it on TV, and they play it on the Internet. I was talking to the mom of one of the kids, and she said the kids play all the time. They know all about it.”

The Poker Lounge came about last fall after Lipsey’s cousin, David Kaplan, began pushing the idea of setting up free poker tournaments in Memphis bars. He’d seen it work in the bars around the University of Kansas, where he was a student.

“Honestly, in the beginning, I told David there was no way it would work, that the bars would not pay us to do it,” Lipsey says. “He said to give it a shot and see what happens.”

They recruited Kaplan’s high school friend Lawson Arney to run the Web site (ThePokerLounge.net), handed out flyers after Grizzlies games, and started a weekly tournament at Newby’s. During the first few weeks, they drew about 20 or 30 people to each tournament.

“It took off from there, and we’ve been adding locations ever since,” Lipsey says.

They now set up the tournaments in about 13 area bars and are expecting to add more in the upcoming weeks.

This is how it works: The Poker Lounge provides all the equipment for a game — the tables, the cards, and the chips — charging the bar a fee for each table that is filled. A pit boss makes sure the rules are being followed. There is no entry fee for the tournaments, and no money is bet, only chips.

Each tournament has a first-place prize, such as a poker-chip set or a hand-held poker game. The winner also qualifies for the Tournament of Champions, which is held every six to eight weeks. Whoever wins that gets a weekend stay for two in Las Vegas, including airfare and hotel.

“I think the beauty of it is that when you play in these tournaments, it doesn’t require you to spend a dime. You can come in and learn, although experienced players have fun too,” says Gary Munyan, general manager of Celebrity’s, a Poker Lounge client.

“They even taught me,” Munyan says. “I was at the table with three professionals and a couple of other guys who, like me, were novices. By the end of the night, you felt pretty comfortable about what you’re doing. I think it’s a chance for people who don’t know anything about poker to learn.”

The only poker game played at the Poker Lounge’s tournaments is No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. “That’s the game everyone knows right now,” says Lipsey, who’s been playing poker since he was 12. “My friend and I used to go to the poker rooms down in Tunica, and it consisted of five tables. There were two Seven-Card Stud tables, two Omaha tables, and one Texas Hold ‘Em table. Now you go and there’s about 30 tables and 25 of them are Texas Hold ‘Em, four of them are Omaha, and one of them, if you’re lucky, might be Seven-Card Stud. It’s absolutely ludicrous how popular it is.”

According to Lipsey, there are generally two types of players.

“We have a core group that comes four nights a week to various locations. They know they’re going to go to the Sports Pub on Sunday and the Fox & the Hound on Monday. They’re going to take Tuesday off, but they’ll be at Gill’s on Wednesday and then Buffalo Wild Wings on Friday,” he says.

There are also players who show up only at specific locations.

“No matter what, on Tuesday night, I know I’m going to see certain people at the Sidecar Café or certain people are going to play at the Newby’s game on Sunday,” he says.

On average, the games draw between 50 to 60 people each night, about a third of whom are women. Since they’ve started, 3,300 people have played in tournaments hosted by the Poker Lounge. If nothing else, the company has helped Memphis grow its own poker scene.

“I’d say the scene here is very strong,” Lipsey says. “We have people who use our tournaments as practice for going to Tunica or in their home games. They can practice for free with us and then go out and play for money.”

ThePokerLounge.net

ashby129@hotmail.com

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Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Behind Closed Doors

The hermetic sealing of the Senate chamber  on Tuesday,
following the invocation by Majority Leader Harry Reid of a little-used
provision of the Senate’s rules, may have demonstrated something far greater
than the rival parties’ capacity for playing “gotcha last;” it also proved that
the Senate can accomplish more, in a shorter time, behind closed doors, that it
ever seems to be able to in the full glare of the public eye.  Once C-Span,
spectators, staffers and other hangers-on were ejected from the Senate chamber,
the Senate accomplished in less than three hours what it hasn’t been able to
accomplish in 18 months—getting one of its recalcitrant committees to honor a
promise to finish an investigation into the misuse by the Bush administration of
intelligence about WMD’s, one which it’s been dragging its feet on for all that
time. 

 

If there’s a lesson here, it may be that sunshine is not
the universal disinfectant proponents of open government, freedom of
information, and the like actually believe.  It may actually be an occasional
repellant. Of course, that’s not to sanction the many abuses of the public’s
right to know perpetrated by the administration of Boris Bush and Natasha Cheney
(the latter being the one that brought us the famous “secret energy task
force”). But just as we marvel at the mystery of what actually happens to the
light in our refrigerators when we close the door, but are never tempted to get
in and close the door behind us to find out, it was far better that we saw the
light that emerged after the Senate’s doors were re-opened.  Which is not to say
that I would have minded being the proverbial fly on the wall during those
roughly three hours.

 

For anyone like me, who’s fascinated by C-Span‘s
coverage of Congressional goings-on (I first got hooked during the Bert Lance
hearings—yes, that makes me a dinosaur, but how many people who still have all
their teeth remember the cartoon characters Boris and Natasha, for that
matter?), the machinations of the gang of aging white men who comprise the U.S.
Senate are ten times  better than any episode of “Bored Housewives” (or whatever
the name of that insipid show is).  The only problem is, the cameras, I’m
afraid, sometimes get in the way of our deliberative bodies’ real work—getting
something meaningful done.  So, even though it will rank up there in the
pantheon of all-time television moments, the announcement by Senator Frist that
he could diagnose a person’s neurological condition just by looking at a video
of them ,
that moment, and all the histrionics accompanying the shameful meddling by the
Senate in the Terry Schiavo tragedy, graphically demonstrated how jockeying for
public eyeball position distracted senators from doing the country’s business. 
I’m beginning to think C-Span should title its coverage of what goes on on the
floor of the Senate as “The Posturing and Bickering Shows.”

 

In a way, I’m sorry the country didn’t get to see, in real
time, the miraculous moment when the Democrats emerged from their
three-year-long persistent vegetative state caused by the trauma they inflicted
on themselves in voting to give the President the authority to wage war in
Iraq.  Benefiting from an apparent reverse orchiectomy (with apologies to my
hero, Lance Armstrong), the Democrats finally stood up to the evasion and phony
lip service they’ve been subjected to for lo these many months.  Enough of the
bogus “my good friend, Senator So-and-so,” and “the Honorable Gentleman/Gentlelady”
crap, a charade we’d already seen viciously outed in the three-word epithet
uttered by Dick Cheney (the Senate’s “president”) to Patrick Leahy in the
cloakroom of that august body. 

 

Any further doubt we had about the collegiality of the band
of Senate brothers was firmly resolved when, in a speech responding to the
apparently outlandish suggestion by Senator Tom Coburn that New Orleans could
use use $250 million dollars to rebuild a portion of its destroyed interstate
highway more than the 50 residents of a remote Alaskan island could use it to
build a bridge to their outpost they obviously never needed or wanted, Senator
Ted Stevens, in what the Washington Post characterized as a “hissy fit”, engaged in the ultimate act of gentility by threatening to resign from the
Senate and be taken out on a stretcher (how did they resist that temptation?).
Then, with veins popping and head trembling, he bellowed his response to
Coburn’s suggestion: “NO”.  And, of course, he was overwhelmingly supported by
the majority of his fellow porkmeisters. So much for the dignity of the Senate.

 

At a time when virtually everything from gory surgical
procedures to tearful testimony in murder trials can be viewed on one TV channel
or another, and when broadcasting such other spellbinding events as Supreme
Court arguments (yawn!) to the administration of lethal injections to
condemned murderers (yikes!) is being debated, it may be time to take a
step back, and even to see whether we can put back some of the milk that’s been
spilled from the TV bottle. It’s likely to remain easier to consume there.

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News

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NEW: The Best Free Show You’ll See This week, A New Scientific Element (Really? No, not really). PLUS:A Cheney Cabal?, Leon Picks Up a Defender (and a Few More Attackers), and (Believe It Or Not) “Scooter” Libby the Novelist: These and other topics on “Let It Fly,” the new Flyer newsblog (see above). Feel free to comment.

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Opinion Viewpoint

RUSSWOOD’S LAST GAME

The White Sox victory in the World Series and
the death Sunday of Al Lopez, manager of the Sox’s last AL championship (1959)
before this year, have inspired me to wax nostalgic for times gone by.  Please
indulge me a wistful moment, or feel free to ignore. 

My claim to fame in these recent events is
that I actually saw the 1959 league champs play.  The defending AL champion
White Sox came to Russwood Park for a pre-season exhibition game against the
Cleveland Indians on Easter Sunday 1960.  I’m sure Lopez was there, as were
stars from both teams. 

I only remember a few things about it.  I was
12 at the time.

I remember a big crowd, and the pungent aroma
of cigars and pipes.  You don’t get that at ballparks anymore.  That’s a good
thing, but every once in a while when they have those retro nights, I’m tempted
to suggest that they do something authentic and allow cigars and pipes — not
cigarettes, just cigars and pipes.

I remember being impressed that day by Ted
Kluszewski, the aging slugger (and onetime Memphis Chick!) who had spent most of his career with Cincinnati
and was now with Chicago.  Kluszewski had huge meaty arms, and he liked to cut
his sleeves short so everybody could get a good look at his bulging biceps,
especially pitchers.  When he was about to swing, he would pick his lead leg way
up and thrust it into the ground as he swung, as if he couldn’t wait for the
ball to get there so he could whale away at it. 

That afternoon Kluszewski crushed a line
drive straight to the second baseman.  I hope the fielder had a well-padded
glove, because the ball was a bullet, three feet off the ground when it left the
bat and three feet off the ground when caught.

I also remember seeing Rocky Colavito,
Cleveland’s power hitter then in his early prime.  Rocky hit a home run into the
left field corner.  I think it was the only homer hit that day.  I know it was
the last one in the game.

It was also the last one ever hit at Russwood
Park.  The old wooden stadium burned to the ground that night, and with it the
best hopes and dreams of Memphis baseball for some time to come.  The cause was
never determined, but it was assumed that it was one of those smoking items I
mentioned earlier, left by a careless fan, perhaps a descendant of Mrs.
O’Leary’s cow. 

It was the biggest fire in Memphis history
and has become the stuff of legend.  It broke windows in the Baptist Hospital
across the street, and patients had to be evacuated.  Every piece of fire
equipment in the city responded, and they even called in some from small
surrounding towns.  People actually came to watch it, such was the spectacle. 

The Memphis Chicks had to play that season in
a hastily converted football stadium.  That’s where I got an autograph from an
18-year-old catcher from Memphis, Tim McCarver; people who appeared to be his
parents stood by beaming at the thought that some child wanted their child’s
autograph.  I’m sure neither he nor they ever imagined that the next replacement
stadium would one day be named for him.  Nor could they possibly foresee that he
would enjoy two great careers, first as a player and then as a broadcaster. 

Today, if course, we have in Autozone Park
the most beautiful stadium in the minor leagues, and Memphis baseball is in its
heyday.  The White Sox are once again looking good, and the much-maligned South
Side owns the baseball world.  Al Lopez is gone, the Baptist Hospital is about
to be imploded, and some days I don’t feel so good myself.  But most days are
good.  Today is one of them, and I’m grateful for it, and for lots of good
memories.


(Tom Walsh is a Memphis attorney and poilitical activist.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS: Unusual Suspects

Although the U.S. Senate campaign of U.S. Rep. Harold
Ford Jr. moves on apace (the congressman was the beneficiary of yet another
local fundraiser Sunday, a small-ticket “young professionals” affair at Felicia
Suzanne’s restaurant), skepticism still endures as to whether Ford is in the
Senate race for the long haul.
           
The surest evidence for that is the lack so far of big-name declarations for the
9th district congressional seat – a Ford-family preserve since 1974,
when the current congressman’s father first won it. The theory among local pols
seems to be that Rep. Ford is still holding on to all of his options – including
a possible eleventh-hour decision to seek reelection to his congressional seat.

           
This is unlikely for several reasons – foremost among them being the fact that a
Senate race by Ford is essentially a no-lose situation. Already a media
personage of sorts — most recently, MSNBC’s Don Imus delivered
a televised dithyramb to Ford on his morning talk show — the congressman
clearly is in search of a national platform.

           
Victory in a Senate race would give him that, but so would the kind of
full-scale attention that even a losing race would garner from the commercial
and cable networks and the big-time national print media. In a worst-case
scenario, Ford might emerge from defeat with an opportunity for a cable show
himself – or some other high-profile position in government or media or
elsewhere in the private sector.

           
Ford’s office released the results of a new poll this week purporting to show
the Democratic congressman leading each of his prospective Republican opponents
for the Senate seat – 38 to 37 percent over Ed Bryant; 40-38 percent over
Van Hilleary, and 39-36 percent over Bob Corker.
The Ford news release claims a “5 to 1” edge for the congressman over Democratic
rival Rosalind Kurita.

           
Still and all, the usual suspects for a congressional race to succeed Ford are
so far hedging their bets, leaving the field to the unusual ones. One of these,
Northwest Airlines attorney Nikki Tinker, a former Ford staffer, has been
pursuing what might be called a Milton Berle strategy, after one of the late
iconic comic’s patented stage devices.

           

Whenever something he did or said got a more-than-typical
burst of applause from his audience, Berle would purse his lips in a modest
frown and extend his left arm, palm outward, in a gesture of suppression.
Meanwhile, the right hand, with rapid fingers going “gimme, gimme,” was held
conspicuously close to his chest.

           
So hath it been with Tinker, previously more or less unknown on the local
political scene (though she was titular director of one of Rep. Ford’s unopposed
reelection races). On one hand, she has publicly disclaimed interest in being
publicized as a candidate; on the other, she has pursued an ambitious game plan
to advance her identity and prospects.

           

Tinker

Beginning some months ago with a puff piece in the Washington insider
publication “The Hill” which pronounced her the “frontrunner” in the 9th
district race, Tinker has since scheduled a series of one-on-one meetings with
local movers and shakers.
           
And a fundraiser held for her in late September by her local NWA boss, Phil
Trenary, netted some $50,000 – including decent contributions from several
of the invited blue-ribbon luminaries (among them, Convention and Visitors
bureau director Kevin Kane, Plough Foundation executive director Rick
Masson, megabusinessmen Jim McGhee and Henry Turley, and
activist par excellence Gayle Rose. Tinker even reported a hefty donation
from movie star Morgan Freeman.
           
Tinker may soon have real competition from another previous unknown, however.
One Tyson Pratcher, deputy state director in the New York office of U.S.
Senator Hillary Clinton, has made several recent local appearances at
local political gatherings to publicize a possible run for the 9th
District congressional seat.

           

Pratcher

At last weekend’s picnic for county commission candidate Sidney Chism on
the New Horn Lake Road parkgrounds, Pratcher was very much in evidence, as he
had been the previous week at a meeting of the University of Memphis College
Democrats.

           
Pratcher, a native of Memphis, described his mission as one of scouting the
terrain for a race. “I’m thinking very seriously about it,” he said.

           
Although so far only lawyer Ed Stanton and Ron Redwing, a former
aide to Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, have made serious open
declarations of interest in the congressional seat, other names being talked
about include those of Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey, former MLGW
head Herman Morris, Blue Cross/Blue Shield executive Calvin Anderson.  
city councilman Myron Lowery, state Senator Steve Cohen, and
Shelby County Commissioner Joe Ford, the current congressman’s brother. 

 

Return of the Don: Don Sundquist was back on the
reservation this past weekend  – literally. The former governor (1995-2003), who
ran afoul of his Republican party-mates during his dedicated pursuit of a state
income tax during his second term, was in Memphis Friday night at the Ridgeway
Country Club and was warmly welcomed as one of the speakers in a well-attended
tribute to retiring Shelby County Clerk Jayne Creson.
           
Sundquist, who retired with wife Martha to a home in Townsend in East
Tennessee after leaving office, now serves as co-chairman, with former governor
Angus King of Maine, of the federal Medicaid Commission, charged with
making proposals for Medicaid reform.
           
Friday night’s affair, sponsored by the Shelby County Republican Women and
organized by SCRW president Jeanette Watkins, also brought out another
recent GOP luminary, former Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, who served as
emcee for the ceremony.
           
Attendance, which was generous and across the board politically, included both
the previously declared Republican candidates for clerk in next year’s election 
– current Creson aide Debbie Stamson and Shelby County Commissioner
Marilyn Loeffel.
           
On Saturday morning, Sundquist returned to East Tennessee to witness the
Tennessee Volunteers’ losing effort in Saturday’s football game at Knoxville
with the Steve Spurrier-led South Carolina Gamecocks.

 

Say It Ain’t So, Leon!’: Few issues have
generated as much heat among local Democrats of late as what can be called The
Great Leon Gray Controversy. There’s a fairly humongous amount of fuming
and snorting in party circles over the local Air American radio host’s apostasy
on certain matters – most relating to the Faith and Morals side of the political
dividing line.
           
What Gray has done in recent weeks has challenged both the party orthodoxy and
the progressive consensus on all of the following: Intelligent Design (he’s an
advocate for it); gay rights (he has proclaimed, essentially, that gays have
“forced” the rest of society to tolerate an equality that he sees as relating to
lifestyle choice rather than irreversible being), and faith-based prerogatives
in general, including publicly licensed prayer and doctrinal religious activity.
           
For all this Gray has been under steady attack by bloggers and callers – many of
whom demand that AM680 discontinue his services. He has his defenders, as well,
though. One of them is David Cocke, the former local Democratic Party
chairman, who puts it this way: “There’s nothing Leon is saying that shouldn’t
be thought about seriously and be part of the dialogue.” Are Gray’s views,
generally populist on economic questions but right of center on social issues,
consistent with membership in the larger fraternity of the local Democratic
Party? “Sure they are,” insists Cocke, who has maintained for years that a major
reason for the Democratic Party’s loss of power and relevance has been its
official unwillingness to compromise with social conservatives and its
indifference to compromise with them.
           
A case in point cited by Cocke (and one that Leon Gray would presumably concur
with him on).  The abortion controversy has proved unnecessarily intractable,
says Cocke (a firm supporter of Roe v. Wade) because “both right and left
have been unwilling to compromise and have adopted instead the ‘slippery slope’
philosophy.” The parties could – and should – have found common ground – say,
Cocke suggests, on curbing the incidence of partial birth abortion.
           
Do sentiments like those expressed by Gray and Cocke represent outright heresy?
Or are they legitimate efforts to redefine the political middle ground? And, if
the latter, what kind of base exists to support such a redefinition? It’s more
than just a controversy over a talk-show host, I suspect. Where Democrats are
concerned, there’s a racial dividing line somewhere in there, and perhaps a
class line, as well.

           
Meanwhile, Gray reports that feedback at AM680 has been voluminous both ways and
has been “positive” on the whole. “What people have to understand is that, like
it or not, there is such a thing as the Christian Left,” he said at
Saturday’s Chism affair, where he served as emcee/deejay.

          
(The controversy over talk-show host Gray is one of several current subjects
that readers have a chance to comment on at the Flyer’s new weblog, “Let
It Fly,” at www.memphisflyer.com.)

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Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: No Crime, No Foul

Since the momentous announcement of the indictment
of Scooter Libby, pundits on the right, and the thundering herd of apologists
for the Bush administration, have trumpeted their elation — first that no one
(including Libby) was indicted for the crime of outing a covert CIA agent, and
second, that Karl Rove wasn’t indicted at all.(See my “Fitz’s Knuckle Ball.“) Their talking point seems to be
that the fact the grand jury didn’t charge a criminal violation of one of the
classified information statutes must mean (or at least can be spun to mean) that
neither Libby, nor any of the other officials implicated in the outing of Plame,
did anything wrong (with a capital W) in doing so, even if Libby himself may
have done something wrong (with a small w) in lying about it.   David Brooks said
it best, during his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press:

[T]he American people have to know that the wave of
hysteria, the wave of paranoia, the wave of charges and allegations about Karl
Rove and everybody else is unsupported by the facts.

This, of course, is an echo of the standard
established by this White House for judging the seriousness of the conduct in
this case. Recall that at one point the President and his spokesperson, Scott
McClellan,  proclaimed repeatedly that anyone “involved” in the leak at issue
would be fired from the administration. 

This was consistent with a well-known personal
bugaboo of Bush’s regarding leaks, not so much (in fact, not at all) because of
their effect on the integrity of government, but because of Bush’s obsession
with secrecy, an axiom for the way this administration conducts its business.
But as it gradually became obvious that White House officials were, in fact,
“involved” in leaking, and more importantly, as the identity of one of those
White House officials in particular came into focus, the president quickly
recast his standard of tolerance for leakers in his midst by raising the bar for
discipline to the commission of a crime.  In other words, it became OK with the President,
and wouldn’t disqualify anyone from continued employment by him, if they
violated his own well-known prohibition against leaking, compromised national
security, or, for that matter, even lied about it to him or to the press, just
as long as they didn’t get caught by anyone with the power to slam the jailhouse
door on them.

What is misunderstood about the indictment in this
case, or indeed, about the criminal law altogether, is that it is entirely
possible for an act to be “wrong,” judged by any generally-accepted standard
(i.e., moral, ethical, and yes, even legal), and yet not  rise to the level of
criminality.  The leak of Ms. Plame’s identity by Libby and others may have
been, and undoubtedly was, wrong, and even arguably illegal, but what facts the
prosecutor was able to establish (hindered, in part, by Libby’s treachery) were
not sufficient, in his estimation, to establish violations of applicable
criminal statutes.  Prosecutors are loathe to charge crimes if they think
they’re going to have any difficulty proving them.  That hurts their batting
averages, and Fitzgerald is, at least so far, batting at Hall of Fame levels.

But for anyone to take any comfort from the absence
of a criminal indictment on the charge of outing a covert CIA operative, as
though the whole thing had been given the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, is
perverse, because the clear image that emerges from the indictment is that what
was done in the leaking of Ms. Plame’s identity and employment was wrong, on any
imaginable basis, if for no other reason because of the harm it inflicted on
her, and on her country.  This is especially significant given the fact that no
one else, not Congress (Sam Ervin, where are you now that we need you?), and
certainly not the White House, has shown the slightest inclination to conduct a
parallel investigation of the incident, broader in scope and less stringent in
procedure than the one conducted by the special prosecutor.  Thus, the last word
on the propriety of what was done by operatives of this administration in this
disgraceful episode will hinge on the artificial standard of criminality, and
that will be an outrage.

If you read the indictment (and I suspect many more
people claim they’ve done so than actually have, based on some of the
off-the-wall interpretations of the document we’ve been treated to in the last
48 hours), what comes through very clearly is: first, the identity (and worse,
the employment status) of Valerie Plame got disclosed by one or more White House
functionaries, and second, the revelation (i.e., leak) violated the classified
nature of that information, and, in the process, endangered a CIA agent and
compromised national security as well.  The indictment makes that point very
clearly. So did Fitzgerald at his press conference announcing it (recall his
hyper-patriotic, nearly pontifical statements.)

But (admittedly a big but) what the indictment
stops short of doing is charging that the revelation of classified information,
as damaging as that may have been to national security, violated the arcane,
narrowly-defined crimes encompassed by the Intelligence Identities Protection
Act of 1982, or by the Espionage Act of 1917. 

The difficulty of proving violations of the IIPA
has long been touted by the defenders of the White House leak as a reason, not
only that a crime was not committed in doing so, but that nothing that was done
was wrong either.  Indeed, one of the self-satisfied authors of the IIPA (also,
not surprisingly, one of the principal talking-head apologists for the
administration in this affair), Victoria Toensing, was quoted in the LA Times as
saying, “what is it that somebody did wrong if they didn’t break the law?”
I guess ruining a CIA agent’s career,
endangering her (and arguably others’) life and compromising this country’s
national security at a time of war doesn’t qualify as “wrong,” in Ms. 
Toensing’s world.

It must be remembered, though, that the standard
for criminality imports two very important criteria that don’t exist under any
other standard: first, that every one of the elements of what a statute defines
as criminal conduct, some of which can be quite esoteric (e.g., to be a “covert
agent, under the IIPA, one must have served outside the United States within the
last five years) are satisfied, and second (even more importantly), that all of
those elements can be proved by a standard that exists only in criminal
law—beyond a reasonable doubt.  Fitzgerald most definitely was not saying that
what was done to Valerie Plame, or to the country’s national security, wasn’t
wrong, damaging or even reprehensible; he was just saying he couldn’t prove it
was a crime.

Blessedly, there isn’t a criminal statute that
applies to every wrong in our society.  But when we start using criminality as
the go-to criterion for judging the rectitude of human behavior, especially
behavior that has seriously deleterious consequences, we have abandoned several
important layers of responsibility for that behavior, and in the process,
denigrated the quality of life in a civilized society.

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Categories
Opinion

CITY BEAT: Waiting for the Big One

One of the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina was that journalists and politicians predictably raised the specter of “Earthquake Memphis” in the same breath.

Last week, The Commercial Appeal ran a couple of front-page stories on “the greatest natural-disaster threat to the Mid-South,” beginning one of them with the ominous thought that “When a catastrophic earthquake rumbles out of the New Madrid fault, it won’t just be Memphis’ problem.”

And last Friday night, if you passed on the free music on Beale Street and high school football, you could have attended a public forum on earthquake preparedness at the University of Memphis.

These urgent warnings left me unmoved.
I fear falling trees, which crush a few houses on my Midtown street every year or so. I spend a few hundred dollars to trim mine every year and wish that my power lines were buried underground like they are in the suburbs.

I fear hurricanes, which tear up the Gulf Coast I love every year. I try to avoid visiting the coast when there is a storm warning.

I fear ice storms and windstorms, like the ones that hit Memphis in 1993 and 2003. I’m grateful for the linemen who work for MLGW.

I fear drunk drivers, terrorists, criminals with guns, and contagious diseases. I try to avoid them, and I support the DUI and gun laws and the efforts of the police, FBI, federal prosecutors, and research doctors — even if I don’t get an annual flu shot.

I fear fires, and I pay $1,122 a year for homeowners insurance.

But I don’t feel the same way about earthquakes. That’s a risk I can live with. I won’t even spring for the extra $255 a year it would cost for an earthquake policy on my home. For one thing, the 10 percent deductible would leave me liable for the first $18,000 in repairs. The deductible on my standard policy is $500, which tells you something about how the insurance industry views risk.

But the real reason is it just doesn’t seem worth it. The famous New Madrid earthquakes were back in 1811 and 1812. No building or home in Memphis that I know of has been knocked down by an earthquake. If I lived in California, where nine of the 10 most devastating earthquakes in the history of the United States have occurred (the other one was in Alaska), then I would probably feel differently.

Most of the preventive measures recommended by federal agencies and preparedness organizations strike me as silly. It’s common sense to keep a stock of food, water, and batteries, but does anyone seriously practice “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” at least twice a year? Or replace windows with tempered glass? Or secure china cabinets and book cases to wall studs? Or use double-sided Velcro, bee’s wax, fishing line, or bungee cords to hold down trophies, potted plants, computers, and televisions?

If I’m killed by a falling bowling trophy, I figure my number was up.

The U.S. experiences 2 percent of the world’s earthquakes. Some 3,300 Americans have died in earthquakes in the last century. More than 1,000 died in Katrina in one week. FEMA has estimated that over time earthquakes could cause annualized losses of $4.4 billion nationwide and $17 million in Memphis. The Katrina cleanup could cost $250 billion.

The first impulse of journalists and politicians after a natural disaster is to visit the scene and tell the story. The second impulse is to find someone to blame. And the third impulse is to propose a “solution” which involves shifting millions or billions of tax dollars around.

As individuals and as communities, we make decisions about risks and rewards. Equating earthquake risk in Memphis with earthquake risk in California or hurricane risk on the Gulf Coast is illogical, irresponsible, and will lead to bad public policy.

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