Politico.com blogger Anne Schroeder is reporting that Fox News Channel has hired former Ninth District Congressman Harold Ford Jr. as a “political contributor.”
Schroeder calls Junior a “heartthrob” and a “pretty face,” and notes that Fox just signed former Senator Rick Santorum as a commentator as well. For Fox, we suppose that constitutes “fair and balanced.”
Read Schroeder’s blog. (Scroll down.)
Everywhere one goes in the Beaches of South Walton, people say “10 years ago …
“… This was a lonesome beach 10 years ago. None of these strip malls were here 10 years ago. Heck, 10 years ago, this was a two-lane road through a forest. You could get a house around here for nothing 10 years ago.”
Traveling east on US 98, my host and I headed for Scenic Highway 30A, a 20-mile strip along the Gulf Coast that is the heart of the place I’d been brought in to see.
“Up until about 10 years ago,” my host says, “hardly anybody knew this road was here.”
No more. By the end of my tour, when I had seen all 13 “eclectic beach communities” collectively known as the Beaches of South Walton, it was astoundingly clear what happened here about 10 years ago: The Machine found the place.
Read the rest of Paul Gerald’s South Walton Beach travel feature.
“A few weeks ago, about 60 of Mayor Willie Herenton’s big financial backers joined him for lunch at Folk’s Folly steakhouse. It was the mayor’s way of thanking them for contributing $1,000 to “sponsor” his annual Christmas party last year.
“‘Herenton’s Hypocrites’ is how one attendee described it, suggesting that some of those attending were either ambivalent or secretly opposed to a fifth consecutive four-year term for Herenton.
“In politics as in sports, they say money talks and bullshit walks. Not quite. …”
Flyer columnist John Branston has a provocative offer for Mayor Herenton’s backers. Read about it here.
WCCO-TV in Minneapolis is reporting that an off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that he, er, assaulted her.
The FBI identified the man as Samuel Oscar Gonzalez, 20, of Lakewood, Washington. He was charged in federal court with simple assault, a misdemeanor.
The incident occurred on the redeye Monday morning from Seattle to Minneapolis. The woman was headed back to college.
Near the end of the flight, the FBI said Gonzalez sat next to the woman as she was trying to sleep. He touched her, which she described as spooning, lifted her shirt and then got up and left. Court documents said she felt a warm fluid on her back, clothes and seat after he walked away.
The woman told the flight attendants about the incident. They moved her to another seat and called police from the air. The crew also moved the man to a seat near the front of the plane until the end of the flight.
The employee was reportedly an off-duty baggage handler. Hmmm. Sounds like he had his own carry-on bag. Airline officials are hoping to come up with a solution to beat this problem.
Mary Weiss, former lead singer of girl group goddesses the Shangri-Las, is coming out of the garage with a new CD Tuesday, with a little help from a Memphis connection.
Greg Cartwright of Reigning Sound co-produced the disc and wrote songs, while the Reigning Sound backed Weiss up.
Reigning Sound played the record release party with Weiss this weekend in Cleveland, and they’re tuning up to play the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas next Thursday, March 15.
The disc, Dangerous Game, is Weiss’ first since 1965. You can read a lengthy interview with Weiss here.
A finger-pointing Edmund Ford ranted at his fellow City Council members and members of the media for 18 minutes Tuesday in a committee meeting, and nearly got into an altercation with City Council Chairman Tom Marshall.
Ford has been in the news constantly for the last several weeks due to his federal indictment on bribery charges and, more recently, his MLGW bills. During a committee meeting Tuesday, he blasted Marshall, Carol Chumney, members of the news media and others. Chumney, who was chairing the meeting, at first tried to cut Ford off but eventually just let him ramble.
Ramble he did, saying Marshall “got $1.4 million” in school board contracts, Chumney “got fired” from her old law firm (she protested that the statement was untrue), and television news reporters hounded him and his wife like paparazzi chasing Princess Diana to her death.
In a hallway confrontation, Ford and Marshall nearly came to blows, according to Marshall, after Ford first pointed his finger at him then put a hand on him. A sergeant-at-arms stepped between them.
WMC-TV Channel 5 has raw video (and we do mean raw) of Ford’s rant. Among his finer rhetorical moments: “Don’t Make Me a Punk” and “Don’t Chase My Wife.” A bravura performance. Not to be missed.
Watch here, as Ford takes the whole council on a joyride through Crazytown.
If you shake the proverbial cliche tree this time of year, you’ll find yourself covered in tidbits about conference basketball tournaments. “Cinderella’s last chance for glory.” “A major stumbling block for top-10 teams.” “Terrific tune-up for the Big Dance.” With so little at stake — beyond that one last chance for bottom-feeding teams to qualify for the NCAA tournament by winning their conference “tune-up” — what kind of value should this week’s Conference USA event at FedExForum have for the host team? Having run away with the league’s regular season championship for a second straight year, the University of Memphis has far more to lose than gain. If they win three straight games, they’ve done what the tournament selection committee expects them to do. But if they lose, they can expect to fall at least two seeds in their bracket of the tournament that counts.
Seems like a good time for a dose of perspective. Here’s a look at the five conference tournaments the U of M program has won, and what those titles meant for the Tigers in the Big Dance.
• 1982 Metro — Memphis actually won the 1929 Mississippi Valley tourney, but since the NCAA had yet to be born, we’ll call this the first modern tourney title for the Tigers. Led by Bobby Parks, Doom Haynes, and a freshman named Keith Lee, Memphis State entered the tournament with a record of 21-4 and ranked 10th in the country. The Tigers snuck by Virginia Tech in the semis, 71-70, then beat arch-rival Louisville in the final. As it turned out, that was one more victory than coach Dana Kirk’s squad would get in the NCAA’s. The Tigers beat Wake Forest (again by a single point) before losing to Villanova in overtime in the East Regional semifinals. Local fans would hear from this Wildcat team again.
• 1984 Metro — Having lost three of their last five regular-season games, the Tigers had seen their ranking drop from 8th to 17th before they hosted their Metro brethren at the Mid-South Coliseum. The Tigers embarrassed Southern Miss in the quarterfinals then edged Florida State, 65-63, for a shot at Virginia Tech and a taste of revenge. (The Hokies had beaten Memphis State by 20 two weeks earlier.) The Tigers won the championship, 78-65, and entered the NCAA tournament with a record of 24-6. Behind a total of 55 points from Lee, the Tigers whipped Oral Roberts and Purdue to reach a third straight Sweet Sixteen. Alas, Hakeem Olajuwon scored 25 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in St. Louis to lead his Houston Cougars to a 78-71 win over the Tigers. Houston made it to the finals for a second straight year, where they lost to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown.
• 1985 Metro — This may have been the finest Tiger team of all time. Lee’s senior season was strengthened by the likes of point guard Andre Turner, All-America-to-be William Bedford, Baskerville Holmes, and Vincent Askew. The Tigers entered the tourney — played in Louisville — ranked 5th in the country and with a record of 24-3. After beating Southern Miss in the quarterfinals, the Tigers beat the host team, 81-74, Memphis State’s third victory over the Cardinals in less than two months. Which made the championship game (a 90-86 overtime win over Florida State) slightly anticlimactic. The Tigers made it all the way to the Final Four, winning classics against Boston College and Wayman Tisdale’s Oklahoma Sooners along the way. Alas, just as Villanova ended Lee’s freshman season, so they ended his college career. The Tigers’ career scoring leader was held to 10 points in the 52-45 Wildcat win.
• 1987 Metro — This was the most bittersweet championship in U of M history. Regardless of their performance, these Tigers — the first squad under head coach Larry Finch — had to pay a penalty for their predecessors. Due to violations under Kirk, the Tiger program had been stripped of its 1985 Final Four appearance and was ineligible for the 1987 NCAA tournament. Gone were Lee, Bedford, and Turner. Still on board were Askew and Dwight Boyd. The Tigers finished the regular season 23-8 and traveled to Louisville — home of the defending national champions and sophomore star Pervis Ellison — for the only postseason action they would see. And Memphis State made this tournament its whipping boy. Beat Cincinnati by 19 in the quarterfinals, South Carolina by 10 in the semis, and the host Cardinals by 23(!) for the championship. The program’s third conference tourney title in four years (and fourth in six) would be their last for almost two decades.
• 2006 Conference USA — Considering these Tigers suited up C-USA’s Player of the Year (Rodney Carney), Freshman of the Year (Shawne Williams), and another all-conference player in Darius Washington, the tournament — played at FedExForum — was the Tigers’ to lose. Having fallen in the finals in near-tragic fashion a year earlier (when Washington missed two free throws after time expired to give Louisville the title), John Calipari’s sixth Memphis club left nothing to debate. They beat Tulane by 19 in the quarters behind 18 points from Carney, whipped Houston by 14 behind 23 from Williams, then avenged a late-season loss to UAB by beating the Blazers, 57-46, for the championship. The title, along with a 28-3 record, earned Memphis a top seed in the NCAA’s for the first time ever. The Tigers reached the Elite Eight for the first time in 14 years, but shot merely 31 percent in a 50-45 loss to UCLA.
The Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library (3030 Poplar) is one of the 80 U.S. and Canadian libraries – out of the hundreds nominated — featured in Heart of the Community: Libraries We Love (Berkshire Publishing), edited by Karen Christensen and David Levinson. That’s libraries rural and urban, old and new, great and small.
“We looked for regional diversity from east to west and north to south, and temporal coverage, from the earliest libraries to the very newest,” according to Christensen. “We also wanted to include libraries that have successfully undergone change, whether it is relocation, renovation, expansion, new missions, or new clientele.”
Kudos to the Central Library.
America, what on earth is wrong with you? Black Snake Moan came in 8th during its opening weekend, behind Wild Hogs (middle-age men on motorcycles) at number one and Ghost Rider (middle-age man on motorcycle on fire) at number three. Ghost Rider is in its third week of release.
Black Snake Moan took in a little more than $4 million in its opening weekend, compared to Wild Hog’s $38 million and number two film Zodiac’s $13 million.
From a story in Reuters: “The studio said [Black Snake Moan] played well in ‘sophisticated’ markets like Los Angeles and New York, and in key southern cities like Memphis and Atlanta.”
Reuters News Service is reporting that Elvis Presley plans to be a ghost voter at the 2007 national elections in the jungle-clad South Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. That is, if you believe the nation’s electoral rolls.
In 2006 almost half of Papua New Guinea’s 4.9 million registered voters were regarded by the electoral commission as ghost voters and did not exist.
The commission has been trying for a year to update voter registration ahead of June 30 elections, but admits voter rolls in remote, rugged highland electorates remain vastly inaccurate.
Electoral Commissioner Andrew Trawen said ghost voters remained a problem with several Elvis Presleys, who died (theoretically, at least) in 1977, registering to vote, alongside a handful of Tom Jones, and a couple of kings and queens.
As of March, the country’s five highland provinces have voter registrations ranging from 116 percent to 132 percent, said the commission in its voter analysis.
Of course, based on our extensive photo research, it’s possible the King is still hiding out in the South Pacific. But if he’s not, heads will roll.Read the full story from Reuters.