Month: January 2008

Categories
Cover Feature News

Young and Restless

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Monday afternoon at FedExForum, in the middle of the fourth quarter of a previously ugly, physical game against the Chicago Bulls, the Memphis Grizzlies pulled away with a barrage of alley-oop dunks and three-point bombs — Stro Shows, La Bombas, Spanish connections, and Rudy Gay daggers. It was a fun, rousing conclusion to the team’s annual, nationally televised, Martin Luther King Jr. Day showcase, and coming at the exact midpoint of this NBA season, it capped off the first half on a highpoint.

Unfortunately, for the Grizzlies, highlights have been few and far between this season. Monday’s win brought the team’s record to 12-29, only two games better than the 10-31 record the team sported at the midway point a year ago in a season in which the team ended up with the worst record in the league. Along the way this season, the Grizzlies have won back-to-back games only once and have yet to notch a three-game win streak. This is not the performance most fans expected from a talented, albeit young, roster seemingly capable of making a 15-game-or-so improvement on last year’s 22-60 record.

Fans who haven’t been paying close attention (and, with average home attendance down more than 1,000 per game this season, that’s a growing group) could be forgiven for thinking that this year’s model is more of the same for the NBA team in town.

But, despite the disappointing similarity in the win-loss column, this Grizzlies team is playing better and, most importantly, more meaningful basketball than they were a year ago.

Last season, the Grizzlies closed the season with lineups filled with middling veterans (Chucky Atkins, Damon Stoudamire) and soon-to-be-departed journeymen (Dahntay Jones, Junior Harrington) playing for an interim coach (Tony Barone) and lame-duck executive (Jerry West). Despite the up-and-down development of rookie Rudy Gay, it was a team already waiting for the season to end soon after it began.

This season’s team isn’t waiting on the future, but building it, with each of the top eight players in the rotation under the age of 28 and potentially part of the long-term future and with a new, presumably long-term management team (coach Marc Iavaroni and general manager Chris Wallace) in charge.

On the floor, this younger, less experienced team has been more competitive, even if the difference in wins has so far been minimal. Last season, the Grizzlies finished with the worst point-differential in the league in addition to the worst record, the former statistic generally a truer measure of how good a team is. Their record reflected their quality of play.

At the mid-point of this season, the Grizzlies have the league’s fourth worst record but only the ninth worst point differential. The reason for this disparity is the most demoralizing aspect of the team’s season so far: This Grizzlies team has been unbelievably bad and/or unlucky at finishing off close games.

Through 41 games, the Grizzlies have gone an astounding 1-10 in games decided by three points or less or that go to overtime. Compare this record in close games to that of other “bad” teams this season: Of the five worst teams in the league aside from the Grizzlies, only one (the similarly disappointing Miami Heat at 2-7 in close ones) has played even five nail-biters.

Larry Kuzniewski

That the Grizzlies have played so many of these games is a testament to the team’s talent. Unlike Seattle (2-3 in close games) or Minnesota (1-3) or New York (1-3), the Grizzlies are good enough to compete. That the record in these games is so dismal is a comment on many things: A rookie head coach still feeling his way (success in tight games is often used as a barometer of quality coaching), youth, porous defense, a lack of clutch scorers. But the 1-10 record is so extreme that it’s also a bit of a fluke.

Aside from the losing record, the biggest disappointments this season have probably been the two high-profile big men the team acquired in the offseason — 6’8″ former player Iavaroni and free-agent seven-foot center Darko Milicic.

Milicic played reasonably well the first month of the season, averaging 11 points and 8 rebounds in November, but his game has been on the decline since, averaging a more Tsakalidis-like 5 points and 5 boards a game over the past two months.

A robotic offensive player with an over-reliance on his left-handed jump hook, Milicic’s game has suffered from a series of minor ailments (thumb, ankle, knee) and resulting shaky confidence, only compounding his struggles to make shots around the basket. Sadly, it’s become clear that this team needs a different kind of center to thrive — one more adept at providing energetic help defense and rebounding out of his area. It’s hard not to think that, had the team been able to acquire Cleveland’s Anderson Varejao in free-agency instead, they’d be at least five games better right now.

Larry Kuzniewski

A long-time assistant under some of the league’s best coaches (Pat Riley in Miami, Mike D’Antoni in Phoenix), Iavaroni came into the job with a seemingly perfect pedigree, but also without any head-coaching experience at any level, and it’s shown. He’s taken longer than seemed necessary to find his way through the roster and settle on a rotation that most close watchers of the team would have selected from day one, along the way showing a legitimately odd commitment to ineffective free-agent swingman Casey Jacobsen.

On the sidelines, Iavaroni has seemed to rely on his assistants in game decisions much more than previous, veteran Griz coaches Hubie Brown or Mike Fratello, something that is neither surprising nor necessarily a bad thing, though it does speak to his own learning curve as a head man. Regardless of the approach, Iavaroni has certainly left himself open to more than usual second guessing of his late-game decisions en route to that 1-10 record in close games.

To Iavaroni’s credit, however, he’s generally kept his eye on the franchise’s long-term strategy rather than lapsing into the more common coach’s tendency to worry only about the game in front of him. His primary focus has been on implementing an uptempo style and developing the young players needed to make it work. And you can see this success in the promising seasons of the two players most likely to form the core of the Grizzlies’ future — 21-year-old second-year forward Rudy Gay and 20-year-old rookie point guard Mike Conley.

After a rocky rookie season, Gay has taken the kind of leap that suggests stardom: He’s emerged as a serious scoring threat, challenging Pau Gasol for the team lead and Portland’s Brandon Roy for top scoring average among second-year players. Along the way, Gay has proven both versatile and clutch: He’s the only player in the league in the Top 40 in both dunks and made three-pointers, and his late-game threes to beat the Spurs (over Duncan) and to go to overtime against the New Orleans Hornets are season highlights.

Larry Kuzniewski

Rookie Conley’s immersion was delayed by a combination of injury and coaching decision, but, since moving into the lineup at the beginning of January, he’s already proven to be a very effective lead guard. Even as a rookie who was still a teenager on draft night, Conley has created more shots with fewer turnovers than either Stoudamire or backup Kyle Lowry have. His two biggest adjustments — outside shooting and learning to finish plays over bigger, more athletic NBA defenders — have also, so far, proven less of a problem than expected.

If Conley’s production as a starter (10 points, 6 assists, and 1.3 steals per game on 44-percent shooting) doesn’t seem like much on the surface, put it in context — of his age (20), experience (one year of college ball), and position (point guard, the hardest in the league to play as a rookie) — and then remember how much Gay and Hakim Warrick struggled as rookies and how much better they got as second-year players. If Conley makes a similar improvement next season, the Grizzlies could have another young star on their hands.

And put both Gay and Conley in a wider league context: Among NBA players age 21 or younger, only the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum, 20, and Seattle’s Kevin Durant, 19, have matched Gay’s combination of production and potential. Among players who have yet to reaching drinking age, only the same pair have played better than Conley.

It’s been the overdue insertion of Conley into the starting lineup that might be turning this season around. Without Conley starting, the Grizzlies went 8-22 (a .267 winning percentage) with a -5.0 point differential. Since promoting Conley, the team has gone 4-7 (.364) with a (barely) positive point differential (+3 across 11 games). Could they play .500 ball in the second half? It’s possible.

But it isn’t just Conley that has the Grizzlies looking more like the team fans expected to see back in November. It took a while, too long perhaps, but the Grizzlies are finally putting their best lineups on the floor: Conley in; Stoudamire out. Crafty sharpshooter Juan Carlos Navarro getting consistent minutes and shots; ineffective Jacobsen on the bench. Younger, more talented Hakim Warrick playing over less reliable Stromile Swift. And then there’s Pau Gasol.

The team’s ostensible “franchise player,” Gasol got off to a slow start due to his own series of minor ailments and averaged a decent but sub-par 17 points and 7 rebounds on 49 percent shooting in November. This lackluster production enraged segments of the fan base and local media already prone to histrionics on the subject of Gasol, but it was clear to anyone who’s watched him over the years that he wasn’t right physically and clear to anyone with an active brain that Gasol wasn’t past his prime at age 27.

Gasol started to come around physically in December, his production ticking up to 18 points, 9 rebounds, and more than 3 assists per game. This month, fully healthy and with improved talent around him, he’s been better than ever, averaging 23 points, 11 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 2 blocks per game while shooting 54 percent from the floor.

One of the great myths of Grizzlies basketball is that Gasol hasn’t improved since his unexpected rookie of the year campaign in the 2001-2002 season, when, in fact, his game has improved incrementally — aside from a few injury setbacks — every season: His shooting, his passing, his shot-blocking, his rebounding, his ability to handle the ball under pressure, even his still mediocre-at-best defense have all ticked up over time. Since rounding into shape physically, Gasol has played a little bit better than he did last season, which was a little bit better than the season before, and so on and so on.

That said, trading Gasol is still very much an option for this team, and should be a subject for further research as we get closer to the league’s late-February trade deadline. Gasol’s fate is something to watch in the second half, but the real story should be on the court.

Instead of a team waiting for a season to end, Grizzlies fans now get to watch a team busy being born, with all the messy growing pains that implies.

This season, more than ever, the Grizzlies have suffered in comparison to the other “pro” team in town, the currently top-ranked one operated by the University of Memphis, a franchise whose built-in advantages in a relatively non-competitive system will make them a better bet each and every year for fans only concerned with seeing the home team win.

The pleasures of pro ball are both more micro and macro than the college variety. In the pro game, there’s more to be found in the small details of games, in the simple pleasures of watching the world’s greatest athletes at work. And then there’s the big picture of watching how teams and individual players develop over the course of a long season or over many seasons. What chess moves made in the coming months — on and off the court — will set up larger successes (or continued failures) down the line?

Last spring, pro hoops fans at FedExForum only got to watch a team in a holding pattern — twiddling their thumbs waiting on the lottery. This spring, the basketball is more meaningful, and the hope — in the form, especially, of Gay and Conley — far more tangible than dreams of a lucky Ping-Pong ball.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Happy Huck?

Behind the happy, healthy, guitar-strumming campaign style that has so besotted the national press corps, Mike Huckabee looks like something considerably less charming — a zealous proponent of the “biblical” reformation of every aspect of American society.

If that sounds too extreme to describe the smiling Huck — who introduced himself to the country as “a conservative, but I’m not angry about it” — then consider how he explained his urge to revamp the nation’s founding document. At a public forum on the eve of the Michigan primary, while mocking Republican opponents who don’t want to append a “marriage amendment” or a “life amendment” to the Constitution, he said: “I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”

The next day, Republican speechwriter and strategist Lisa Schiffren complained: “Mike Huckabee is going to force those of us who have wanted more religion in the town square to reexamine the merits of strict separation of church and state. He is the best advertisement ever for the ACLU.”

Not so long ago, Huckabee attributed his rising political fortunes to the hand of the Almighty. “There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one,” he said. “It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people, and that’s the only way that our campaign could be doing what it’s doing … That’s honestly why it’s happening.”

He later denied that he meant to suggest that God wants him in the White House. But his deliberate reference this week to conforming the law to “God’s standards” sounds uncomfortably like the ideology sometimes known as “Christian dominionism” or “Christian reconstructionism,” which declares that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law.

Back in 1998, when he was still serving as governor, Huckabee helped write Kids Who Kill, a short book purporting to analyze the outbreak of school shootings by teenagers. His coauthor was George Grant, a well-known militant Christian reconstructionist author, activist, and educator. That same year, the libertarian Reason magazine published an exposé of reconstructionism titled “Invitation to a Stoning,” which identified Grant and quoted him on the movement’s ambition for “world conquest.” Scorning the moderation of other conservative Christians, Grant explained, “It is dominion we are after. Not just a voice … not just influence … not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.”

Of course, Huckabee must have had no illusions about Grant’s baroque worldview, since it is clearly reflected in their book. The school shootings were mere symptoms of American civilization in decline, they thundered, with communities “fragmented and polarized” by “abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism.”

As governor, he also promoted the faith-based programs of a reconstructionist minister named Bill Gothard, and even boasted that he had gone through Gothard’s “basic program” himself. More reputable evangelicals consider Gothard to be a cultish fringe character, but he has built an enormous empire, which depends on funding from local and state governments to bring his authoritarian version of the Gospel to prisoners, police officers and welfare recipients, among others.

Huckabee’s rhetoric has surely changed, if not his views. He no longer denounces environmentalism, for example, at least not publicly. But he still maintains contact with reconstructionist leaders, some of whom are supporting his presidential candidacy. Just last month, Huckabee attended a campaign fund-raiser at the Houston home of Steven Hotze, who became one of the nation’s most notorious advocates of dominionist ideology when he led the religious right’s takeover of the Texas Republican Party. Huck’s old friend Gothard was also at Hotze’s home, along with a bevy of extremists including Rick Scarborough, author of Liberalism Kills Kids.

Does Huckabee still believe that his narrow version of Christianity must dominate every detail of human existence in this country? He doesn’t like to answer hard questions about the intersection of his faith and his politics, but it is long past time that somebody demanded a straight answer.

Joe Conason writes for Salon.com and the New York Observer.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Bob Patterson

It is a cliché to say, upon the death of someone notable, that his or her passing leaves such a void that it will seem awkward or strange to go forward with the business of life as usual. But clichés are founded on realities, and all of the above conditions certainly apply in the aftermath of Bob Patterson’s passing last weekend as the result of a massive heart attack. What makes the widespread public regret and feelings of bereavement all the more striking is that Patterson had, for the past 17 years, been the taxman for residents of Shelby County. Although the office of Shelby County Trustee, to which Patterson was first elected in 1990, has certain other duties, the collection and administration of the county property tax and other standard levies is certainly foremost among them.

Yet it was virtually impossible to find someone with a grudge against Patterson — even among those public officials and elected bodies with whom he contended in his nonstop efforts to establish the Trustee’s office as independent and jurisdictionally unbeholden to other branches of county government. Indeed, he was respected for his principled obstinance on the matter, just as he was heeded for the many warnings he gave during the last several years concerning a county financial picture that he insisted was more dismal than was described by other officials. In that regard, the recent cupboard-is-bare acknowledgement by Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton in his speech advocating consolidation came as something of a confirmation of Patterson’s warnings.

Patterson played the role of constructive dissident in county politics as well. Though he was a loyal Republican of long standing and was among the first county officers to advocate partisan elections in countywide races, he arrived at his positions and formed his relationships outside the establishment zones of either major party. It was not uncommon to see Patterson, wearing one of the many wide-brimmed hats he owned, in attendance at Democratic events as well as Republican ones. Patterson was the sponsor of two events that were considered staples of the political year — his yearly barbecue at Kirby Farms and the annual Christmas Party he and his wife Virginia held at their East Memphis home. In 2006 and last December, however, Patterson did not hold his Christmas party. He explained to friends that the turnout had begun to exceed the available space in his home and that he intended to resume the tradition once he had settled on an appropriate larger venue.

He was friendly to all and fair-minded and independent in his thinking, and for some time during the past year had given serious thought to running for county mayor himself during the next election cycle.

Ultimately, Patterson resolved to continue serving as Trustee. And why not? Only last year he earned the Victor E. Martinelli Award presented by the National Association of County Collectors, Treasurers and Finance Officers certifying him as the absolute tops in his field.
It is therefore no cliché to say that Bob Patterson leaves a void. It is hard to imagine local politics and government without him.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Over and Out

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

COLUMBIA, S.C. — “I’m sad for my Dad,” Tony Thompson was saying after plopping down in a booth at the bar of the downtown Hilton.
I had been sitting there with Howie Morgan, a sometime campaign hand in Tennessee Republican campaigns and a supporter this time around of Mike Huckabee, who had just finished second to the now fully resurgent John McCain in the South Carolina Republican primary. Having spotted Thompson earlier on a cell phone outside the hotel, I had asked him to join us.

It was only about 10 o’clock on Saturday night, but Tony’s party was clearly over. The amiable Nashville-based lobbyist was just then waiting for a cab to take him back to the Marriott, where his father, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, and various staffers and supporters of the former Tennessee senator were gathered.

Holding a wake, as one of them, longtime political hand Steve Allbrooks, had confessed before bailing out and heading back to Tennessee. Ex-Senator Thompson, who had been billed as the GOP’s savior when various party pros had beseeched him to run in early 2007, had just climaxed — and probably concluded — his disappointing run with a distant third-place finish, well behind both McCain, the probable GOP favorite now, and Huckabee.

“I don’t think he’s made any plans to go on,” the younger Thompson said carefully when asked about his father’s future course. He sighed. “You know, he was drafted for this. He’s always been drafted.”

As I thought back, that was a fair description of Fred Thompson’s career. Drafted in 1972 by his political mentor, then Senator Howard Baker, to serve as Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate committee, where Thompson ended up popping the fateful question, Did President Nixon tape any of his conversations in the White House?

Drafted again in the late 1980s for what turned out to be regular strong-man roles by Hollywood after playing himself in a movie about his law client Marie Ragghianti, who was the whistle blower in disgraced governor Ray Blanton‘s pay-for-pardons scandal.

Drafted once more in 1994 by Tennessee Republicans to try to win back the Baker Senate seat, which had meanwhile become Al Gore‘s, then was vacated as Gore ascended to the vice presidency. Thompson did win it back, though he had to do a late turnaround on his campaign’s tentative beginning in order to finally beat Democrat Jim Cooper handily.

Thompson had spoken to that moment earlier this month in Iowa — the first of two states (South Carolina was the second) that had been considered must-wins if he was to overcome yet another feckless start. “You know, there were some who said, ‘Old Fred doesn’t seem suited for this. He doesn’t seem to have the fire in the belly,” he confided to a Holiday Inn crowd in West Des Moines.

He recalled an early political obituary that had appeared during that 1994 Senate race in The Tennessee Journal, the influential political weekly that was then published by Nashville’s M. Lee Smith, who had been a significant player himself in statewide Republican affairs.

“What they said was regarded as gospel, and [Smith] was my old law school buddy. He didn’t mean any harm,” Thompson recalled. “But he said, ‘Fred just can’t do this.'” Thompson had let that sink in before continuing.

“Well, I did. I not only won. I turned a 20-point deficit into a 20-point victory margin.” And, as he pointed out, he had gone on to win reelection to a full term in 2006 with the largest vote total for a statewide candidate in Tennessee history. “I’ve won some races in my time,” Thompson said, as he urged that Iowa crowd to go out into the next day’s caucuses and help him “shock the world.”

It was an effective appeal, but, as things turned out, the best the folks in Iowa could do was reward Thompson with a third-place finish, behind Huckabee and Mitt Romney. It was less a shock than it was a defibrillator moment that barely kept his presidential hopes alive.

He had, as son Tony was saying, been drafted for this effort, too — only to see that “no-fire-in-the-belly” talk get started all over again amongst the Beltway media. That was something of a canard. The fact is that Thompson had just got tired of politics in general and the Washington brand in particular and had opted out of both a reelection effort in 2002 and another would-be draft the same year, for governor.

The unexpected death of Thompson’s grown daughter, Tony’s sister, had further capped his declining appetite for service in the Senate. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life up here,” he had said then. “I don’t like spending 14- and 16-hour days voting on ‘sense of the Senate’ resolutions on irrelevant matters.”

What Thompson did was go back to acting, to portraying hard-bitten, ultra-authoritative District Attorney Arthur Branch on the long-running NBC show Law and Order. I had long suspected that Thompson’s now notorious delay in beginning his presidential campaign — it was late summer before he got going, a tardiness that many considered ultimately fatal to his chances — owed something to contractual obligations, and Tony now corroborated this.

Yes, there had been a Law and Order rerun season to wait out (an earlier campaign from Thompson, who appeared in every episode, would have compelled its suspension), and there had been a contract to complete as fill-in reader for Paul Harvey as well.

There was also a fundamental flaw in the Thompson-for-President campaign, one that, earlier that day, I had seen a late flash of. The candidate had been booked for an election-day appearance at the South Carolina Arms Collector Association Gun Show, held at the sprawling Jamil Shrine Center, a big flea-market-style barn in Northwest Columbia, and I decided to check it out.

It was a cold, rainy day, and I was surprised to see the large parking lot area overflowing. Once having found a spot on the puddled periphery and having quick-stepped through the drizzle to get inside, though, I was quickly disabused of any notion that candidate Thompson was the big draw.

It looked like an armed camp inside. Table after table loaded with formidable-looking weapons of all sorts. Every species of rifle and nozzled gun imaginable, automatic and otherwise, was being swarmed over and sighted through and sometimes hoisted on the shoulders of a crowd that may have numbered in the thousands. Not to mention, brass knucks, spiked wristbands, and anything else that looked like it could be used for assault purposes.

The candidate himself finally arrived, in an entourage that included both son Tony and Bob Davis, the former Tennessee GOP chairman whose considerable accomplishments include the lifelong retention of a Skeezix-style shelf of lacquered hair that juts out at right angles to his forehead and has survived not only middle age but assorted weathers like this election-day downpour.

To be sure, Thompson attracted attention as he and the others moved through the vast building, aisle by crowded aisle. He is, after all, a familiar image from his movie and TV roles, and he was frequently asked to provide an autograph or pose for a picture. But he left little curiosity in his wake, as each parted wave of shoppers went right back to ogling and handling the shiny and menacing-looking table goodies.

Once, at least, toward the end of his last circuit, on his way out of the arena, the talk got expressly political. One of the vendors congratulated Thompson on his stout rhetoric defending the Second Amendment rights of gun-bearers and compared him favorably in that regard to rival Huckabee, who was generally conceded to have grabbed off much of the conservative hinterland vote that Thompson’s campaign was aiming for.

“You don’t see him here, do you?” the man said, in something of a non sequitur.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing this for a long time, a long time before I was in politics,” Thompson said. And, after a few more thank-you, thank-you-very-much responses to such remarks, a few more autographs and pictures, he and his retinue were gone, and the huge crowd kept on swarming as before.

I remembered taking my girls to a production of Swan Lake at the Cannon Center a few years back and how, when the cast came out for curtain calls after the show, the dancer who had played the evil Black Swan and had performed superbly got noticeably subdued applause from the young audience and was visibly hurt by the fact.

That was Fred Thompson in 2008. A gifted and natural actor, as he had many times demonstrated, he had answered an audition call and been handed a role this year — champion of desperate last-ditch conservatives — that, in a year of patent voter unrest and desire for change, was bound to have a limited audience and fan base.

In South Carolina, as in Iowa, Thompson had fulminated against left-wing Democrats, upheld gun rights, deplored abortion and gay marriage, inveighed against the burden of taxation, and denounced illegal immigration and Islamo-fascism and Iran, all of which his chosen part called for. Sometimes he did it well, sometimes not so well, as with any touring road show.

But meanwhile, another player in the drama, former governor Huckabee of Arkansas, whose campaign had gotten a head start over Thompson’s, was saying all these things and more, but more easily and elegantly and subordinating them to a sunnier outlook that had some progressive populist overtones. Put simply, the former preacher, a winner in Iowa and a contender elsewhere, had managed to upstage the ex-actor.

In the last few days before the GOP primary in South Carolina, the Thompson and Huckabee camps had been having at each other pretty vigorously — one reason why Howie Morgan had not exactly been advertising his allegiance as the three of us sat making polite conversation, Howie and I with cocktails, the teetotaling Tony Thompson without.

Finally, I made bold to say, as an aside, “Tony, I didn’t tell you that Howie here is with the Huckabee campaign. I was sure you’d think that was okay.”

Tony’s face changed a little, only a little. And he said, “I’m not sure I do.” He went on to talk about a barrage of “push polls” aimed at his father and clearly, to his mind, emanating from the Huckabee campaign.

The conversation might have taken a difficult direction, but just then someone from the hotel came to tell Tony his cab had arrived, and, after handshakes and a pleasant enough leavetaking, he was gone, presumably headed to commiserate with his father.

Tony Thompson’s place in the booth was shortly taken by Jim Gilchrist, head of the Minuteman Project, perhaps the most zealous of the organizations opposed to illegal immigration and demanding both a fence and total repatriation of illegals, Mexican or otherwise, back to their homelands.

Gilchrist, whose endorsement of Huckabee (arranged, Morgan had said, by himself) had become controversial in the anti-immigration movement, was a friendly man with a surprisingly soft, even kindly face, and I had already talked with him at some length during the long ballroom wait for results at Huckabee’s election-night headquarters at the nearby Convention Center.

At one point, he leaned over and asked me, “Jackson, why is it that the media are so intent on sacrificing the sovereignty of the United States and undermining the economic viability of America?”

I considered my options and answered, “That’s one semantics, Jim. Another goes this way: ‘Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ Those are Emma Lazarus’ words on the Statue of Liberty.” Yep, I really did.

Let’s just say that the conversation went on and failed to reach a consensus. In that respect, it bore a resemblance to the ongoing election scramble in both parties. The Democratic version of the South Carolina primary occurrs this weekend, and the Tennessee primary and the rest of Super Tuesday are just around the bend on February 5th, and, with no resolution in sight, things are still …

To Be Continued.

See “Political Beat” at memphisflyer.com for more political news.

Categories
Opinion

The Great Debaters

There was some fine oratory on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as that part of King’s legacy was upheld by mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton, congressman Steve Cohen, and city school board member Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr.

Somewhat surprisingly, none of them were on the speakers platform outside the National Civil Rights Museum for a 9 a.m. rally by the group Memphis Cares. About 200 people were there, a mix of adults and children, many wearing signs that said “I Am a Mentor” or “I Want To Be a Man.” Speakers passed out mentoring applications asking for a 12-month commitment. A white woman standing near the back of the crowd handed out “Obama ’08” stickers, but seemed out of place in a setting that was nonpartisan.

A smaller, racially mixed crowd met at MIFA to mark that group’s 40th anniversary. Featured speaker Whalum was a 12-year-old student at Hamilton Elementary School in 1968. “I made up my mind the day he was killed that I’d do everything I could to make it up to him,” says Whalum, who is supporting Obama. Whalum, who graduated from Melrose High School in Memphis and Morehouse College in Atlanta, gave an animated and energetic talk about the need to translate the rhetoric of King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech into action.

“It has been scientifically proven that if you are dreaming then you are asleep,” he said. He contrasted the racial progress that has been made in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Mississippi since 1963 with the failure of urban school integration (he said the Memphis schools are 94 percent minority) and the struggles of black-owned businesses where, Whalum said, black consumers direct only one percent of their spending. “On Valentine’s Day this year, buy your flowers from a black-owned business,” Whalum said.

Whalum was introduced by Cohen, who was a student at Vanderbilt University in 1968. In his second year as a congressman, Cohen has kept a grueling schedule of public appearances and developed a fine sense of when to take the stage and when to yield it to others. He kept his introduction short and self-effacing. He had spoken earlier at a breakfast for the United Mine Workers of America and would speak again Monday afternoon, to warm applause, at Pastor Dwight Montgomery’s Annesdale Cherokee Missionary Baptist Church before the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Cohen’s theme was economic injustice (“I don’t need a rebate”) and the need to shift federal spending from the war in Iraq to domestic needs. Cohen is staying neutral in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The other speakers at the SCLC event were Herenton and Wharton. Both were at their best, which is very good. Herenton, who is supporting Hillary Clinton, marched with striking sanitation workers in 1968 and wore an “I Am A Man” sign. His talk was brief, but he spoke with the gravitas of a man who has been there about his own spiritual orientation and connection to Dr. King. “Is America better off 40 years later? I’ll let you answer that question,” he said, somewhat enigmatically. I couldn’t help thinking about the dust-up between Obama and Clinton over the respective contributions of King and former President Lyndon Johnson to civil rights policy. Herenton, it sometimes seems, is faced with the impossible task of playing both parts.

Wharton was living in Washington, D.C., in April 1968 and would be at Ole Miss in the fall. Forty years later, he said he sees more emphasis on service, personal commitment to King’s ideals, and an encouraging number of children attending the day’s commemorative events. Wharton said it is unlikely he will support a candidate before Super Tuesday: “As you well know, all politics is local, and I have got some hot political irons in the fire that I’ve got to deal with. Stay tuned. Things could change.”

With the focus on the South Carolina primary and Monday night’s Democratic candidate debate, none of the presidential candidates from either party were in Memphis Monday. Bill Clinton spoke at King-related events in Atlanta and at Fisk University in Nashville. Will Hillary Clinton and Obama court Memphis and its reliable Democratic voters, including the 42 percent who voted for Herenton? Does Tennessee matter this year, or is the price too high — a lost white or middle-class black vote for every vote from what Herenton has called the “real people”? As Wharton said, stay tuned.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Abort Mission

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, in which the court ruled that anti-abortion laws violate citizens’ constitutional right to privacy.

Coincidentally, the 105th Tennessee General Assembly convened in Nashville earlier this month, making immediate progress on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that could limit abortion rights. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 6-2, with Memphis Democrats Jim Kyle and Beverly Marrero providing the nays.

The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the state constitution protects abortion rights, thus limiting the power of any future Supreme Court reversal to change abortion law in Tennessee.

Christie Petrone, director of community affairs for the regional Planned Parenthood, follows developments in abortion law in the state and explains the paradox of local abortion rights.

“The women of Tennessee have greater protection, from our constitution, than a lot of other states. Our protection goes beyond Roe v. Wade. If the Roe v. Wade decision were overturned, abortion would immediately become illegal in many states,” she says. “But we face more anti-choice legislation here than other states. This amendment is an arbitrary attempt to chip away at Roe v. Wade.”

In what would amount to a reversal of the 2000 ruling, the proposed amendment says that the state constitution provides neither protection for abortion rights nor funding for the procedure.

“If this amendment passes, it sets up the system to allow legislators to ban abortion,” Petrone explains. “Right now, they can’t.”

Amendment supporters, including sponsor Diane Black, a Republican senator from Gallatin, say that the language could lead the way for legal restrictions on abortions without legislating an abortion ban.

Under the amendement, women seeking an abortion would have to wait 48 hours for a “period of reflection.” Clinics would be permitted to perform abortions only in the first trimester of a pregnancy, while abortions later in the pregnancy would have to take place in a hospital. Abortion providers would be legally bound to present detailed descriptions of the process to women seeking the procedure.

“This is a legislative tactic to take private decision making away from women,” Petrone says. “The decision to have an abortion is a private one that should be made between a woman and a doctor, not a woman and her legislator.”

The proposed amendment still has a long way to go. It must pass through the full Senate and House of Representatives — it failed in the House in 2006 — before requiring approval of two thirds of legislators in the next General Assembly. Tennessee citizens would vote on its inclusion in the constitution in 2010.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Work In Progress

CREDIT: Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects

In many ways, the future downtown law school will look much like the former post office and
Customs House does now.

The stately exterior will be the same. The marble floor will stay, as will the worn areas in that

floor where postal customers once stood in line to buy stamps. Even a U.S. postal service sign — etched in glass and hanging above what will be a security desk — will remain.

When the building reopens in 2009, however, there will be one major difference: A lot more people will have the chance to see it.

About 45 people had that pleasure last week when Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects led a tour of the project.

“The post office took very good care of this building,” says project architect Bill Nixon. “They did a great job, but they only had about 30 percent of it occupied.”

In addition to University of Memphis law school students and faculty, the building will house a legal library, a legal services clinic, and a Barnes & Noble that will sell law school textbooks.

As it stands now, wiring is exposed in large swaths. Paper signs taped to doors and windows give a hint of what’s planned: “Remove door, trim, and casing.” Or “Demo lower window, upper window to remain.”
In the third-floor room that will become a large courtroom, the drop ceiling already has been partially removed, revealing the original molding on the ceiling and an ornate skylight. A dingy blue carpet, however, still bears the traces of workers’ cubicles.

Nixon began working on the relocation in 2001, initially looking on the U of M’s main campus for a facility or site that would suit the law school’s needs.

“We found this building with the help of a lot of downtown attorneys,” Nixon says. “That’s how we started looking at it in 2002.”

After the law school was told it was in danger of losing its accreditation because of the condition of its current on-campus facility, the project became a top priority.

The Front Street site actually encompasses three buildings, the main one built in 1884. An addition was constructed in the back in 1903, and wings were added — as well as an outside shell that encapsulated all three buildings — in 1929. From the roof, you can see how the outside stone wall is covering a sloping green tile roof.

When finished, the project will be a curious mix of old and new. Fireplaces in what will be the faculty lounge will remain. Two of the building’s 12 vaults will stay. But historical preservationists asked the architects not to mimic the style of the old construction, so anything new will have a contemporary feel. The top-floor reading room will be enclosed in glass, giving law students a breathtaking view of Mud Island and the river and giving boaters a beacon of the city.

But if the tour did anything, it reinforced the notion that people rarely build architecture like this anymore. In one room — a future faculty lounge — tour participants oohed and aahed over dark red gum paneling and stenciled wooden beams spanning the ceiling.

“This is like the school I went to in England,” Nixon says. “It’s like Harry Potter or something.”

In a world where many new buildings have only a 20-year lifespan — even iconic public projects such as The Pyramid arena — it’s nice to see something that’s been in use in some capacity for more than a century.

The project is estimated at $45 million, less than what it would cost for a brand-new facility. Of course, much of that owes to the original construction. The building is still in good shape and is versatile enough for a variety of uses.

“It is built a little like a battleship,” Nixon says.

Instead of building as cheaply as possible, maybe we should be thinking about making an investment and getting more out of construction in the long run. I know that’s easy for me to say. I’m not a builder footing the bill.

Environmentally sound design doesn’t just mean having energy efficient appliances. If the most energy expended in a building is used during construction, the longer a building is used, the more efficient it is over time.

And maybe that’s one lesson the city — not just the students — can take from the law school.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

It was a great week to be a basketball fan in Memphis. The

U of M Tigers — following a convincing win over Southern Miss and a North Carolina loss to Maryland — are ranked number one in the Associated Press poll for the first time in 25 years. Last time, the team held that ranking for just one week. This time, we think they’ll carry it all the way to the Final Four. These Tigers have bite.

The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River last summer because of a basic design flaw. Hundreds of “gusset plates” — steel pieces that hold beams together — were only half as thick as they needed to be. Okay, until someone reassures us that the Memphis bridges also didn’t use the wrong plates, we are not driving to Arkansas for a while.

Greg Cravens

State Senator Steve Cohen made an appearance on The Daily Show, where he chatted with correspondent Samantha Bee about his objections to the practice of “line standing.” You see, this is where congressional lobbyists pay others to hold their place in line. Does this mean that Cohen crossed the writers’ strike picket line?

Shelby County Sheriff’s Department deputies charge a man with selling thousands of dollars’ worth of counterfeit Prada, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton items. Considering that he was offering these luxury wares from a folding table set up on Walnut Grove, we wonder what tipped them off?

Categories
News The Fly-By

Change to the Charter

After only 38 percent of registered voters in Memphis turned out during the city election last fall, the Shelby County Election Commission is suggesting that future municipal elections be scheduled at the same time as general elections.

The date change is part of a list of policy suggestions presented by election commission chair Myra Stiles to the Memphis Charter Commission last week. Other suggestions included staggered terms for City Council members and appointing outside counsel on questions regarding municipal elections. But charter commission members asked Stiles to return with a much more defined list of suggestions.

“Ms. Stiles is coming in with a broad pen,” said charter commission chair Myron Lowery.

Generally, the city attorney’s office deals with municipal election issues. Last fall, Mayor Willie Herenton — the person who appoints the city attorney — claimed to know of vote rigging and voting machine malfunctions.

“There were some who felt he had a conflict at that election,” Stiles told charter commission members.

Under the election commission’s proposal, staggered terms would require half of the City Council members to run during one election cycle, with the remaining half doing the same two years later.

Proposed changes to the city’s charter could come before voters as early as the November election.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fortunate One

CREDIT: Carol Kaelson

It’s a good thing Aimee Seligstein watches reality television.

On the high school algebra teacher’s recent Wheel of Fortune appearance, she correctly guessed the name “Wayne Brady,” host of TV’s Don’t Forget the Lyrics, to solve the puzzle in the $30,000 final bonus round. As a result, Seligstein left the show’s Hollywood studio $47,150 richer.

The show aired Tuesday, January 15th, and Seligstein and friends gathered at the downtown Flying Saucer for a viewing party.

“They usually only show sports on the TVs at the Flying Saucer. It was funny when people would walk into the bar and look at the TVs like, why are they showing Wheel of Fortune?” Seligstein said. “They then saw me and understood. Everyone in the bar started booing the other contestants.”

The Wooddale High School teacher joined her father to audition for the show at Sam’s Town Casino in Tunica last summer. More than 3,000 people showed up to audition on a mock Wheel of Fortune set, but only a handful were chosen that day. Seligstein and her father were never called to the set.

However, another round of auditions was held at a Memphis hotel a few weeks later, and a couple hundred attendees of the Sam’s Town event were randomly selected to try out at that audition.

Seligstein’s father received an audition invitation in the mail. Contest rules allow the passing of such invitations to friends or family members, so he gave the spot to his daughter.

At the hotel audition, Seligstein competed against about 60 others on written tests and solving puzzles aloud.

“On the written test, there were puzzles with some letters filled in and some blank. You had to try to solve the puzzle based on what letters are there,” Seligstein said. “You don’t have much time to do it. I only answered about half of them.”

But that was apparently good enough. Seligstein received a letter two weeks later informing her that she would be an official contestant. The letter said she should expect a call with more information some time within the next 18 months.

“That letter got filed away in the back of my closet, and I tried not to think about it,” Seligstein said. “It was five months before I got the call.”

When that call finally came, Seligstein and her sister went shopping for the perfect game show outfit.

“They told me there were certain colors I couldn’t wear, like solid white, black, or red. And they don’t want you to wear a pattern,” said Seligstein. “I decided on a turquoise shirt and a black sparkly sweater vest.”

On the big day in mid-December, Seligstein’s family cheered her on in the audience. Six games were filmed, and Seligstein was chosen for the second one. She stayed ahead for most of the game, correctly guessing phrases like “White Chocolate Mousse” and “Like Heaven on Earth.”

What will she do with her winnings?

“I’m going to buy furniture for my house and pay for graduate school,” she said. “And I’m going to pay back the money I spent on my trip to L.A. [Wheel of Fortune] doesn’t pay for that.”