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Month: September 2012
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Ed Stanton III
John Branston checks out U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton III at City Beat Blog.
After a long night of boozing it up on bourbon (and bologna!) the Cochon caravan traveled to Sweet Grass Next Door in Cooper Young for a mid-morning Bloody Mary Tailgate. There, some Cochon 5.55Kers took off running around the neighborhood while the rest of us gorged on bloody marys, oysters, and Benton’s bacon. While I don’t want to speculate on who got the better deal in this situation, I think it’s clear we — burp — got the better deal in this situation.
- Justin Fox Burks
- Oysters at Cochon’s Bloody Mary Tailgate at Sweet Grass.
- Justin Fox Burks
- Cochon’s Bloody Mary Tailgate at Sweet Grass.
- Justin Fox Burks
- Benton’s Bacon at Cochon’s Bloody Mary Tailgate.
- Hannah Sayle
- More oysters! This time barbecued and topped with fois gras.
But the feasting certainly didn’t end there. We returned to Sweet Grass about six hours later for a pop-up restaurant by Boston chefs Jamie Bissonnette and Will Gilsan, and Sweet Grass’ very own Ryan Trimm.
The result of this culinary meeting of the minds was a gastronomical tour de force: barbecued oysters topped with fois gras; a BBQ spaghetti inspired cavatelli pasta; a Thai pork slider with green curry, pork fat mayo and kimchi; grilled cheese with pork belly and summer veggies; a mortadella, mustard, and robiola sandwich, Vietnamese fried bones; cured loin with lentils and salsa verde; Mexican soda pulled pork; and a special Manhattan snocone with Luxardo cherries for dessert.
The dishes were served family style, a steady stream of tastings for the whole table, and paired with Anchor brews and Elk Cove wines, and a tasty gin fizz (with a hint of celery bitters to keep things interesting and not too sweet.)
It was a porky prelude to Sunday’s competition day, best enjoyed inside and away from Hurricane Isaac’s after-dinner downpour.
- Hannah Sayle
- Manhattan snocone with Luxardo cherries.
- Hannah Sayle
- Pulled pork.
- Hannah Sayle
- Cochon’s Heritage BBQ Pop-up Restaurant at Sweet Grass.
- Hannah Sayle
- Vietnamese fried bones at the Cochon Heritage BBQ Pop-Up Restaurant.
The sign-in pens in the United States attorney’s office in the federal building have real flowers on the end of them. How about that?
The significance? Zero. But you take your color wherever you can find it in the federal building. Down-to-earth, conversational and opinionated as they may be off the job, feds are invariably somewhat robot-like in public in their official capacity.
Edward Stanton III, the current United States attorney, is no exception. I stopped by recently to get acquainted and found the 40-year-old Stanton polite, professional, dedicated to justice, and, like seven of his predecessors I have known, as guarded as a bulldog with a ham bone when the topic is politics.
They pay their political dues to get appointed by the President on the recommendation of the senior members of Congress from their party (interim United States attorneys are an exception and usually career prosecutors). Then they are supposed to put politics aside when facing some tough calls about public corruption cases. West Tennessee District has a long record of high-profile cases like Tennessee Waltz and Tarnished Blue and Main Street Sweeper.
The process isn’t automatic, but if form holds, whether or not Stanton is in office in a year or so will depend on who wins the election in November. Stanton is a Democrat, appointed in 2010 by Barack Obama. His predecessor, David Kustoff, was a politically active Republican appointed by President George W. Bush. Stanton was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress against Steve Cohen. His father is General Sessions Court Clerk Ed Stanton Jr. Ed III was a national advance team member for Clinton/Gore ‘96 in Washington, D.C., from July 1996 to November 1996. He has also worked as a corporate attorney for FedEx and in the office of Charles Carpenter, a political strategist for former Mayor Herenton.
“I want to be clear that what I do is not political,” he said. “The dictates of this job are very apolitical.”
In 2011, Stanton and officials from the Justice Department in Washington D.C. went to the National Civil Rights Museum to announce the formation of a new civil rights unit to be headed by veteran Memphis prosecutor Steve Parker. In August, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee approved a consent order in Fayette County, which the Department of Justice negotiated with the Board of Education and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund to desegregate the Fayette County public schools.
It requires the district to implement a controlled choice program, close two schools, construct a new one, revise attendance zone lines, and monitor its schools to achieve a racial balance within 15 percent of the county at large.
“This consent order is a significant landmark in this desegregation case, which dates back to 1965,” Stanton had said in a prepared statement that made me wonder if the Justice Department plans to become more involved in school desegregation in Memphis and Shelby County.
“At this point the Department of Justice is not a party to that,” he told me. “We were a party early on and the litigants agreed to dismiss the Department of Justice.”
He said there is little connection between the Fayette County and Shelby County schools cases.
“Certainly, we are interested in seeing that federal laws are upheld across the board, not only in Shelby County and Fayette County but across this district in all aspects,” he said.
As for the Shelby County cases scheduled to start this week and in November in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays, “We stay apprised of the developments, that’s for sure.”
He has a personal interest, too. Stanton grew up in Memphis and attended Idlewild Elementary School, Bellevue Junior High, Central High School. He got his college undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Memphis.
His priorities, he said, are domestic and international terrorism, “worst of the worst” gun crime, a teaching certification scam, the Safe Street Task Force, Project Safe Neighborhoods, Internet crime, social media predators, and human trafficing, which has spiked in Memphis as a distribution center for all kinds of things. A defendant nicknamed “T-Rex” is scheduled to go on trial later this year.
With no ammo of my own to fire at Stanton, I tried baiting him with a week-old quote from Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor, state prosecutor, and television commentator long since freed from the bonds of circumspection.
“They are meek and weak-kneed when it comes to the big institutions, and then they pick out these almost insignificant cases as if to prove they’re tough,” Spitzer said, talking about the Justice Department and Goldman Sachs.
Stanton smiled and declined to take the bait.
“Our work in the Western District speaks for itself in this department, as well as the Department of Justice,” he said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with what I am doing now as a federal law enforcement official in West Tennessee.”
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Thinking About Memphis Tiger Football
Frank Murtaugh revives his annual tradition: thinking about Memphis Tiger football, so you don’t have to. This week’s “Three Thoughts.”
• Aesthetic Victory
Memphis coach Justin Fuente pays no attention to moral victories. He said as much during his postgame comments just after midnight Sunday morning. So let’s call the atmosphere at the Liberty Bowl for the 2012 season opener an aesthetic victory. After three seasons of lopsided losses and dwindling crowds, the University of Memphis hosted an event that felt like top-tier college football. Tiger Lane was buzzing, the new video board transformed the cosmetics of a stadium still too large, and a crowd of nearly 40,000 fans turned out . . . to watch their Tigers. (Hats off to UT-Martin’s traveling contingent, but it didn’t make up a significant portion of the crowd.)
Mother Nature’s dramatic interruption aside, this was college football as it can be in Memphis. It’s a shame so many fans were home before the fourth quarter (though no one can be blamed for seeking permanent shelter from a storm like Saturday’s). Would an extra 20,000 fans have made a difference? For a game decided by three points, who knows? Fact is, two-hour rain delays aren’t going to happen again. Let’s hope crowds of 40,000 are indeed in the seats the next time a tight fourth quarter unfolds at the Liberty Bowl.
• Jacob’s Ladder
Junior quarterback Jacob Karam has some climbing to do. (I’d give him a B- for his first start as a Tiger.) Karam’s play is the largest among several variables that will determine if this year’s team is competitive in Conference USA. He led an impressive scoring drive in the first quarter, completing a beautiful pass to tight end Alan Cross down the right sideline for a 36-yard gain. Better yet, he was cool late in the game, connecting with Keiwone Malone on 4th-and-12 then scrambling twice to extend the drive that tied the game with under a minute to play. And in Fuente’s words, Karam “valued the football,” tossing it to the sideline to avoid a sack, avoiding the temptation to throw deep into coverage.
On the other hand, Karam connected on only 12 of his 28 passes, and averaged 5.6 yards per attempt (13.1 per completion). Many of his 157 passing yards came after a receiver had the ball in hand. The Tigers will need to develop a downfield threat as the season progresses. Otherwise, they’ll see an opponent load seven defenders (if not eight or nine) into the tackle box, making life miserable for running backs Jerrell Rhodes (106 yards Saturday), Jacquise Cook (40), and Artaves Gibson.
• Pressure, pressure . . . pressure?
Ugliest stat from an ugly loss: UT-Martin quarterback Derek Carr dropped back to pass 38 times and was not sacked once. I’m guessing the Skyhawk offensive line won’t be the biggest or toughest Memphis faces this season, so to have the opposing quarterback play an entire game pressure-free may be the most troubling indicator of all entering this Saturday’s Arkansas State game. Whether it’s bull rushes from linemen Corey Jones or Terry Redden, or blitzes from the outside by linebackers Zach Gholson or Charles Harris, the U of M has to establish pocket pressure or the Tigers will likely discover an undermanned secondary dreadfully exposed. (Starting safeties Mitch Huelsing and Cannon Smith combined for a single assisted tackle against the Skyhawks.)
Last year’s opening loss to Mississippi State, by a score of 59-14, was troubling, but it was the 47-3 dismantling at Arkansas State the next week that was the real “uh-oh” moment for the 2011 Tigers. How might that loss motivate the Tiger veterans this weekend? Will the objective be to merely close that gap . . . or grab the first win of Fuente’s coaching career? Coming off a 57-34 drubbing of their own at Oregon, the Red Wolves won’t be lacking for motivation.
Fuente emphasizes that the building of the Tiger program is a “process.” It’s a process that won’t get any easier until that first victory is secured.
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Let’s Grill Some Stats!
Bruce VanWyngarden finds irony in CA editor Chris Peck’s Sunday column.
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Let Them Eat Stats
In a column today entitled “Anxiety Works Overtime,” Commercial Appeal editor Chris Peck remembers a blissful time when “Labor Day was about grilling steaks and not about sweating over your job.”
Peck goes on to suggest that if you’re employed by, say, Pinnacle Airlines or Accredo Health Group or FedEx, “you may be worrying this weekend.”
Or, I might add (since Peck didn’t mention it), if you are employed by the Commercial Appeal, which quietly laid off 17 more people on August 27th, five days before Peck published this oh-so-sympatico ode to the perils of unemployment.
From the Memphis Newspaper Guild website (complete with two typos): “Reduction in Force: Due to a Scripps company-wide action, The Commercial Appeal inacted a reduction in force on Monday, August 27. The company elimiated 17 guild-covered jobs.”
Back to Mr. Peck, who continues: “Half the people on Earth who are looking for a real job can’t find one. Against that backdrop, we’re not as bad off in the United States, or in Memphis.
“But the anxiety over finding and keeping a job is no less real for us. The ill winds of too few jobs and too much underemployment are felt even in the heat of early September.”
Or late August, for that matter.
Frank Murtaugh sat through six hours of storms, lightning, turnovers — and another frustrating Memphis Tigers football loss.
As far as introductions go, the script seemed firmly in place. A crowd just shy of 40,000 filled most of a dolled-up Liberty Bowl to greet rookie coach Justin Fuente and sound off a new era for a football program desperate for a positive vibe. Before kickoff, players pranced atop a new artificial turf and stole glimpses at the mammoth, $2.5-million video board above the south end zone. The sky was sunny, the breeze steady (if a bit stiff). And the Tigers’ opponent on this opening night was not Ole Miss. Wasn’t even Mississippi State. The UT-Martin Skyhawks were in town.
Tiger tailback Jerrell Rhodes lost the ball on the first Memphis possession, but the sky didn’t fall (not yet). Quarterback Jacob Karam — also making his Memphis debut — led a 97-yard drive, highlighted by a pretty connection with reserve tight end Alan Cross down the right sideline. Rhodes carried the ball the final three yards to give the home team a 7-0 lead with 5:43 left to play in the first quarter.
The Skyhawks tied things on a 9-yard pass from Derek Carr to Quentin Sims midway through the second quarter. But a pair of botched field goals by UTM added to the sense that this would be a Memphis night, however sloppy. Early in the third quarter, Tevin Jones got his hand on a Skyhawk punt, giving Memphis the ball at the UTM 34 yard line and eventually setting up a 33-yard field goal by Paulo Henriques. Tigers back on top, script holding to form.
Then came the rain.
At 7:58 p.m, with 7:51 to play in the third quarter, severe-weather warnings came to fruition, complete with lightning, thunder, and local meteorology giant Dave Brown standing 50 feet tall on that new video board. The stadium emptied, fans huddling for shelter along the Liberty Bowl’s wide, ground level concourse. For two hours and forty minutes. (The press box briefly lost power, making some wonder about the wisdom of sitting in such a venue, ten stories closer to the lightning than most.) Not quite two hours into the delay, public address announcer Chuck Roberts emphasized that the game would be completed, however long it took to resume. (The two teams not sharing the same conference complicated rules for cancellation.)
When play finally resumed (at 10:38 p.m.), the Skyhawks completed a 75-yard drive with a five-yard dash by D.J. McNeil to take a 14-10 lead. The remaining crowd (less than half the 39,076 who originally came) seemed to take pause when the fourth quarter opened with Memphis behind by the same score. (The last time Memphis lost to a team currently in the Football Championship Subdivision was in 1972, to Drake.)
UTM kicker Cody Sandlin missed another field goal attempt (from just 19 yards) with 12:05 to play. But he extended the lead to seven points four minutes later after a pair of penalties by Tiger freshman Reggis Ball — one a horse-collar, the other a facemask — gave the Skyhawks 30 yards of field possession.
The Tigers found themselves facing fourth down and 12 yards to go at their own 27 with 3:30 left on the clock, which is where Fuente made the first bold call of his head coaching career. Karam dropped back to pass and found Keiwone Malone for 18 yards and a first down. The Texas Tech transfer scrambled for big gains to extend the drive and finally connected with senior wideout Marcus Rucker on a cut-back with just under a minute to play. Rucker dodged Skyhawk tacklers the final 20 yards to tie the game at 17.
The Memphis defense held UTM to three downs on the ensuing possession, forcing a punt. Malone fielded the ball cleanly, but lost it as he tumbled backward to the turf upon being hit, UTM recovering. (The play was reviewed but upheld by the game officials.) Sandlin then ripped the script to shreds just before midnight, connecting on a game-winning 43-yard field goal with four seconds to play.
“This was a rough loss,” said Fuente as Saturday turned to Sunday. “I was proud of some aspects of our program. But I was not proud of the penalties we had in the fourth quarter. We’re not going to tolerate that.”
Fuente became the sixth straight Memphis football coach to lose his debut. “I’m not into moral victories,” he said. “I saw our team handle adversity, and I’m not sure we have in the past. It’s a step in the right direction. Kids take their cues from the coaches, and I’ll have a very spirited preparation for next week [at Arkansas State].”
The new coach acknowledged the welcome he received, however damp and gloomy the night may have become. “The fan support was great,” he said. “I wish we could have delivered a better product for them. It’s definitely a process.”
GAME NOTES
• Rhodes gained 106 yards rushing, while Karam added 52 on the ground
• Karam completed 12 of 28 passes for 157 yards and did not throw an interception.
• Tiger punter Tom Hornsey averaged 44.2 yards on four kicks, with one going 63 yards.
• Lonnie Ballentine was the star for the Memphis defense with the first two interceptions of his career.
• Skyhawk quarterback Derek Carr completed 19 of 38 passes for 211 yards and was not sacked.