Month: February 2020

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Politicians Prepping for Super Tuesday

Shelby County, like the rest of Tennessee, is getting into the act for Super Tuesday, March 3rd, which is already underway via early voting. Although there’s a local race or two that have attracted attention, most focus is on the presidential race; the Democratic presidential primary, in particular.

Although all the Democratic candidates seem to have their claques here, the two main acts among party traditionalists would seem to be those of former Vice President Joe Biden, and, perhaps surprisingly, ex-New York Mayor Mike  Bloomberg. Biden was the early leader in most polls of Democratic candidates, in Shelby County as elsewhere in the nation, and his support has held reasonably well locally, considering his worse-than-anticipated showing in the early tests of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Jackson Baker

and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris presided over a rally Saturday for presidential candidate Joe Biden at Mahogany restaurant.

Biden has yet to make an appearance here, but his surrogates have been active — including Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and state Senator Raumesh Akbari, both of whom were among the presiders at the most recent turnout for Biden, on Saturday at the Mahogany restaurant on Poplar Avenue.

Like the former vice president, Bloomberg has had two jam-packed affairs involving local surrogates as well, including one at his local field office on Tennessee Street a couple weeks ago.

Bloomberg has some local eminences in his camp also, including Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who since his re-election last year has increasingly been flexing his broker’s muscles as a source of endorsement.

Jackson Baker

with County Commissioner and Clerk candidate Reginald Milton, is beginning to enjoy the role of political broker and is a Bloomberg mainstay.

Other Democratic candidates — Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,  Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Senator Amy Klubachar, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — have support as well, but the main battle in Shelby County, as perhaps in Tennessee, would seem to be between Biden and Bloomberg — between longtime party loyalists, as it were, and those convinced by Bloomberg’s late-developing but extraordinary show of money and advertising.

As in other locations, Sanders is thought to command the allegiance of a mass of grassroots devotees, whose numbers are hard to measure in advance.

Harris, welcoming Saturday’s crowd of Biden supporters, celebrated his home county as being the largest county in Tennessee as well as “the greatest.” The reality, though, is that, once again, Shelby County has had to yield prominence of place to the state capital of Nashville. The major candidates themselves have been hard to find locally. Last week, Bloomberg, for example, made stops in Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, and Nashville, and skipped Memphis, though he made a visit here in December to tout his health-care plan.

The Shelby County mayor was undeterred by Biden’s slow start in earlier states. Said Harris: “I believe Joe Biden is that candidate that can appeal to us — we’re all the audience — from sea to shining sea, all across America. Joe Biden is the candidate that can take a message and convert people to supporters. And he has the experience that matters.”

Akbari also was emphatic, noting that “when it comes to the general [election], unfortunately, we in Tennessee are a  deep shade of red, but we can help select the nominee who’s going to take us across the finish line in November and kick the surface and get the swamp — the real swamp — out of the White House.”

Clearly, what happens when Tennessee votes with the other 14 Super Tuesday states won’t be decisive all by itself, but it will be interesting to see if the state can reclaim its erstwhile reputation as a bellweather, capable of reflecting national sentiment in its voting results.

• There is serious competition in several local races as well. Both major parties have contested primaries for the open state House seat in suburban District 97. A tight race is brewing between Democrats Gabby Salinas and Allan Creasy, both of whom are veterans of near-win races in 2018. Two Republicans, Brandon Weiss and John Gillespie, are fighting it out for their party’s nomination. The current holder of the seat, Republican Jim Coley, is not running for re-election.

The race to succeed the retiring Ed Stanton Jr. as General Sessions Court clerk is a slugfest involving 13 Democrats and four Republicans. Among Democrats, the candidates getting the most play would seem to be Gortria Banks, County Commissioner Reginald Milton, and fellow Commissioner Eddie Jones. Milton seems to add at least one high-octane endorsement a day (examples: Mayor Strickland, City Court Clerk Myron Lowery, former legislator and NAACP eminence Johnnie Turner), while Jones is getting support in new radio ads from former state Senator John Ford, whose prior felony conviction kept him from becoming a candidate himself.

…

Jackson Baker

on Beale to honor the legendary street’s being officially admitted into the national historic register.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Memphis Black Restaurant Week Kicks off March 8th

Memphis Black Restaurant Week (MBRW) is right around the corner, and there will be so many exciting options to choose from across the city.

MBRW is an annual celebration of black-owned businesses, with a goal of boosting awareness and bringing in new customers to support minority-owned restaurants around Memphis.

Participating restaurants are offering two-course lunches for $15 and three-course dinners for $25 for the whole week, providing an affordable way for Memphians to sample food from lots of different eateries without breaking their budget.

This year’s featured restaurants include old favorites — like The Four Way, which has been a Memphis staple since the civil rights era — and notable newcomers, like Flava House, a restaurant and hookah lounge that opened its doors in late 2019. Other participants include Chef Tam’s Underground Café, Curry N Jerk, The Waffle Iron, and
many more.

Cynthia Daniels has been organizing MBRW since 2015 and wants people to know that MBRW has something for everyone.

Cynthia Daniels

Memphis Flyer: What originally inspired you to launch Black Restaurant Week?

Cynthia Daniels: It was inspired by the opening of HM Dessert Lounge in November 2015. I had the opportunity to work with Chef Fran Mosley during that time, and business was very slow in the beginning. I thought it would be cool to create a food-themed event that celebrates black restaurants, the same way we have a Jewish Festival, Italian Festival, Indian Festival, and more.

This is the fifth Black Restaurant Week since you launched the first one years ago. How much has it changed or grown or evolved in the last five years?

It’s grown outside of Memphis and is now a nationwide event in major cities across the country.

How do you choose which restaurants participate?

There’s a mixture of Memphis staples involved and newer restaurants that need marketing support to gain more business.

There’s a wide variety of food options across all the different participating restaurants — is that intentional? Do you try to get as much food variety as possible or does that happen organically?

Yes, I want it to be intentional. At times, black restaurants are stereotyped for only selling soul food, so MBRW showcases diversity among
what’s offered.

Justin Fox Burks

Sage

What are some dishes or foods that you’re most excited about or that you think are particularly unique?

Soul Rolls at Sage, peach cobbler nachos at Chef Tam’s Underground Café, and sweet potato pancakes at The Waffle Iron.

Now that you have a few years under your belt, what do you think the future of Black Restaurant Week looks like in the next five years and beyond?

I feel like it will continue to grow outside of the Midtown and Downtown areas. We’ve expanded to include South Memphis and Orange Mound this year.

Do you have any particularly fond memories from Black Restaurant Week over the last few years?

It never fails that I can run into MBRW supporters during the year and they always tell me that MBRW introduced them to their favorite new restaurants. That proves the week was successful, and the success continues long after the weeklong event.

Do you have any message for prospective restaurant patrons who are thinking of coming out for MBRW for the first time this year?

I want to remind people that MBRW is for everyone! It’s a celebration of food, and we embrace all ethnicities who want to experience amazing food and hidden jewels throughout the city.

MBRW is happening March 8th through 14th. Find more information and check out participating restaurants at blackrestaurantweek.com or follow along on their Facebook page: facebook.com/MemphisBlackRW.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers 60, #22 Houston 59

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Defense and free throws.

From youth leagues to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, coaches emphasize two of basketball’s decidedly unsexy elements when trying to squeeze a win out of an overmatched (on paper) team. Saturday afternoon at FedExForum, Penny Hardaway’s Tigers excelled at both to upset the 22nd-ranked Houston Cougars, leaders of the American Athletic Conference.
Larry Kuzniewski

Lester Quinones


Precious Achiuwa hit one of two free throws with 28.6 seconds remaining to give Memphis a 60-59 lead. Then with five seconds left, Cougar guard Caleb Mills missed a jump shot from 18 feet, Achiuwa’s right hand in his face. Tiger guard Alex Lomax stripped the loose rebound from the hands of a Houston player only to have it deflected out of bounds — last touched by a Cougar — with three-tenths of a second on the clock. A long inbounds pass was all that remained to secure the Tigers’ biggest win of 2020, a victory that improved the U of M record to 19-8 (8-6 in the AAC).

“I feel like, for 40 minutes, we showed who we were, and who we could be,” said Hardaway. “We only scored 60 points, but the shots we got were quality shots. We did all the tough things to win this game. I’m very proud of them.”

The Tigers only scored two field goals over the game’s final four minutes (both of them dunks by Malcolm Dandridge, who finished with a season-high 12 points). But the Tigers held Houston to a single field goal over the same stretch (a Mills bucket on his way to a game-high 21 points) and hit five of six free throws (Lomax and Lester Quinones making two each). For the game, Memphis converted 21 of 30 shots from the foul line while Houston made 9 of 12. “That’s the way it is on the road sometimes,” said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. The Cougars fell to 21-7 (11-4).

It wasn’t pretty basketball. The Tigers didn’t score over the game’s first six minutes, but by stifling Houston shooters, they kept the score low and tied things up at 10 midway through the first half. Memphis led at halftime, 27-23, despite no player having scored as many as three field goals.

Cougar point guard Marcus Sasser scored seven points during a late Houston run that put Memphis behind, 54-51, with 3:30 left to play. And that’s when the Tiger defense rose, forcing three misses (two by Mills) in the game’s closing minutes.

“Our mindset was defense today,” emphasized Lomax. “We’ve been working so hard. I’m so glad we came together as a team, a brotherhood, for the coaches and the city. We owed them this [win].”

“It’s a confidence-booster for sure,” added Tiger guard Tyler Harris, who scored ten points and hit a pair of treys. “Going into these last few games, we’ll have a different swagger.”
Larry Kuzniewski

Penny Hardaway

How important were the Tiger free throws? Achiuwa and Quinones each missed eight of the nine shots they took from the field. But Achiuwa converted eight of his 12 free throws (to finish with 10 points) and Quinones all eight of his (to finish with 10 himself).

The Tigers committed only eight turnovers, their lowest total of the season, and held Houston to 35-percent shooting. There was, quite literally, no margin for error.

“We switched some things up [at halftime] to get into the pain more,” said Hardaway. “Credit to the guys for getting in there and making things happen. Every free throw was needed. I’m relieved. I’m glad the guys can see the other side of it. We’ve been losing some heartbreakers at the end. A lot of it self-inflicting wounds. We steadied the ship and got a win.”

As for defense becoming his team’s calling card, Hardaway considers it a welcome surprise. “It’s ironic — or weird, to be more exact — for a freshman-laden team to be one of the best defensive teams in the country,” he said. “For that to be us, right now, it feels good. Of course we’d want more points. But you’re gonna win championships and win games with defense. We’ve gotten stops in other games, but just couldn’t bring it home. To finish the game with three stops is great.”

Three of the Tigers’ last four regular-season games will be played on the road, starting Tuesday night at SMU. The Mustangs came back late to beat Memphis, 74-70, on January 25th at FedExForum.

Categories
Music Music Blog

That 70s Revolution: The Potent Global Force of Soul Music, Screened at Stax

James Brown at the Zaire 74 festival

Like many, I was stunned by the 1996 documentary, When We Were Kings. Though I never followed boxing, the film’s recreation of the political context of a much-hyped 1974 match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, the “Rumble in the Jungle,” was so compellingly crafted that the fight became much more than just a fight. Ali represented an unapologetically radical vision of African American pride and resistance, while Foreman seemed to unconsciously channel more regressive politics. It was no surprise when the film won an Oscar, though the recent prospect of a musical based on the movie may stretch one’s credulity somewhat.

Part of the film focused on the concurrent Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa. Like the fight, it was organized by promoter Don King, and featured many luminaries of both American and African soul music. And yet the lean, effective editing of When We Were Kings offered only a small sampling of the music that was going down, a tantalizing glimpse of the global reach of American soul, as it came to honor the ancestral lands of so many of its heroes.

Enter a parallel documentary of sorts, over a decade later: Soul Power, a full serving of brilliant performances by the likes of James Brown (“Soul Power”), The J.B.’s (“Cold Sweat”), The Spinners (“One of a Kind”), OK Jazz featuring Franco, Bill Withers (“Hope She’ll Be Happier”), Miriam Makeba (“Qongqothwane” a.k.a. “The Click Song”), B.B. King (“The Thrill Is Gone”), Pembe Dance Troupe, The Crusaders (“Put It Where You Want It”), Fania All-Stars featuring Celia Cruz, Danny “Big Black” Rey, Afrisa featuring Tabu Ley Rochereau, and Manu Dibango.

That 70s Revolution: The Potent Global Force of Soul Music, Screened at Stax

To do justice to the enormity of this cultural mashup, one must see both films, and, with some of the non-musical interviews interspersed in Soul Power, there is a bit of overlap. But, to be sure, Soul Power puts the music front and center.

Thus, it makes perfect sense that the Stax Museum of American Soul Music will be screening the film free of charge, with free popcorn to boot, this coming Monday, February 24th. While no Stax artists are featured in the film, the museum is living up to its name as a cultural clearing house for all kinds of soul. And it helps put the accomplishments of Stax in context, as echoes of the 1972 Wattstax concert in Los Angeles can be seen in the politically charged gathering: like Wattstax, it was a show of strength by the performers and the audience alike. Soul Power, indeed. 

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Memphis Restaurant Association Awards to Honor Shawn Danko and Pat Taylor

CREDIT: Kooky Canuck/Facebook

Kooky Canuck/Facebook

Shawn Danko has been named Restaurateur of the Year.

This weekend, the 56th annual Memphis Restaurant Association awards will honor Kooky Canuck owner Shawn Danko and Cleaner Solutions owner Pat Taylor.

Danko has been named Restaurateur of the Year, and Taylor is Associate Member of the Year. Both have been deeply involved in the local restaurant scene and are being honored for their commitment to celebrating and lobbying for the Memphis restaurant industry.

Danko, who is originally from Montreal, first came to Memphis to open the Hard Rock Cafe and later the Downtown restaurant Kooky Canuck. He serves on boards for the Memphis Restaurant Association and Memphis Tourism and has been featured on a number of food shows including Man v. Food.

Taylor worked in restaurants for almost 20 years before transitioning to the cleaning and sanitation industry. His company Cleaner Solutions has serviced hundreds of Memphis restaurants with dishwashers and cleaners for roughly 16 years. Taylor has been an active member and sponsor of the Memphis Restaurant Association and says that he is driven by his desire to give back.

The annual celebration is a major fundraiser for the Memphis Restaurant Association, and the awards ceremony will be held at 6 p.m. on Sunday, February 23rd, at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn. Go to memphisrestaurants.com/events for more info.

Categories
News News Blog

From Pig Tails to Cheesecake: A Look at TN Death Row Inmates’ Last Meals

Fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, and peach pie with vanilla ice cream was the last meal of Tennessee death row inmate Nicholas Sutton.

Nicholas Sutton, who died by means of electrocution Thursday, February 20th, was the state’s first inmate to be put to death this year.

Sutton was sentenced to death in 1986 after killing a fellow inmate. He was in prison at the time he committed the murder, serving a life sentence for three murders he had been convicted of in 1979.

According to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, death row inmates are allowed to request a last meal “within reason” costing up to $20.

Here is what the 10 inmates executed prior to Sutton selected for their final meal:

Lee Hall, convicted for killing his ex-girlfriend in 1991, was executed in December. He selected a Philly cheesesteak, two orders of onion rings, a slice of cheesecake, and a Pepsi for his final meal.

Stephen West, convicted of a double murder in the 1980s and put to death in August, ate a Philly cheesesteak and french fries.

Donnie Johnson, a Shelby County resident, was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of his wife. Prior to his execution in May, Johnson opted to forgo picking his last meal and instead asked that his supporters donate meals to the homeless.

David Miller, sentenced to death for a 1983 murder, was executed in December 2018. For his last meal, he chose fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and coffee.

Edmund Zagorski, sentenced to death for a 1983 double murder, received the death penalty in November 2018. He ate pickled pig knuckles and pig tails for his final meal.

Billy Ray Irick, was convicted for the 1985 murder of a 7-year-old girl and was the first inmate in Tennessee to be executed after nearly a decade break. Before his death in August 2018, Irick selected a burger, onion rings, and a Pepsi for his final meal.

Cecil Johnson, convicted for a 1980 triple murder and put to death in December 2009, refused a final meal.

Steve Henley, convicted of killing a couple in 1985, was sentenced to death in February 2009. He requested shrimp, oysters, fried fish, onion rings, and hush puppies.

Daryl Holton, convicted for the death of three children in 1997 and put to death in September 2007, declined a last meal.

Philip Workman, a Shelby County resident convicted for the murder of a police officer in 1982, was executed in May 2007. He didn’t select a last meal, but instead asked that a large vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person.


Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

City Silo Table + Pantry To Open Second Location

CREDIT: City Silo Table + Pantry

City Silo Table + Pantry

Clean-eating cafe City Silo Table + Pantry has announced that they will open a Saddle Creek location in Germantown this fall in the former Grimaldi’s Pizzeria space.

City Silo is owned by Memphis natives Rebekah and Scott Tashie. The new 3,500-square-foot location will include an outdoor covered patio and roll-up garage doors.

“We are extremely excited to open our second location in Germ

antown. It’s a neighborhood we always knew we wanted to be a part of, and we have been working for a while now with Saddle Creek and Trademark Property Company to make this partnership happen. We feel that this development and location are a great fit for our growing brand,” Scott Tashie said via press release.

The new location will also have an expanded menu and be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They will have a bar serving coffee, beer, wine, juice cocktails, and Proseco cocktails.

The original City Silo Table + Pantry is located at 5101 Sanderlin. The new location is slated to open this fall at 7605 West Farmington #2 in the Saddle Creek shopping center.

Categories
News News Blog

Lawmakers Want to Allow Tennessee College Students to Carry Guns on Campus


Some state lawmakers are looking to allow students at public colleges and universities in Tennessee to carry firearms on campus.

The bill (SB 2288/ HB 2102) would amend Tennessee’s current law, passed in 2017, which allows full-time employees with permits to carry a concealed firearm on campus, to include students.

The bill is sponsored in the House by Rep. Rush Bricken and in the Senate by Sen. Janice Bowling, both Republicans from Tullahoma. Neither lawmaker responded to the Flyer’s requests for comment.

The current law allows authorized full-time employees to carry on campus, but they are prohibited from carrying a firearm in plain sight, to university sponsored events, disciplinary or tenure meetings, or the university medical clinic.

Tennessee is one of 10 states that currently allows the carrying of concealed weapons on campuses in some form or another.

The other states include Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.

In some of those states, students must be 21 years old to carry a gun on campus. The draft of Tennessee’s proposed bill does not include an age provision.

[pdf-1]

The debate on whether or not states should create laws that allow guns on campus has been going since 2008, when the National Rifle Association began pushing the issue.

This push was largely prompted by mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University that resulted in a total of 37 deaths.

Research from universities and higher education boards across the country suggests that allowing students to carry guns on campus could have more adverse than positive effects.

For example, the Houston Community College Board of Trustees passed a resolution in 2011, urging lawmakers to vote against the bill allowing concealed firearms on campus. The resolution cited the possible increase in liability insurance cost, which they estimated could be between $780,000 to $900,000 per year.

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Richard Locker, director of communications for the chancellor’s office of The College System of Tennessee, said its governing board, the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR), has not yet discussed what the implications of the law could be, but said “the safety of our students is always our top priority.”

There are 40 colleges in the TBR system, including the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Memphis campus and Southwest Community College in Memphis.

Sen. Sara Kyle (D-Memphis), who is sponsoring a handful of gun control bills this legislative session, opposes the bill and any effort that would put more guns on college campuses.

“My goal is to eliminate gun violence,” Kyle said, “Evidence shows that adding guns to a college campus will only increase the number of accidental shootings, gun suicides, and gun homicides.”

Kat McRitchie, volunteer lead for the Tennessee chapter of Moms Demand Action agrees, saying that allowing students to carry guns on campus is a “bad, dangerous idea.”

“Anyone who has been on a college campus or is familiar with college life, knows that life is full of risk factors,” McRitchie said. “We see increased alcohol and drug use and high rates of mental health issues. College students are still growing and developing.This makes the presence of guns a dangerous addition.”

Like Kyle, Moms Demand Action fears the law could lead to an increase in unintentional shootings and suicide by firearms on campuses.

According to research compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety, the firearm suicide rate among youth has increased by 82 percent over the past decade. Access to firearms increases the risk of suicide by three times.

[pullquote-1]

In other states, those who support laws allowing students to carry, have argued that the presence of legal firearms on campus could prevent mass shootings or other devastating acts of mass violence.

But, McRitchie believes that “the daily risk of unintentional shootings and suicide are greater, real risks than the risk of mass shootings.”

McRitchie adds that most campuses have trained law enforcement officers with firearms present on campus who are equipped to handle mass acts of violence.

A study published in the Journal of American College Health showed that 89 percent of university police chiefs agreed that the most effective way to deal with gun violence on campus is to prevent gun use or carry on campus. Based on this survey of 417 police chiefs, the study also concluded that the majority of universities had a plan in place to handle an active shooter incident on campus.

“Fear is driving this movement,” McRitchie said. “But college campuses are relatively safe. This would be introducing risks that aren’t necessary.”

Categories
News News Blog

Beer Bracket Challenge 2020: Go Vote for Your Fave Memphis Beers

Voting is important. Voting on beer is important-er.

That’s why we launched the Memphis Flyer Beer Bracket Challenge. Voting commenced this morning (Thursday) and will run until the champion is picked on Saturday, February 29th. (Leap Year, weird.)

For this year’s challenge, we split our bracket into four divisions — light beer, dark beer, IPA, and seasonals. We really like the idea of the breweries all competing in (roughly) the same style.

Yes, you’ll still have, say, a cream ale up against a pilsner. But this ain’t the Great American Beer Fest, y’all. This is for anyone out there who loves Memphis craft beer.  

We asked six of Memphis’ craft breweries to send us their picks in each category. On Match-Up Monday at the Young Avenue Deli, we seeded those beers on our bracket. We picked the matchups blindly right out of our famous trophy — the VanWyngarden Cup. So, we didn’t influence the match-ups. That’s fair, right?

The rest is now up to you. Do you love Tiny Bomb? Are you ga-ga for Mexican Lager? Does Midnight Magic have you under its spell? (I’ll stop.) Well, go and do your civic, craft-beer duty and vote at the bracket challenge website. (Did we give you the website yet? If not, here it is.)

You can vote once in each of the five rounds of voting — first round, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and the championship round. It runs just like another lesser-known tournament that happens this time of year involving basketball. Except it’s better. It’s Memphis craft beer.

if you’re not yet convinced to get off your barstool and go vote, let’s sweeten the pot. Some lucky voters will win tickets to the one-of-a-kind Memphis Brewfest, a beer festival held on the field at Liberty Bowl Stadium.  

Best of luck to all of our breweries this year: Ghost River, Wiseacre, Crosstown, High Cotton, Memphis Made, and last year’s winner, Meddlesome Brewing. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Nuttery From Nashville

If it’s February, I’m probably going to be writing at least one column about the Tennessee General Assembly, which gets rolling in late January each year. That column usually includes a rundown of the latest goofy bills brought up for consideration by our reliably loony GOP legislators. This year is, unfortunately, no exception. So here goes …

Last week, Representative James Van Huss (who prefers to go by his “prophet name,” Micah) proposed the following bill, which … Well, just read it:

“Resolves to recognize CNN and The Washington Post as fake news and part of the media wing of the Democratic Party, and further resolves to condemn such media outlets for denigrating our citizens and implying that they are weak-minded followers instead of people exercising their rights that our veterans paid for with their blood.”

The impetus for this stellar bit of law-making was apparently the fact that Van Huss learned that a CNN pundit and a WAPO columnist had dared to suggest that some Trump supporters may not be, er, very bright or sophisticated.

By putting this bill up for consideration in the state House, Trumpster Van Huss pretty much proves the pundits’ point. In fact, Van Huss is the same Einstein who, during last year’s session, read aloud an article from The Onion as the basis for taking a position on another bill, not realizing it was satire. Oops.

But it’s not like Van Huss is breaking new ground here. The stupid has been burning in Nashville for some time now. In recent years, the General Assembly has considered: a bill that mandated abstinence-only sex education; a “gateway body parts” bill that prohibited teachers from using words such as “gay”; a bill to allow teachers to abstain from teaching evolution or climate change; a bill cracking down on “saggy pants”; a bill that addressed the possibility of a mop sink in the capitol building being a possible “foot-washing” sink for Muslims. And on it goes.

In this year’s session, Governor Bill Lee has already signed a bill that would allow some adoption agencies to deny LGBTQ couples the right to adopt, despite enormous pushback from the state’s largest corporations and business interests, who fear that such backward legislation will make it more difficult for them to lure employees to Tennessee, and that it will chase off major conventions and events, such as, say, the NHL or NBA All-Star game.

The legislators are also debating whether to leave a bust of KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest in the capitol building or perhaps replace it with one of Dolly Parton. You can’t make this stuff up.

But it’s not all fun and games and bigotry and racism. There are also the usual attempts to screw over Memphis. And this one is a doozy. Consider, if you will, this bill, which came to light on Monday: “Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 69-10-112, is amended by adding the following as a new subsection: In granting a certificate of exemption under this section, no home rule municipality or county operating under a county charter form of government may exercise authority or power over landowner riparian water rights and reasonable use for water to which a landowner has a riparian water right.”

In plain English, this means that in Tennessee a county or city would no longer have control over local water rights. It means, for example, the recent successful efforts by activists such as Save Our Aquifer and the Sierra Club to convince local authorities to prohibit the TVA from drilling into the Memphis Sand Aquifer would no longer be possible. The state would make the call on Shelby County water rights, instead of having it under local control. I have no doubt that the TVA would have won that battle if it had been decided at the state level — and we’d already have five wells dug into our aquifer next to a toxic wastewater site.

The Sierra Club’s Scott Banbury agrees: “If this were in effect when we fought the TVA, the Shelby County Health Department would not have been able to take their groundwater wells away from them,” he said. “This bill would take away Shelby County’s authority to deny well permits or institute any ‘conservation fees’ on private wells. It would undo all the work of the Shelby County Groundwater Board, Shelby County Health Department, and Protect Our Aquifer.”

Enough, already. There needs to be an all-hands-on-deck resistance mounted to stop this bill in its tracks. The mayors, city council, county commission, and all local House and Senate legislators should have their hair on fire about this. This is beyond party. Memphis’ unique and bountiful aquifer is one of its greatest assets. Do we really want to have it controlled by the likes of James Van Huss?