Hoop City?
Those were two interesting stories about the University of Memphis Tiger basketball team and the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team (“Hoop City 2013: 20 Questions,” October 24th issue). Nice questions and some good answers. Now, I have one question: What qualifications does Memphis have to be called “Hoop City”? New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philly, and others pop up in my mind before Memphis does.
I love the teams here, but as a scorer/statistician (not a fan) I question that Memphis is Hoop City. I think it’s media hype and nothing more. Media hype in sports is frequent in Memphis from the print media to the sports talk-show people to television folks. I won’t go into details about why, but I hope that I am wrong when the Tigers and the Grizzlies bring home titles at the end of the season.
Jay Guinozzo
Memphis
Politics — as usual?
Regarding Liz Rincon’s article “A Wake-Up Call” in the October 17th Flyer and the buffoon Joe Brown’s diatribe at the Shelby County Democratic Party roast of Willie Herenton: Somehow, Brown and Rincon deserve each other.
First, and in all fairness, Brown did not say (as relayed by Rincon) that Obama had “failed to create a single job.” What Brown did say (according to the Flyer‘s own Jackson Baker) was that in six years, Obama had failed to produce a single jobs bill, which is true. The thin-skinned Rincon somehow imagined this to be an insult to the president, something clearly verboten among the true believers.
Nor did Brown say that girls should “keep their knees together.” What he did ask was why “black preachers are not telling girls to keep their knees together,” which was intended as a criticism of black clergy, not women.
Nor was Brown particularly critical of homosexuality, as Rincon perceived him to be. What Brown said was “we need to keep Big Brother out of the bedroom” and that he wished gays would remain “in the closet.” This was clearly Brown’s own personal belief, and, believe it or not, he has a constitutional right to express it —even if doing so conflicts with Rincon’s somewhat dogmatic and self-righteous views on the subject. Rincon should also note that black churches as a whole do not support gay marriage.
Most notably, Rincon completely failed to mention that Brown’s frank comments clearly “resonated” with a number of Democrats in the crowd.
The real issue here and the thing that really appears to have riled up Ms. Rincon is that someone in the morally challenged Democratic Party (albeit a dolt like Brown) had the audacity to question her somewhat tenuous, sactimonious, and ideologically rigid personal positions.
Finally, she puts the finishing touches on her own diatribe by issuing an ultimatum to Brown and other dangerous types who would stray from the tent of pseudo-inclusion and intolerant tolerance: Shut up, get back in line, and don’t question anything or “we’ll say goodbye” and exclude you from the great party of inclusion.
Erwin Williamson
Memphis
So, the party of “fiscal responsibility,” in thrall to a virulent absurdist fringe, has taken us to the brink of economic disaster, which, in the short run, cost us $24 billion, loss of credibility throughout the world, and induced international wonderment at how the greatest democracy on earth could be brought so low by such a small cabal of scheming anarchists! A simple answer would be that if you elect “fools” to high public office you should expect to suffer from the “errands” they undertake.
America, having endured this needless pain, will recover, though the long-term effects are yet to unfold. But those who bellow about “taking their country back” should realize that’s not going to happen. It ceased to exist at Appomattox in 1865.
Jay Sheffield
Memphis
Just how “fiscally responsible” is this: The Tea Party lunatics cost our country $24,000,000,000 in a temper tantrum trying to take health care away from 30,000,000 Americans. That $24,000,000,000 would have bought health care for every uninsured American for a decade. Instead, it was flushed down the toilet. It benefited no one. No foreign country helped. No wars paid for. No roads or bridges built. Just total waste never to be recovered.
I hope every voter in America will make “Twenty-four BILLION Wasted” a battle cry come November 2014. I also think legal action should be started immediately to sue the Republican Party for this money. It was ours, and they blew it on a terrorist attack against our country.
Jim Brasfield
Memphis
