Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

What’s It All About?

Songwriter Burt Bacharach died last week at 94. His songs were mostly old-school paeans to romance — “Walk on By,” “The Look of Love,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “Alfie,” to name just a few. Still, they popped up on the Top 40 charts for four decades, alongside the latest from the Stones, Donna Summer, Bruce Springsteen, the Temptations, the Cure, Elvis Costello, you name it. Bacharach left a musical legacy that made millions of people happy, even if only for three minutes at a time. You could do worse in this life.

I mention all this because I’ve been reading a lot about happiness lately, and the fact that we humans are essentially hard-wired for toxic or tonic thinking — stress or respite. It’s well-established now that how we process stress can either help our body heal or cause it to close itself off with anxiety.

I’m dealing with some health issues, so I’ve spent a lot of time recently consulting with Dr. Google. And even though my prognosis is pretty good, I still take heart from reading the vast trove of anecdotal “power of positive thinking” stories. These are genuine NIH medical histories, not hippie fantasies or Mexican-miracle-cures. For example, countless serious studies using placebos have demonstrated that if someone believes a medicine is helping, it will, even if it’s not medicine. Similarly, what were once considered “quack” remedies, including meditation and holistic practices, and even certain mushrooms long used in Chinese medicine, are now being tested with promising results. So that reishi mushroom tincture I take every morning couldn’t hurt, right?

Once, virtually every system of healing around the globe, from primitive jungle tribes to the kingdoms of Renaissance Europe, treated the mind and body as a whole. Then, 300 years ago or so, Western medicine started to see them as two distinct entities: The body came to be perceived more as a machine with replaceable, repairable, independent parts, with little medical connection to the mind’s influence. This led to great advances in surgery, trauma care, and pharmaceuticals, but it ignored the vital connections between mind and body, the recognition that the mind and body are not separate, but one. Our healthcare system is still primarily geared to medicate and operate, but thankfully the recognition of holistic strategies has also re-emerged.

So, back to the mind: If there are two options, what mental habits are tonic? And which are toxic? Meditation is probably the purest form of tonic thinking — just focusing on breathing and clearing one’s mind. Listening to music is tonic, as is any activity that gets your mind and body into a cohesive flow. As for toxic thinking? It’s dealing with stress. It’s worry. It’s tossing and turning at night over unpaid bills or that fight with your spouse or the pain in your chest that won’t subside. Learning to recognize stress and how to counter it is as medically necessary as remembering to take that evening cholesterol tablet.

In my, er, research, I rediscovered a book by Norman Cousins called Anatomy of an Illness. This book was a big deal in the 1960s, mainly because it was one of the first accounts of someone who ignored the medical establishment and succeeded in curing himself — and because Cousins was a well-known writer and the editor of the then-popular national magazine, Saturday Review. (I should add here that I was briefly managing editor at SR in the 1980s and had occasion to work with Cousins for a few months.)

At any rate, in 1964, Cousins was told he had ankylosing spondylitis — a crippling and irreversible disease — and should get his affairs in order. Faced with spending the short remainder of his life wasting away in a hospital room, Cousins checked into a hotel, and with the help of a sympathetic doctor, took massive amounts of vitamin C and spent hours every day watching comedies by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields and reading humorous books, his thesis being that laughter would free his brain from worry and negativity. It was a good call. His illness disappeared and his book became a huge bestseller, and he beat the raindrops falling on his head. You could do worse in this life, Alfie.

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At Large Opinion

Shiny Objects

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

Last Friday, after enduring three cold, gray days and nights beneath a quarter-inch of ice, we in Memphis were gifted with the return of the sun and a glittering display of trees sparkling in the morning light. Like many of you, I went out and took pictures and listened to the sounds of the clicking, dripping, shimmering ice-fall with some gratitude. It had been a long week.

And it felt something like closure, an offering, maybe a respite of sorts from the previous week’s civic trauma surrounding the Tyre Nichols case, though much work — and further trauma — surely lies ahead of us in that arena. 

Nevertheless, on this glorious morning, the national news media seemed to have at least temporarily moved on to other matters, and for that we could be grateful. The new shiny object (literally) that was garnering the media’s attention was the presence of a large balloon drifting high over the state of Montana that had been determined to be of Chinese origin. Was it a weather device, as the Chinese were alleging, or was it a piece of nefarious spy-machinery seeking to glean military secrets from the barren Montana terrain, 60,000 feet below?

Long ago, I spent a summer in Montana as a farm laborer, driving grain trucks through lush green fields surrounded by distant mountains during the day and drinking 3.2 beer and getting schooled at 8-ball in cowboy saloons by night. In my admittedly wan memory of those days, nothing much happens in Montana, though it is a beautiful place to spend a summer when you are young and full of yourself.

But back to the balloon, which, as it slowly crossed the country, served much like a high-altitude Rorschach test for the body politic. Republicans, including usual suspects Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Pompeo, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump (Jr. and Sr.), and nearly every other GOP yahoo you could name, began clamoring for President Biden to shoot it down immediately, no questions asked. Maybe they thought the balloon was “woke.” Can’t be too careful.

The current president’s advisors, on the other hand, were urging caution, both for the fact that detritus and equipment falling from a balloon as big as “three buses” might damage something or somebody below, and for the possibility that the balloon could be retrieved and brought down safely to better determine its true purpose. Or, in other words, get woke about it.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy jumped into the fray, calling for a briefing of the “Gang of Eight” — the group of lawmakers charged with reviewing the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information. “China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent,” McCarthy tweeted.

Perhaps fearing the “Gang of Eight” was an actual gang in Congress (and who could blame them?), the Chinese government issued further clarification: “It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure.”

For its part, the U.S. intelligence community pretended to know what “force majeure” meant for several critical minutes as researchers scrambled to determine what they were up against. After all, it’s not every day you get a Chinese balloon over your airspace, and it’s even more complicated when the Chinese start speaking French. Sacre bleu!

As the balloon drifted across the country on Saturday, the GOP upped its rhetoric: We were all in danger of … something, and Biden’s refusal to shoot it down was just despicable and cowardly. You’d have thought there were drag queens cooking on gas stoves in that thing.

Finally, late in the afternoon, as the evil blimp entered airspace above the Atlantic, it was shot down off the coast near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A Pentagon spokesperson said that the U.S. had disabled the balloon’s equipment days earlier and had decided to wait until there was no danger to those on the ground before taking it down. The Pentagon added that three Chinese balloons had crossed the country unmolested during the Trump administration. Oh. Oops.

On Sunday, the entire nation took a deep breath and began looking for the next shiny object to fight about. 

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At Large Opinion

A Scorpion’s Sting

Tyre Nichols (Photo: Family of Tyre Nichols)

Somebody put some serious work into coming up with the acronym for SCORPION, which stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods. The operation was announced with some fanfare in late 2021 by Mayor Jim Strickland and Police Director C.J. Davis. The four 10-man units were assigned to work in high-crime areas, seeking to reduce the city’s rates of murder, carjacking, car theft, and other major felonies. As has now been reported, the officers often used “no tolerance” policing methods, pulling motorists over for low-level infractions, such as tinted windows or seat-belt violations, as an excuse to interrogate and search.

We still don’t know why SCORPION officers stopped 29-year-old Tyre Nichols near his home in the Hickory Hill neighborhood on January 7th, but, as is now well-documented after the release of a disturbing and nauseating video last Friday, we do know the officers aggressively pulled Nichols from his car, and though he cooperated fully with commands to lie on the ground, they struck him repeatedly and shot him with a taser.

Nichols fled the scene but was caught eight minutes later. Video from a nearby pole-mounted police camera showed five officers mercilessly beating Nichols with batons, face-kicks, and brutal punches to his head for more than three minutes. Nichols was then left on the ground for nearly a half-hour as his assailants stood around discussing possible alibis, ignoring him. Three days later, Nichols died from his injuries at St. Francis Hospital. Ten days after that, on January 20th, the officers were fired for violations of department policies, including excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid.

No one who watched that video can deny that this was a lynching, a cold-blooded murder of a young man whose death began with a routine traffic stop that escalated only because the cops wanted it to. The Nichols case made the MPD — and the city of Memphis — the lead story on the national news for several days. Reporters parachuted into town from all over, doing stand-up reporting from Memphis streets, covering the peaceful protests, and interviewing Memphis officials and politicians.

In the aftermath, the city got some things right. Davis denounced the officers’ actions, quickly fired them, and said of the video: “This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. … This incident was heinous, reckless, and inhumane.”

District Attorney Stephen Mulroy held a press conference to announce charges against the five officers, including second-degree murder, and urged consideration of police reform. (This is in stark contrast, it should be noted, to the former DA, who was reluctant to prosecute MPD officers for much of anything.)

The national news website Daily Beast contrasted Memphis’ response with that of New York in similar police-related cases: “This is how you do it. You give the officers due process. But you don’t serve as their defense attorney. … It’s notable that officials in a red state (albeit in a purplish city) appear more committed to accountability for police officers than they are … in New York City.”

City officials — and Nichols’ mother RowVaughn Wells — asked residents “to protest in peace. I don’t want us burning our city, tearing up our streets.” And Memphis, again, got it right. Demonstrators were unfailingly peaceful. Tyre Nichols’ life was celebrated — and his death was mourned with calm, power, and dignity.

Now here we are, and now the real work begins. The Nichols family deserves swift justice. Those officers need to go to prison for a long time. But MPD needs to be rebuilt from the ground up — and maybe from the top down — starting with those who thought SCORPION was a good idea. It was not. It propagated a toxic “cop culture” that was allowed free rein under the guise of restoring peace to our neighborhoods. Davis announced the deactivation of the unit on Saturday, which is a start.

Perhaps Lawrence Turner, pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, where Nichols’ funeral will be held this week, said it best: “Today can mark the beginning of the Second Civil Rights Movement: beyond individual equality to systemic equality. We demand a system that manifests justice for all, not the privileged few, in Tyre’s name — each day going forward until we overcome.”

It’s our turn, Memphis. The world is still watching.

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At Large Opinion

Woke-A-Mole

Photo: KWON JUNHO | Unsplash

Here’s the latest news from Florida, the cutting edge of “conservative” politics, where Governor (and GOP presidential candidate in waiting) Ron DeSantis is determined to stamp out “wokism” in all its terrifying forms and get his name in the news as often as possible.

Last spring, at DeSantis’ urging, the state passed its own version of the “Don’t Say Gay” act, which bans mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity in any manner deemed to be against state standards in schools, and prohibits public schools from adopting procedures that maintain the confidentiality of a disclosure by a student of their sexuality or gender.

Last week, because DeSantis was apparently not content to limit his interest in harassing transgender students to undergraduates, the governor requested data on the number of students who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who have received treatment in university clinics across the state.

Also, last week, in an even more stunning development, Florida banned the teaching of AP classes on African-American history in the state’s high schools. The department of education said the curriculum “is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”

So, to review: In Florida, you can’t say gay or Black in schools because teaching about LGBTQ+ issues or Black history is “woke” and might make straight white people sad. Or have to think. Or learn something.

DeSantis is also now pushing for a bill that would give discounts to those wanting to buy a gas stove because gas stoves were a momentary thing that woke people were supposedly woke about last week, due to a study that revealed gas stoves can leak methane into people’s homes. It was all over Fox News, and Tucker Carlson made hay with the “issue” for several nights. Conservatives went on Twitter and dared liberals to come and take their stoves. Liberals were like, “What? Nobody wants your stupid stove, gas boy.” So the issue went away after a few days.

By the way, if you want to see what DeSantis is going to be outraged about next, you can just watch ol’ Tucker. Unbelievably, in recent days, Carlson’s been saying how good cigarettes are for America, how the country was built on smoking. This was in response to House Republicans opening a smoking lounge in the Capitol building. So maybe DeSantis will put gas stoves and cigarettes on a plane to Massachusetts. That should trigger the woke folks, right?

I know, I know, it’s hard to keep up with these fools, but here’s a handy list of woke things conservatives are (or have been) worried about in recent times: the feminization of Mr. Potato Head, the feminization of M&Ms cartoon characters (a Carlson favorite), Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, gay Teletubbies, drag queens (including, amazingly, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire), litter boxes in schools for students “who identify as cats,” the word Latinx (banned in Arkansas by new Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders), the emasculation of alpha males by aggressive liberal women, bare arms on females (banned in the Missouri legislature), and, of course, the all-time woke pisser-offer — pronouns.

To be accurate, these are usually the kinds of trendy topics that get a lot of air-time in the right-wing news silo for a while, then fade as they lose their usefulness — or people finally see through the charade. (Is “charage” a word? It should be.)

There is, of course, a more durable outrage list that gets tapped when the base rubes really need an anger fix. These include: abortion (and nonexistent “post-birth abortions”), the morning-after pill and other contraceptives, immigrants (non-white), Covid vaccines (they kill people), crime waves (in Democrat cities), gas prices (Joe’s fault), books about sex or race, the “myth” of global warning, and “Critical Race Theory” (which isn’t taught in public schools and which no conservative can actually explain but is really scary).

So, that’s a lot of woke stuff, right? What does it mean if none of it scares or triggers you? Are you still woke? I’m pretty sure I am, but maybe it’s because I’ve come to think being woke simply means that you believe in science, medicine, education, research, fact-based reporting, and the importance of being open to new information. Honestly, I think being woke is what we used to call “normal,” before so many got sucked into their own social media bubbles by charlatans and grifters. At its heart, maybe being woke is simply being unafraid to call “bullshit” when you see it.

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At Large Opinion

Of Wanda and Wallabies

Jamie and Kaari Morant (Photo: Courtesy of Jamie Morant)

So, what do beleaguered County Clerk Wanda Halbert and a wallaby have in common? Well, one of them was found wandering around near Lick Creek in Overton Park last April after having escaped the flooded Memphis Kanga Zoo. The other was seldom to be found, as her office struggled mightily for months to get new Tennessee license plates to Memphis drivers. They have in common the fact that both of their stories were among the Top 10 viewed in 2022 on memphisflyer.com.

It’s an odd list, sort of representative of the year past, but also representative of just how easily some offbeat stories can go viral, well, just because. It can be a matter of lucky timing, or maybe a national website picks up a story, or maybe it just gets a lucky tweet from a celebrity.

Consider the human-interest story that Flyer Grizzlies writer Sharon Brown posted in May. She’d spent weeks trying to get an interview with star guard Ja Morant’s mother, Jamie Morant. When Brown finally got the go-ahead, she struck gold. Morant was forthcoming and frank and opened up about her own childhood and how she taught Ja to respect women. Here’s one exchange from the story:

Brown: Ja once said that you are his best friend and that you taught him to celebrate women every day, that he carries with him in his treatment of his sister, his daughter, and other women. Why was it important to you to teach that to him?

Jamie Morant: Treating everyone with respect is important, but as a man you should treat women with the utmost respect. I mean, you came from a woman, right? We see enough of the opposite in the world and I wanted more for my son.

Thanks to a few retweets from national writers and influencers, Brown’s insightful story became the Flyer’s most-read piece online in 2022.

Right behind that story was a clear example of how serendipity can shape readership — and not in a heart-warming way. Arguably, one of the darkest days in Memphis last year occurred in early September, when a young woman named Eliza Fletcher was kidnapped and murdered while on an early morning jog near the University of Memphis. A man named Cleotha Abston was soon charged with the crime, as we reported at the time. But strangely, it was not Abston’s first appearance in the Flyer, as googlers from all over soon discovered.

In a story from 2001, former Flyer reporter John Branston recounted the troubling tale of Memphis lawyer Kemper Durand. Here’s an excerpt:

“Durand was walking to his car around 2 a.m. on May 25, 2000, after attending a party on Beale Street when a lone gunman walked up behind him, took his wallet, and forced him into the trunk. The abductor, Cleotha Abston, drove around and picked up friends then, after about two hours, escorted Durand into a Mapco station to withdraw money from an ATM. A uniformed Memphis Housing Authority officer entered, Durand yelled that he had been kidnapped, and the kidnappers ran away.”

So, it turned out that 22 years before he kidnapped and killed Eliza Fletcher, Abston had kidnapped someone else. No one had publicly made this connection until we noticed Branston’s story getting a lot of web traffic later in September. Abston pled guilty in 2001 and served nearly 20 years before being released — with disastrous and tragic results.

Also scoring in the Top 10 was Toby Sells’ story about a controversial, Democrat-hating preacher from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, named Greg Locke. Sample quote: “If you vote Democrat, I don’t even want you around this church,” Locke said in a sermon. “You can get out. You can get out, you demon. You can get out, you baby-butchering, election thief.” Yeah, so, he’s a lot like Jesus, and our readers gobbled it up.

Rounding out our top stories of 2022 were a couple that you might have expected to get a lot of traffic: a column (with pictures) that I wrote about exploring the Mississippi River bottom at its all-time low, and another photo feature in which Flyer film editor Chris McCoy posted a bunch of amazing shots of the same phenomenon. Sometimes the bottom can rise to the top, I guess.

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At Large Opinion

Daze of Christmas Past

Photographerlondon | Dreamstime.com

It started with a backache in October. It seemed like a muscle pull or pinched nerve but it wouldn’t stop hurting. I went to two noted local clinics, each of which suggested different possible causes but offered no real relief from the pain. Finally, I tried acupuncture, which alleviated the symptoms enough that I thought maybe I’d turned the corner.

Then things got scary. On December 13th, I was walking my dogs when I noticed my left foot felt weak and a little floppy. I called my physician, Dr. Warren, and got an appointment for three days later. My wife Tatine accompanied me. After a brief check of my vitals and listening to me describe my symptoms, Warren said, “You’re going to the emergency room at Methodist right now.” And so the holiday festivities began.

After an hour, I was wheeled into a CT scan and then returned to a hallway to await results. Two hours later, the ER physician came out and said, quickly, “It’s cancer. You have a small mass in your chest. We’ll need to biopsy it and see what we’re dealing with.”

Well, merry dang Christmas. Tatine and I sat for a bit, like tornado survivors in a split-open house trailer. What the hell?

The next couple of days were a blur. Family and friends came and went and I put up a smile and a thumb. I then experienced the hospital’s panoply of tubular machines that inhale your body and look at its interior. The cacophonous MRI experience was an hour of bangs and audio distortion that I’ve yet to quite understand. But the good news was that the cancer seemed isolated to a single spot.

We began a series of meetings with doctors from cardiology, neurology, and oncology. The tumor was a thumb-sized growth that had attached to the front of my spine. The plan was for the neurologists to stabilize the spine from the backside with pins, and then when that was done, a treatment protocol for the tumor — once the biopsy came back and we knew what kind of cancer we were dealing with — would be created. So, on the fifth day of Christmas, I got major back surgery and a new Franken-spine. Two days later, the biopsy results indicated that I had a “curable” stage I lymphoma that could be treated with chemo over the next few months, a gift for which I’m obviously quite thankful.

The next three days were what I’ve come to recall as my “disco dreams” period. I was in the ICU and had access to a handy little pump that would allow me to give myself a nice pain-killing sedative every hour during the night. I was taking lots of other pills and the interaction was somewhat psychedelic. My sleep was full of flashing lights and rolling trains and groove music, interrupted on the hour, every hour, sadly, by nurses giving me meds, checking my vitals, taking my blood. My night visitors kept breaking up the party.

After ICU, I was moved to another room to begin my “plugged-in” phase, wherein bleeping tubes dripped medicines into my body and other tubes removed liquids from my body and I felt like a tank being simultaneously drained and filled.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, pipes were freezing, water was being boiled, blackouts were rolling. My family was gathering for meals and holiday rituals and I was watching movies on my laptop, my choices purely whimsical: My Man Godfrey, The Tender Bar, Slap Shot, The Man in the High Castle, some Harry Potter thing. I wanted out. Christmas was coming.

Christmas Eve arrived and after my family left, it was down to my favorite nurse Vitarn and me. I was feeling melancholy. We wished each other merry merry and I turned out the lights. (It was only later that I was gently told that “Vitarn” was really Vita, who signed her name on the white board as “Vita rn.”) Anyway, Vita and I had a lovely Christmas morning together, before Dr. Warren came in, checked me over, and said if neurology approved, I could go home.

By midday, I was good to go and stepping gingerly into the front seat of our car. I will not soon forget the odd pale daylight, how strange it felt being outside for the first time in 12 days, how quiet the traffic-less stretch of Union Avenue seemed to be on this, the strangest Christmas ever.

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Books

Star Power at Burke’s Books

Photo: Corey Mesler


Imagine, if you will, looking up to see famed filmmaker Joel Coen and his wife, actress Frances McDormand, walk into your place of business in Memphis on a random December day. That’s what happened to Corey Mesler, who, along with his wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Chloe runs Burke’s Books in Cooper-Young.

“We were all a little gob-smacked,” says Mesler. “They said they were on their way to California and they were stopping in Memphis for ‘barbecue, antiques, and Burke’s Books.’”

The pair was down-to-earth and friendly, Mesler says. “They couldn’t have been nicer. Once they met all of us and discovered we were a family-run business, Frances said, ‘Isn’t it nice that we’re all doing just we want?’ We loved them. It was almost like we already knew them.”

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At Large Opinion

A Year At Large

Verdict’s out on whether this year was rock bottom, but we did see the bottom of the Mississippi River. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

It’s long been the custom for Flyer writers to devote their year-end column to the 12 months just past, so I’ve spent the past couple of days rummaging through my 2022 columns.

January — The brutal assassination of Memphis rapper Young Dolph dominated the news for a couple of weeks and put Memphis into an unwanted national spotlight. I also wrote about the increasingly troubling phenomenon of souped-up cars with drive-out tags ignoring all traffic laws with impunity. By the end of the month, I was reduced to writing about the joys of learning a language on Duolingo, just to catch a breather.

February — The new Republican-created Tennessee voting district maps were a joke at all three levels, a mugging of democracy in plain sight. Newly configured districts in and around Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville were designed to break up neighborhoods and Democratic voting strongholds in urban areas, especially Black communities.

Later that month, I took in a pup I found abandoned at the Overton Park dog run. I named her Wink and soon discovered she was deaf. The story had a happy ending, eventually, as two women adopted her. She’s now Sasha, and I still get pictures of her.

Also, Marjorie Taylor Greene ranted about Nancy Pelosi’s “gazpacho police” enforcing mask requirements.

March — I urged the Mighty Lights folks to light the M Bridge in Ukrainian blue and gold after Putin’s invasion. It took a minute for them to catch on.

That was followed by a column on the right’s obsession with “wokeness.” Steve Bannon predicted that Ukraine’s “woke” army would succumb to Putin’s manly Russian forces in a couple of weeks. As usual, Bannon got it completely wrong.

March also saw the beginning of the circus surrounding the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Despite having no real blemishes on her record and more judicial and trial experience than any nominee in decades, she suffered the slings and rubber-tipped arrows of GOP opportunists such as Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and our homegrown lightweight, Marsha Blackburn, who cleverly asked the judge to “define a woman.”

April — I took a deep dive into the Wordle phenomenon, and how I personally got name-checked as a Wordle grinch.

Right-wingers began whining ceaselessly about saving American schools from “Critical Race Theory,” and Governor Bill Lee first tipped his hand about funneling tax dollars to Hillsdale College to fund 50 right-wing charter schools.

Blackburn once again found a way to embarrass (most of) us by slyly giving a white power symbol while questioning Judge Jackson on the Senate floor.

May — The leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade was beginning to stir dissent, as American women realized that this SCOTUS was apparently quite willing to overturn the right of women to control their own bodies. I suggested the leak came from Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, but it now appears the leaker was Alito himself.

A shooter in Buffalo murdered 10 Black people in a supermarket, citing as his reason the “white replacement theory” that had been spouted by Fox host Tucker Carlson and other white supremacists for weeks. Many thoughts and prayers were offered.

No uterus, no opinion, right? Well, the Supreme Court released a different opinion, called Dobbs. (Photo: © Mikephotos | Dreamstime.com)

June — Oh, hey, time for another mass shooting, this time at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Thoughts and prayers were immediately issued and everything was fine.

A few days later, after giving a speech at the NRA convention, Donald Trump read the names of the 19 victims of the shooting (mispronouncing many of them). Then, as one does, he danced off-stage to Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming.”

July — Roe v. Wade was overturned and American women in many parts of the country were required to adhere to a religious tenet held by 13 percent of the country’s adults, and six of the nine Supreme Court judges. Conservative activists had spent years working to pack the Supreme Court for the express purpose of undoing Roe v. Wade, and they succeeded. Pundits wondered if women would be able to sustain their outrage until Election Day.

In Memphis, it was 100 degrees or so all month, including one day in which our “feels like” temperature reached a balmy 114.

August — After an investigation, the DOJ became convinced that Trump was lying about not having more classified information stored at Mar-a-Lago and conducted a raid, which uncovered lots more classified and top-secret information. Trump had lied. Shocker.

I wrote about the horrific problems of Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert’s office, then I went on vacation for a couple weeks and had a great time. Kinda like Wanda did.

September — Like I said, I went on vacation. When I got back I wrote about license plates, “In God We Trust,” and propping up religion by the state government.

October — I managed to get out a column about being a bird-nerd and getting busted for pot in college. You wouldn’t think there would be a connection, but that’s why they pay me the big bucks to write this stuff. I also commended President Joe “Cheech” Biden for letting all those dope-fiends out of prison.

The next week I went out in a boat on the Mississippi River, what was left of it, and took a lot of pictures of sand dunes that used to be river bottom.

November — Finally, there was good news. The “red wave” that was supposed to crush the Democrats’ power in Washington, D.C., and around the country turned out to be blue. People didn’t forget the Roe v. Wade debacle. People didn’t want to overturn the 2020 election or put Trump’s hand-selected clowns in high office. Huzzah.

December — We learned that the city would be getting a minor league football team called the Memphis Showboats (again). The city went crazy with all-night celebrations for a week. It was awesome.

We were also treated to another episode of the ongoing series, “I’m an anti-Semite,” starring “Ye,” Trump, and another horrible person. Then Trump demanded that we “terminate” the Constitution and make him president again because Elon Musk released an earth-shattering Twitter expose about Hunter Biden’s penis. So far, the Constitution hasn’t been terminated, but there’s always next year. See you in January.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Call Me

Don’t lose my number. (Photo: Stokkete | Dreamstime.com)

Rikki, don’t lose that number
You don’t wanna call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself …

I still remember it: 581-3457. No, that wasn’t Rikki’s number. That was my family’s phone number when I was growing up. In those days, I could tell you the phone numbers of all my close friends, plus those of my grandparents, plus the local pizza joint. I never thought about having to look them up. Everyone had tons of numbers memorized. It was essential. It’s not like you could carry a phone book around with you.

Now? Well, I know my wife’s phone number, mainly because I have to use it in filling out various forms. And I know Jenny’s, of course (867-5309). But I couldn’t begin to tell you my children’s numbers. They’ve all moved around and their area codes are weird now and, well, I don’t have to know their numbers because I can just tell my phone to “call Mary.” This is a good thing. I’ve got four kids and stepkids, meaning I’d have to memorize 40 rando digits with my dwindling brain cells, and who needs that?

Speaking of my brain cells, indulge me please as I ponder for a moment the ancient days of landlines — only we didn’t call them landlines. We called them “telephones.” They were big, clunky plastic things that were plugged into walls or placed in little booths around town. Most families had a single phone shared by everybody, usually in the living room. Later, people began to get “extensions,” so you could get some modicum of privacy, unless your pesky brother in the other room stealthily picked up and listened. College dorms had a single phone in the hallway, shared by every resident living on that floor. You want to sweet talk your girlfriend? Good luck.

Times were tough, I tell ya. If you’re over 40, you can probably relate to much of this. The greatest evolutionary steps of the telephone have happened within our lifetimes.

Remember when voicemail was introduced? What a revelation that was. Everyone left those stupid explicit instructions. “You have reached 901-111-5554, the residence of George and Brenda Caldwell-Williams. We can’t answer the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and phone number after the beep, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a great day!”

You had to listen to that bilge all the way through every time you called before you could leave a message. Kill me. And lots of people did cute or “funny” answering machine messages, like reading the script together or making little jokes. Kill me again. Faster.

And caller ID? What a game changer! I remember with great pleasure the day we got that device on our home phone. That very night our teenage daughter called and said, “Hey, Mom, I’m at Kathryn’s and I think I’m just gonna spend the night out here, okay?” My wife responded: “Huh, that’s interesting. Our new caller ID says you’re at Brad’s house. You get your butt home right now, young lady!” It was so delicious. Good, good times.

Now caller ID, voicemail, cameras, maps, phone books, and the entire collected knowledge of the human race are built into the noisy little computers we carry with us everywhere. Today that Steely Dan song I cited above would be called, “Rikki, Yo Here’s My Digits.” You’d just airdrop her your number and start sending inappropriate texts.

And it’s not just songs that have had to be reinvented. All of modern fiction and screenwriting have changed to accommodate the new reality of constant interconnectedness. Plots involving letter writing? Nah. Heroine driving a car and can’t be reached? Nah. Hero needs to go to the library to look something up and then meets girl of his dreams? Nah.

These sorts of changes aren’t unprecedented, of course. Art and literature have always evolved to accommodate the modifications imposed by humanity’s inventiveness. The World According to Garp and Casablanca beautifully exemplify the era of their creation, and their truths stand the test of time. Bogart standing on a rainy Moroccan tarmac growling, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” over a cell phone just wouldn’t have the same magic.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Same Old Game

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve seen a fresh incarnation of a game we’ve all become familiar with during the last seven years. It’s called “Will You Denounce This?” The game begins when Donald Trump says or does something that used to be thought of as outrageous. The media then jump into action by asking any Republican they can get in front of a microphone to denounce Trump. As in:

Reporter: “Senator Leghorn, Donald Trump said this week that the United States should bomb Puerto Rico to keep Democrats from making it the 51st state. Puerto Rico is an American territory and Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Will you denounce Trump’s statement that the United States should bomb American citizens?”

Leghorn: “Well, President Trump says a lot of things, and I don’t think anything is gained from addressing these ‘gotcha’ questions from the media.”

Reporter: “But Mr. Trump is saying we should bomb one of our own territories, which could kill thousands of American citizens. Surely you don’t condone such a thing.”

Leghorn: “Look, I work for the American people, and the American people are concerned about high taxes, inflation, drag queens, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. The kind of questions you’re asking are irrelevant, premature, and based on speculation.”

Reporter [incredulous voice]: “So you won’t denounce the bombing and killing of American citizens by American armed forces?”

Leghorn: “Well, of course I don’t personally approve of bombing Puerto Rico, but the president is privy to information we don’t have, and he has a right to express his opinion.”

Reporter: “So, if Mr. Trump gets the GOP nomination in 2024, will you support him?”

Leghorn: “It’s a long way to 2024 so I don’t want to play that game, but, as a Republican, I will of course support our nominee. Also, Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

So yeah, that wasn’t exactly what happened recently, but Trump did roll out three doozies. First, he vowed that when he became president again, he would pardon anyone involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then, he had dinner with musician Kanye West, who just last week on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler and his disdain for Jews. Having this guy to dinner was not a great look for Trump. But “Ye” upped the ante and brought Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, anti-Semite, and avowed Nazi boot-licker who makes Ye look progressive.

When word got out about the dinner, the media began a fresh round of “Will You Denounce This?” And they actually found a few Republicans willing to say that Trump was wrong to host these assholes for dinner, including Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney. Progress, right?

Not exactly. Before the ruckus ensuing from his dinner could die down, Trump posted the following on his Truth Social network: “With the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? … A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

No one knows for sure what provoked this latest Trump outburst. Perhaps the weirdness of those Hunter Biden penis pictures coming out via a Twitter story? Surely we don’t need to terminate the Constitution for that, do we? I mean, unless that thing was really huge.

It’s tempting to dismiss all this as the ranting of a delusional fool, but bear in mind that this is a man who could still become the GOP nominee — and that most Republicans are still afraid to stand up to a guy who pledges to release convicted January 6th rioters, has dinner with two Hitler-lovers, calls for the overturning of the 2020 election, and says we should terminate the U.S. Constitution.

There’s an adage that you should never play chess with a pigeon because they knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around like they won. If the Republicans don’t pick a new king soon, they’re going to need another board. This game is getting old.