Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

Old and in the Fray

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date November 30, 2022

Willie Nelson (Photo: Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com)

President Joe Biden turned 80 last week. When asked about it beforehand, he said, “I can’t say the age I’m going to be. I can’t even get it out of my mouth.”

I’m not near 80, but I’m old enough to relate to the president’s sentiment. It’s a weird phenomenon, how our bodies keep changing and our brains (and eyes) are always surprised by it. How the hell did I get wrinkles on my knees, for instance? Jaysus.

The president’s comment brought to mind a conversation I had with my paternal grandmother when I was a considerably younger man. We were having breakfast at her house, when, apropos of nothing, she said, incredulously: “Eighty! Sometimes I think, how can I be 80? I don’t feel any different than I ever did.” She was a woman with a flair for the dramatic, including sighing at some point during each holiday season: “This will probably be my last Christmas.” It usually wasn’t. Until it was. Anyway, for some reason, that conversation has stayed with me through the years, and I get it now, Velma.

Age is front of mind nationally these days because it’s possible — though I don’t think Trump will make it through the gauntlet of indictments awaiting him — that the 2024 presidential campaign could feature an 82-year-old Biden against a 78-year-old Trump. Boy, that’ll stimulate the youth vote!

In 2016, Trump, at 70, was the oldest president ever elected, until Biden set the new age mark of 78, in 2020. By way of comparison, Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when elected in 1980 and addled by dementia by the time he left office eight years later, was previously the oldest elected president and the oldest to ever hold the office. The only reason Biden gets asked about whether he’ll run for re-election is because of his age. Is it a fair question?

Consider this list: Paul McCartney, Judi Dench, Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Pope Francis, Nancy Pelosi, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Billy Dee Williams, Bernie Sanders, Anthony Fauci, Ralph Lauren, Martha Stewart, Quincy Jones, George Takei, Al Pacino, and last but not least, at 89, Willie Nelson. All are in their 80s, and all are still working and productive. I could have added dozens more, including many non-celebrities I know personally. But, with the possible exceptions of Bernie, Nancy, and Morgan Freeman (who, after all, has played POTUS three times), none are likely qualified to handle the rigors of the highest office in the land.

Neither is Trump, for that matter. In fact, given the choice, I’d prefer almost anybody on that list above, but that’s another story.

On the occasion of Biden’s birthday, The New York Times published a piece that looked at his health prospects, were he to win in 2024, citing 10 experts on aging: “Mr. Biden, these experts agreed, has a lot going in his favor: He is highly educated, has plenty of social interaction, a stimulating job that requires a lot of thinking, is married, and has a strong family network — all factors that, studies show, are protective against dementia and conducive to healthy aging. He does not smoke or drink alcohol and, according to the White House, he exercises five times a week. He also has top-notch medical care.”

The article also stated: “It is true that older people tend to decline physically, and the brain also undergoes changes. But in people who are active, experts say, the brain continues to evolve and some brain functions can even improve — a phenomenon experts call the ‘neuroplasticity of aging.’”

The conclusion was that Biden’s odds of getting dementia before leaving office in 2028 were about one in 10. By contrast, the public has never gotten a health report from any of Trump’s doctors that Trump didn’t edit, so that’s sort of a crap shoot.

But 2024 is still a ways off, and anything that happens in the next 18 months — from a health crisis for either man to an indictment for Trump — could alter the course of history. I hope both men stay healthy, but I can’t help but think that it’s well past time to turn the page on geriatric candidates for both parties. Unless maybe Willie Nelson is interested.

Tags Aging, At Large, Memphis

At Large Opinion

Hail Mary #8

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date November 23, 2022

Did you hear the big news?

Memphis is going to get a USFL team! The USFL, in case you’re not familiar with the latest iteration (I wasn’t), is a professional football league that had its debut season last spring with eight teams, all of which played their games in Birmingham, Alabama — which is weird, since the teams were supposedly affiliated with other cities. The Philadelphia Stars take on the Pittsburgh Maulers in Alabama in April? How does that setup not draw huge crowds?

Anyway, next spring, according to a newly signed agreement (obtained by the Daily Memphian via an FOIA request) between the city of Memphis, Liberty Stadium managers Global Spectrum, and the USFL, Memphis gets a piece of this sweet gridiron action. The new Memphis Showboats will play in the Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, along with the possibly mighty Houston Gamblers, who will also call Memphis their home field. (When the Gamblers and the Showboats hook up, will both teams wear home uniforms? Tune in next spring and find out!) The Showboats will mostly be made up of players from the now-defunct Tampa Bay Bandits USFL team, which folded after one season.

Dear reader, you may be forgiven if you are less than enthralled. I am myself extraordinarily underwhelmed. They should have called this team the Memphis Deja Vu because we’ve all been here before. Memphis is no stranger to start-up, wonky-league football teams, having been home to no less than seven through the years. Let me refresh your memory, in case you don’t still have the souvenir jerseys: Memphis Southmen, WFL (1974-75); Memphis Showboats, USFL (1984-85); Memphis Mad Dogs, CFL (1995); Tennessee Oilers, NFL (1997); Memphis Maniax, XFL (2001); Memphis Express, AAF (2019). This list doesn’t include the Memphis Pharaohs, an Arena League team that played in the Pyramid for a season in the 1990s.

Suffice it to say that all Memphis professional football teams should be required to have the words “The Short-Lived” above the team name on the jerseys. Two years for a Memphis pro football team is an “era.”

Reportedly, the prime mover for this latest Excellent Adventure in Football Fantasy is FedEx founder and chairman Fred Smith, who, bless his heart, has wanted a professional football franchise for his home city for decades. Remember the Memphis Hound Dogs, the city’s well-funded 1990s Hail Mary pass at the NFL? Smith was part of that ownership group, along with cotton magnate Billy Dunavant, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, and Elvis Presley Enterprises. Despite the undeniably rockin’ name and lots of money, Memphis lost out to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers, who had the good sense to choose cat names.

Smith then became part of the ownership group of the (obligatory “short-lived” descriptor goes here) CFL Memphis Mad Dogs, who entertained the city, sort of, for one season. Oh, Canada.

Anyway, at last week’s announcement, when Smith and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland posed awkwardly, jointly holding an orange-ish football and wearing too-small Memphis Showboat hats, it had a kabuki theater, been-here-done-this feel. Lord help us. Who’s fired up for April minor-league football, y’all? Show of hands.

By all accounts, the city’s financial commitment to this silliness is fairly minimal: some minor upgrades to the stadium and providing office and practice space to the team — which is apparently going to be the Pipkin building. The last time most Memphians were there was when we were driving through to get Covid shots in 2020. Good times!

It should be noted for historical purposes that the original USFL lasted three (whoo!) entire seasons (1983-85). Three consecutive Heisman Trophy winners signed with the league, including Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker (who said last week he would rather be a werewolf than a vampire). The league played its games in the spring for two seasons, but one influential team owner pushed relentlessly for the league to shift its games to the fall. “If God wanted football in the spring,” the owner said, closing his case, “he wouldn’t have created baseball.”

The ensuing move to a fall schedule doomed the league, which could not compete for fans or TV eyeballs with the NFL and college football. The owner whose business acumen destroyed the original USFL? It was New Jersey Generals owner Donald J. Trump. A stable genius, even back then.

Go Showboats.

Tags At Large, football, Fred Smith, Memphis Showboats, Sports

At Large Opinion

Ripple: Surfing the Red Wave That Wasn’t

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date November 16, 2022

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow …
— Robert Hunter

“I’m like Roger Stone, only nice.”

I awoke from a dream the other night in which I’d just uttered these words. To whom, I don’t know, nor do I know the context — just that I’d said to someone that I was like political sleazeball Roger Stone. Only nice.

I can only credit this to the political brain fog in which I’d spent most of my waking hours over the preceding couple of weeks. I watched CNN, MSNBC, and Fox on rotation each night. I relentlessly doom-scrolled my Twitter politics feed. I read countless analyses in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. I scoured websites for new polls and approval ratings percentages.

The conclusion was the same everywhere: The GOP’s messaging on inflation and crime was striking a chord with the electorate. Roe v. Wade was yesterday’s news; that fervor had peaked and faded, replaced by anxiety over the rising cost of groceries and gasoline. Nobody was worried about a “threat to democracy,” even if President Biden made a speech about it. It was the economy, stupid. As it ever was.

Everyone was on board with this, from the addled fever dreams of Tucker Carlson’s brain to the thumb-sucking commentariat of the great Gray Lady. The future was Republican, folks, and this election would be a nightmare for progressives. A “red wave” would sweep the GOP into control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The only question was how much of a margin they would get. The next two years would then feature a parade of contrived impeachments, investigations of Hunter Biden’s laptop, blockages of judicial appointments, anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender legislation, and more anti-abortion measures.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the blowout: Namely, everyone got it wrong.

On election night, the red wave was a brief ripple in still water, stirred by the early returns in newly gerrymandered Florida. But it didn’t sustain. Instead, we had an historic blue blowback — an unheard-of mid-term election in which the opposing party lost ground. State legislatures and governorships were flipped blue. The Senate stayed firmly in Democratic hands. Which party would win the House was still unknown as I write this, but it’s obvious that neither party will have enough of an edge in Congress to control much of anything.

So what do we take from this? First and foremost is the fact that polling is broken. It’s useless. We need to stop using polls as the basis for news stories and analysis. A recent Times story reported that, on the average, only one in 29 people takes a call from a pollster. A poll based on the 1,000 responses (from 29,000 calls!) of the oddballs who actually answer unknown calls is in no way indicative of the public sentiment on anything. It’s another reason polls entirely missed the surging youth vote. People in their 20s don’t answer unknown numbers. Hell, they barely even talk on their phones to their parents. Adding to the chaos, the GOP flooded the media with bogus polls that had Republicans ahead, further skewing the narrative.

What else do we take away? Well, simply put, Donald Trump is finished. Done. Toast. After the party’s third election loss in four years, GOP leaders have suddenly found the “courage” to begin rejecting the Big Orange. Almost every nutjob he endorsed lost, from coast to coast. The electorate rejected MAGA, rejected election denial, rejected the removal of abortion rights, and rejected Trumpism.

Trump won’t get the message for a while. His ego won’t let it happen. But watch how the winds blow over the next few days. Hell, watch how Lindsey Graham blows over the next few days. When Trump loses Lindsey, he’ll know it’s really over. Even Mike Pence has found some measure of rectitude, albeit only after six years of obsequious toady-ism.

These election results have given me hope, a thing that’s mostly eluded me over the past six years, when it seemed darker, autocratic, even violent forces were on the rise, inevitable. It’s all making me feel a bit like Roger Stone, only nice.

Tags At Large, Blue Wave, Election 2022, election polls, Memphis, Red Wave

At Large Opinion

Sacred Cows

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date November 9, 2022

On the front page of last Wednesday’s Commercial Appeal, there was a fascinating story by reporter Katherine Burgess about a cow sanctuary in nearby Arlington. The farm is run by a Hindu nonprofit organization and now has almost 200 Gyr cattle, or as they are sometimes called, sacred cows.

Hindus from all over, even India, have made pilgrimages to the farm for worship. Burgess quoted Purushotham Tandu, the spiritual advisor at the organization: “The cow has many healing capacities. When you go close to the cow, it will vibrate on certain frequencies. We have certain frequencies. So whatever unwanted emotions, it will take and will replace with good emotions and cosmic energy.” Okay.

When it comes to religion, I’ve been a devout agnostic for decades. I am from Missouri, after all. This is not to say that I haven’t experienced certain inexplicable feelings at times, emotions that seem somehow spiritual, connected to something beyond the pale of this physical world. These occasional mysteries remind me to keep my options open, even though a formal “faith” eludes me.

Atheists and true believers have a lot in common, actually. You have to have faith to be an atheist. There’s no proof that God doesn’t exist, so atheism is just another faith-based belief system. Conversely, those who proclaim there is a god, are standing only on their faith to make that assertion. (The preceding is brought to you by every late-night dorm discussion I had in college.)

Now, when it comes to feeling the spiritual power of a Gyr cow, well, yes, I’m certainly agnostic. But who knows? Might be worth a trip to the ’burbs to find out. They’re pretty impressive-looking beasts. Who knows what harmonic frequencies they may have tapped into?

Oddly, there was another religion story (also by Burgess) on the front page of that Wednesday paper. This one was about Christ Church Memphis, a large local Protestant congregation that had just voted by a 90 percent to 10 percent margin to leave the United Methodist Church. I was raised in the Methodist Church, so I was curious why this denomination had decided to sever ties with the mother ship.

Sigh.

It seems the Christ Church Memphis folks don’t approve of the current LGBTQ-acceptance policies of the United Methodist Church, which is letting LGBTQ Methodists (gasp!) get married to one another. And they’re even allowing some of them to become members of the clergy. The horror! What would Jesus do?

Ninety percent of Christ Church members seem to think Jesus hated queers and wouldn’t let them become members of his church. And, to be fair, they ought to know, right? I mean, “Christ” is right there in the church’s name, so these people are obviously true followers of Jesus’ teachings.

Except for maybe they’re not.

Here are a couple of Jesus’ thoughts they may have overlooked: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Also this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

So, the good folks at Christ Church have obviously made a couple addendums to those teachings, like, “Nuh-uh. Jesus wasn’t talking about them gays when he said those things. And even if he didn’t condemn them, we do! And this is our church, dammit!”

Jesus.

As a certified agnostic, let me toss out some free advice on religion, okay? If your church judges people of a certain creed, gender, or sexual identity as inherently evil, you need a new church. If your preacher preaches chastity and fools around with the congregation’s teenagers, you need a new church. If your preacher drives a new Mercedes and lives in a gated mansion, you need a new church. If your preacher condemns abortion as murder and then endorses Herschel Walker for senator, you need a new church. If your preacher is a MAGA Trumper, run! You really need a new church, and maybe a little remedial study of the true tenets of Christianity.

Here’s the bottom line, straight from Jesus: “Do unto others [all others!] as you would have them do unto you.” It’s the closest thing to a sacred cow you’ll find in the Bible. Take it in. Breathe it. Feel its frequency.

Tags Christ Church Memphis, LGBTQ+, Memphis, Memphis Flyer, united methodist church

At Large Opinion

Bottom’s Up

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date October 26, 2022

The Mississippi is 10.75 feet below normal. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

The boardwalk to Harbor Town Marina on Mud Island usually runs at a slight decline to the water from the parking lot near Cordelia’s Market. Today, the walkway slants at a precipitous angle, flat to the ground, down to the marina and its collection of yachts, cruisers, houseboats, and ski-boats, most of which are literally stuck in the mud. The Mississippi River is at its all-time historical low in Memphis — 10.75 feet below normal.

I’m meeting John Gary, one of Memphis’ preeminent river men. Gary’s been going out on the Mississippi since his boyhood, 50 years ago. He knows the Memphis section of the river like few others. We’ve been friends for many years.

“Over here,” he shouts. I see him approaching from the far end of the dock, where there appears to be at least a few inches of water, and where Gary’s 19-foot runabout is tied up.

“This is crazy,” I said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he replies. “There’s a lot of beach out there where a river used to be.”

John Gary and Max (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

We climb into the boat and putter our way south, heading out of the harbor, past the Downtown skyline, past the exposed cobblestones, and past an ancient, long-hidden motorboat with its stern sticking out of the mud. Gary’s two dogs, Max and Lyon, are our happy passengers.

Once on the river, we turn north and motor briskly under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. We’re going over to take a look at the Loosahatchie Bar (known by locals as Robinson Crusoe Island). It’s the island you see just north of the bridge as you cross into Arkansas. Well, it used to be an island. Now, not so much. What was once a river back-channel is currently a vast sandbar that connects the island to the mainland and reaches halfway across the river to Downtown.

Gary finds a good spot to stick the boat anchor in the sand and we tie off. The dogs run ahead, eager to explore this fresh Sahara, with its high white dunes and its deep dark pockets where the water lingered longest, now as dry as the gar and carp bones bleaching in the sun. Animal footprints remain in the once-muddy sand around the now-gone watering holes: great blue heron, coyote/dog, raccoon, even a large cat track or two. I take photo after photo, dazzled by the weirdness of standing on the bottom of the country’s biggest river.

After a while, we decide to motor upriver along Mud Island, where we pass a long string of barges that are running their engines at the precise speed needed to stay in place against the current. They are loaded with benzene (used to refine gasoline), ammonia, fertilizer, concrete, and other farm and industrial essentials.

Harbor Town Marina (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Gary explains that the channel has narrowed so much upriver that only one barge can pass at a time. Barges coming downstream have the right of way, so upstream barges can often sit for hours a day, burning fuel, awaiting their turn. For the moment, this section of America’s supply chain is dead in the water. Results coming soon to a gas station or construction site near you.

We continue north until we reach the mouth of the Wolf River, which looks more like the Wolf Ripple as it splashes over rocks and mud, adding a temporary trickle to the Mother of Waters.

How long does this go on? How low can the Mississippi go? And as Mother Nature continues to show us new climate change tricks, is this something we can expect to happen more often? The immediate prediction is that we can expect the river to stay low for the near future, and possibly even drop further. Meaning we can expect a vital supply lane for the U.S. economy to continue to be slowed, at best.

Back at Harbor Town, we tie off Gary’s boat to the very end of the marina in a couple feet of water. As we survey the bent steel and broken boards of the marina’s structure, and the dozens of boats settled into the brown goo, it’s obvious that most of these vessels won’t be going anywhere for quite some time. For now, there is no joy in Mud Island. The mighty Mississippi has struck out.

Tags At Large, John Gary, Memphis, Memphis Flyer, Mississippi River

News News Blog News Feature

Photo Gallery: Unreal Sights of Historically Low Mississippi River

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date October 21, 2022

The exposed beach on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River across from Memphis has grown to more than a mile in width. Hiker Sallie Sabatini lends perspective on the epic scale of the scene.

Flyer staffers Chris McCoy and Bruce VanWyngarden went out to get some fresh views of the shrinking Mississippi River on Thursday. Here are some of their shots. VanWyngarden hitched a boat ride from local river expert John Gary. McCoy and several friends hiked along the Arkansas side.

Tags drought, Memphis, Mississippi River

At Large Opinion

Rough Water Ahead

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date October 19, 2022

On Sunday, former President Donald Trump attacked American Jews on his Truth Social platform. His message: Jews in the United States need to “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel and Donald Trump “before it is too late.”

That concluding sentence caused a lot of blowback from Jewish groups, who saw Trump’s post as a veiled threat and a thinly disguised message to his MAGA and white supremacist base that Jews were a problem. It was remarks like these that got Trump banned from Twitter and led to his forming Truth Social, where his audience is relatively minuscule but where he can post whatever lies and racist tropes that arise in his addled brain without constraint.

Speaking of addled brains: Earlier in the week, wealthy rapper and confirmed lunatic, Kanye West, offered his own anti-Semitic post on Twitter, stating he was going to “go death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He later posted that George Floyd was not murdered but died of a Fentanyl overdose (a racist trope that was disproved at trial). West was banned from Twitter and restricted on Instagram for his remarks, but he immediately announced that he was going to buy the troubled wanna-be-Twitter social medium, Parler.

Meanwhile, the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was nearing a final deal to take over Twitter, the most influential social medium for news and opinion in the world. Musk’s recent remarks on the war in Ukraine make it clear he is a Putin enabler, which could be a problem. Musk has also stated that when he takes over Twitter he will “reduce content moderation” and will allow “all speech that stops short of violating the law,” meaning Trump, Kanye, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other racists currently banned from Twitter would be reinstated and allowed to spew whatever garbage they want, as long as it’s “legal.” And meaning that Truth Social, Parler, and Twitter would all be owned by egocentric billionaires. Good times.

This is nothing new, of course. American mass media has long been dominated by wealthy men who used their influential mass-media platforms to further their own ambitions and political views. In the early 20th century, William Randolph Hearst owned 30 influential newspapers that featured lurid stories on crime, corruption, politics, and sex. Hearst controlled the editorial positions and political news in his papers and is considered to have almost single-handedly influenced the United States to declare war on Spain and invade Cuba in 1898.

Little has changed. Consider Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, Wall Street Journal), Michael Bloomberg (Forbes, Business Week), Jeff Bezos (Washington Post, Amazon), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram). Throw in Musk and Twitter, and that’s a lot of influence and power in the hands of five* self-interested billionaires.

Republicans, the majority of whom are now election deniers and Trump enablers, are naturally quite happy about the possibility of these three social mediums being owned by their kind of people. The official GOP House Judiciary Committee tweeted last week: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” Not subtle, and even more disturbing when you consider that the anti-Semitic garbage Trump and Kanye posted garnered no criticism from any Republican of note.

We are three weeks out from a midterm election that no one seems to have a handle on. The polls are all over the place, with most indicating the Democrats will hold the Senate and lose the House. Still, no one knows, and accurate polling has never been more difficult. When was the last time you answered a call from an unknown number to take a poll? Democrats can take hope from this summer’s landslide pro-choice vote in deep-red Kansas, which the polls missed by double-digit percentage points. Republicans can take hope from the fact that a hypocritical, prevaricating moron like Herschel Walker is polling competitively in the Georgia Senate race, a staggering indictment of the electorate.

In addition to the election drama, Trump is facing multiple indictments in state and federal courts, with the DOJ hovering, waiting for the election to be over before making any moves in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. What we’ve learned after six years of Trump-induced chaos is that democracy is a fragile thing, and that rough water is likely still ahead. Buckle up.

*Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, Warren Buffett was listed as one of the billionaire newspaper owners. Buffett divested his newspaper holdings in 2020.

Tags Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Parler, Truth Social, Twitter

At Large Opinion

Nerds of a Feather

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date October 12, 2022

Call me Mary Poppins ’cause I will feed the damn birds, tuppence a bag. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

In the morning, I like to sit out on our little deck. There’s a flower garden, a birdbath, a seed feeder, and a steady stream of feathery friends zipping in and out from the surrounding trees. I enjoy watching them while figuring out the daily Wordle and sipping a Nespresso. And yes, I realize that this is probably the nerdiest possible way to begin a day.

Or so you thought. Now let me crank the nerd-level knob up to 11: I also turn on a Bird Song app on my iPhone that lets me know which birds are within earshot. A couple days ago, the app alerted me to the presence of three birds I’d never seen before: a golden-crowned kinglet, a Kentucky warbler, and the fantastically named yellow-rumped warbler. Maybe there’s a migration happening, I thought, while staring through my binoculars at a golden-headed little bird in the magnolia. Colorful birds were flitting about everywhere. Hummingbirds were buzzing in the salvia. It was like the bird-nerd Super Bowl.

On the Flyer Slack channel a half-hour later, I couldn’t resist letting my co-workers know my exciting news. I even sent a screenshot of my bird app. One of them responded with a meme that read: “One minute you are young and cool, maybe even a little dangerous, and the next minute you are reading Amazon reviews for birdseed.”

Ouch! Why you young whippersnapper! You have no idea how cool and dangerous I used to be. I was once hauled to a cop car wearing zip-tie cuffs and tossed in the back seat. The officer didn’t even do the “watch-your-head” move as he shoved me in. Before that, the police had literally broken down my front door and searched my house room to room, even tossing dresser drawers. Then they hauled me and my roommates off to jail — for the horrendous crime of possessing marijuana.

This was back in the early 1970s, when I was busy cramming four years of college into seven — dropping out to work or travel for a few months, then returning to classes for a semester. I lived with four other guys in a big old dump of a house in Columbia, Missouri. In those days, mere possession of pot could send you to jail, and one of the neighbors had ratted us out. Maybe it was the pungent plumes of ditch-weed pouring off our front porch every night that set her off. I dunno. Either that or the repetitive playing of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” off that Iron Butterfly album. We really dug the eight-minute drum solo. (In retrospect, we should have gone to jail for that.)

Anyway, the cops found some pot in the kitchen, but by the next morning they apparently realized they had no way of determining whose it was — and we weren’t admitting anything, because we were cool, almost dangerously so. Since they really couldn’t charge five of us for possession of a half-bag of weed, the police let us go with a stern warning to lay off the devil’s lettuce. Which we all ignored, even after doing that hard time in the Boone County slammer.

Now, pot is legal or legal-ish in 19 states, with more coming on every year. Everybody from college kids to your great-grandma is gobbling “edibles” and discussing the merits of sativa versus indica. Last week, President Joe “Cheech” Biden issued a blanket pardon for everyone who’d been convicted of marijuana possession under federal charges, which according to The New York Times, is around 6,500 people. That’s a lot of bird-watching geezers, though not enough to swing a national election, as the Foxers are claiming.

The more important part of President Doobie’s statement was his announced intention to get marijuana removed as a Schedule 1 drug. That’s long overdue. Putting pot in the same class with such drugs as fentanyl and heroin has never made any sense.

But I digress. Bottom line: The possession of pot is no longer “dangerous.” It’s not even cool, if everyone is doing it, right? So please, spare me your judgment, kidz. I’ve got some birdseed to order.

Tags bird watching, Joe Biden, marijuana laws

At Large Opinion

In God We Must

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date October 5, 2022

Don’t mind me. I’m on a highway to hell with this godless license plate.

When you get your new, blue Tennessee license plates, you can ask for one with “In God We Trust” on it. It doesn’t cost any more and the print is so tiny, you can’t even see it from 20 feet away, but the state of Tennessee has helpfully made it quite easy for you to tell if the car in front of you is driven by a god-fearin’ Tennessean or a heathen: On the “IGWT” plates, numbers are to the left of the center logo and letters are on the right. On the secular plates, the letters are on the left, numbers on the right.

So if, say, a vehicle with license plate BRK-1234 makes an illegal turn from the center lane, it’s probably because he’s going to hell eventually, anyway.

In May, Tennessee counties were surveyed to see which plate their drivers preferred. Some rural counties were more than 90 percent IGWT-ers. Conversely, drivers in big-city counties like Davidson (86 percent) and Shelby (74 percent) favored the secular plate. (Of course, after the incompetent and delayed roll-out of the new plates in Memphis, Shelby Countians can probably be forgiven if they’ve lost their faith.)

All this begs the question: Why is the state mixing religion with license plates? The godly plates are free, so there’s not even a financial reason for it, as there is with other specialty plates you can order.

The answer, of course, is that Governor Bill Lee and our GOP-dominated state legislature would like to push their brand of Christianity on everybody, in any way they can. One has only to look at Lee’s years-long insistence on getting Hillsdale College charter schools established in Tennessee — with our tax dollars, of course.

Hillsdale president Larry Arnn, you may recall, outraged Tennessee educators in August by saying in a speech that teachers are the “dumbest students from the dumbest colleges.” Lee, who was at the speech, nodded calmly, and has yet to criticize Arnn for his remarks.

In response, local school boards in the state have vigorously opposed the granting of charters to Hillsdale, but Lee loaded up the state committee that approves charters with cronies and Hillsdale supporters, so the odds were good that they’d get approved.

That all changed this week, when Nashville television reporter Phil Williams (who’s been all over this story) found a video of Hillsdale professor David Azerrad mocking the achievements of African Americans, including George Washington Carver and the NASA mathematicians in Hidden Figures, saying that putting them in history books kept more deserving white people from being written about.

I wish I were making this up.

Governor Lee, let me remind you, has said of Hillsdale: “I believe their efforts are a good fit for Tennessee.” No, they are not, you mouth-breathing cheeseball. Hillsdale is a racist Christian-nationalist academy whose students’ academic scores are anemic. Last Thursday, Hillsdale withdrew its applications in Tennessee, due in no small part, one assumes, to the racist video being uncovered.

Perhaps, the state can take a lesson from New York. In mid-September, The New York Times broke a story about that city’s Hasidic schools, which get funding from the state, much like what Lee is pushing for in Tennessee. The story revealed that Hasidic schools were flush with government money, but that male Hasidic students were getting only five or six hours a week of secular learning (math, English, history, etc.) and spent 90 percent of the time learning Hebrew and studying religious texts.

The Times also found that rabbis routinely hit students with rulers, belts, and sticks wrapped in electrical tape, and that parents often “tipped” rabbis $100 to keep their boys from being abused. Hasidic boys’ scores in the state’s standard tests were the worst in the city. The state had let the issue slide for years because Hasidic Jews are a monolithic voting bloc that can swing elections in several districts.

There is a reason our Founding Fathers established the separation of church and state. In this country, you have the right to practice any faith you choose, but taking tax dollars to prop up the teaching of religion is patently unconstitutional.

It’s a slippery slope, and it’s wrong. Kind of like providing free specialty license plates for that guy who just cut you off and gave you the finger. Was that you, Governor?

Tags In God We Trust, Tennessee license plates

At Large Opinion

The Old Man Tees

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date September 28, 2022

Playing the white tees (Photo: Agaliza | Dreamstime.com)

I used to play golf with a regular foursome almost every weekend at Galloway. However, due to injuries, age, and a general lack of desire on our parts to wallow in the Memphis summer heat for four hours, we fell out of the habit. As a result, my clubs have been sitting in my garage all summer, gathering dust.

But last week, when a friend asked me to join a foursome to play nine late-afternoon holes at Mirimichi, the splendid course near Millington that was once owned by Justin Timberlake, I couldn’t resist. I pulled out my clubs and shoes and hosed off the dust — in the process, upsetting a gecko that had taken up residence in my left golf shoe. I drove out to Mirimichi well before our tee time, so I could hit some balls on the practice range. After 15 minutes of hacking, my creaky body finally began finding its way into some semblance of my old swing. This could be ugly, I thought.

It helped that we played from the “old man” white tees, something we used to scoff about, but I was happy to take any advantage offered. A fine time was had by all, and I hit enough decent shots to keep from getting too discouraged — and even made a couple of pars.

At the end of the round, we pulled our carts up to an outdoor bar area for a beer. An older man and his son arrived soon thereafter, and we chatted amiably for a couple minutes about general things — the weather, the course, etc. After a bit, the son said he had to go, but the older fellow (let’s call him Bill) said he was going to hang around a while. “I love you,” they said to each other, as the son walked away.

Bill told us that he didn’t play much anymore and that he just enjoyed riding around the course with his son. Then the conversation took an unexpected turn. Bill let us know that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was going regularly to MD Anderson Hospital for treatment. I’m no doctor but I know that prognosis is not a good one. We all offered our sincere wishes for good luck in dealing with his condition, but Bill casually moved on to other subjects: Where do you fellas live? What do you do for a living? That kind of stuff. Then, somehow, the conversation got around to how generally “crazy” things were in the country today, and I started to get a little nervous.

This is precarious conversational turf among strangers these days. You never know who’s going to pull a MAGA rant out of their butts. In fact, earlier in the week, I’d been subjected to a surprise diatribe about how the war in Ukraine was “fake” and was being promoted by the Democrats to help President Biden. This cockamamie spiel, I might add, came from a man whose name every Memphian would recognize. The crazy can come from anywhere, and I certainly had no interest in getting into a political argument with a possibly dying stranger at a golf course bar.

But one of my friends (thanks, Sam) said something to the effect of, “Well, Bruce writes about that stuff every week for the Flyer, you should ask him what he thinks.” I was stuck. And Bill didn’t mess around. “You write for the Flyer?” he asked. “Well, what do you think about Trump?”

I took a sip of my beer and said: “Well, I think he’s a crook and a conman. And I think it’s obvious he stole top-secret government documents and he should be prosecuted for a federal crime, like anyone else would be.”

There was a brief pause, then Bill said, “My son works over there at the naval base in Millington, so I asked him what would happen if he took any documents home. He said they’d arrest him so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.”

“Well, I think that’s what should happen to anybody who does that,” I said.

Bill didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head a little. I got the feeling he’d been a Trump supporter, but that we were now playing from the same tees.