Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

Saving Grace

Barack Obama (Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

It was in late June 2015. I was on vacation, visiting my son Andrew in New York City. The news had been filled for days with the horrific events in Charleston, South Carolina, where a racist teenager named Dylann Roof had walked into Emanuel AME Church and gunned down nine Black parishioners in cold blood.

We decided to drive out to Montauk for a few days to try and change the vacation narrative. The first night, we went to watch an indie film being screened in a local park. It was a perfect summer evening and a small crowd was spread about on blankets and folding chairs, waiting for the film to begin, chatting, staring at their phones. I was one of the latter, scrolling idly, when a tweet with a video of President Obama caught my attention. It was the moment when the president broke into “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. Obama began singing alone, then a few parishioners joined in, and then the sound swelled like a great wave cresting, as everyone in the congregation lifted their voices. As I watched, I felt tears flooding my cheeks. The president had somehow tapped into the unspeakable pain of that moment and transformed it into hope, into love, into catharsis. I will never forget it.

Just 10 days earlier, the man who would become Obama’s successor had ridden an elevator down to the basement of Trump Tower and announced his intention to run for president. His first words into the cameras were a lie: “Wow,” he said. “That is some group of people. Thousands!” Puzzled reporters looked around, noting the several dozen spectators, some of whom, it was later discovered, had been paid $50 to attend and wave signs. Trump then went off on one of his now-familiar verbal rambles, concluding by saying of Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. They’re not sending their best.”

Trump didn’t invent the stubbornly embedded strain of American racism that still plagues this country, emerging and receding through the centuries like a blood tide. But Trump was the first president to give permission to the white people who are decidedly not “America’s best” to voice the angry, suppressed, evil part out loud — and act on it. In a few short years, the specter of white supremacy has gone from anonymous, ignorant men burning crosses in the Southern woods to the mainstream of the Republican Party — and into the brains of who-knows-how-many disturbed young men with easy access to high-powered weapons.

The latest rallying cry is the “white replacement theory” — the belief that people of color are going to somehow pour across the border by the millions, register to vote (even though they wouldn’t be citizens), and take over the electorate, thereby making white people a minority. It’s a fiendishly clever plot, no? Laughable or not, it’s now the principal topic on Tucker Carlson’s racist fever-fest on Fox News. And mainstream Republicans have taken the cue, openly espousing the theory, even using it in their ads. The message isn’t subtle: Poor, dirty, non-English-speaking brown and Black people are going to “replace” you noble white people and take all your stuff. And the Democrats are behind it all!

The 18-year-old who murdered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last weekend wrote 180 pages of drivel citing the replacement theory as justification. It’s just the latest iteration of the American white supremacist horror show, which also includes the murders of worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the killings of Hispanics at a mall in El Paso, and the deadly “Jews will not replace us” march in Charlottesville, Virginia. All were committed by white men citing the replacement theory bullshit.

Trump began his campaign with a racist trope, and he continued to stoke racism at every turn for five years, including after the nazi march at Charlottesville, where he notably cited “good people on both sides.”

That whirlwind has hit the barn. We live in a country where baseless fear-mongering and racism spark mass murder, a country where it’s easier for a teenager to obtain weapons of war than a beer, a country gravely in need of healing, and yes, maybe even a hymn. We are an Amazing Disgrace.

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At Large Opinion

Oh, My God!

Ginni Thomas (Photo: Wikimedia | Gage Skidmore)

It really is unbelievable, when you think about it. You have to wonder how this can possibly be happening in 2022. Women are being treated like chattel — their bodies controlled by the state as though they were livestock, their gender and sexuality no longer their own.

I’m talking, of course, about Afghanistan’s autocratic Taliban rulers, who last week ordered all Afghan women to wear body-covering burkas in public. The decree further mandated that women leave their homes only when necessary, even when wearing a burka. Male relatives will also face punishment — including possible jail time — if women in their family violate the dress code.

It was seen as a hard shift by the Taliban government, one that confirmed the worst fears of human rights activists. It is a cruel and absurd level of oppression and misogyny, but what do you expect when government and religious ideology are combined? It’s so distressing.

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the Supreme Court (where six of the nine justices are Catholic) appears to be ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and thereby legalize religious-based laws banning or restricting abortion in 26 states (and counting). Seventy percent of Americans oppose making abortion illegal again, but this is a case where “majority rule” is truly a joke. As Republicans learned long ago: Control the judges and you control the law.

The problem, of course, is not necessarily that the justices are Catholic — liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, for example — the problem is that the five judges in question have been vetted and brought to the fore by the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, which opposes abortion rights. Presidents G.W. Bush and Donald Trump (both of whom lost the popular vote) followed their recommendations, and here we are. It’s been the Federalists’ stated goal to overturn Roe v. Wade for 50 years, and it looks like they’re about to succeed.

John Gehring, Catholic program director at the Washington-based clergy network Faith in Public Life, was interviewed by the AP: “The Catholic intellectual tradition has produced giants of liberal thought as well, but in recent decades the right has done a better job building institutions that nurture pathways to power.” No kidding.

And let’s not forget the Evangelical Christians’ contribution to this pending fustercluck. David Talcott, professor of philosophy at King’s College and an expert in Christian sexual ethics, told vox.com: “Conservative Catholics and conservative evangelicals have become allies of certain kinds, each defending the interests of other, a theological and philosophical overlap between the two.” Indeed.

I’m no religious expert, but I am sure of one thing: What we’re talking about here is, at its core, sexual repression. Abortion is just one spoke in the traditional religious shame-wheel that also includes opposition to sex without marriage, LGBTQ rights (including gay marriage), contraception, masturbation, etc. — pretty much anything involving fun sexy-time — because their god has decreed that sex is not for f**king around. It’s for baby-making. The guilt is just an added feature, not a bug.

It’s no accident that when contraception became readily available to women via the pill, the sexual revolution followed, and Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. The religious right and their Republican groomers have been working to turn back the clock ever since. Can’t have women acting all uppity, after all. They need to learn their place and make some damn babies. The conservatives played the long game — stacking the courts — and it looks like they may finally pull it off. Much to their regret, I predict.

There are two principal theories about the now-infamous leak that made Justice Samuel Alito’s preliminary majority opinion public: 1) A liberal justice or associate leaked it to provoke alarm among progressives and arouse the base for the midterms. 2) A conservative justice or associate leaked it to prevent any of the five in the majority from being able to back away from their initial opinion on subsequent votes.

Ironically, both results will probably happen. As for the leaker? If I were a betting man, I’d put money on Mrs. Clarence Thomas.

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At Large Opinion

Both Sides Now

Sean Hannity (Photo: Wikimedia | Tia Dufour)

I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in the 1970s. The school runs a real daily newspaper, where students in their senior year get hands-on experience as reporters. In those long-ago days, we wrote on typewriters using cheap brown paper. Every desk had an ashtray on it. Our editors were veterans from dailies around the country and were mean as cobras. When you turned in a story, you better have spelled every name right and gotten “both sides” or you got your ass chewed and your story was wadded up and thrown into an editor’s wastebasket. Back then, nothing was stored on a computer, so you started your rewrite from scratch. Good times. We drank a lot of beer after work.

One day, the police radio in the corner of the newsroom reported that a child had been run over and killed by a school bus. I was given the story. I dutifully called the school district spokesperson and got a boilerplate statement: “We regret this unavoidable tragedy, blah blah.” I got the police report and wrote up the details of the accident; then I got a quote from a police spokesperson. When I turned in my story, the editor tossed it back to me and said, “This needs a statement from the kid’s parents.”

I was mortified. I couldn’t even imagine what question I would ask the parents of a dead 5-year-old. I sat staring at the phone. An hour later, I told the editor that I’d called the parents’ house several times and no one had answered. It was before answering machines and cell phones and there was a looming press deadline, so I got away with it. I decided then that I was not hard-boiled enough for daily newspaper reporting.

This “get both sides” ethos still remains, but what was once our universal source of news and information — the local newspaper — is a crispy cicada shell. Most of them aren’t even locally owned any longer. They’re doing what they can with the resources they have, but millions of Americans are now self-selecting their news sources. And, sadly, millions of those Americans have no idea how to distinguish legitimate news reporting from propaganda and misinformation.

Take an issue like, say, the minimum wage. It’s $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised in 13 years. A traditional journalist would explore the issue by talking to business owners, hourly workers, labor union officials, and economists.

Those in favor of raising the minimum wage would say it puts more money in the pockets of the working class, which will spend it, which will drive the economy via increased sales of appliances, cars, vacations, etc. Those opposed would argue that raising the minimum wage will increase labor costs, which will increase the price of goods, cause inflation, and put companies out of business.

After getting input from both sides, a journalist would then dig into historical trends, to see what actually happened when the minimum wage was raised in the past. Then, voila!, a news article. Fair and balanced. Two sides with a little neutral analysis. This was journalism for decades. Pick an issue. Rinse and repeat. Done properly, the reader would have no idea how the reporter felt about the minimum wage. Reporters were not even allowed to cover stories where they might have a conflict of interest.

Contrast that with the recently released taped conversations between former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo and Sean Hannity. Bartiromo is heard telling Meadows the questions she’s going to ask Trump in an upcoming interview, setting up the softballs, so to speak. Hannity is heard asking Meadows, “Which states do we need to focus on?” in order to drive GOP voter turnout for Trump. Note the “we.” After getting his marching orders, Hannity ends the conversation by saying, “Yes, sir!” to Meadows. Welcome to the new “fair and balanced.” And don’t even get me started on the racist bilge that Tucker Carlson spews out to 4.3 million Americans every night.

The Fox News network and its hosts have an agenda. They are the network of Trumpism and manufactured far-right outrage. The hosts at MSNBC also have an agenda, a progressive one, though I don’t think they’re anywhere near as manipulative of the truth as Fox.

The overarching point is that people need to learn to distinguish between reporting, opinion, and propaganda. Legitimate news reporting exists; it’s just harder to find amid all the dreck pouring from the political fringes. Propaganda is designed to make you feel something — fear, anger, outrage. Good journalism is supposed to make you think. We need to seek out the latter.

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At Large Opinion

No Column This Week

Photo: Redbaron | Dreamstime.com

Someone told me that I had two faults. One was that I didn’t listen, and the other was … I dunno, some crap they were rattling on about.

But I can’t worry about that. I’m under a lot of pressure here. You read this column hoping to be informed or entertained or outraged, perhaps to be brought up to speed on issues of the day. And this is week after week after week, mind you. I don’t get a break.

It’s not like I’m a comedian or a band on tour, with a new audience every night. Those people have it easy. They know what their audience likes. Play the hits. Tell that funny story about your brother-in-law. Soak in the applause. Hit the hotel bar. Job done. Piece of cake.

Not me, no sir. I have the same readers every week, and I can’t just rerun a column from three weeks ago that got a lot of Facebook likes and web traffic, no matter how brilliant it was. No, you people demand fresh material.

I know, it’s not like I don’t have subject matter. There’s an unspeakably horrible genocide happening in Europe, but I have no real insights there, other than to hope someone pushes Vladimir Putin out of a window soon.

I guess I could always rant about Tucker Carlson’s creepy and mostly traitorous television show on Fox News, which Russian television is running verbatim almost every night. This week, Tucker is claiming that American men are being “feminized” by the woke left and has been running a homoerotic promo video of sweaty, muscly shirtless guys swinging axes and other heavy items. He also discussed the possible testosterone-building benefits of testicle tanning with an “expert.” I’m not making this up. And this manly man does all this while sitting in a director’s chair, wearing a bow tie, khakis, and Weejuns loafers sans socks. Is it wrong that I want to punch his smug, entitled face with my woke little fist?

And I’ve already written at length about the GOP clowns who run the Tennessee legislature, the people whose primary concerns are hassling trans kids, setting up private schools with taxpayer money, and overturning Roe v. Wade. They do the latter under the guise of “protecting children,” but let’s be real: If they really cared about children, they’d expand Medicare (a gift from the feds), raise the minimum wage, enforce the clean air and water regulations, and quit making it legal for any mouth-breathing yahoo who can stand upright to carry a gun anywhere with no training or restrictions.

But, okay, since I’m here, knee-deep in writing about the Nashbillies, I’d be remiss in not mentioning the speech given last week by state Senator Frank Niceley. The senate was debating a patently unconstitutional bill that would keep homeless people from sleeping on public property — basically criminalizing homelessness — and Niceley decided he needed to give the chamber “a little lesson on homelessness.” Here’s how the speech began:

“[In] 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with citizens and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.” Homelessness, Niceley added, is “not a dead end.”

Indeed it is not. One can rise from homelessness to take over a country, found the Nazi party, start a world war, and murder millions of men, women, and children in gas chambers.

No doubt motivated by their colleague’s inspirational oratory, the Senate passed the homelessness bill, which makes sleeping on public property a Class E felony, and sent it on to Governor Bill Lee, who will no doubt sign it in Jesus’ name, amen. Because Jesus also hated poor people.

So, I think you see what I’m dealing with here. Trying to make enough sense of any of this to crank out a reasonably coherent column is just impossible this week. Sorry. I promise to do better next time.

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At Large Opinion

The Bottom of the Barrel

“I think gas prices are going down,” I said to no one. It was a week ago and I was alone, driving along Union and Poplar and seeing posted prices as low as $3.59 a gallon. I was sure I hadn’t seen prices below $4 a gallon in a while, but the news had been filled with “sky-rocketing gas prices” stories for weeks (accompanied by grim analyses of how inflation was going to cost the Democrats the midterms), so maybe I was imagining things?

Then, on Monday, I got an email from GasBuddy, a tech company based in Boston that operates apps based on monitoring real-time fuel prices at more than 150,000 gas stations in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Each week, GasBuddy sends me a weekly update on the country’s gas prices. I usually send it to junk mail, but not this week. According to GasBuddy, prices in Memphis are 17.4 cents a gallon lower than they were a month ago, down to $3.42 a gallon, if you know where to look. Nationally, gas prices are down 23.3 cents a gallon from a month ago. This is good, right? So why is it not news? Maybe it’s because a “falling gas prices” story doesn’t fit a defining media narrative. Or maybe there’s just too damn much news — most of it bad — to keep up with.

Consider, an English teacher in Southeast Missouri was just fired for teaching “Critical Race Theory” in an elective contemporary literature class that was reading the award-winning book, Dear Martin. It was Kim Morrison’s second year teaching the young adult novel, but earlier this year, Missouri passed a bill outlawing the teaching of CRT and parents complained, you see, so …

Oh, and let’s not forget the case of a woman in Texas, Lizelle Herrera, who was indicted for murder for “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” It was unclear whether Herrera induced her own abortion or someone else’s, but, you know, details aren’t really important in these matters. Herrera was later released because Texas’ new law banning abortions after six weeks is only enforceable if charges are brought by a private citizen, i.e. a vigilante, and local law enforcement had overstepped their authority. Shocker, I know.

But wait, there’s more. All over GOPutin America, legislators are rushing to emulate bills like these, as well as those similar to Florida’s spiffy new “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which eliminates the nonexistent threat of kindergartners being taught anything about LGBTQ humans.

In Tennessee, legislators are not about to be left behind their Neanderthal red-state brethren. They had been working diligently to pass into law a bill that would remove age limits for marriage, because young girls, they do get weary and sometimes just need a husband who will help them with their homework. A national outcry got our Nash-billies to back off. For now.

Speaking of national outcries … The New York Times did a big story this week on Hillsdale College’s fight against “leftist academics,” which mainly consists of getting state legislatures to give them public money to start charter schools in suburban and rural areas (white) to, as the Times put it, “provide a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda.”

Our own Governor Bill Lee got a lot of ink in the story as the leading Hillsdale proponent in the country among public officials. Lee, you may recall, intends to give Hillsdale College enough of our tax dollars to fund 50 private charter schools in Tennessee.

And, as long as I’m writing about embarrassing Tennessee elected officials, I’d be remiss in not mentioning Senator Marsha Blackburn’s apparent flashing of the “white power” hand symbol in the Senate chambers while questioning Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, who is — shocking, I know — African American. Way to go, Marsha. In a week with tons of disgusting news, you found the bottom of the barrel and scraped it.

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At Large Opinion

SHARE

You cannot possibly go through a day on social media in 2022 without seeing posts that feature lines of five little squares stacked in (up to six) rows. Some of the boxes are black, some are yellow, and some are green. The bottom row is almost always filled with green boxes, indicating that the poster has solved the daily Wordle puzzle. If the bottom line is not all green, the poster will write something like, “Dammit! I am not amused!”

Wordle was invented by a software engineer named Josh Wardle as a birthday gift to his partner. It was released to the public in November and originally had around 90 users. But the game was free and weirdly addictive and, er, word soon spread about it. By January, when Wordle was purchased by The New York Times, millions of people were playing it daily. The Times, to its credit, has so far kept things just the way they were: No app, no ads, no payments of any kind. You just google “Wordle,” go to the website, and play. There’s a new word every day, and on most days you can finish the puzzle before your coffee is cold.

Maybe that’s part of Wordle’s charm. It’s not complicated. You have six tries to guess a five-letter word by a process of elimination. It helps to have a decent vocabulary, but you’ll be relatively competent after a few tries. Here’s the best part: There are no experts, no champions, no tournaments. You don’t “win” at Wordle. The object is to avoid losing. Someone who’s played Wordle for a week might solve tomorrow’s puzzle in fewer tries than Einstein, if Einstein wasn’t dead.

There’s a whole subculture built around “starter words,” i.e. which first-guess word will give you the best chance at solving the puzzle. Favorites include ARISE, SHARE, TASER, ADIEU, etc. You get the idea. Don’t pick EPOXY or FUZZY. But honestly, the game just isn’t that difficult. Sometimes, I start with a weird word just for fun. There are 30 possible letter guesses in six lines and only 26 letters in the alphabet, so why not live a little dangerously?

This is not to say Wordle can’t get frustrating. Let’s say on your third guess you’ve got the following four letters in the correct place: SHA_E. That means you’ve got three guesses left and (depending on which letters you may have already picked) up to seven possible options for that fourth letter. SHAME? SHAPE? SHAVE? SHALE? Good luck, Albert.

And, admit it or not, that’s what much of this game is: luck. Whether you get the answer in two (usually big-time luck, based on a good starter-word guess) or six always comes down to a certain element of chance.

Most people don’t lose at Wordle often, but getting the answer in two or three guesses makes you feel like a winner, at least for 24 hours. And that’s where the communal sharing on social media comes in, I suppose — to commiserate over bad days and celebrate the good ones.

To be honest, random Wordle posts used to make me kind of crazy. “Why would anyone think their Wordle score would be interesting to anyone else?” I groused. Then I got called out as a grinch so now I chill and just scroll past.

It helps that there are now Facebook sites where you can go to share your daily scores with other Wordle-Nerdles. In fact, one local site claims to be founded (cough, Kim Gullett) on the basis of my Wordle grumpiness about score-posting. I occasionally visit and know the ropes over there, so if you’re feeling a little nervous, here’s a handy guide to what to say when posting your score:

One guess: “WOW, I need to go play the lottery!!!”

Two guesses: “Got lucky with my starter word today!”

Three guesses: “Got it in three. Not bad!”

Four guesses: “Oh well, another boring four.”

Five guesses: “I was beginning to get nervous!”

Six guesses: “WHEW! So close!!”

If you didn’t get the answer, a good fallback is “Dammit! I am not amused!”

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At Large Opinion

The Price of Gaffes

President Joe Biden (Photo: Palinchak | Dreamstime.com)

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

With these nine words — apparently an ad-lib departure from his scripted speech in Poland last Saturday — President Joe Biden started the media’s hearts a-thumpin’ and created a field day for pundits, commentators, and other opinionistas. The next morning, the front pages of the country’s major newspapers led with the story of Biden’s “gaffe.” The Sunday cable shows were all over it. Quelle horreur!

Biden was speaking of Vladimir Putin, of course, the man who has single-handedly shoved Europe into disorder, destruction, and bloody conflict over the past month, the man who unilaterally invaded and attempted a takeover of a sovereign nation by brutal force.

But, apparently, suggesting that such a man should be removed from power is a bridge too far. Biden’s improv sent Washington media elites to their fainting couches. What will Vlad think? Will he be peeved? Sensing that the president may have taken a step too far, the White House immediately walked back the statement, saying that the president only meant that Putin should be removed from power in Ukraine. Right.

Here’s the thing: There are two sets of rules in play here. Donald Trump used to utter more “gaffes” before lunch on any given Tuesday than Biden has offered up in 14 months. “Little Rocket Man,” anyone? Redrawing the path of a hurricane on a map with a Sharpie? Suggesting that scientists figure out a way to “do an injection into the lungs” with bleach? Now those are gaffes.

And remember that Trump loves Putin, repeatedly calling him a “genius.” At a Mar-a-Lago gathering a month ago, Trump said, “Putin’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”

How remarkable is that? The former president of the United States is rooting for the current iteration of Hitler’s invasion of Poland to succeed, discussing it like it’s a real estate deal. The remark didn’t get much play on the morning shows, though. Not gaffe-y enough, I guess.

Biden, by contrast, was saying the quiet part out loud, something most decent people wish would happen: Putin has got to go. Forty years ago, President Reagan routinely called for the Berlin Wall to fall and labeled the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” Today, that’s not prudent. And, as with everything else in the U.S. these days, the political tribal divide defines how we react to things.

We have only to look at the circus surrounding the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for another example. 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 accused Jackson of having a “hidden agenda to bring critical race theory into the law” (Huh?) and asked the judge to “define a woman.” (I would dearly love to see Marsha try to answer that latter question. Or “what’s eight times seven?” for that matter.)

Speaking of SCOTUS, how about that wacky Ginni Thomas, amirite? (Fun fact: Ginni’s number was 867-5309.) Copies of texts she sent to Trump chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were released to the media last week, and it’s clear she was a major force in organizing the January 6th insurrection and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. Kind of unseemly for the wife of a Supreme Court justice, don’t you think? Surely, even Republicans would agree with that? Nope. Crickets.

But, to be honest, I’m hard-pressed to think of any Republican senator who would put principle and/or love of country over party hackery and self-interest. Maybe Mitt Romney? Lisa Murkowski? I know the Democrats have their own hacks, but the country has come to a sad state of affairs when we can’t find agreement on issues with such an obvious demarcation between right and wrong. It’s always tribes über alles — much to our mutual detriment.

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At Large Opinion

The Ashtray of History

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

Sure, your grandparents loved you, but did they love you enough to put a picture of you and your siblings on the bottom of an ashtray? I think not. Check, and mate, my friend.

If you look at the photo accompanying this column, you’ll see me (middle) and my brothers mugging for the camera in clothes made by my stepmom. It was taken in the 1960s, probably for Easter, and was on the wall in my parents’ house for a long while. I’m guessing they must have given a copy to my paternal grandparents, at least one of whom thought, “Hey, I’ll put this in the bottom of an ashtray so I’ll think of the boys whenever I crush out a Camel.”

My sister found the ashtray in a long-unopened box last week and sent me a picture of it. It was truly a “WTF?” moment, and we had a good laugh over the phone. But that’s because we were looking at it through the social mores of 2022 rather than those of 60 years ago, when smoking was acceptable and decorative ashtrays of one sort or another were displayed in most people’s houses. My grandfather was a physician and smoked like a wet campfire all his life. Having an ashtray with a photo of his grandkids was probably normal back then. I assume. I hope.

I shared the photo with my brothers and the rest of my family via social media and we had a good laugh — or at least some good emojis and text exchanges. These kinds of familial artifacts are like archeological finds, evoking memories long buried. We shouldn’t take them for granted.

I wonder, for example, how much family memorabilia was destroyed in Luhansk, Ukraine, last week, when a Russian tank pulled up in front of a home for the aged and opened fire, killing 56 elderly people. “They just adjusted the tank, put it in front of the house, and started firing,” an official told The New York Times. Lives and memories lost forever in the rubble.

These stories keep emerging. It’s like an enormous, crushing boulder, seemingly unstoppable. Each day brings new tales of horror, of bombed schools, of proud, once-vibrant cities being blasted apart block by block, of Ukrainian civilians being put in trucks and shuttled back to camps in Russia.

Almost as horrifying are the Americans who support this evil or who look for rationalizations or suggest providing an “off-ramp” for Putin. This would include the Republican senators who were fine with former President Trump withholding arms and supplies from Ukraine for political purposes, and who are now hypocritically raging that President Biden isn’t sending enough. Marsha Blackburn, I’m looking at you.

We’re way past the time to let domestic politics have any part in this struggle. This is a pivotal moment in world history. Are we big enough as a country to rise to the occasion? Or do we waste our energy hating the president of Mar-a-Lago or shouting, “Let’s Go, Brandon”?

Maybe, instead, we should be thinking about how many families have been destroyed by Vladimir Putin’s forces in attacks on more than 50 hospitals. Hospitals! And about how many lives and families have been ended or ruined because of cruel attacks on apartment buildings, schools, grocery stores, and homes? If it helps humanize the situation, maybe think about how much family memorabilia has been left behind by the 10 million Ukrainians displaced from their homes by this merciless, unprovoked assault on their country.

A crucible is coming. We can’t keep appeasing a murderous sociopath with the lives of innocents, hoping he will stop if we keep enough Big Macs and credit cards from his people. How many more civilians have to die before we realize the Russian leader just doesn’t care? What is the level of evil we will tolerate before we call his bluff, before we finally put Vladimir Putin’s picture in the ashtray of history?

We’re going to find out soon.

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Art Art Feature News News Blog News Feature

UPDATED: Memphis Photographer Tommy Kha’s Photo Removed from Airport

Update: On Tuesday, March 22nd, the Airport Authority, in a statement from president and CEO Scott Brockman, announced its intentions to reinstall the photo. “The Airport Authority appreciates the support that the community has shown for Tommy and we have made the decision to reinstall the artwork,” the statement reads. “We apologize to Tommy for the effect that this ordeal has had on him.”

Memphis photographer Tommy Kha’s work has been displayed in prominent galleries and museums all around the world. Not surprisingly, one of his photographs was included among the artworks selected for the new Concourse B at Memphis International Airport by the UrbanArt Commission. It was taken down this week, said the Airport Authority, in response to complaints from “Elvis fans.”

The photograph in question features Kha in an Elvis jumpsuit, standing in a kitchen with what appears to be 1950s-era furniture.

Tommy Kha’s photo “Constellations VIII / Golden Fields” at the opening of Concourse B. (Photo by Jon W. Sparks).

Scott Brockman, president of the airport authority, released a statement regarding the removal of the photo:

“Recently, the Airport Authority has received a lot of negative feedback from Elvis fans about one of the art pieces that was purchased and installed in our recently modernized concourse. When the airport created its art program, our goal was to purchase and display artwork that did not include public figures or celebrities.

“Our selection committee made an exception in the case of Tommy Kha’s piece and recommended its purchase. This was the only piece in the art collection that depicted a celebrity or public figure. While we understand that the artist created the piece as a tribute to Elvis, the public reaction has been strong, leading us to revisit that original goal of avoiding the depiction of public figures in our art collection. As a result, the airport determined it was best to temporarily remove the piece while we determine our best path forward.

“We are open to the possibility of commissioning new artwork by Tommy Kha to replace his previous piece.

“Among the complaints, there were a small number of comments that included language that referred to Mr. Kha’s race, and such comments are completely unacceptable. The Airport Authority does not support those comments nor does it form the basis for the Authority’s decision regarding the piece. MSCAA has been very intentional to emphasize local artists, diversity and inclusion with this art program, and we will continue to do so.”

The UrbanArt Commission also issued a statement:

“UAC respects and appreciates Tommy Kha and his art, and was pleased to recommend him to be included in the Memphis International Airport collection. Tommy grew up in Whitehaven, has spent years doing documentary work around Elvis tribute artists/impersonators, and considers himself a part of that community.

“We are opposed to Tommy Kha’s installation being removed from display, especially considering the openly racist comments made online in the development of this situation. … Airport leadership has chosen to remove an artwork from a Memphis artist, for reasons that we adamantly disagree with. UAC is in contact with the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority and advocates for the artwork to be reinstalled.”

Editor’s Note: The Flyer is working on a more comprehensive story about this situation. Stay tuned.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Big Chill in Bluff City

photo: Bruce VanWyngarden Signs of spring are blossoming.

Two weekends ago, I walked out into the Saturday morning sun. It was 65 glorious degrees and headed into the mid-70s by afternoon. March had just arrived and March means spring in Memphis. And spring in Memphis means it’s time for Yard Man to get after it.

So I rolled the electric mower out of the garage and ran it over the front yard to mulch last October’s standing leaf harvest. Very satisfying. Very mulchy. I could hear the grass giving thanks.

Then I crawled around the flower beds that make up most of our backyard and clipped and snipped the dead stems, marveling at the annual miracle of perennial shoots emerging from the soil, ready for another season of life. I made a large pile of brown vegetation. Also quite satisfying.

Next, I was drawn like a salmon returning to its home waters, to the Midtown Home Depot, where (as one does) I picked up a mega-package of paper towels, some birdseed for the feeder, six light bulbs, some floor cleaner, two bags of potting soil, and a partridge in a pear tree. And lots of plastic pots of blooming annuals to brighten up the deck — petunias, anemone, lobelia.

There is a clear and simple joy in sitting in the sun and putting fresh plants into old clay pots, digging out last year’s roots and putting the fresh square bundles of soil into their new homes. The smell of loamy earth, the dirty fingernails, the stained trouser knees — all the rituals of spring, of rebirth. 

I liberated the faithful hose from its winter abode and filled it with purpose. The new plants were watered and it was good. Yard Man was content. And there was beer. 

All was well in the kingdom for a couple of days. I took inordinate pleasure from the new flora each time I walked out the back door — the blues, whites, purples, and yellows. I noticed the buds emerging on the fig tree, the white blossoms on the plums, and the big oaks turning green at their tips. Spring was well and truly sprung. 

And then we began to hear rumblings of trouble from the West. A cold front was coming, they said, a real one, with ice and snow and frigid temperatures. They were calling the storm a “cyclone bomb” and saying it would hit Memphis Friday night. We’d be lucky to survive, it appeared. The ensuing weekend would be a frozen, snowy, icy mess. In a city that is still littered with piles of limbs from a February ice storm that left 150,000 people without power, this was not good news.

Alas, the storm did arrive Friday night, right on schedule, and it was a doozy, with sleet, lightning, strong winds, freezing rain, four inches of snow, and temperatures in the mid-20s. I built a fire in the fireplace but there was no joy in it. Feeling fatalistic, I decided to just let my new flowers tough it out. Snow would protect them from freezing, I’d heard. Whatever, spring. You bastard. 

The next morning, just one week after I’d welcomed spring to my yard, the city awoke to a coat of thick wet snow. The social-media photos were lovely, folks. Thanks. But there was also sun on this new morning, and lots of it, and before long, rivulets of meltwater were everywhere. Heavy clumps of snow were falling from the trees and rooftops. There were no broken limbs, no power outages. Huzzah.

At midday, I got out in it and walked around the neighborhood, taking in the snowmelt, the wet streets, the bright sun reflecting it all, the warming air. It put me in mind of a John Updike quote that I return to on occasion: “I am now in my amazed, insistent appreciation of the physical world, of this planet with its scenery and weather … that every day and season has its beauty and its uses, that even a walk to the mailbox is a precious experience, that all species of tree and weed have their signature and style and the day is a pageant of clouds.” 

When I returned home I was happy to see that the petunias, anemones, and lobelia were blooming bright in their snow-crusted pots, literally no worse for the weather. And I looked again at the buds emerging on the fig tree, the white blossoms on the plums, the big oaks turning green at their tips.