Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

It’s Limbo Time!

Photo: Natalya Erofeeva | Dreamstime.com

The excitement began last Thursday with a post by former President Donald Trump on his Truth Social network: “These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States …” he wrote. Yes, Trump was very angry that he had been “indicated,” but the misspelling went mostly unnoticed, except by snarky liberals who were unaware that outrage doesn’t need no damn proofreader.

Trump went on in his usual grammar-free, random all-caps style: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!” he wrote. Which was true, since previous attacks on our country have involved bombs, airplanes, armies, other nations, and such. But this was not an attack on our country. It was an indictment of one American citizen, which happens around 90,000 times a week in the U.S. judicial system. Still, Trump had a point of sorts: This was at least an indictment, the likes of which have never been seen before — one issued to a former U.S. president.

Those who’ve lived in this country for the past seven years have experienced a political maelstrom unlike any in our history, one involving a president — now-former president — who utters one lie after another, ignores all political and ethical protocols, and has no apparent respect for the rule of law. Trump used all of these tools during the final months of his presidency, culminating on January 6, 2021, when his planned attempt to overturn the national presidential election mercifully came up short.

Now that he’s facing real-life repercussions, the evidence is pretty clear to anyone not in the Trump cult that the former president will not hesitate for a nanosecond to do whatever it takes in order to keep himself out of jail. It’s who he is. It’s who he always has been.

The forthcoming New York case is likely just the preview before the main feature hits the screen. The charges (unreleased as I write this) in this first indictment are not expected to rise to a level that would put Trump behind bars, unless there is an egregious felony charge that no one saw coming. His punishment, if he is found guilty, will probably involve a fine, probation, and/or suspension of his business license. (There could also be a mug shot that will break the internet for a couple of days.)

But this is worth remembering: A defendant in a criminal case has to appear in court every day during his trial. With a possible 34 counts to argue, this trial could go on for weeks, meaning Trump would have to stay in New York City and sit in a courtroom for several hours every weekday. No social media, no Mar-a-Lago schmoozing, no television, no golf, no distractions. Just hour after hour of sitting still, watching other people talk about him, unable to interrupt. That scenario will be pure hell on earth for a twitchy narcissist like Trump.

But, unfortunately for millions of schadenfreude lovers, that’s not going to happen for weeks, if not months. Trump’s lawyers have those 34 charges to appeal, and they will — all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Trump attorney Joe Tacopina has said that his client does not intend to take a plea deal, and that his team planned “substantial legal challenges,” including motions to dismiss or appeals on all or most charges.

The same scenario will play out in any subsequent indictments of Trump, whether they be in Atlanta, New York, or Washington, D.C. Trump’s legal tactics have remained the same for 40 years: delay, appeal, obfuscate — anything to throw gravel in the gears of the legal system. The day when Trump will have to sit down and face a jury of his theoretical peers isn’t coming any time soon. In fact, we can expect that Trump’s various legal entanglements will be ongoing during the 2024 primary season and ensuing presidential campaign.

This isn’t comforting news for any American longing for a return to normalcy. The lunacy, crudeness, and threats of violence from Trump and his die-hard supporters will be with us for the foreseeable future. The 65 percent of Americans who just want this all to go away will have to remain strong and steadfast. Maybe it will help to remember the former president’s own words: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”

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At Large Opinion

Sex, Lies, and Statuary

David by Michelangelo (Photo: Massimo Lama | Dreamstime.com)

When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.” This much-quoted bit of judiciary shorthand was offered in the case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which the state of Ohio fined Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland Heights theater owner, $2,500 for showing the French film, Les Amants (The Lovers), directed by Louis Malle and starring famed actress Jeanne Moreau.

Stewart went on: “I have reached the conclusion that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

In so ruling, Stewart struck a blow for art, in this instance a film that explored the emotional and physical dimensions of an affair, but that was not pornographic in any sense of the word.

One can only imagine what Potter might think of the school board and administrators in Florida who last week fired their principal for allowing a teacher to show sixth-graders in an art class what it called “pornography” — a picture of Michelangelo’s statue David, widely regarded as one of the most important artworks in the history of mankind.

The statue, which depicts David just as he’s about to go into battle against Goliath, stood in the central square of Florence, Italy, from 1504 until 1873, when it was moved indoors to Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia due to concerns about weather damage. It should be noted that the statue was originally commissioned to stand in a cathedral but was moved to the central square so that more people would have a chance to view its magnificence.

So why, you might ask, would the administrators of Hillsdale Academy’s Tallahassee Classical School object to its sixth-grade students viewing Michelangelo’s masterwork? What could be more “classical” than Michelangelo?

There’s a one-word answer, and I bet you can guess what it is: penis. Yep, David’s artistically sculpted junk is up there, right where it’s supposed to be on a human male, and this was a big problem for the administrators. Spurred by complaints from three parents, the right-wing idiocracy swung into action.

It makes me wonder if these folks have ever heard of Stormy Daniels. I mean, if you want to see what pornography really is, just google “Stormy Daniels films.” Try explaining that to little Braxton. And how are these Hillsdale administrators going to talk to their students about the forthcoming legal brouhaha surrounding former President Trump and the aforementioned woman he paid $130,000 to for doing absolutely nothing wrong at a hotel in Lake Tahoe?

(Note: It’s at this point that I’m duty-bound to remind you that if the name Hillsdale Academy sounds familiar, it’s because it is the smarmy religious-based operation to which Governor Bill Lee wants to give millions of your tax dollars in lieu of that money going to public schools.)

But finally, to be fair, I guess I have to point out that there is some historical precedent to Hillsdale’s overreaction to the sight of David’s massive marble peen. In the mid-1800s, Great Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum installed a full-size replica of David in one of its central galleries. Upon her first visit, Queen Victoria staggered backward, hand to chest, and was heard to exclaim, “Oh my stars and garters! What am I looking at? Make it stop!” The museum then had a fig leaf created that was hung on the statue whenever the queen paid a visit. How, er, hard was that? Perhaps Hillsdale could show its students the fig-covered version.

No, it’s not a perfect solution, but these days it’s any port in a Stormy.

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At Large Opinion

Memphis in Maybe

Photo: Beale Street Music Festival | Facebook

There is about to come a true reckoning for Memphis, and for the two organizations — the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) and Memphis in May (MIM) — who’ve been wrangling for years over the fate of the 30 acres of land along Memphis’ Mississippi waterfront that comprise Tom Lee Park.

MIM, the ever-whinging predictors of doom for their annual events because of the new park’s facilities and landscaping, and MRPP, the ever-optimistic promoters of a “world-class reimagined riverfront,” will soon see their competing visions encounter a real-world test.

From May 5th through May 7th, the Beale Street Music Festival will return to the still-uncompleted but thoroughly reconfigured terrain along the river. Tens of thousands of music fans will stream into the park searching for music, which for the first time ever will not involve merely wandering around in a big field and stopping when you see a band on a stage.

According to MRPP, the new Tom Lee Park is 80-percent completed. There are new trees, sodding, bushes, and grasses, plus landscaped ridges, moguls, and walkways and partly completed shelters and playgrounds, plus natural spaces and trails, including a “riffle area.” In other words, music fans are going to have to walk around the plantings and landscaping and new construction — or on it and over it.

In the past, after Music Fest, with its seemingly inevitable rainy day or two, the park was almost always a disaster area — a muddy, gross morass littered with discarded tennis shoes, boots, clothing, food and drink detritus, and dozens of ever-aromatic porta-potties. How will it go this year?

I don’t know, but I’m trying to imagine, say, Keith and Travis, two young music fans from Jonesboro, a little stoned, a lot drunk, meandering through the park. Then let’s say they hear the raucous sounds of Low Cut Connie in the distance and head in the direction of the music. It’s dark, and Keith stumbles in some monkey grass, drops his beer cup, falls to his knees, then climbs up on a mogul of earth to get a better view. Travis, who is a more sensitive type, says, “Dude, you probably shouldn’t be up there. You’re trampling the liriope.”

“Whooo, LIRIOPE!!” says Kevin. “LOW CUT CONNIE!!! Whooo!!!”

Multiply this action over three days and 30,000 people, plus a probable rainy day or two, and you’re reimagining some serious damage repair. Or at least, one would think so.

Then two weeks later, the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest settles in for four days of nonstop partying and carousing, including the building of often-massive ramshackle temporary shelters for teams to boogie the days and nights away while tending their world-class smokers. Lumber gets hauled in; muddy pathways form between team shelters and sites. Booze gets drunk, trash gets thrown, pigs get smoked, and a good time is had by all. Except the clean-up crews.

Memphis in May has complained that it hasn’t been given enough acreage to carry out its events in the new park. MRPP responded with a document clearly showing that it has in fact provided more space than MIM asked for. Even so, MIM has disinvited 35 barbecue teams to this year’s contest, claiming a lack of space. In addition, the Blues Tent is being moved to Beale Street, also because MIM says the new park configuration isn’t big enough for it. So it goes. If you get what you ask for, it’s difficult to justify the complaints.

But enough theory, enough predicting, enough sniping. Events are in the saddle now, and we’ll soon know for sure whether MIM can succeed — financially and otherwise — in the new park.

And we’ll also soon know how much MIM events will damage the area and its new landscaping. One assumes that both sides will learn a lot from 2023, and that both sides may have to make adjustments for future Memphis in Mays.

The good news is that, after much wrangling, the contract between MRPP and MIM has been signed, with the city agreeing to pay for any repair damages above $500,000. That’s an open checkbook for taxpayers, with the amount to be determined, one would assume, after the last barbecue smoker trailer leaves the grounds. It’s also another reality check, literally, and another learning opportunity.

Call me Pollyanna, but I think that after all the smoke clears this May, both organizations, and the city, will know more about how to create a win-win for Memphis: namely, a great annual festival held in a world-class river park that also serves the populace year-round. That’s the reality we should all be hoping for.

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At Large Opinion

Rush’s Leftovers

Rush Limbaugh (Photo: Gage Skidmore | Creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

I’m guessing you may have missed it: the second anniversary of Rush Limbaugh’s death on February 17th. There were no parades or anything. At least, none that I heard about. His death was little noted or remembered, except for a couple shots fired on Twitter. “Try to live your life so that ‘rot in hell’ isn’t trending at the mention of your death,” posted one. Good advice, says I.

Limbaugh was widely seen as the godfather of today’s vitriolic, hyperbolic, right-wing media subculture, the life force that spawned Fox News and its host of creepy hosts, plus OAN, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, and dozens of other “news” turdlets on the web and elsewhere.

Limbaugh spewed lies by the thousands over the course of his career, taking delight in coming up with terms such as “feminazi,” and was a clear inspiration for a certain former president. The homeless were “compassion fascists,” environmentalists were “tree-huggers.” He made fun of Michael J. Fox, imitating the tremors that were a symptom of the actor’s Parkinson’s disease (Sound familiar?). Limbaugh ran a segment called “AIDS updates,” mocking the deaths of gay men by playing Dionne Warwick’s recording of the song “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” A lifelong smoker, he told his listeners that tobacco doesn’t kill people. He died of lung cancer two years ago as karma tap-danced on his grave.

Current parallel to El Rushbo? Maybe Tucker Carlson, the guy on Fox who thinks Russia is the victim in Ukraine, and says the January 6th riots were just a bunch of peaceful tourists visiting the Capitol? This guy looked through 40,000 hours of videotape and didn’t see any real violence, or at least chose not to put any on the air in his “documentary.” That’s like showing only the starry sky in a film about man landing on the moon, and saying the film proves it never happened.

When it comes to smoking, TC actually ramps it up a notch from Rushbo, declaring not only that smoking won’t kill you, but it’s actually good for you, it’s “all-American.” And he’s a ceaseless promoter of Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so much so that clips of his shows are featured nightly on Russian television. Most troubling, perhaps, is that he is a promoter of the “great replacement theory,” warning his viewers that “If we continue on this trajectory, eventually there’ll be no more native-born Americans,” i.e. white people. Cue immigrant-bashing from the next guest. It’s hardly worth mentioning that Tucker continues to push Donald Trump’s Big Lie on the 2020 election.

The question with these kinds of propagandists is always this: Do they believe their own lies or do they just expect the idiots who make them rich to do so? The money’s good either way, but maybe the slight moral edge, if there is one, goes to the propagandist who actually believes his own drivel. We’ll never know if Limbaugh bought the garbage he spewed into America’s airways every day. But given the revelations in the ongoing Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, it is quite provable that Carlson and his employer are lying all the way to the bank.

And it’s all because ol’ Rushbo discovered America’s dirty little secret: There is a dark, racist, proudly know-nothing subset of our citizenry that only wants to have its bigotry and anger reinforced. They are like addicts who want to hear sobriety is for losers, smokers who want to believe smoking makes them healthy, ignorant mouth-breathers who want to believe their skin tone makes them superior.

The whole ecosystem needs to perish, beginning with those organizations who reap millions of dollars knowingly spreading the venal lies that are ripping this country in half. The public airways, including cable TV, need to be brought back to the pre-Limbaugh days of the Fairness Doctrine, when some semblance of truth was required of news organizations, when “equal time” on an issue was mandatory. The current Wild West of “news,” with its blend of anger-tainment, disinformation, propaganda, and profit over truth, needs to die. Karma is waiting.

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At Large Opinion

Free Speech?

Sean Hannity (Photo: The White House | Public Domain | Wikimedia Commons)

You’re likely to be hearing a lot more about the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in the coming weeks.

This is the seminal case upon which our nation’s libel law has been adjudicated since 1964.

The case involved an appeal by the Times against L.B. Sullivan, a commissioner of the city of Montgomery, Alabama, who had sued the Times and “four individual petitioners, who are Negros and Alabama clergymen,” based on the claim that an ad taken out in the Times by the defendants made false accusations and that he was entitled to libel damages.

The Alabama Supreme Court had ruled in Sullivan’s favor. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, overruled the state’s decision on the grounds that “mere negligence or carelessness is not evidence of actual malice or malice in fact,” and determined that the First Amendment requires the plaintiff show that the defendant knew that a statement was false or was reckless in deciding to publish the information without investigating whether it was accurate.

In recent years, conservatives, including former President Donald Trump have railed against the Times v. Sullivan decision, claiming it grants media outlets permission to publish false narratives under the protection of the defendant having to prove evidence of malice or intention. Here’s Trump in 2016: “I want to open up our libel laws so when the New York Times and Washington Post write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

In 2019, Justice Clarence Thomas further stirred the kettle, writing: “New York Times v. Sullivan and the court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

And just last week, not to be outdone by anyone in his ongoing choke-the-woke agenda, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis upped his attacks on the “leftist mainstream media,” saying he would push to loosen Florida’s libel laws: “I’d say these companies are probably the leading purveyors of disinformation in our entire society right now.”

Here’s some free advice for these folks: Be careful what you wish for. Libel reform cuts both ways, as Fox News is now finding out the hard way.

The voting machine company, Dominion, is suing Fox for $1.6 billion for promoting fabrications about it regarding the 2020 presidential election. The case will likely turn on the court’s interpretation of Times v. Sullivan and whether Fox knew its hosts’ promotion of lies by election-deniers such as Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others were false.

Turns out, they did. Shocker, I know. In a court document released last week, Dominion claimed that “literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility — from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the hosts themselves — acted with actual malice.” And the company had receipts, dozens of pages of them.

Here’s a sample email exchange between hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham:

Carlson: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”

Ingraham “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

There are dozens more examples of internal communications between Fox News hosts, including Trump acolyte Sean Hannity, disparaging the false claims against Dominion. Here are a few other samples of various hosts’ descriptors of their nightly guests: “Ludicrous.” “Off the rails.” “Fucking lunatics.” “Complete bullshit.”

Yet, the election-deniers were put on the air night after night and allowed to pump their duplicitous bilge without pushback. Most troubling for Fox is that the network’s knowing duplicity extended all the way to the top. Dominion’s filing includes records of Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch calling the voter-fraud claims “really crazy stuff,” among other things.

But the “really crazy stuff” went on the air in prime time for weeks, duping millions of Fox News viewers into believing the “Big Lie” that Dominion’s machines had altered millions of votes and helped steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

“Fox knew,” the Dominion filing declares. “From the top down, Fox knew.”

Fox News responded: “The core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”

Good luck with that. And you might want to give ol’ Clarence a call.

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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.