Author: Memphis Flyer

Talk about irony! No sooner had the city’s budget season concluded, with retrenchments in police, fire, and sanitation services built in, than a tragedy occurs downtown involving the death of a police officer whose career facts evince nothing but dedication and service. On one night, Officer Timothy Warren, assigned to the downtown beat and concerned about the unusually intense heat, is passing out bottled water to homeless people, pedestrians, and fellow officers.

On the next night, he is standing his normal vigil when shots are heard in the nearby DoubleTree Hotel, and he rushes to the scene, becoming the second casualty of a gunman involved in a domestic dispute turned violent.

This is reality, not fiction, but no dramatist could have concocted a more telling commentary on the perils that are always, figuratively and literally, just around the corner from our first responders, nor on the extent to which they serve as a buffer between the rest of us and serious harm. We are not citing this tragic incident in order to revisit the recent arguments, pro and con, for the aforesaid retrenchments.

Officer Warren, like so many of his compatriots, was an everyday hero, not just somebody who rose to an occasion on this one fatal evening, and he merited an honored place in the minds and hearts of his fellow citizens even before the circumstances which took his life called him to our attention.

Let us not think of him as a martyr or as a symbol but as the true public servant that he was and mourn his absence from our ranks and from the circle of his immediate family, to whom we extend sincerest condolences.

Those of us who were raised on books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed materials have reason to lament some of the characteristics of our transitional age, in which digital communication is clearly on its way to becoming dominant in our daily lives. Not to misunderstand: We, too, have embraced some or all of the new commonplaces — Facebook, Twitter, emails, e-Storage, online publishing, iPhones et al., and the Internet in general. And we eagerly anticipate all the new high-tech developments, which come these days with astonishing real-time speed.

But we still hanker for words on paper. We, after all, are in the business. And we think that books and the other forms of print will endure. Note that this current installment of the Flyer is our latest in a long-established series of literary issues. We look forward to doing these issues as much as our readers crave getting their hands on them. And, much as we enjoy being able to call up everything from ball scores to game videos to, er, bestselling books on our smartphones, we still can’t think of anything that smacks more of community than a good, well-visited bookstore.

Speaking of which, we rejoiced at the recent report from Leonard Gill, our literary editor, that the tradition will continue at the Laurelwood Shopping Center, where, thanks both to popular demand and to the initiative of a conscientious owner, the former Davis-Kidd facility will live on as the Booksellers at Laurelwood.

A distinguished son of Memphis, who became the first African American to serve as mayor of this city, J.O. Patterson Jr. died on Saturday at the age of 75, concluding a lifetime in which he honored both the secular and the sacred realms. As a bishop of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and chairman of that church’s General Assembly, Patterson followed in the religious tradition of his father, J.O. Patterson Sr., who was COGIC’s first international presiding bishop. But the son would author a pedigree of his own, charting a course in politics that opened the way to power and public office not only for himself but for all African Americans in Memphis.

A lawyer as well as a theologian, Patterson served both in the state House of Representatives and the state Senate and was a five-term member of the Memphis City Council. When then Mayor Wyeth Chandler resigned his office in 1982 to become a Circuit Court judge, Patterson, as chairman of the city council, became interim mayor. He then ran in the special election to succeed Chandler and finished first, with 40.6 percent of the vote, in a three-candidate field that also included then County Clerk Dick Hackett and former U.S. attorney Mike Cody.

Had Patterson run under the no-runoff provisions under which Willie Herenton won the mayoralty in 1991, he, not Herenton, would have been the city’s first elected black mayor. As it was, though he would lose a one-on-one runoff to Hackett, Patterson established the momentum that would eventually result in African Americans realizing their political power in Memphis.

Though he would remain a pillar of support and advice for people of whatever race in the worlds of politics and government, Patterson progressively devoted himself to church affairs and was a recognized eminence worldwide at the time of his death.

The Value of Compromise

Though there were many recent occasions when both the Shelby County Commission and the Memphis City Council seemed at an internal impasse, each stalemated by disagreement between factions and unable to reach agreement, both bodies were ultimately able to overcome their differences and to produce compromise budgets that required everyone involved to make genuine sacrifices.

In the case of the county commission, both Democratic and Republican members were able to reverse course, Democrats in backing away from a pay raise for employees, Republicans on overcoming their ideological resistance to restore funding for key social programs. On the city council, the two contending sides were able to break a deadlock when each side, to achieve its own ends, opened the way for the other side to accomplish its end, as well.

Though we would not presume to compare these two sets of deliberations to those of the Founding Fathers in devising the Constitution, our local bodies went about things the same way, giving as well as getting, and arriving finally at a set of checks and balances.

That, we’d like to think, is how it’s supposed to be.

One of the odd things about modern American history that both liberals and conservatives these days find themselves a little squeamish about remembering (much less acknowledging) is the role of the late former president Richard Nixon in devising much of the social legislation that is now under attack from the right.

Richard Milhous Nixon. Tricky Dick. Mr. Watergate. That’s right. It was Nixon, the darling of the right wing in his own time, who created such organs of government as the Environmental Protection Agency and who once proposed to enact a guaranteed annual income as a substitute for an outmoded welfare system.

The fact is, Nixon was downright New Dealish (though in a moderated — i.e., “conservative” — way). Our point in bringing this up is to wonder what happened to that era of Republicanism. And Nixon’s well-documented paranoia and deviousness are irrelevant to a consideration of the question. The two GOP presidents on either side of him historically, predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower and successor Gerald Ford, both had simon-pure reputations, and both had similar policy inclinations — not, as is the fashion of so many of their lodge brothers today, to dismantle government or, in the infamous words of one Grover Norquist, an ideologue in favor with today’s Grand Old Party, to “drown it in the bathtub.”

We bring this up because something struck a nerve during a debate on the Shelby County Commission the other day. In making the case that funding for a proposed sickle-cell center at Methodist Hospital should be disallowed, Republican commissioner Wyatt Bunker made the point that it was not the business of government to sponsor such a “social thing.”

Really? A disease-control center encounters opposition as a “social” boondoggle because … what? That it would mainly deal with a low-income population, which, in this case, is primarily African American?

Hold that thought. We’ve got another coming. 

Simultaneous with the commission’s winding down its budget considerations, the GOP-dominated state government was leaning hard on the Shelby County Health Department to dispossess itself of any working relationship with Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit whose local branch is used to dispensing Title X federal funds for family-planning purposes. Having failed to get foolproof legislation passed that would defund Planned Parenthood and remove it from its historic role in such programs, the state Health Department itself is arm-twisting to prevent the Shelby County Health Department from partnering with whom it pleases.

That reminds us of the notorious GOP-sponsored HB 600, the bill, now enacted into law, that went so far as to prohibit local jurisdictions from passing workplace anti-discrimination ordinances.

Didn’t the Republican Party used to pride itself on its call for decentralization and local empowerment? What happened?

And then we remembered the other Nixon, the president who famously disgraced himself when caught in the act of scheming to create an all-encompassing state monolith. That Nixon is making a comeback, has apparently become something of a role model, even as the one who tried his hand at constructive public policy is ignored. Ah, the times!

If you want to know something about Josh Pastner’s coolness in adversity, just ask the members of the Memphis Rotary Club, who have been an audience for the University of Memphis basketball coach on two separate mid-summer occasions when the air conditioning system at the host venue decided to malfunction.

Such was the case on Tuesday at the University Club, and, by the time Pastner, a self-described “gatekeeper” for Tiger fans, got well under way in a preview of the team’s prospects, the weather outside, bordering on 100 degrees, had ceased to be a major preoccupation.

Pastner said his team was “the most unique thing in college athletics,” a unit whose grip on its home city could only be compared to that of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, a civically owned franchise. He brought the good news that, attendance-wise, the Tigers had ranked in the Top 10 nationally for the last 10 years. And he noted that the U of M’s legendary cage rivalry with Louisville would be renewed this year and next, on a home-and-home basis.

Somewhat unsettled that the Tigers, winners of the C-USA post-season tournament, were relegated to 12-seed status in this year’s NCAA tournament, on the basis of a relatively weak non-conference schedule, Pastner pointed out that he ramped up the schedule for this year. Among the nonconference teams on tap, besides Louisville, are Georgetown, Xavier, and Belmont, and there was the expectation of encountering real powerhouses like Duke, UCA, Kansas, and in-state rival UT in the Maui Classic tournament in November. That should fix any lingering worries about an anemic R.P.I.

The dedicated, young third-year coach — who famously doesn’t drink, smoke, or even drink coffee and sleeps practically not at all — was frank about owning up to some of the problems he encountered early in last year’s season, some of them relating to his own coaching. He acknowledged having difficulty in training his charges, most of them fresh from high school heroics, to grasp the team ethic and confessed that he had taken too long in divining the optimum role for several players.

But Pastner didn’t need to add that the story of last year’s team had a satisfyingly happy ending, concluding with a barn-burner cliffhanger loss in the NCAA to number-one seed Arizona (his alma mater).

He was asked: How does the rise of the Grizzlies impact the Tigers’ fan base? No jealousy or looking over his shoulder at those upstart grit-and-grind wonders. It was all positive, he said. The newly gained prominence of the city’s NBA team had become a bonanza of a recruiting tool for Tiger prospects. And he said he had long had the habit of taking his players to visit Grizzlies practices so they can get a sense of what lies ahead for them if they apply themselves in the college ranks.

Oh, and Pastner said that in his efforts to upgrade the Tigers’ schedule, he hopes fairly soon to be able to match his team against that of a certain coach now plying his trade at the University of Kentucky.

That is a consummation devoutly to be wished!

So many of the arguments during budget season here in River City go to the issue of our supposedly horrendous tax rate. Whether it’s the County Commission or the City Council, some member who is about to wield the meat ax on the public purse is sure to say it’s necessary to keep the city/county (pick one) from having a tax rate that is the highest in Tennessee or the second highest in the Western World or just too damn high. It’s enough to put old Draco to shame.

As we write these words, the City Council is about to consider trashing its sanitation system and taking first responders out of service, while the County Commission has already cast preliminary votes for several such “economies,” the most egregious of which was a vote to slash funding for the Office of Early Childhood and Youth, though members had been warned that to do so would endanger roughly $6 million in federal funding that was leveraged on the $450,000 commissioners voted to cut. (See also here)

Between them, the City Council and County Commission are going after as many long-established quality-of-life items as they can find to purge or defund — public golf courses, the local music commission, public libraries. It’s no exaggeration to say that our public officials — many or maybe most of them — have panicked themselves into a fire-sale mode. And when we say fire sale, we mean just that. Excising some 111 fire department jobs, as one councilman and the fire department director himself have proposed, would apparently require the sale of some existing department vehicles as surplus items.

Give Commissioner Terry Roland this: The man from Millington may be something of a madcap, guilty, as his commission antagonist Walter Bailey says, of “grandstanding” in his proposal to cut 10 percent off the salaries of administration appointees earning more than $100,000 a year. But Roland’s rationale for that action, adopted by his fellow commissioners on Monday, makes at least a modicum of sense. So long as ranking county officials were prepared to jettison a certain number of their own employees, “people who make from $29,000 to $35,000,” Roland said, “you ought to be willing to back it up with a cut yourself.”

Bailey himself, in waging a solitary struggle on Monday on behalf of keeping in the county budget a modest 2 percent pay increase for county employees, pointed out that any resultant bump in the county tax rate would be almost imperceptible, a matter of $7, he estimated, for the median householder.

Ah yes, Memphians, Shelby Countians. That danged tax rate, again. To get or retain some modest amenities in our public life, we would have to pay a little more. Never mind that to live in such recognized magnet parts of the country as New York, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, and Miami, we’d have to pay a lot more — if not in the tax rate per se then by sheer cost-of-living measures.

Our lawmakers seem to have forgotten that cardinal common-sense rule: You get what you pay for. In being so penny-wise, they are making themselves — and us —look pound-foolish.

The weekend’s various Memorial Day celebrations were reminders to all of us of the sacrifices made over the nearly 250 years of our country’s history by the brave men and women who have taken up arms to defend our freedoms — often at the cost of their lives.

The visit to Memphis on Tuesday of Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, was a reminder that the battle on behalf of those freedoms goes on in civil spheres as well.

In a luncheon speech to members of the Memphis Rotary Club, Weinberg took note of the prevailing impression that the ACLU had an ideological tilt to the left and promptly set about demolishing what she described as a serious misconception.

Among the organizations that the ACLU has offered its legal services to on behalf of challenged or suppressed constitutional rights have been such conservative institutions as the far-right Eagle forum and various chamber of commerce groups, Weinberg pointed out. The state chapter is supported by some 3,200 members and supporters and by private donations, she said.

She recounted particular cases in Tennessee — one involving a self-described “Christ-centered student preacher” in Nashville who had been denied a permit to carry out charitable efforts on behalf of the homeless in public spaces. Weinberg said the ACLU was able to demonstrate that the barrier between church and state that was invoked in this case was based on too literal an interpretation of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights actually guaranteed the apprentice minister’s right to do as he was doing, she said.

Another case involved the support of a retired couple — “Reagan Republicans” — in their efforts to maintain voting rights in the course of an extended journey around the country in an RV.

“We are embracing the change of the state,” Weinberg said — a declaration suggesting both the ACLU’s awareness of changing demographics and changing political attitudes in Tennessee. Contrary to popular supposition, requests for ACLU support were not restricted to the major cities but included rural areas as well, she said.

Commenting that questions of security had become uppermost since the events of 9/11, Weinberg said many elements of the Patriot Act were perfectly acceptable and even necessary, but others were suspect. Asked for an example, she mentioned Section 215 of the act, which, she said, “requires libraries and mental health centers to make available to the feds private information without probable cause” — reading habits in the one case, private medical circumstances in the other.

“Our mantra is ‘safe and free,'” she proclaimed, and it was hard to see how that slogan differed at all from those which rang out so loud and clear at the weekend’s Memorial Day remembrances.

Indeed, Weinberg’s appearance seemed to us to segue very nicely with all those events.

Mere moments before the start of a Booker T. Washington High School graduation ceremony at Cook Convention Center that was made something more than routine by the presence of President Barack Obama as commencement speaker, Memphis mayor A C Wharton had a thought about the effect of it all on his oft-distressed town:

“This just shows that no matter what your physical circumstances are, you can make it. It shows that Memphis does matter. His presence here today shows that. Memphis is the focus of the world today.”

In truth, more than one recent circumstance had made Memphis the focus of the world — or at least of the nation — in recent weeks. Simultaneous with the anticipation of the president’s appearance here, as the prize for Booker T. Washington’s having won the 2011 Race to the Top Commencement Challenge, the city had gained abundant publicity for two other circumstances. One was the dramatic and unexpected playoff run by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies; another was the 100-year flood that had left the engorged Mississippi River and its tributaries lapping ominously at adjacent low-level land surfaces. On a given day or night, TV channel surfers might be treated both to the pandemonium going on inside FedExForum as the Grizzlies did their heroic best to advance to the Western Conference finals and to the image of Al Roker or Diane Sawyer finding a deep enough patch of shorewater to wade in, thereby simulating a little bit of faux Katrina.

In the near euphoria generated by Obama’s visit and by his tribute to BTW’s up-by-the-bootstrap academic success, the pain of the Grizzlies’ seventh-game loss in the second playoff round to the favored Oklahoma City Thunder was dissipated somewhat, especially since the team’s bright promise for the future remains intact.

The flood is a different matter. One of the attendees at Monday’s graduation event was Kevin Kane, the able longtime director of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. Kane shared a few thoughts about the triad of recent events here. “It’s a mixed bag,” Kane said. The president’s visit was an obvious bonanza, and the Grizzlies’ rise to prominence would eventually generate “millions upon millions of dollars.” But: “Obviously, the flood is probably going to cost us some business over the next couple of months. … The way the national media portrayed that we were in a lot worse shape than we really were is going to be tough for us. There were people who used to live in Memphis calling us, thinking that B.B. King’s and places like that were three feet under water. We’re going to have to reposition some of our summer advertising. We track reservations to our local hotels. We know the frequency with which they come in, and I can tell you the phones literally quit ringing after about a solid week of that coverage that Memphis was under water and in bad shape.”

For all that, Kane said, accentuating the positive, the president’s visit to Memphis on BTW’s behalf was a “feel-good story” with a positive message about the city and its schools, and that impression will linger, too — hopefully, longer.