Category: Editorial

Progress Report

These words are being written even before we know the result of this week’s NBA contest at The Pyramid between the Michael Jordan-led Washington Wizards and the Memphis Grizzlies. But whatever the outcome, one fact has been made fairly clear. With the UT football team having just taken a tumble from LSU at the Southeastern Conference championship game in Atlanta and with the disappointing Nashville-based Titans of the NFL floundering in the lower half of their division, the best sports action in Tennessee is where it ought to be — right here in River City.

The Grizzlies are bringing up the rear of their division, as far as that goes, but the young team, made up so predominantly of rookies like Shane Battier and Pau Gasol and players still on the way up like homegrown Lorenzen Wright, has clearly shown in recent weeks that they can play in the NBA. And the crowds, having dropped off just a tad from opening night, have started picking up again.

The University of Memphis Tigers, sparked by freshman phenom Dajuan Wagner, also seem poised to make waves in the national collegiate ranks, despite hitting a bump in the road at Ole Miss last weekend. It’s our guess that by NCAA tournament time in March no one’s going to want to tangle with John Calipari’s bunch.

Throw in the Redbirds and it’s safe to say that when it comes to sports, Memphis has never had it so good. Perhaps the most revealing comment on the developing Memphis sports scene came from Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey, a diehard opponent of the public/private financing deal that brought the Grizzlies to Memphis from Vancouver. Even he confessed to having attended three of the team’s games and to getting caught up in the spirit of things. We know how he feels.

Worth a Try

Last October, county officials began an experiment to see if the way prisoners are housed in the Shelby County jail could be made more efficient and more conducive to the safety of prisoners, jailers, and — not least — the public. The system, chronicled in this issue by reporter Mary Cashiola, is called “direct supervision” and is based on an emerging penal concept that resembles the now established technique of community policing in the outside world.

As is the case with community policing, the custodians of law and order will inhabit the same universe as that of their charges. It is one thing to do this in neighborhoods, of course, and another to do it with jailers working at stations situated directly in cell blocks — especially when the cell blocks in question belong to one of the most troubled facilities in America. It is certainly one of the most frequently litigated over. And there’s the rub: Shelby County is attempting this expedient because it is literally running out of options. The direct-supervision initiative is in fact part of the county’s response to the latest federal court order and it is regarded on all sides as an exploratory mechanism.

If it works, we will have learned something — and gained much. If it doesn’t? Well, things could hardly get much worse than they are right now.

Ignoring History?

Israeli reaction to last weekend’s horrific suicide-bomber attacks in Tel Aviv and Haifa was, as usual, swift and predictable but in one sense unprecedented. Unlike so many aerial reprisals in the past, Israeli jets this time struck not at refugee camps, the perceived breeding grounds of terrorism, but at the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority itself and at the headquarters of that government’s leader, Yasser Arafat.

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon minced no words in explaining his government’s bellicose response to this latest round of outrages. “Arafat is responsible for everything that is happening here.”

While the validity of Sharon’s assertion is clearly a matter of debate, the American media, infused as it is now with patriotic, antiterrorist fervor, apparently don’t think so. Suddenly, Yasser Arafat is a Middle East bogeyman every bit as despicable as Osama bin Laden. Indeed, Bill Day’s cartoon on the editorial page of Tuesday’s Commercial Appeal — labeling Bin Laden and Arafat as identical-twin terrorists — shows how willingly the mainstream media have accepted Sharon’s assessment of the situation.

No matter that the equation of Bin Laden and Arafat is patently absurd. No matter that the former is an international thug who openly advocates terrorist attacks against all who oppose his Islamic fundamentalist views, while the latter is the head of a legally recognized state who has spoken out clearly and unequivocally against recent terrorist outrages. No, Arafat gets tarred with the same brush.Why?

Clearly, there is frustration all around. When innocent blood continues to be shed, the urge to lash out at someone — anyone — is almost irresistible. But we question the American media’s willingness to join in the Arafat witch-hunt. Is it even in Israel’s best interests to turn the Palestinian conflict into a personal vendetta against a man who, whatever his past actions, has been the closest thing in recent times among his people to a voice for moderation? Do the Israelis truly believe that Palestine without Arafat would be any less volatile, any less problematic?

These are all considerations the Israeli people need to weigh carefully, for their own sake as well as the world’s. In the meantime, we Americans would do well to resist our usual instinct to oversimplify complex situations. We need to study history not ignore it. Having labored long and hard to skillfully create a structure of support among moderate Arab states for our legitimate antiterrorist campaign in Afghanistan, we need to think twice before supporting actions which may destroy it.

Wonderland

Had we not misplaced our Lewis Carroll volumes, we could probably cite the perfect literary parallel to the surreal pilgrimage made last week to the new Memphis-Shelby County Library by three local government officials. One thing we know we don’t have on our hands is any sort of seasonal reprise involving the theme of three wise visitors bearing gifts.

The officials — city councilman Brent Taylor and county commissioners Marilyn Loeffel and Tommy Hart — came to the site bearing more than their fair share of misunderstandings and in the process embarrassed themselves and the community.

What they took exception to was the artwork near the entrance to the building which features historical quotes and images. One such (adjacent to Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat) is Karl Marx’s phrase, “Workers of the world, unite!”

Our three protectors made it seem that the phrase was part of a dangerous commie plot. Never mind that Marx was no Lenin, that the offending phrase anticipates Solidarity not the gulags, and that the spectre of international communism no longer exists.

Taylor, Loeffel, and Hart could have gone inside and looked it all up — and, while they were at it, read up on the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

h3>The Line Of Fire

At this writing eight journalists have been killed covering the hostilities in Afghanistan. You will not likely read any glowing tributes to their heroism, nor is it probable any funds will be raised to help their families. But those men and women died while doing their very essential jobs and they deserve our deepest respect.

The job of war correspondent is often seen as a glamorous one. And, indeed, the image of a flak-jacketed reporter standing against the night sky while bombs burst in air has an undeniable aura of showmanship. But someone is holding the camera. And hundreds of other journalists you’ll never see are writing newspaper stories and reporting for radio — and ducking bullets.

History is being made in Afghanistan and the press plays a vital role by providing a source of unofficial information. Governments, no matter how righteous their cause, give out only the information they deem necessary to dispense. A free press is essential — in war and peace — to make sure the whole story is told. This doesn’t mean giving away information that would put our troops in danger; it does mean letting the world know the truth. Our servicemen and -women deserve no less.

Eight journalists have died doing their job. So far. We owe them our gratitude.

A Life To Remember

It is unfortunate that on a day when most of us were still dealing with the sad news of James Ford’s death, the family name of the late Shelby County commissioner took a hit from the actions of Tamara Mitchell-Ford, estranged wife of the commissioner’s brother, state Senator John Ford, who chose this inauspicious time to drive her car into the residence of the senator’s paramour. (The incident made ambivalent, to say the least, the proper application of the term “home-wrecker.”)

However, that bizarre incident should not be allowed to distract us from honoring Commissioner Ford and his achievements.

Though Ford, a former member of the Memphis city council, was confined to a wheelchair for the last several years, he was still able to vigorously perform his duties as commissioner. This was most notable during the last year when he was chairman and oversaw the resolution of several tough issues, including prolonged and intense debates over school funding and the use of public money to construct a new arena for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Even when he was relatively healthy, Commissioner Ford was mild of manner and polite, even courtly, to an extreme. Conversely, his failing health did not impede his robust responses to opponents or, as was the case in one or two of the past year’s stormier meetings, audience members who heckled the commission. He did not suffer fools gladly.

“He had as much resolve as anyone I ever knew, even in his illness, and he had great academic achievements,” observed his nephew, U.S. Representative Harold Ford Jr., who pointed out that James Ford had attended, more or less concurrently, Columbia University Medical School, Union Theological Seminary, and New York University School of Law.

Commissioner Ford was a decent man and a distinguished public servant whose contributions will be missed.

As we probe into the nature of evil elsewhere in this issue of the Flyer, it seems appropriate to ask how we are doing in the current War Against the Evildoers.

Tempting as it is to venture a little irony at the repetitious use of the term “evildoers” by President Bush, the fact remains: If the international cabal that inflicted the horrific events of September 11th on America and on the world is not evil, then the term has no useful meaning.

No other term begins to describe the actions of the criminal elite of the Taliban, those moral monsters now on the run in Afghanistan, who beat women on the street for not covering themselves or for speaking out of turn or for laughing out loud. And who have shot women in the head in public arenas for doing scarcely more than that.

Likewise, it’s hard to think of another adjective to apply to the likes of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi playboy turned predator who seems to have clearly been the financier and mastermind behind the plotted murder of innocent thousands at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As of this writing, the news from Afghanistan is good: Bin Laden is reputedly confined to a diminishing area of mountainous country south of Kandahar and is constantly on the run. His Al Qaeda organization is in disarray, the Taliban are fighting among themselves, and Afghani citizens are organizing search parties in efforts to secure the $25 million reward offered by the U.S. government for bin Laden’s capture or death.

Let others quibble about the viability of the word “terrorists” or worry aloud about America’s policy misdeeds which may have contributed to the current state of affairs. Our policies have been and will continue to be imperfect. But our policies, flawed as some may have been, were carried out for political and economic reasons, not for the purpose of intentionally killing thousands of innocent, unsuspecting noncombatants. We know evil when we see it. And it’s not a matter of ethnocentrism. We recognized evil 60 years ago in Germany, a nation that was culturally akin to our own, and we did what we had to to get rid of it.

In other words, as overused as the phrase may be, the president is justified in using the word “evil” to describe the actions of our enemies. As a people we do not have to embody the principle of Good to make war against Evil. There is nothing black and white about the present struggle. If we prevail, we will not become perfect creatures. But, imperfect as we are, we are nevertheless entitled to carry on the battle against the zealots whose sense of mission is best characterized by their pledge to see to our ultimate destruction.

A New New World Order

Anyone who, Rip Van Winkle-like, might have gone to sleep 20 years back and just awakened, would probably be astonished at the new lineup of nations on the international scene.

Who would have thought, for example, that United States military forces would be waging war in Afghanistan while Russia looked on approvingly? Who could have imagined that the targets of our action would include elements of the very same Mujahadin whom an American secretary of state — Jimmy Carter’s Zbigniew Brezenski — toasted as being “on God’s side.” (It is tempting to conclude in hindsight that a Soviet-dominated Afghanistan — the status quo we so strained against a generation ago — was to be far preferred to the successor regime of the Taliban and the international terrorists to whom it gave protection.)

Similarly, was it possible to anticipate 20 years ago that the United States would ever be making common cause with Iran? With Syria? In 1981, no American president could have used the word “Palestine” to describe a potential Islamic state co-existing peaceably side by side with Israel. An American president has just done so.

Two decades ago, most Americans wondered if America would ever be able to catch up economically with Japan. For the last five years, of course, the United States — which, for most of that time, enjoyed an unprecedented boom — was in the position of holding up the Japanese economy and preventing it from utter collapse.

These are just a few instances of the fluidity that confronts us on the international scene. Most of them are to be welcomed. What needs to be guarded against, as a new millennium begins to define itself, is the substitution of one implacable enemy for another. One of the more commendable efforts of the Bush administration is the ongoing one to avoid such a Manichean standoff. Indeed, some of the new alignments alluded to above stem from that effort.

If there’s one thing we don’t need as the international order is being reshuffled, it is another polarity of Us versus Them. If, as in the old saw, it takes two to tango, we’d just as soon not dance.

Let’s Listen Up

On the statewide scene, Saturday’s endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen by 8th District congressman John Tanner lends further momentum to the possibility that both the Democratic Party, with Bredesen, and the Republicans, with U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary, might have in effect already picked their candidates.

Such is literally not the case, however. Not only is there a long primary season yet to come before next May, but former state Representative Jim Henry, who is running against Hilleary, and three Democrats — Knoxville district attorney Randy Nichols, former state Representative Andy Womack, and former state Education Commissioner Charles Smith — are all making constructive points that are being overlooked by the two favored candidates. In particular, all four are more open-minded on the question of tax reform than either Bredesen or Hilleary seem to be.

It is too early to salt this race and pack it away. The four challengers for governor should be listened to, and we in the media should make certain that they are.

Anyone who has spent any time in downtown Memphis has probably chanced upon Jacqueline Smith, one of the most tenacious resistors in the history of civil protest. That’s both appropriate and ironic, because as Chris Davis reminds us once again in this issue, the target of Smith’s protest is none other than the National Civil Rights Museum itself.

Smith’s argument is not with the idea of memorializing Dr. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel, site of the present-day museum. It is with the way in which that project of honoring the martyr, his memory, and his mission has been carried out. As she sees it, the money spent on constructing the current facilities on Mulberry Street might have been invested instead in some kind of project that could have preserved the historical life patterns on Mulberry rather than on a museum.

It’s a point that’s somewhat conceded by Judge D’Army Bailey, one of the museum’s founders. Even making all due allowances for the grievances conceivably being nursed by Bailey, who was forced out as museum president some years ago by members still prominent on the museum’s current board of directors, it is still striking that his point of view and Jacqueline Smith’s, formerly as divergent as could be imagined, have come to rest on the same basic complaint, that of the museum’s potential alienation from the human needs of the area surrounding it.

We have no intention of judging whether that complaint is well-founded or not. Clearly the National Civil Rights Museum has much to commend it, exactly as it is now constituted. It is not only a consistent attraction for visitors to Memphis, it is a nice (in the most nuanced sense of that word) counterpart to some of the bloody history that gave it birth.

Yet neither will we dismiss the protests being made by Smith or anyone else who can make a coherent case against the process of social paving-over which goes by the name of “gentrification.” All of the nation’s major cities have seen that process in the last few decades: As economic opportunity presents itself, the buildings in a depressed area are bought up, refurbished, and rented or sold to upscale businesses and residents. Meanwhile, the low-income residents who had been maintaining an existence in the area do not share in the good fortune. They are uprooted and forced to find habitation elsewhere.

If nothing else, Jacqueline Smith’s enduring protest, whether wrongheaded or not, is a stimulus to all of us who believe in the goal of civil rights to make sure that we mean what we say when we espouse and honor the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King and the other martyrs of our time and place.

Republican leaders Thomas DeLay and Dick Armey, the House of Representatives duo who opined in the wake of September 11th that it would not be “in the American spirit” to confer emergency benefits on those Americans deprived of their jobs by the terrorist attacks, are now doing all they can to sidetrack airport security.

Never mind that a bill to federalize airport-security forces passed the Senate with the absolute bipartisan unanimity of a 100-to-1 vote. Never mind that Americans are now united in their revulsion at the makeshift pseudo-security heretofore provided at the nation’s air terminals by poorly trained minimum-wage workers.

Never mind, for that matter, the obvious and overriding need for public safety, which would be provided by a security element federalized in the mode of the armed services and trained according to the same strict standards.

DeLay and Armey are now attempting to invoke party discipline and parliamentary protocol in order to hold up passage of the much-needed enabling legislation. The reason? A fear that a federalized security force would lend itself to unionization. Armey even has the gall to suggest that the airport-security bill’s proponents are practicing “politics” to keep at bay an alternative measure that would continue to rely on private security firms.

It is to the discredit of President Bush that he continues to support the measure favored by Armey and DeLay — just as his recently improved stature was undercut by his collaboration with them in new pork-barrel proposals and tax-cut bills benefiting the rich.

Senator John McCain, now so often the spokesman for responsible congressional Republicans, said it best Sunday when he termed the GOP leaders’ opposition to the airport-security measure “indefensible.”

So it is. Would that our commander-in-chief saw things as clearly!

Changing the Play

Based on their preseason performance, the Memphis Grizzlies may be a better team than the unit that struggled to win one-fourth of its games in Vancouver. New faces like Pau Gasol, Shane Battier, Brevin Knight, and Jason Williams give fresh hope to the team that will take the floor on opening night Thursday against the Detroit Pistons.

By the same token, Memphis may also find that The Pyramid is a better arena than many people want to admit. We’ll put the over-and-under on the number of games the Grizzlies will win at a franchise-best 30 and the over-and-under on average attendance this season at 15,000 (fans in seats, not tickets sold). At least eight games — Iverson, Shaq, Jordan, Robinson, etc. — should fill all 20,000 seats.

That would make for some nice paydays all around. Nothing like the pot of gold envisioned by Grizzlies owners and their friends last spring, but probably enough to make ends meet in the new and troubling world in which we live.

It was reported in last Sunday’s New York Times that car rentals in the U.S. are down 35 percent in the wake of September 11th. Rental-car surcharges, of course, are one financing component of the proposed new $250 million arena, along with hotel taxes, state aid, and user fees. It is obvious to anyone but the vested interests that none of those sources is going to measure up to projections in the near future — and possibly longer. The Grizzlies are now slated to play in The Pyramid for three years.

And it could be longer than that.

Don’t look now, but it seems as though the General Assembly of the State of
Tennessee will actually summon up enough courage to consider a state income
tax on its merits and may even pass it.

At press time, anyhow, the auguries are good for a special
legislative session next week — the third of the last two years. The previous
ones, called by a dogged Governor Don Sundquist, were exercises in cowardice
and futility — ending without anything close to an agreement on a revenue
means whereby a state going bankrupt could escape red ink and somehow manage
to pay for its essential services.

In the abortive special sessions as well as in the last two
regular ones, the final obstacle to genuine tax reform was in the state
Senate, not the House of Representatives, whose leader, Speaker Jimmy Naifeh
of Covington, long ago signaled that the votes in his chamber were at hand,
for whatever it took. And recently Naifeh gave his endorsement to a specific
tax proposal.

This would be a 3.5 percent flat tax, subject to deduction from
the taxpayers’ federal returns and coupled with reductions in the state’s
prevailing sales tax, which is, by common consent, much too high already. The
tax would be instituted on July 1st, with a proviso — yet to be worked out —
that it be subject to an up or down vote by the people in the first,
experimental year of its operation. Altogether farsighted, sensible, and
democratic.

The good news is that the Senate leadership is in on the game
this time, unlike the case as recently as July, when senators allowed
themselves to be cowed by an unruly mob of tax protesters and backed away from
an emerging compromise measure much like the one being considered now.

All this comes at a time when the state’s fiscal situation,
already difficult enough, has become truly perilous, with estimates of next
year’s projected revenue shortfall — made worse by fallout from the recent
national catastrophe — ranging as high as $1 billion. It passed all
understanding when the legislature chose to adjourn each of the last two years
without putting the state’s books in order. As a result we have seen Draconian
cuts across the board in education, mental health, parks and recreation, to
name a but a few areas of service.

It would be the height of folly to continue in that mode. We
welcome the indications that the state’s legislators this time may choose to
forgo wearing the fool’s cap in the people’s name.

The Mayor’s Race

There was both bad news and good news in District Attorney
General Bill Gibbons’ decision not to run for county mayor. The bad news was
that we were deprived of what would have been yet another quality candidate in
a race that is shaping up as involving several. The good news was Gibbons’
refreshing indifference to running for the sake of running as well as his
demonstrated loyalty to the tasks already assigned him by popular vote. All
indications are that former city councilman John Bobango, a conscientious
public servant, will carry the Republican mantle cast aside by Gibbons. He
will join four well-qualified Democrats already in the race — banker Harold
Byrd, Public Defender A C Wharton, and two able legislators, Senator Jim Kyle
and Representative Carol Chumney. We have every reason to expect that issues
of consequence will be ably debated by these able individuals.

No more satisfying story exists than the parable of the prodigal son, reformed from a wayward past and come home to rectitude and redemption. No more dismaying sequel could be imagined than one in which the prodigal falls off the wagon and returns to his errant ways.

Yet that is the scenario we are getting with the recent proposal from Governor Don Sundquist to “reform” TennCare, the state-run medical program for Tennessee’s uninsured and uninsurables.

Since its inception in the second term of former Governor Ned McWherter, TennCare has functioned as a model, however imperfect, of a state’s concern for its citizens — an improvement over the bureaucratic federal system of Medicaid, which it replaced through a waiver granted under the administration of former President Clinton.

Now Sundquist, who has been a champion of TennCare for the last several years, is seeking a new federal waiver for a watered-down version of TennCare which would provide less care for fewer citizens — notably large numbers of uninsurables who would be sliced from the program’s rolls. It is no secret that all this was offered as a sop to the opponents of Sundquist’s various tax-reform plans in the hope that these naysayers would see the governor as cost-conscious and thereby, as if by magic, relent in their obstructionism.

This strategy was unfortunate enough, but, when a federal judge blocked the waiver at the request of protesting health-care advocates, Sundquist became miffed and threatened to junk TennCare altogether. A prodigal act indeed.

The governor himself — who transcended his traditionalist conservative background several years ago to become a proponent of a state income tax and other progressive concepts — has made the point in the past that Tennessee is better off financially with TennCare as it was initially conceived than it would be with Medicaid. Plagued as the state’s program has been with mounting costs and inefficient provider organizations, TennCare is still less of a financial burden on the state and its citizens than the federal program by itself would be.

One of the problems with Sundquist’s proposed restructuring is that not only would it cruelly expunge too many people — mainly those with prior illness who have no hope of gaining private insurance — it would also deny the state significant infusions in the way of federal matching funds.

This is one of those cases of simple arithmetic in which less is less.

We urge the governor to repress his less than commendable reaction to the judicial ruling and to forgo pushing ahead with his ill-advised restructuring of TennCare. We sympathize with a chief executive who has seen his tax-reform plans frustrated by mossback members of his own Republican Party and by opportunistic Democrats. But in this case the proposed solution, the gutting of TennCare, would not only be a bad end in itself, it is almost surely destined to fail as a concession to the professional government-bashers and ax-the-taxers, who in July conjured up a bona fide riot to sabotage tax reform and have indicated that they will continue to oppose it for the foreseeable future.

Better to see to our duty toward the uninsurables than to pander to this benighted lot.

Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe of September 11th has worn
off and the nation has settled down for a long-term combat with an elusive —
and somewhat illusory-seeming — foe, attention in Memphis and Shelby County
has returned somewhat to more local and mundane concerns.

On the high side was the debut this week of the Memphis
Grizzlies, the city’s new NBA team, which had a long-awaited exhibition game
with the Portland Trailblazers scheduled for The Pyramid. On the low side was
the latest black eye received by our community, in the form of brand-new
rankings of state schools which show that Memphis is home to fully 64 of the
98 Tennessee schools ranked as under-performing according to an official state
measure.

Without intending to make light of the current national
emergency, which is serious indeed, we would suggest that this showing by the
city school system is, in its own way, an equally grave threat to the future
of our community. And there is nothing at all illusory about this one.

Basically, these 64 schools have been put “On Notice” –
– meaning that they have a year by the terms of the state’s Basic Education
Plan to show improvement. If they don’t, they will be placed on official
probation. If within two years of that point, the schools fail to show the
necessary improvement, they are subject to state takeover. Nobody really knows
what that means in the realm of change nor how soon or dramatic that change
would be. (For the curious and/or concerned, this week’s cover story by Mary
Cashiola goes into the matter in some detail.)

What is demonstrable is that such a result would amount to a
grade of F for the Memphis public school system, and even if the system could
be upgraded via state intervention, the sense of failure would hang over the
system and the city for some time to come.

In the short run, the city system still has a chance to mend
itself through its own means albeit with some — mainly professional —
assistance from the state. Unfortunately, the state’s currently precarious
fiscal condition ensures very little of that assistance will be financial. We
hope for the community’s sake that those conservatives who are always saying
that “throwing money at a problem” doesn’t fix it are right, because
clearly there is precious little to throw our way just now.

In any case, we all have a stake in the Memphis school system’s
“instructional improvement initiative” (III), called into being to
fix the problem. We can only hope that it calls upon real effort and ingenuity
and does not become just another bureaucratic alphabet agency.

Otherwise, the community, as school board member Sara Lewis
succinctly put it, is “going to be in serious trouble in about 15
years.” As she noted, the 117,000 students currently at risk in our
under-performing system constitute the pool out of which our future decision-
makers will emerge.