Category: Opinion

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Editorial Opinion

Herenton’s Baby

Right now, school consolidation — the subject of a controversial state bill which is floundering, or about to — is an idea without a constituency, and that’s a recipe for irrelevance. The only person who might be able to change things is Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.

If there is a case to be made, Herenton, the former city schools superintendent, and his friend Johnnie B. Watson, the current superintendent, are the people to make it. They need to explain three things: what the cost savings would be from city-county school consolidation, where those savings would come from, and how classroom instruction would be affected.

Herenton needs to say more than what he has said — that, without consolidation, school costs are going to bankrupt this city and its school system. Where is there duplication in the city and county systems? How many administrative positions could be cut, and at what savings? How would the two school boards be merged? Would the 45,000-student county system become an adjunct to the 116,000-student city system? That seems to be one of the fears of the county administration and school board, who maintain — not unreasonably — that any aggregate containing 20 percent of the student population of Tennessee might become an entity too unwieldy to manage.

It’s understandable that Herenton may not want to come out with a detailed plan for consolidation. He has done so before, only to find himself leading a charge without any troops behind him. The problem back in the mid-1990s, when Herenton was focusing on governmental, not school, consolidation, was that black politicians in the city feared loss of their power, while white suburbanites dreaded the thought of being involved with what they imagined as crime-ridden, defective inner-city schools.

Back then, Herenton attempted to defuse the consolidation issue by separating the schools from it, constructing his consolidation pitch around the maintenance of independence for both the city and the county school systems. Now he’s coming at the issue from the other end, professing a desire to consolidate the schools first and the rest of the two separate governments later.

To be sure, he has cut the base of resistance in half, but as was made obvious from the intensity of county school board members’ reaction, the suburbanites who doubted consolidation almost a decade ago when its chief specter was concealed are bound to be more adamant than ever now that the disguise is off.

Herenton, now in his third and presumably final term as mayor, is at an optimum time politically to make a new bid for consolidation. Considering how easily he won the most recent mayor’s race against several opponents (including one from the rival Ford political clan), the mayor might be inspired by the apparent determination of George W. Bush to push an agenda that his hairbreadth victory hardly gave the new president a mandate for.

If Herenton can pull off consolidation, or any important component of it, during his third term, that fact could become even more of a legacy than his being the city’s first African-American mayor.

Incontestably, the consolidation issue is Herenton’s baby.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

A Worthy Alternative

To the Editor:

The Friends of Shelby Farms wish to add to the statement made by Mayor Rout in The Memphis Flyer (City Reporter, February 1st issue). We agree with attorney Richard Glassman that Alternative F is worthy of serious consideration. We anticipate further discussion once the roadway is presented in specific detail. It is important to note that this latest alternative, like its predecessors, is subject to the federal laws pertaining to roads through parkland. The citizens of Memphis and Shelby County should have the final decision.

Steve Eppel, Friends of Shelby Farms, Memphis

In Defense of Ashley

To the Editor:

I am writing in response to a recent letter to the editor (February 8th issue) in which Ashley Fantz was taken to task for her article on Grandmaster Fu Wei Zhong. I too had a strong negative reaction when I first read an article by Ms. Fantz months ago. However, after I read and re-read that particular article (of all things to get irked over, it was a book review), I felt that my criticisms were perhaps not entirely fair and held back on firing off the two-page letter I had written.

I have subsequently read Ms. Fantz’s work with a somewhat skeptical (albeit amused) eye and have found that, while I do not agree with everything she writes, I find her work to be relatively balanced, well written, serious when needed, humorous when appropriate and simply fun to read. Sadly, it’s predictable in today’s oversensitive society that when you skewer a few sacred cows — even when done with tongue-in-cheek humor — those on the receiving end have a hissy fit.

Chris Leek, Memphis

Bogus Logic?

To the Editor:

John Branston’s Viewpoint column (“A Bogus ‘Choice,'” February 1st issue) posed the question, “Why do 118,000 students stay in the Memphis City Schools?” He uses the number of children enrolled in the Memphis schools as evidence to refute the idea of vouchers. He says that choice exists in Memphis through the optional schools, the Memphis Opportunity Scholarship Trust, and the ability to move to a desired school attendance zone. Well, what’s bogus is Branston’s analysis.

First, the vast majority of Memphis City Schools’ student population lives in poverty. People in poverty need before- and after-school care, free breakfasts, free lunches, transportation, etc. The schools located in the depressed areas of Memphis offer those services through a designation as an “entitled” school. Many optional schools do not provide these additional services.

Then there’s Branston’s idea that transportation is a small issue. He must not live in a household that has only one or even no reliable automobile. Reliance on public transit is problematic at best. When on a limited income, the additional time and expense of getting a child across town for school and then getting yourself to work are huge hurdles. Such parents do not have any options; even their housing is usually limited to the rentals that are eligible for government subsidy.

Second, the Opportunity Trust limits its assistance to low-income persons. Has Branston looked at the cost of the city’s top schools — Presbyterian Day School, St. Mary’s, Lausanne? A $1,500 check doesn’t go far for tuition, and tuition is just a portion of the costs for private schools. Would Branston feel the same if the waiting list for scholarship aid contained 116,000 names instead of its present 2,000?

Third, I’m one of those “mobile” folks who chose his school by buying a home miles from his workplace. Did I have any influence over Mayor Herenton’s annexation frenzy? My mobility has gone the way of doubled taxes and a neighborhood with “For Sale” signs and foreclosure notices everywhere. I was forced to go to the school board building three times last week: once to sign up for a spot in the 900-plus-person line, a second time for a roll call to keep my number 369 place in line, and a third time at 5 a.m. to languish in line until 8:25 a.m. This, just to hand in applications for my two oldest children for a chance to attend an optional program miles from our home. And, since few optional schools include kindergarten, who knows where my rising kindergartner will be next fall?

Last, Branston countered his own view by noting that the economically advantaged have fled to Germantown, Collierville, and private schools, leaving the poor to MCS. Doesn’t that clearly indicate that over 100,000 students do not have a choice? Branston concludes that my children will be in Memphis schools because I do not believe MCS is a poor choice for my children or I choose to ignore its problems. It is neither. My children will be in Memphis schools because I make too much money to get scholarships but too little income to send three children to private schools or buy a more expensive house in an “annexation free” Shelby County area.

By the way, does Mr. Branston have children in Memphis City Schools?

Raymond Miller, Memphis

(Editor’s Note: John Branston has two children in Memphis City Schools.)

To the Editor:

Mr. Branston with his Viewpoint column “A Bogus ‘Choice'” unfortunately defends the failing status quo against vouchers and charter schools and tax credits for private and parochial school tuition. Branston basically grants in the column that many public schools are largely failing. Branston also seems to grant that teachers’ unions and bureaucrats might rule the public schools. Branston is then struck by the fact that 118,000 students “choose” to attend public schools in Memphis. (Branston has obviously never heard of the mandatory school attendance law in Tennessee.)

Branston then diverts our attention to another bogus notion: that Memphis City Schools has sufficient “choice” through its optional school program for gifted students. But the point of Mr. Bush’s programs, as I understand it, is to expand the choices to all students, whether gifted or not. (And this doesn’t mean that elite students could not enroll in the Memphis City Schools optional program under Bush’s programs.) The heavily taxed citizens of America and their children deserve a greater range of choice. So, now, who is really missing the more important point?

Phillip Stephenson, Memphis

The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

Categories
Opinion

About Bob

I write in defense of the bump and grind.

And the spotlighted shoulder-roll invitation. Pigeon-toe coyness. The peep-show nod of a bolo hat, sheer black tights, and a bar-back chair. A hand holding a cigarette, its smoke outlining the curve of a woman’s hip.

I write in defense of Bob Fosse.

Not that Bob Fosse, the man, the choreographer, the director, the self-styled dancin’ man, needs defending. He won mainstream accolades galore: an Emmy, a Tony, and an Oscar in one year. It’s his artful mixing of the bawdy and the sophisticated on stage before anyone else and better than anyone else that has been seemingly forgotten in modern musical theater. Consider contemporary adaptations of Fosse style. And if you think you don’t know Fosse, you do. His razzle-dazzle combination of jazz, burlesque, ballet, acrobatics, and Tin Pan/vaudevillian choreography has influenced every major performing artist from MTVers to Carnegie Hallers. Yet, try as some might to mimic the choreographer’s magic, it’s clear that stage entertainment will never be as complex, interesting, or fun as Fosse made it.

True, Fosse, the biographical musical which opened to a full house Tuesday night at The Orpheum, was not choreographed by the man himself but by Ann Reinking, his protegÇ and current Broadway diva since Liza with a Z gained 400 pounds. Though the show appears to be Fosse turned up a notch, with almost identical staging of his most famous numbers from Chicago, Sweet Charity, Cabaret, The Pajama Game, and Dancin’ — missing are Pippin and Damn Yankees — Reinking has carefully placed transitional interludes between numbers as a way to introduce the audience to a different side of the artist. But she doesn’t mess with the essence of Fosse’s special brand of vaudevillian entertainment. “Steam Heat,” Fosse’s trademark piece, stands out in the revue as does “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity. The show is a genuine ode to Reinking’s mentor. And as with anything associated with Fosse, the musical maintains its unapologetic sexiness.

But not every musical that Fosse placed a hip-swivel and finger-snap to has avoided sexual contrivance. Nineteen ninety-seven’s Broadway revival of Cabaret, directed by American Beauty‘s Sam Mendes, is a crotch-grabbing mÇnage Ö trois screw-fest that took Fosse choreography and added a helping of over-the-top titillations. The revamped version is not much like Fosse’s 1972 Oscar-winning film version starring Liza Minelli as the too-talented for a strip club Sally Bowles and Joel Grey as the emcee. Mendes downgrades Bowles to a karaoke-level star in this 100-percent perverse adaptation. “Two Ladies” doesn’t indulge the imagination and, oddly, Bowles’ love interest is a closet homosexual — a twist that isn’t alluded to in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, which the musical is based on. All of this is not to imply that Mendes’ version isn’t worthy; it won a slew of Tonys for a reason. But there is a distinct absence of Fosse’s talent for making the raunchy complex and the profound more digestible.

The film Cabaret was very different from the stage version. It was revolutionary in its depiction of a bleak, upsetting future run by a government of hate bent on destroying all free thinking. Though it wasn’t the first film to feature androgyny, Cabaret‘s Joel Grey in clown makeup likely inspired fascination among glam-rockers and was cinematically echoed by films like A Clockwork Orange. Fosse’s film was a post-modern feat, showing shadows of shadows, stage-like devices such as red ribbons strewn across the ground of a Jewish ghetto to intimate bloodshed, and people in fun-house distortion behind glass bricks. When was the last time a musical was turned into a beautiful, well-choreographed film? Forget Evita. During its dance scenes, the camera managed to cut off all the actors’ feet.

Broadway has become anesthetized, cleaned with giant Disney sponges, its subway stations dripping with plastic cartoon numbers. The hookers of Times Square who could have easily sung their tired hearts out in Sweet Charity have been replaced by Donald Duck and Goofy. What is playing on the Great White Way? Annie Get Your Gun, Beauty and the Beast, Rent, Seussical (starring Rosie O’Donnell, no less). New York Times theater critics as recent as Frank Rich and as far back as Walter Kerr have lamented that there’s nothing exciting happening to characters on Broadway.

Fosse, however, offered dancers a chance to become more than wallpaper for the actors. For the choreographer who died of a heart attack after rehearsals for a mid-1980s Chicago revival, singing, dancing, and acting were interchangeable. And the most concise example of that is Fosse, a musical revue that he had nothing to do with but is dedicated solely to him.

Fosse, Through February 25th, The Orpheum

Categories
Opinion

Magic in a Digital Age

Millions of people fly across the country every year. We’ve made computers that can think faster than we do. We’ve mapped the human genome. But show us someone who can guess our card was the Ace of Spades and we still sit up in awe.

For Kevin Spencer, this is what makes magic worth performing.

“To be in this age of technology and to still be able to bring wonder to anything, to be able to create that emotion in people, is great,” says the magician and illusionist. Spencer is a performer in the escape tradition of Houdini or Harry Blackstone Jr. But neither of them shared the stage with his wife.

“The fact that my wife and I work as a team makes it a better show,” says Spencer. “We know each other so well and so many of those things are expressed on the stage. Who we are together works well on the stage.”

Cindy Spencer got involved in magic through Kevin. She was working as a diamond consultant and dating Kevin’s roommate when the three of them started performing together. After the roommate left the act, Cindy and Kevin continued to work together and eventually fell in love. They’ve been married for 18 years.

Spencer, on the other hand, has wanted to be a magician ever since he was very young.

“I was 5 or 6 when I saw my first magic show. It was so completely fascinating.” After getting a magic kit for Christmas, he started putting on shows, eventually doing them for local civic groups during junior high and high school.

“I lived in a farm town in Indiana. Everybody knew I was the little boy who did magic.”

During college, he majored in clinical psychology and worked his way through by continuing to give magic shows.

“I was going into it to help people with their minds,” Spencer says and laughs. “Now all I do is mess with them.”

It was around this time he saw Doug Henning perform, talked to him backstage after the show for over an hour, and decided that he was going to do magic for a living. But Spencer says his show is a little different from most of the magic shows you see in live venues or on television.

For one thing, the Spencers perform with a lot of audience participation.

“That’s the most exciting part, when people can experience it for themselves,” says Spencer. “When they can be close to it, it becomes incredible.” But it also lends credibility to the show. After an audience member comes off the stage, his friends and neighbors can ask him what exactly happened.

But the main difference, Spencer thinks, is that they try to present the show with a theatrical twist.

“A lot of times when you see magicians perform, they bring the illusion onto the stage and then they carry the box off after they’re through.” This is not the way the Spencers work. Using elements from the theater — music, lighting, scenery, special effects — the duo tries to bring a sense of heightened tension and fluidity to the production.

“Like any good play or musical, the audience experiences a wide variety of emotions,” says Spencer. “There are light-hearted tricks and then there are very dramatic moments.”

But all that sleight of hand is building toward one key moment.

“Each illusion is a kind of act on its own. They are each dressed differently until we get to the finale.” The Spencers try to tailor each show to the stage on which they’re performing. On the stage of the Bartlett Performing Arts Center, that means Houdini’s water trick: A milk tank is filled to the brim with 50 gallons of water, and Spencer is chained and padlocked inside the tank.

“And I have to get out,” says Spencer. “It’s pretty intense. Not many people do it anymore. I’m not sure if that’s because of skill or stupidity.”

He laughs and decides it’s a question of skill.

The Spencers: Theatre of Illusion

8 p.m., Friday, February 23rd

$15

Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Rattrap Salesman

(BOMBAY) — India is driven by commerce. Despite its widespread poverty, Indians buy and sell everywhere — on the streets, in their homes, in stores and tiny stalls, even in the middle of traffic.

Once the doorbell rang in the Bombay apartment where my family and I are staying with relatives. It was after 10 p.m. When I looked out the peep hole and described the old woman in a sari I saw in the hallway, the people inside just laughed. Apparently they had encountered her before. She was selling sleepwear — lingerie — door-to-door.

Every morning we are awakened by a cacophony of sounds, which includes car and truck horns, crows cawing, and the sing-song shouts of hawkers outside the apartment selling fruits and vegetables from push carts. In the amazing tangle that is Bombay traffic we are offered toys, flowers, books, magazines, and miniature Indian flags (January 26 is Independence Day). Outside the most upscale stores, vendors set up shop, selling everything imaginable. There are even people on the street who will shine your shoes, give you a shave, or clean your ears.

Then there was the rat trap salesman in Hyderabad.

My father-in-law operates a liquor store that was owned by his father before him. One day during our stay in Hyderabad, I noticed a man outside the shop with some unusual wares. On closer inspection, I saw that he was selling all kinds of rattraps and rodent poisons. He had humane traps (both wooden and metal) for catching the rats alive and the more traditional metal traps that break the rodent’s neck.

It was an impressive array of goods and I stopped to look more closely. The man, who had very dark skin and appeared to be in his 30s, smiled at me. I returned the smile. By this time I had learned to avoid the frustrating dance of two people who don’t speak the same language. Since I don’t speak Telugu or Hindi and he didn’t know English, we were confined to smiling at each other and making the universal signs of greeting. We nodded a lot.

I found myself watching the rattrap salesman as he went about his daily chore of laying his rug down on the sidewalk and then putting out his display in an orderly fashion. He didn’t hawk but waited for an interested customer and then began the inevitable haggling. We continued to smile at each other as I went to and from the house (which is above the store).

The night before we left Hyderabad to return to Bombay one of the relatives who works in the store told me at dinner that the rat trap salesman wanted to come back with me to the United States. He had assured the relative that he would be no trouble to me and that he would be available to do any chores I wished him to perform both at my home and in my office.

Because there are so many people in India and so few jobs available, there are people who do all kinds of work. A middle-class family can easily afford someone who will come to their house and cook, another person to clean the floors and make the beds, and another to wash the clothes. (This man is called the “dobhi.”) Likewise it is affordable to have someone drive your car (or wash it), bring you a newspaper, or run your errands. This is the world the rattrap salesman visualized; this is the world he knows.

The next day, I gave him a 100 rupee note — about two U.S. dollars. (I had originally wanted to buy one of his wooden traps, but decided it would be too cumbersome to bring back.) He smiled. I smiled.

When it came time to load the cars for the trip to the train station, I shook his hand before getting into the car. From the front seat, I could see him deliberating. Finally, just before the car pulled off, he handed me a note. It read:

Respected Sir,

I wont to go to America with you. My passport is ready. I shall feel oblige if you kindly arrange for a “visa.” I can work at your office or at your house also.

Thank you.

He did not include his name. He obviously had gone to great lengths to get the note written. He couldn’t have known many people who could write English. Still at the last minute he could not decide whether or not to present it to me.

I wish I could have talked to him, explained the many reasons why he could not go back with me. But the car was pulling off. There was only time for one more universal sign. I shrugged.

That night as dusk settled on the countryside along the train tracks, as shepherds drove their goats wherever it is goats go at night, I thought about the rattrap salesman and how different his world is from mine. I felt sad — for both of us. n

You can e-mail Dennis Freeland at freeland@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Fool’s Gold

1. Lotteries are a sucker game. In a typical state lottery you have to guess six two-digit numbers out of a possible 49. None of the six numbers is used more than once and you must guess the winning numbers in correct order. The odds of hitting the jackpot in this system are one in 14 million.

You are three times more likely to be killed in an auto accident on the way to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the jackpot.

Fran Lebowitz quips, “As I figure it, you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play it or not.” Or as John Warren Kindt says in his book Gambling, “The only way to win is to never buy a ticket.”

2. The state of Tennessee will need to use blatantly false advertising to lure you in. The Publisher’s Clearinghouse contest is required by law to publish your odds of winning. The lottery is exempt from this requirement. If lotteries made plain your odds of winning, the game would be over.

3. The state will waste an obscene amount of the revenue collected from the lottery on advertising. The Washington Post calls lottery ads “the foulest of gambling lures. And they lure the poorest and most vulnerable among us through publicly sponsored, shamelessly misleading advertising.”

4. A lottery is a regressive tax. During the first year of the Georgia lottery, the lottery sold $249 worth of tickets per resident in ZIP codes with average household incomes below $20,000, compared with $97 in ZIP codes with incomes exceeding $40,000. Per-capita ticket sales were also twice as high in minority areas compared with white areas.

5. Lower-income people will pay for the education of wealthier people. Georgia’s HOPE scholarship program mostly provides scholarships to students from middle- and upper-class families. Of the 16,376 students who received HOPE scholarships for the 1994-95 academic year, the average family income was $44,876 while the average state income was $32,359.

By requiring students to apply for a battery of federal grants and scholarships, poor and minority students are diverted into Pell grants. They receive a $150 book allowance per semester from HOPE while wealthier students receive the bulk of the HOPE money.

6. A lottery will not solve Tennessee’s revenue problems. After payouts and advertising, a lottery typically provides 1 to 3 percent of a state’s revenue. It will be two years before the lottery referendum is held and another year before the lottery is up and running. Meanwhile, Tennessee will sink deeper into the hole. A lottery creates few jobs and no useful product. Compulsive gambling will create a host of social problems, which the state will pay for in the long run.

7. A lottery will not make Tennessee’s tax system any fairer. A lottery is a diversionary tactic that our legislators are using to keep from reforming our antiquated, unfair tax structure.

8. Tennessee is late getting into the lottery game. Lottery revenue has peaked in many states and is dropping off. Virginia has had a lottery for 10 years and is now hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole. How long will it take for Tennesseans to catch on to the sucker game and stop playing? Lotteries are one of the most unstable sources of revenue.

9. The state will decrease the general revenue for education by the amount the lottery makes. Educational spending tends to decline once a state puts a lottery into operation. According to one study, states without lotteries maintained and increased their educational spending more than states with lotteries.

10. The state of Tennessee has a social contract with its citizens to protect them from fraud. This contract is null and void when it comes to lotteries.

Nell Levin is a social activist living in Nashville.

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Editorial Opinion

Reserving Judgment

Reserving Judgment

This week was the occasion (as our Web site, www.memphisflyer.com, was first to report) for a visit to Tennessee by President George W. Bush, whose intent was to focus attention on the details of his education plan, one which stresses educational testing and a series of incentives as a means of improving student performance.

Accordingly, the president selected the venue of Townsend Elementary School in Blount County. This is a school where low-income students and high recent test scores happen to intersect, and thus Bush thought it appropriate as a place to proclaim the gospel of his results-oriented approach.

We happened to favor the somewhat more expensive and conventional approach of Bush’s recent election opponent, former Vice President Al Gore, and we remain distrustful of all those polemicists who like to dump venom on the nation’s teachers’ unions, most of whom supported Gore over Bush. These organized teachers may constitute an entrenched lobby, as their critics claimed, but we remain convinced that their hearts are in the right place.

Even so, there is something to be said for “thinking out of the box,” as the current phrase has it. And Bush’s plan, to its credit, does not commit the sin, common to many “conservative” plans, of substituting rhetoric for bona fide fiscal supports. The administration is prepared to commit more funds than have heretofore been available to most school districts, and we have no knee-jerk opposition to the plan’s emphasis on maximizing local control or its application of the carrot-and-stick approach to matters of future funding and teacher rewards.

We are pleased, too, at intimations coming from Washington that the controversial “school voucher” component of the Bush plan has been dropped. We can only hope so. It is simply wrong, however well-intended, to take taxpayers’ money and route it out by whatever formula to private institutions, some of them highly sectarian.

On balance, we are prepared to reserve judgment on the Bush plan, a stance which is in part just good fatalistic sense. For, like it or not, the plan — or something like it — is on the way. And who knows? Maybe it will marry well with the educational reforms Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist is proposing.

Reserving Judgment II

Questions about the XFL are as plentiful today as they were when the gaudy new football league, co-owned by NBC and the World Wrestling Federation, first announced it would make Memphis one of its eight charter members. After three weeks, the TV ratings have settled down to the low expectations that the league itself had before getting the first week’s unexpectedly good viewer totals.

Memphis Maniax general manager Steve Ehrhart tried to stem the tide of bad press this week, issuing a press release proclaiming Memphis as the “number one” UPN market. He spun reporters at the team’s weekly press conference to the effect that things are better than the national media make them out to be, that the Memphis TV market in particular is doing better than expected, and that the two local games drew well, especially considering the weather.

The jury is still out on the Memphis Maniax and the Xtreme Football League. But the combination of NBC’s bucks and the WWF’s chutzpah could give the league real staying power — a la the old AFL and the current MSNBC, two similarly endowed hybrids. Here, too, we’ll reserve judgment.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Conversion of Tom Moss

It was expected that Tom Moss, who was appointed Shelby County Commissioner
last fall, would try to get himself assimilated as a member in good standing
of the commission’s seven-member GOP majority. After all, nominal Republican
Moss had defeated mainstream Republican David Lillard and was named to his
post basically by a Democrat-dominated coalition (the same coalition that
boosted lodge brother Shep Wilbun into the vacant Juvenile Court clerkship).
Moss, along with veteran Republican Clair VanderSchaaf (who voted with the
Democrats both times), was supposed to be dog meat for righteously vengeful
Republicans to gnaw on at re-election time in 2002.

So now builder Moss, whose ascension to the commission may have
been more a developers’ coup than anything expressly political, has tried to
accommodate himself to his fellow Republicans.

But things have become almost surreal: There was Moss after
Monday’s commission meeting complaining, “I don’t think we’re a solid enough
bloc. I don’t think we’re exacting enough in return for what we give up.” We?
Why, the Republican majority, of course!

“For example, we should have demanded a quid pro quo from the
Democrats when Bridget [Chisholm] came on,” Moss continued, referring to the
young African-American woman, hitherto a political unknown like himself who
was elected to the commission to replace Wilbun.

In other words, Tom Moss — who achieved office under the cloud
of Democratic sponsorship — has now become the most zealous of GOP partisans:
No more deals with the Democrats unless something of solid value to the
Republican coalition comes from it! It’s really quite remarkable, this
turnaround saga of Moss the hardnose.

Though there are those who maintain that Chisholm is in the same
developers’ camp as Moss, she herself boasts state Senator John Ford and U.S.
Rep. Harold Ford Jr. as her chief supporters. In a key vote Monday on a
Southeast Shelby County development resisted by its projected residential
neighbors, Chisholm voted one way (against), Moss voted another (for), and
VanderSchaaf voted yet a third way, proposing an amendment that would have
split the difference.

The project deadlocked at six to six and thereby died, although
it can — and probably will — be brought up for consideration again. But the
interesting fact about the vote was that none of the three supposed New Bloc
members were together on the deal.

It may be easier than one would have thought for Tom Moss to take
on protective coloration he’ll need for next year’s election season. At last
Saturday’s annual Shelby County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner at the Adam’s
Mark, Moss was observed having a chummy conversation with Chris Norris, the
ex-commissioner’s wife and a bedrock Republican in her own right.

That was followed by an even chummier conversation with county
GOP chairman Alan Crone, who was overheard asking the new commissioner out to
lunch.

The upshot of all this? Perhaps nothing more than a modification
of the old saw that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” Sudden ones, too, we
could add. Or maybe the point is that partisanship is a substance which these
days is thicker than blood or water.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Who Is Elvis Prez-ley?

A line of attack frequently pursued by Vice President Al Gore‘s Republican adversaries in this year’s presidential race has been that he is only a nominal Tennessean, that he is actually a son of Washington, D.C., and that his contacts with home-staters are only superficial and occasional.

Whether fair or not, the approach has evidently succeeded in sowing doubt in the minds of some Tennessee voters and may be partly responsible for Gore’s recent second-place showing, behind Republican rival George W. Bush, in a variety of pollsters’ samplings of Tennesseans.

The vice president did himself little good in this regard when he appeared Tuesday night on NBC’s Tonight Show with host Jay Leno.

At one point, discussing the annual habit that he and wife Tipper engage in of dressing up for Halloween in elaborate custumes, he noted that members of the press corps surprised him Tuesday at one of his rally stops by showing up in Halloween getups of their own.

One of them was disguised, Gore noted, “as Elvis Prez-ley”– giving the name the pronunciation favored by members of the national media. But not by Tennesseans.

And certainly not by residents of Memphis, site of an eleventh-hour stop this weekend by candidate Gore, who is counting on a Shelby County turnout to give him a chance for victory in Tennessee over Bush.

The late entertainment icon Elvis Presley pronounced his name “Press-ley,” never any other way, and the difference in pronunciations has historically been regarded as one of those divides that distinguish the local sensibility from the national one.

The gaffe is only symbolic, but it prompts two thoughts, neither of which is flattering to Gore. Does he not know the right way to say the name of this late home-state eminence? Or does he know the right way and prefer to accommodate himself to the prevailing error elsewhere?

For those who would consider the incident insignificant, this question might be considered: what would it say of Gore’s home-state savvy if he pronounced the first name of a latter-day artist “Shan-ia,” which emphasis on the first syllable? Or “Shan-ee-ah” or some other wrong guess? This is, after all, a time in which Gore, Bush, and all other major candidates for office make a practice of taking an active part in popular culture and flaunting their knowledge of it.

As the vice president digs in for his last stand in Tennessee and elsewhere, some other moves of his (or of his campaign staff’s) have threatened to backfire. Early Wednesday morning, a Memphis radio reporter was awakened from slumber by a call from the Gore-Lieberman campaign urging him to conduct an interview with former state Attorney General (and current Gore CEO) Charles Burson, who was then placed on the line. (This came a day after someone from the Gore-Lieberman campaign had called the station and carried out a lengthy interrogation concerning its demographics Ñ the idea seeming to station personnel to be, ‘Are you worthy of being the medium for our message?’)

Somewhat grumpily, the reporter obliged by havng a conversation with Burson, a highly personable man but one whom he did not know personally. The reporter made no effort to record it for later broadcast purposes.

To the reporter, the episode– which no doubt had its counterpart in Bush’s campaign here and there– smacked of the artificial and the peremptory.

For all that, it is a fact that Gore has his share of long-term home-state relationships, real ones, and he will be calling on all these during his weekend sweep of Knoxville and Memphis (where a Court Square rally Friday night will be followed by Gore’s appearance at a Democratic prayer breakfast Saturday), to be followed by a return to his headquarters site of Nashville to get the last word from the voters.

“I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” is Gore’s song, and any wrong notes here at the end of things could easily create unwanted dissonance instead of the playback he’s looking for.

(You can write Jackson Baker at baker@memphisflyer.com)

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Herenton Indictment?

The career of Willie Herenton can be divided into two parts.

In Part One, he was the breaker of racial barriers in Memphis: the
first black assistant school superintendent, the first black school
superintendent, the first black mayor. In Part Two, he was the champion
of black power. Not the radical black power of “Burn Baby Burn” and a
clenched-fist salute, but the black economic power of an affluent
class, a growing middle class, and a rising underclass.

It was in Part Two that Herenton got himself in a jam and possibly a
federal grand jury investigation.

This is the Herenton who, a few years after becoming mayor, became a
partner in Banneker Estates, an upscale real estate development next to
his home in South Memphis that he hoped would rival similar enclaves
for wealthy whites in East Memphis.

This is the Herenton who explored selling MLGW, clashed with Herman
Morris, installed his protégé Joseph Lee, and insisted
that MLGW reallocate its lucrative bond business so that firms in
Memphis, including one where his son worked, got more business.

This is the Herenton who hired special adviser/real estate man Pete
Aviotti, who says the mayor has “a passion” for real estate.

This is the Herenton who co-existed with Shelby County mayor Jim
Rout and special adviser Bobby Lanier and a posse of hostile suburban
mayors for 16 years and ran for city mayor a fifth time to keep Morris
from getting the job.

And this is the Herenton who did deals with one E.W. Moon at
Banneker Estates and downtown near Beale Street.

How you look at Herenton, builder of black economic wealth, depends
somewhat on whether you are black or white. By Herenton’s lights, he
has been more than fair to whites by putting them in director jobs and
going along with their pet business projects.

The root of this federal investigation is minority participation,
the rule that says you don’t do a big public deal in this town without
black and white partners in the underwriting firms, the PR firms, the
law firms, on the job sites, and any place where there’s the smell of
money. Minority participation was the making and unmaking of Tennessee
Waltz star witness Tim Willis, among others.

My guess is that the feds have about a one-month window to indict.
After that, Mr. Obama goes to Washington, and a new attorney general
gets installed along with new U.S. attorneys with Democratic loyalties
and antennas.

If there is a case, it will surely have to go to Washington for
review, and I can imagine the conversation going like this.

“Mr. Attorney General, we’ve got a hot one down in Memphis against
the mayor who’s been in office for 17 years. He’s taken some shots over
the years, but he’s still a local hero to a lot of people. He knows it,
and he’ll fight like hell. Is it a go?”

“What did he do?”

“It’s a real estate deal.”

“About time. Nail a bunch of bankers and brokers, too?”

“Uh, actually, no.”

“I see. I’m kinda busy. Can we get back to you in January?”

And I can imagine the Herenton lines of defense, first in the media
and then in the courtroom: It’s the Republicans’ parting shot, the
sequel to Tennessee Waltz. If you can’t vote him out of office, indict
him. Payback for Joseph Lee. The mayor is indicted while bankers get
$25 million bonuses for destroying the global economy.

A Herenton indictment would be a national story. I can see a New
York Times equivalent to The Wall Street Journal‘s obsession
with the back story of the 1993 federal corruption trial of former
congressman Harold Ford Sr., two months after Bill Clinton was sworn
in. The pre-trial and the trial itself would be a war, tougher than the
Ford trial or the trial of former Atlanta mayor (and Herenton friend)
Bill Campbell, who was indicted after he left office.

It is very possible, of course, that the feds have some juicy
evidence of their own and a list of witnesses ready to testify. They
may even have a smoking gun.

After the Joe Lee and Ed Ford fiascoes, they better have a lot of
them.