Category: Politics Beat Blog

“I’m Mad As Hell and Not Gonna Take It Anymore!”

When in doubt, whup somebody’s ass. Anybody’s.

Remember Howard P. Beale, the aging news-anchor character played by Peter Finch in the 1970’s film classic Network!, who, when he learns he’s about to be fired, successfully retrieves his reputation and career by simply venting, ad nauseum, whenever it looks like it will play properly in tv-land?

“I’m Howard P. Beale, and I’m as mad as hell, and not gonna take it anymore!”

Well, I’m terribly afraid that Mr. Howard P. Beale has landed in the White House. How else do you make any sense of what George W. Bush, President of these United States, has had to say for himself in recent days?

No doubt about it, the First Hawk is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore. And no doubt he was made even madder by the news reports coming out of the Middle East these first few days of the new year 2003.

As the world gears up for near-certain war in Iraq, the BBC reported Wednesday that U.N. weapons inspectors who had scoured that country “have almost nothing to report.” United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan added, no doubt irritating the Bush Administration in the process, that he saw no basis at present for the use of force against Iraq. “I don’t see an argument for military action now,” said Mr. Annan.

Annan also told Israeli radio that Baghdad was co-operating with UN weapons inspectors, and that no military action should be considered by the United Nations Security Council, at least until the inspectors issued their full report.

Making matters worse for the administration, one of those UN weapons inspectors told the Los Angeles Times that same day that not only had he and his colleagues found no concealed material in Iraq; they had not seen any of the so-called “intelligence reports” that Washington has said it will supply to help in the search for weapons of mass destruction. “We haven’t found an iota of concealed material yet,” the newspaper quoted this inspector as saying.

All this was bad news, I’m sure, in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush was trying to enjoy the last few hours of his Christmas holidays. That same day, he was lashing out directly at Saddam Hussein, the administration’s 2002 poster boy for evil incarnate, and odds-on favorite right now for the top spot again in 2003. “You know,” said Bush somberly, “he (Saddam) is a man who likes to play games and charades.”

Clearly, the First Hawk has already seen and heard enough about Saddam for not one but two lifetimes, and wishes the Iraqi dictator would simply do the right thing and, well, allow himself to be blasted into oblivion. The President didn’t mince words: “For 11 long years the world has dealt with him, and now he has got to understand his day of reckoning is coming…”

Bingo. Sorry, that’s a game, and the President has told us, it’s Saddam, not us, who likes to play games and charades. Not us; we mean business. We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore. We mean war.

We mean war, because… well, we’re mad as hell, and for good reason. Damn it, Osama Bin Laden, 2001’s “evil one,” took down the Twin Towers and destroyed thousands of American lives, and what’ve we got to show for it? Well, about $39 billion dumped into the security industry, and maybe a few hundred sorry-ass Arab prisoners in Guatanamo, Cuba, prisoners whose greatest crimes wouldn’t make the police blotters of most major American cities.

But no Osama. No Mullah Omar. Nope, the Republicans may have won a significant victory in the 2002 Congressional elections, but they and we still haven’t given anybody outside Afghanistan, as we say in the South, a real “whuppin’.” And what good is all that power if you can’t give somebody a whuppin’?

No, this will never do. We can’t have the the President of these United States looking like Yosemite Sam chasing around after Bugs Bunny, can we? Not when America, the world’s only superpower and God’s most-favored nation, is entitled, fully entitled, to whup some ass. In such circumstances, that ass needs finding.

The appropriate posterior, of course, has been properly identified for months now. And the Bush Administration was all set, any day, to start wiping the floor with Saddam Hussein, until just last weekend, when things got a little complicated in the Far East.

That pesky little devil Kim Jong-il, lord and master of North Korea, last Friday surprised the world by blithely announcing, axis-of-evil kind of guy that he is, that his country already has and will continue to develop the same kind of “weapons of mass destruction” the Bush Administration is hell-bent on finding in Iraq. Not only that: Kim acts like he could care less if the US is upset about his own WMDs. Just to show his true colors, he’s made a point of turfing out UN weapons inspectors already in North Korea keeping tabs on his arms program.

Not very sporting, that Kim. Doesn’t he know we’re mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore?

Kim has certainly muddied the waters. He has thousands of artillery pieces trained on Seoul, the capital of South Korea, just a stone’s throw away from the border. And even allowing for the fact that he has no oil (historically, the Bush presidents have been in the oil business, and have not unnaturally focused most of their foreign-affairs energies on oil-producing nations), messing with Kim would run the severe risk that all our military “might” would be rendered useless by Kim’s 11,000 howitzers, weapons of not-so-mass-destruction whose clever positioning has allowed the North Korean dictator to make a city of some ten million people his virtual hostage.

No, letting Seoul be smashed to bits would never do. Besides, those South Koreans don’t exactly love us right now anyway, and they surely wouldn’t be thrilled to see our foreign-policy blundering lead to a few hundred thousand Korean civilian casualties. Bad television, at the very least, for all concerned.

So what is an angry President to do? He needs to do what any self-respecting, dysfunctional Southern father would do: he and his cohorts need to lash out wildly at the easiest target they can find. They’ll feel a damned sight better after they’ve done so.

It’s not easy being the First Hawk these days. Poor George W. Bush is like the daddy with two teen-aged sons whom he’s told, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever catches one of them smoking, he’s gonna “whup their ass.” Son Number One is the more crafty and malicious of the two; Daddy suspects he may be sneaking around behind the garage for a smoke, and swears he can smell the cigarettes on his breath everytime he comes in the house. But he can never quite catch him doing the dirty deed.

Ah, but Son Number Two. The poor boy comes home from a party where he’s had a drink or two, and, losing all fear, is out there sitting on the front porch smoking a big fat cigar, when Daddy throws open the door, screaming, “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

You all know what happens next, don’t you, in the topsy-turvy world of dysfunctional Southern fatherhood and twenty-first century international affairs? Daddy drags Son Number One out of his bed upstairs, takes him out back and gives him a thorough whuppin’.

Doesn’t make sense, you say? That’s just because you don’t get it. Daddy beat the stuffings out of Son Number One just because he could. And because he’s mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore…

Kenneth Neill is the publisher/CEO of Contemporary Media, parent company of The Memphis Flyer

ANOTHER VIEW…

The Memphis Grizzlies had their best half ever, then almost let Corey Maggette and the Los Angeles Clippers steal the game before recovering for a 116-111 win at The Pyramid.

Maggette scored 22 of his career-high 34 points in the second half but could not lead the Clippers to victory after they trailed by as many as 32 in the first half.

Rookie Gordan Giricek scored three of his season-high 31 points in the final minute to help seal the win.

The Grizzlies had a 71-46 lead at halftime, the largest intermission margin in team history, but the Clippers outscored them 40-19 in the third quarter. Maggette hit a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer at the end of the period, bringing Los Angeles within 90-86.

Maggette sank two more 3-pointers early in the fourth quarter to give the Clippers their first lead at 95-94. They led by as many as five points, but the Grizzlies rediscovered their form with a 9-0 run to retake the lead at 108-104 with just under three minutes left.

The Clippers played without center Michael Olowokandi, who sat out with a sore knee, then lost guard Quentin Richardson to an ankle injury early in the first quarter. Los Angeles suffered its fifth straight loss.

Memphis has won 10 of its last 19 games after starting the season with 13 straight defeats.

When the Griz lose one, they really lose.

With a chance to extend their franchise-record home winning streak to six games, the Memphis Grizzlies had the wrong opponent on the schedule at The Pyramid Sunday.

Karl Malone and Matt Harpring scored 17 points apiece as the Utah Jazz coasted to a wire-to-wire 103-74 victory over the Grizzlies.

The Memphis team managed something of a moral victory when a late mini-rally cut the Utah margin down to 29. It had been in the 30-plus register for most of the final quarter.

Memphis had won five in a row at the Pyramid but never got going against the Jazz, who improved to 25-5 in the all-time series.

Utah rolled to a 104-71 victory over the Grizzlies at the Delta Center on December 6 and picked up where it left off Sunday, opening a 21-11 lead after the first quarter and a 54-31 halftime advantage.

“We want to make it tough on people,” Malone said. “When we get the lead, we want to keep the pressure on you.”

Malone was 6-of-7 from the field, but his biggest contribution might have been his defense on reigning Rookie of the Year Pau Gasol.

In his second matchup with Malone, Gasol was held to nine points in 29 minutes. He was kept to six points on December 6.

“You don’t try to keep him from scoring,” Malone said. “You just try to keep him from having one of those big games.”

“We got dismantled today,” Memphis forward Lorenzen Wright said. “They’ve got people that are old enough to be our dads. We’ve got to realize they’re not our dads and play the way we are supposed to.”

Both teams were coming off big wins on Friday. Utah ended Dallas’ season-opening 12-game home winning streak while Memphis used a game-ending 21-4 run to beat Milwaukee.

Neither team came out strong in the first quarter. But after shooting just 35 percent (8-of-23) in the opening period, Utah was an amazing 87 percent (13-of-15) in the second.

“We knew they were going to bump us,” Memphis coach Hubie Brown said. “You have to meet their physical style with your physical abilities. They are an established playoff team and that’s how they play. We knew that going in tonight.”

The Jazz built their first 20-point lead, 43-22, on Andrei Kirilenko’s dunk with 3:39 remaining and led by at least 20 over the last 3:02.

Shane Battier scored 11 points for Memphis, which avoided a season low in points with 49 seconds left when Mike Batiste made a short jumper.

Holding a 10-point lead at the start of the second quarter, Utah was able to maintain its double-digit advantage due to Memphis’ futility. The Grizzlies shot 17 percent (3-of-18) in the first quarter and began the second by missing their first five shots.

Battier ended the drought with nine minutes remaining and Stromile Swift hit a short jumper on Memphis’ next trip. The Grizzlies made five of their final eight shots but could only watch as Utah used a 15-7 run to turn the game into a rout.

Utah shot 50 percent (35-of-70), held a 43-36 rebounding edge, forced 20 turnovers and placed four players in double figures.

The Grizzlies shot just 38 percent (27-of-71) and Batiste, who scored 10 points, was their only other player to reach double figures.

“Not only were we missing shots, but we were turning the ball over,” Brown said. “In both games, they shot over 50 percent and we have shot in the 30s. We just couldn’t get key people on track.”

As they rush toward establishing a Tennessee lottery, state legislators are getting this sage advice from Georgia lottery officials: be careful.

So says state Sen. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, who is finally winning his determined fight to establish a lottery in Tennessee.

Let us add some unsolicited advice: don’t forget the middle class when Tennessee lottery proceeds are handed out.

Middle-class Tennesseans work hard to scare up enough money to send our children to college where they — we hope — get the education they need to better themselves and the world they inherit from us.

By working hard, we sometimes earn too much money for our children to qualify for scholarships based on income levels. Our children, despite excellent grades, often are shut out of scholarship money, thereby burdening working parents even more.

Meanwhile, students with inferior grades but with less financial wherewithal are entitled to wads of scholarship money.

That’s just not right.

The Tennessee lottery is a chance to change that disparity.

Here’s how:

From Year 1, make lottery scholarship money available to every academically eligible Tennessee high school senior who will attend college in Tennessee. No income limits.

Of course, the seniors would have to meet the academic guidelines, at least a B-average. Should the scholarship fund run low, then establish income limits until the fund is replenished. At that point, remove the income limits.

Tennessee voters overturned the constitutional prohibition against lotteries, largely because the money — after expenses and payouts to lottery winners — would be used for education. Legislation to establish a state lottery should take into consideration the role of middle-class Tennesseans who voted for overturning the lottery prohibition.

Our children should get a piece of the lottery pie. A group of legislators spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Georgia, a state whose HOPE scholarship program is a godsend for high school seniors who want to pursue higher education.

The message from Georgia lottery officials was this: be careful.

Cohen says his group also was advised to go slowly as they work toward setting up a lottery.

In its first year, Georgia’s lottery-funded scholarships were limited to families with incomes of less than $66,000 a year. That’s about twice the average salary of a Georgia teacher.

The Georgia lottery was so successful the first year that income limits were raised to $100,000 a year. The income limits have now been removed altogether.

Cohen envisions something like that in Tennessee, except he thinks income ceilings would never be lifted here.

The limits should be similar to Georgia’s first year. If the lottery works as it should, then income limits should be raised so that any child with a B-average would qualify for scholarships.

A Tennessee lottery, like Georgia’s, would provide money for high school students with good grades to attend any institution of higher learning, from vocational-technical schools (now called technology centers) to Vanderbilt University, the most expensive undergraduate program in Tennessee.

There should be enough money left over to pay for early childhood education programs, Cohen says.

This school year’s high school juniors should be the first group of students eligible for lottery scholarships. This year’s seniors, who would be college freshmen that first lottery year, might be able to participate in the program, though there’s no guarantee this early in the game.

Should Tennessee become the 39th state to establish a lottery, it would be operated as a business. Once the lottery is up and running, the only state involvement would be an annual audit of the operating agency.

“They won’t be state employees,” Cohen says.

Also, all lottery records would be open to public inspection, except for Social Security and telephone numbers of lottery winners.

All-in-all, it sounds like a good start for Tennesseans who have clamored for a lottery for years.

In that spirit of openness, let’s make sure no deserving student gets left behind.

Let us add some unsolicited advice: don’t forget the middle class when Tennessee lottery proceeds are handed out.

Middle-class Tennesseans work hard to scare up enough money to send our children to college where they — we hope — get the education they need to better themselves and the world they inherit from us.

By working hard, we sometimes earn too much money for our children to qualify for scholarships based on income levels. Our children, despite excellent grades, often are shut out of scholarship money, thereby burdening working parents even more.

Meanwhile, students with inferior grades but with less financial wherewithal are entitled to wads of scholarship money.

That’s just not right.

The Tennessee lottery is a chance to change that disparity.

Here’s how:

From Year 1, make lottery scholarship money available to every academically eligible Tennessee high school senior who will attend college in Tennessee. No income limits.

Of course, the seniors would have to meet the academic guidelines, at least a B-average. Should the scholarship fund run low, then establish income limits until the fund is replenished. At that point, remove the income limits.

Tennessee voters overturned the constitutional prohibition against lotteries, largely because the money — after expenses and payouts to lottery winners — would be used for education. Legislation to establish a state lottery should take into consideration the role of middle-class Tennesseans who voted for overturning the lottery prohibition.

Our children should get a piece of the lottery pie. A group of legislators spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Georgia, a state whose HOPE scholarship program is a godsend for high school seniors who want to pursue higher education.

The message from Georgia lottery officials was this: be careful.

Cohen says his group also was advised to go slowly as they work toward setting up a lottery.

In its first year, Georgia’s lottery-funded scholarships were limited to families with incomes of less than $66,000 a year. That’s about twice the average salary of a Georgia teacher.

The Georgia lottery was so successful the first year that income limits were raised to $100,000 a year. The income limits have now been removed altogether.

Cohen envisions something like that in Tennessee, except he thinks income ceilings would never be lifted here.

The limits should be similar to Georgia’s first year. If the lottery works as it should, then income limits should be raised so that any child with a B-average would qualify for scholarships.

A Tennessee lottery, like Georgia’s, would provide money for high school students with good grades to attend any institution of higher learning, from vocational-technical schools (now called technology centers) to Vanderbilt University, the most expensive undergraduate program in Tennessee.

There should be enough money left over to pay for early childhood education programs, Cohen says.

This school year’s high school juniors should be the first group of students eligible for lottery scholarships. This year’s seniors, who would be college freshmen that first lottery year, might be able to participate in the program, though there’s no guarantee this early in the game.

Should Tennessee become the 39th state to establish a lottery, it would be operated as a business. Once the lottery is up and running, the only state involvement would be an annual audit of the operating agency.

“They won’t be state employees,” Cohen says.

Also, all lottery records would be open to public inspection, except for Social Security and telephone numbers of lottery winners.

All-in-all, it sounds like a good start for Tennesseans who have clamored for a lottery for years.

In that spirit of openness, let’s make sure no deserving student gets left behind.

As they rush toward establishing a Tennessee lottery, state legislators are getting this sage advice from Georgia lottery officials: be careful.

So says state Sen. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, who is finally winning his determined fight to establish a lottery in Tennessee.

Let us add some unsolicited advice: donÕt forget the middle class when Tennessee lottery proceeds are handed out.

Middle-class Tennesseans work hard to scare up enough money to send our children to college where they Ð we hope Ð get the education they need to better themselves and the world they inherit from us.

By working hard, we sometimes earn too much money for our children to qualify for scholarships based on income levels. Our children, despite excellent grades, often are shut out of scholarship money, thereby burdening working parents even more.

Meanwhile, students with inferior grades but with less financial wherewithal are entitled to wads of scholarship money.

ThatÕs just not right.

The Tennessee lottery is a chance to change that disparity.

HereÕs how:

From Year 1, make lottery scholarship money available to every academically eligible Tennessee high school senior who will attend college in Tennessee. No income limits.

Of course, the seniors would have to meet the academic guidelines, at least a B-average. Should the scholarship fund run low, then establish income limits until the fund is replenished. At that point, remove the income limits.

Tennessee voters overturned the constitutional prohibition against lotteries, largely because the money Ð after expenses and payouts to lottery winners Ð would be used for education. Legislation to establish a state lottery should take into consideration the role of middle-class Tennesseans who voted for overturning the lottery prohibition.

Our children should get a piece of the lottery pie. A group of legislators spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Georgia, a state whose HOPE scholarship program is a godsend for high school seniors who want to pursue higher education.

The message from Georgia lottery officials was this: be careful.

Cohen says his group also was advised to go slowly as they work toward setting up a lottery.

In its first year, GeorgiaÕs lottery-funded scholarships were limited to families with incomes of less than $66,000 a year. ThatÕs about twice the average salary of a Georgia teacher.

The Georgia lottery was so successful the first year that income limits were raised to $100,000 a year. The income limits have now been removed altogether.

Cohen envisions something like that in Tennessee, except he thinks income ceilings would never be lifted here.

The limits should be similar to GeorgiaÕs first year. If the lottery works as it should, then income limits should be raised so that any child with a B-average would qualify for scholarships.

A Tennessee lottery, like GeorgiaÕs, would provide money for high school students with good grades to attend any institution of higher learning, from vocational-technical schools (now called technology centers) to Vanderbilt University, the most expensive undergraduate program in Tennessee.

There should be enough money left over to pay for early childhood education programs, Cohen says.

This school yearÕs high school juniors should be the first group of students eligible for lottery scholarships. This yearÕs seniors, who would be college freshmen that first lottery year, might be able to participate in the program, though thereÕs no guarantee this early in the game.

Should Tennessee become the 39th state to establish a lottery, it would be operated as a business. Once the lottery is up and running, the only state involvement would be an annual audit of the operating agency.

ÒThey wonÕt be state employees,Ó Cohen says.

Also, all lottery records would be open to public inspection, except for Social Security and telephone numbers of lottery winners.

All-in-all, it sounds like a good start for Tennesseans who have clamored for a lottery for years.

In that spirit of openness, letÕs make sure no deserving student gets left behind.

BULLETIN — Bowing to pressure from his fellow senators and the Bush White House, Sen. Trent Lott resigned his position as Senate majority leader on Friday after his colleagues openly began lining up behind Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist.

The move comes two weeks after Lott’s endorsement of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential bid touched off a national uproar.

“In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003,” Lott said in a written statement. “To all those who offered me their friendship, support and prayers, I will be eternally grateful. I will continue to serve the people of Mississippi in the United States Senate.”

Lott, has spent recent days in his Pascagoula, Miss., home in a futile search for support from colleagues.

With LottÕs departure, the only declared candidate for his post so far has been Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, a close ally of President Bush. Frist, who made his candidacy known Thursday evening, has so far garnered public support from at least seven senators.

But Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania were considered possible rivals for the job.

The 51 GOP senators who will serve in the next Congress plan to meet Jan. 6 to decide who their next leader will be. — Associated Press

PREVIOUS:

U.S. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, a close ally of President Bush, said Thursday he will probably seek to supplant Trent Lott as Senate Republican leader if he determines that most of his colleagues will support him.

In a statement, Frist said several senators had approached him Thursday and asked him to seek the job. He said he agreed to let them gauge support from all 51 GOP senators who will serve in the new Congress that convenes next month.

“I indicated to them that if it is clear that a majority of the Republican caucus believes a change in leadership would benefit the institution of the United States Senate, I will likely step forward for that role,” said Frist, who is riding high in his colleaguesÕ estimation after overseeing the GOPÕs recapture of the Senate as head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002 Frist has been frequently rumored as a likely successor to Vice President Dick Cheney if Cheney for any reason did not serve further.

The Tennessee senator is also known to be interested in a presidential race of his own in 2008.

Lott, 61, has said he believes he has enough support from his colleagues to retain his job and has vowed to fight for it. The Mississippian has been under fire since Dec. 5, when he expressed regret that segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond was defeated in 1948. Lott has delivered a series of apologies for his comments.

Frist, 50 and in his second Senate term, had spent the last several days making noncommittal statements about Lott. But he had been identified as one who was unusually critical of Lott during a conference call of Republican senators focusing on the Lott crisis late last week.

Earlier Thursday, GOP aides speaking on condition of anonymity said Frist was sounding out senators by telephone and was considering making the race. GOP senators plan to meet Jan. 6 to decide who will lead them in the new Congress, which convenes the next day.

“Bill didn’t tell me he was in this thing yet,” said one senator who recently has spoken to Frist. “He’s explaining what’s out there, and I’m glad he is. We need to have an internal discussion among our colleagues about our options,” the senator said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

One aide had said that Frist would consider running for the leadership post if colleagues asked him to do so “for the sake of the Senate as an institution or the long-term agenda of the Republican Party.”

In a sign that Frist might be building momentum, a Republican aide close to No. 2 Senate Republican Don Nickles of Oklahoma said Nickles, previously reported as interested in succeeding Lott, would likely support a race by Frist. It was Nickles who last weekend became the first Senate Republican to call for a new leadership by GOD senators.

Since then, the Republican Senate caucus has arranged to meet on the leadership issue in Washington on January 6th.

Despite gathering disaffection on the part of both political opponents and erstwhile political supporters, U.S. Senate Majority Leader-designate Trent Lott of Mississippi held a press conference on home-state turf Friday on which he apologized for controversial remarks for the third time in a week but vowed not to call it quits as his party’s leader in the Senate.

Shelby County’s two African-American mayors split the difference on how Lott should respond to the growing flap over his remarks extolling Strom Thurmond‘s 1948 “Dixiecrat” presidential campaign.

“He’s a disgrace to the Senate, and he should resign from his leadership role,” insisted Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton at his annual Christmas party at The Peabody Thursday night.

Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton had a different take. “It would be misleading for Lott to resign. It would be a way of pretending that racism had been purged from the nation’s political affairs. It would be symbolic in a wrong sense,” said Wharton, who argued that it would be better for Lott to remain in power and publicly redeem himself through his actions..

And Memphis lawyer John Ryder, a GOP national committeeman, called upon Lott to resign. “He’ll have to go,” Ryder said. No matter how fine a man or dedicated Republican he may have been, he cannot represent our party in a leadership role. The kind of thing he said and will continue to represent to people is a taint upon the Republican Party and its legitimate objectives.”

Lott’s positon has grown increasingly precarious since his off-the-cuff remarks at retiring South Carolina Senator Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration in Washington earlier this week. The Mississippi senator suggested that if Thurmond had been elected in 1948, when the South Carolinian ran for president on an unabashedly segregationist platform, “we wouldn’t have all these problems today.” The storm over those remarks has built steadily since, with President Bush himself calling them “offensive” and increasing numbers of senators and congressman from both parties calling on Lott to step down as GOP leader.

And a more local controversy involving racial sensibilities continued to simmer, as Shelby County Commission chairman Walter Bailey suggested that the grave of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Thomas should be transplanted, with Forrest Park, where the general’s remains currently lie underneath a statue commemorating him, undergoing a conversion to other uses, sans any reference to Forrest or the Confederate cause.

“His remains were in Elmwood Cemetery before they were moved to their current location, and they should go right back to where they first lay in peace,” Bailey said. The commission chairman dismissed Forrest’s recognized military brilliance as a reason for a continued public commemoration of him. “You can go to Berlin, and you won’t see any memorials to Rommel or to Hitler,” he said.

In a reference to yet another brewing controversy — one without racial significance, however Ð Memphis schools superintendent Johnnie B. Watson reported getting “overwhelming favorable reaction” to his highly publicized letter this week complaining of “harassment” from school board member Sara Lewis.

Shelby County’s two African-American mayors split the difference on how another area political eminence, U.S. Senate Majority Leader-designate Trent Lottof Mississippi, should respond to the growing flap over his remarks extolling Strom Thurmond‘s 1948 “Dixiecrat” presidential campaign.

“He’s a disgrace to the Senate, and he should resign from his leadership role,” insisted Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton at his annual Christmas party at The Peabody Thursday night.

Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton had a different take. “It would be misleading for Lott to resign. It would be a way of pretending that racism had been purged from the nation’s political affairs. It would be symbolic in a wrong sense,” said Wharton, who argued that it would be better for Lott to remain in power and publicly redeem himself through his actions.

Lott’s positon has grown increasingly precarious since his off-the-cuff remarks at retiring South Carolina Senator Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration in Washington earlier this week. The Mississippi senator suggested that if Thurmond had been elected in 1948, when the South Carolinian ran for president on an unabashedly segregationist platform, “we wouldn’t have all these problems today.” The storm over those remarks has built steadily since, with President Bush himself calling them “offensive” and increasing numbers of senators and congressman from both parties calling on Lott to step down as GOP leader.

And a more local controversy involving racial sensibilities continued to simmer, as Shelby County Commission chairman Walter Bailey suggested that the grave of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Thomas should be transplanted, with Forrest Park, where the general’s remains currently lie underneath a statue commemorating him, undergoing a conversion to other uses, sans any reference to Forrest or the Confederate cause.

“His remains were in Elmwood Cemetery before they were moved to their current location, and they should go right back to where they first lay in peace,” Bailey said. The commission chairman dismissed Forrest’s recognized military brilliance as a reason for a continued public commemoration of him. “You can go to Berlin, and you won’t see any memorials to Rommel or to Hitler,” he said.

In a reference to yet another brewing controversy — one without racial significance, however Ð Memphis schools superintendent reported getting “overwhelming favorable reaction” to his highly publicized letter this week complaining of being “harassment” from school board member Sara Lewis.

Two former news anchors for WPTV-TV, Channel 24, are not quite out of sight, out of mind.

Bill Lunn has been hired as a morning news anchor and reporter by WMC-TV, Channel 5, and will show up on the NBC affiliate’s programming starting Monday, according to Peggy Phillip, the station’s news director. Lunn anchored the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. news broadcasts of WPTV, an ABC affiliate, before being dropped from the station’s air two weeks ago. “He’s an outstanding asset, and we’re happy to have him,” Phillip said.

Michelle Robinson, who anchored WPTY’s 5 p.m. news and the 9 p.m. news of sister station UPN 30, was let go the same week as Lunn, but she may be seeking legal redress of some sort and is having exploratory conversations with attorney Mark Wright, a former WPTV producer who had also been a colleague of Robinson’s at WREG-TV, News Channel 3.

Ironically, Robinson had once lost her job as a general assignments reporter at 3, for allegedly violating company policy by taking a role in the film The People Versus Larry Flynt without express permission from management.

Robinson was able to win reinstatement, however,and later left the station for a position at 24.

Wright said he and Robinson had made no determination about a legal strategy but acknowledged that the two were investigating the relationship of Robinson’s pregnancy — and on-air remarks about it — to the station’s decision about her employment.

After the announcement week before last of the departure from WPTY of Lunn and Robinson, two other primary anchors for WPTY and UPN 30, Renee Malone and Ken Houston, also were marked for replacement, by imports Cameron Harper and Dee Griffin.

The two Clear Channel stations, the most recent entries in the Memphis television market, have been mired in a state of low viewer ratings for several years, and news director Jim Turpin seems determined to perform shake-ups in an effort to change that situation.

Turpin noted that, at his suggestion, Lunn and the other relieved anchors had been exempted by Clear Channel from the no-compete clause in each of their contracts which prohibits on-air activity on a competitive station for six months following employment at Clear Channel.

“He’s a good guy. He deserves it,” Turpin said of Lunn’s new job opportunity. “It’s more than a ratings matter. We were just faced with a situation that requires us to do something to have people notice what we do.”

Turpin said categorically that there was “no relationship whatsoever’ between Robinson’s pregnancy or on-air comments about it and the fact that she was taken off air when she was.