A lot of folks give President Bush (aka Dubya) grief for mangling the English language. Truth is, Dubya comes by the trait honestly. His father, the first President Bush (aka Poppy), was also a notorious mis-speaker. Below are a series of quotations from Poppy, Dubya, and (just to make things interesting) former Vice President Dan Quayle. Can you guess who said what?

1. “Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you and I am now filibustering.”

2. “When I’m talking about myself, and when he’s talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”

3. “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

4. “I hope I stand for antibigotry, anti-Semitism, antiracism. This is what drives me.”

5. “It’s no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or another.”

6. “When I need a little advice about Saddam Hussein, I turn to country music.”

7. “High-tech is potent, precise, and, in the end, unbeatable. The truth is, it reminds a lot of people of the way I pitch horseshoes. Would you believe some of the people? Would you believe our dog? Look, I want to give the high-five symbol to high-tech.”

8. “Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”

9. “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.”

10. “I’ve got a record, a record that is conservative and a record that is compassionated.”

11. “That gets into quota, go into numerical, set numbers for doctors or for … it could go into all kinds of things.”

12. “Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.”

13. “It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”

14. “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier — so long as I’m the dictator.”

15. “They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program.”

16. “God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear.”

17. “Mars is essentially in the same orbit … Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”

18. “The future will be better tomorrow.”

19. “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”

20. “Had we gone into Baghdad — we could have done it, you guys could have done it, you could have been there in 48 hours — and then what? Which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerrilla war to find the most secure dictator in the world? Whose life would be on my hands as the commander in chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we’re going to show our macho? We’re going into Baghdad. We’re going to be an occupying power — America in an Arab land — with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous.”

BONUS ROUND: Who said, “Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things”?

---

1. Poppy, 2. Dubya, 3. Dubya,
4. Poppy, 5. Poppy, 6. Poppy,
7. Poppy, 8. Dubya, 9. Quayle,
10. Dubya, 11. Poppy, 12. Dubya,
13. Quayle, 14. Dubya, 15. Dubya,
16. Dubya, 17. Quayle, 18. Quayle,
19. Dubya, 20. Poppy BONUS: Quayle

Scoring 15-21: You’re a Bush Hog!
10-14: You won’t be misunderestimated!
5-9: You can’t be fooled again.
0-4: So you’re not smart. you can always run for President.

Best International Embarrassment
The Joe Brown/Iraqi debacle. You’d think as the chairman of the City Council, Joe Brown would show a little more hospitality. But when he heard a visiting delegation of Iraqis was interested in meeting with officials from city government, Brown insisted that the delegates not be allowed inside City Hall. The story quickly was picked up by the national news, making Memphis look like some backwoods redneck town. Then, to top it all off, before the trip was over, two of the Iraqis were robbed at gunpoint downtown. For shame, Memphis. For shame.

Best New Hardcourt Hero

James Posey. When the Memphis Grizzlies signed the soft-spoken Posey prior to last season, it didn’t make much noise around the NBA. But by the time the season was over, the tough-as-nails Posey had helped inject some bellow into the bear for the first time in franchise history, and he created some iconic Grizz moments along the way: tackling a showboating Peja Stojakovic in December and, with the help of a vocal Pyramid crowd, shutting the All-Star forward down a month later; ripping a loose ball free from a scrum of Houston Rockets players near the end of a hard-fought national TV game in January; dropping 38 points, including a halfcourt dagger to send the game to a second overtime, against the Atlanta Hawks in March; and, finally, demolishing the Cleveland Cavaliers rookie sensation LeBron James at both ends of the court to secure win number 50.

Best Excuse To Play the Lottery
The children. With Tennessee college scholarship funds tied to lottery play, your dirty little gambling habit now has an up side. Lucky you.

Best Dance Floor
Backstreet’s Coliseum. On any given Saturday night before January 2004, Backstreet was a cramped little gay club where you had to elbow your way through sweaty bodies onto the tiny dance floor. Getting bopped on the head a few times by some dancing diva was a given. But these days, it’s a whole new fabulous story. The Coliseum, which was once a warehouse, has a massive hardwood dance floor with three dance podiums, a large lounge area with comfy sofas, and a waterwall bar.

Best Collective Success Story
Local filmmakers. This year, locally connected filmmakers Ira Sachs and Craig Brewer followed the film-fest success of debut features The Delta and The Poor & Hungry, respectively, with bigger-budget locally shot follow-ups (Forty Shades of Blue and Hustle & Flow) that have a chance at much wider distribution. Meanwhile, MeDiA Co-op’s Morgan Jon Fox scored a film-fest success story of his own with his second feature, Blue Citrus Hearts, and hopes to do so again with the recently completed away(A)wake.

Best Place to Make You Cry
The Memphis Animal Shelter. Got some pent-up sadness you need to let loose? Just head over to the Memphis Animal Shelter. Looking at all those poor caged doggies on death row is a surefire way to make the tears fall. But if you’re prone to raging fits, you might ought to stay away. Poop is sometimes cleaned out of cages with a hose while the dogs are still inside, leaving them shivering and cold. If you do check it out, though, be sure and rescue at least one dog from shelter hell.

Best Place To Meditate

In your car while you’re sitting stock-still in the middle of a traffic jam on the I-240 loop between the Little Rock and Nashville exits. Sure, Malfunction Junction is still malfunctioning, but this bit of interstate, with its miles of construction work, is a traffic-stopper too.

Best Place to Buy Magazines
Republic Coffee. It seems obvious to put a magazine rack filled with hard-to-find titles in a Midtown coffeeshop. Yet Republic Coffee is the only coffeehouse in Midtown that carries a decent collection of underground and/or independent magazines. Some of their more popular mags include Bitch (a feminist analysis of pop culture), Under the Radar (a music mag for the hipster set), and Clamour (a liberal rag for radicals). The only drawback to selling mags in coffeeshops is that you must purchase the publication before flipping through its pages.

Best Anti-War Theater
Goodtime Speech by Memphis playwright Randy Wayne Youngblood, directed by Alex Cooke and presented by Our Own Voice Theatre Company. Here’s what the Flyer had to say about Youngblood’s play: “[In Goodtime Speech], we are presented with a topsy-turvy world where the irrational is rational, where patriotic songs fill the void created by death, where families mourn and politicians celebrate. One often-repeated line: ‘I had to put the flag in the washing machine to get all the dirt out of it.’ That just about says it all.” And it just about does.

Best Free Political Satire that Isn’t Really Satire/Best Reason to Listen to that Crazy Guy in the Tinfoil Hat

Mayor Herenton and his “lazy-ass cops.” Two police officers stop a car for speeding. They see the driver of the car putting something inside a hat. As this routine traffic stop escalates into a drug bust, a white van pulls up. Out jumps W.W. Herenton, Memphis’ 12-foot-tall mayor-for-life. Herenton scolds the officers, declaring, “Lazy-ass cops,” the most pestilent of all the awful plagues gripping Memphis. This is the same mayor who used his inauguration speech to tell Memphians how God sometimes tells him things. It really is better than fiction.

Best Place to Feel Like You’re on an Acid Trip When You’re Not

The restrooms at XY & Z. The bathroom doors in these one-person bathrooms are built so that they’re slanted away from the toilet area, and the tile on the wall is placed diagonally. When you’re in there, it’s hard not to think for just a moment that you may be having a flashback. Beware: If you’re having a few drinks at this Midtown after-hours bar, remember that angled surfaces and drunk people don’t mix. You may need a buddy to help you keep your balance.

Memphis’ Most Political Artist

Jan Hankins. Even before 2000 when the American electorate became so very polarized, Hankins’ skillful brush dripped with anger. His large canvasses are full of surrealist tricks and nods to the underground comics of the 1960s. Smoke-belching nonsense-engines driven by ample women in star-spangled bikinis and protected by brutish men with guns threaten to set the world on fire at every turn. Hankins’ paintings represent a nightmare world but still manage to look nice over the sofa. Good show!

Best Place to Recoup City Revenue Losses
In front of 201 Poplar. You’d think that people entering and exiting from a building that houses the city jail and the police department would be wary about breaking the law. Unfortunately for drivers using Poplar Avenue, the area between Second Avenue and Danny Thomas is a maze of jaywalking Memphians. With one lane already out of service due to idling police cars, the short stretch narrows to one lane because pedestrians use the remaining lane to talk and sometimes just meander. If the police ticketed each of these jaywalkers, surely the city would have enough money to stall a property tax — or at least enough to pay for an MLGW pension.

Best Sporting Event

Ford family smackdown. On July 10th, Fords John (state senator) and Joe (commissioner) and Jake and Isaac (both Harold Sr.’s sons) entered the ring during a Memphis Wrestling event. They were there to back up a friend getting whupped by a threesome that included Jerry “The King” Lawler.

Best Use of Double-Talk

Mayor Herenton’s “nationwide search.” Last year, the mayor made a marked man of MLGW president Herman Morris, pushing him to resign. A month later, Herenton was rubbing shoulders with God and recommending city finance director Joseph Lee for Morris’ old position. “Foul!” cried the City Council. “We want someone with utility experience.” The always-agreeable mayor then conducted a “nationwide search” which still included Lee’s name at the top of the list. Who knew that the mayor’s nation only extended to City Hall?

Best Place to Meet a New Friend

The Flying Saucer. This place is great for talkative people. The open-air seating looking out on Second Street provides the perfect opportunity for lunch and dinner patrons to yell out random greetings to passersby. Just last week, a male patron was heard yelling a marriage proposal to a female pedestrian. While no one heard her response, the man immediately purchased a round of beer for the entire bar. Will it be a June wedding?

Best Bargain for the Buck

Libertyland. We know that this place is trash-talked for its aging and limited rides. But for a family looking to have a little fun without having to mortgage the house, Libertyland is the place. It’s not always the quantity that matters but the quality, and this place delivers with pleasant operators, tidy grounds, and short lines. Throw in the Midway during the Mid-South Fair and it’s on! Besides, any place that serves funnel cakes at 10 a.m. is okay with us.

Best Daily Lunch Site To Encounter Politicians and Other Civic Notables

Hands down, it’s the Little Tea Shop on Monroe, which also has the best hostess/proprietor, Suhair Lauck, and some of the best plate lunches around.

Best Thoroughfare

It’s Poplar Avenue, which is Shelby County’s real Main Street, running from the river and the Government Center downtown all the way to Collierville, passing through prime parkland, shopping areas, and posh residential addresses along the way.

Best School/Crossing Guards

The ones at Cordova High School, who give service with a smile through the most visibly trying circumstances.

Best Free Show

Any of the criminal courtrooms at 201 Poplar. Nelson Algren would have had a field day.

Best Local Musician to Skip Town

Greg Cartwright. Once of revered local garage-punk bands the Compulsive Gamblers and the Oblivians, Cartwright has been to Memphis rock over the past decade what Alex “Big Star” Chilton was in another era: not a star in his own time but a legend-in-the-making. But as his latest band, the flawless Reigning Sound, prepped the release of its third record, Too Much Guitar!, Cartwright relocated to Asheville, North Carolina. You can take the boy out of Memphis

Best Album by Local Musician to Skip Town

East Nashville Skyline by Todd Snider. Snider got his start as a local troubadour, honing his craft at the now-defunct Daily Planet. He headed down the highway to Nashville, where all rootsy singer-songwriters eventually land, years ago and never has made it “big.” But he’s still managed to age like wine somehow, as illustrated by this career-best album — the smartest, funniest, most humane, and most modest bit of social commentary this bitter election season is likely to see. You better believe we’ll still claim him.

Best Place to Buy a Hat
Mr. Hats in Poplar Plaza. This store offers a dizzying array of toppers and an old-fashioned sales staff that takes hats seriously, very seriously. It’s fun to go into a store where a wannabe MC is trying on an R. Kelly cap next to an aging blueblood agonizing over which floppy Tilley hat will look best in the Grove.

Best Golf Course Nobody Plays

T.O. Fuller Golf Course. T.O. Fuller offers some of the most hilly terrain in Shelby County and lots of privacy. The greens are tiny and the fairways are so sloped the carts should have four-wheel drive. But it’s all yours, baby. Pretend you own the place.

Best Quick Read for Local Film Fans

The Black Lodge Video new-release newsletter. The ostensibly just-the-facts-ma’am, ALL CAPS synopses in these semiregular four-page tip sheets from the Cooper-Young video store regularly veer into comical screeds, fanboy raves, or intentional unintentional comedy. (After fumbling the plot of The Passion of the Christ, they apologized: “Sorry, we don’t read much fiction around here.”) Better, though not for the easily offended, are the film blurbs in “The Book of Filth” on the store’s Web site (BlackLodgeVideo.org), in which unspeakable exploitation movies sit matter-of-factly beside such accidental atrocities as Bibleman! (“the Christian Coalition version of Batman an absolute riot”) and The Joe Piscopo Halloween Special (“a must for any fan of bad comedy”).

Best Music Festival

The Memphis Music & Heritage Festival. Smaller crowds, fewer fratboys, no rivers of urine on the sidewalks. Great, diverse sampling of local music. Nice downtown setting. Free. Others are bigger; none are better.

Best Sigh of Relief

The cancellation of the 50th Anniversary of Rock-and-Roll concert. Could you imagine the kind of chaos that would ensue if Rey Flemings, as head of the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission, had been able to nail down this event? The naysayers wouldn’t be able to tsk-tsk about Memphis being a third-rate city. Then what? THEN WHAT?

Best Things To Do with The Pyramid Besides Turning It into a Casino 2004
1. Local celebrity boxing. Remember, every Wednesday night is Carol Chumney night!

2. Survivor XX: The Pointed House.
3. Terrorist-seeking missile silo.

4. Fill the whole thing with little plastic balls for the kiddies.

5. Detention center for visiting Iraqi VIPs just in case they get any funny ideas.

6. Kevin Kane should personally offer the arena to the pope free of charge. It’s newer than the Vatican, it’s virtually unused, and it’s shaped like a pyramid, which is meaningless but pretty darn cool. His Holiness would have direct access to FedEx. Having the Vatican in Memphis would also bring about a big increase in tourism to rival the 50th Anniversary of Rock-and-Roll.

7. Bomb shelter.

8. Install a roller coaster.

9. A museum dedicated to dearly departed Harold von Braunhut. He’s the guy who invented Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, and all the crazy crap you used to see advertised in comic books. Sure, his politics were a little racist, but he invented Sea Monkeys. And he’s from Memphis.

10. Paint the mother pink! •

“This movie doesn’t really have an ending. The ending of this movie takes place on November 2, 2004.”

— Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore in an interview in the July/August issue of Film Comment

Who are swing voters anyway? How is it even possible to still be undecided about the most bitterly contested and most momentous presidential election in most, if not all, of our lifetimes? This is why I don’t worry that the battalion of entertainers and artists — writers, filmmakers, musicians, comedians, etc. –assaulting this disastrous presidency is merely preaching to the choir. It seems far less important at this point to change minds than to mobilize a base whose collective mind has been made since the moment Bush took office. (Sadly prescient Onion headline from Inauguration Day 2001: “BUSH: ‘OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY IS OVER.'”)

Despite perpetual laments about voter apathy, this unprecedented insertion of popular art into a political election suggests an electorate more tuned in than ever before. As this is being written, half of the top 30 hardcover nonfiction books on The New York Times bestseller list, including the top four, are political titles.

Musically, the Billboard charts may be mostly politics-free, but from hip-hop (Beastie Boys, Russell Simmons’ Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ “Vote or Die” campaign) to indie-rock (Rilo Kiley’s Bush-baiting “It’s a Hit”) to punk (Fat Wreck Chords’ Rock Against Bush compilations) to mainstream rock (the Vote for Change tour, which participant Bruce Springsteen calls “an emergency intervention”) to roots music (the ubiquitous Steve Earle and political records of the year from Todd Snider and Jon Langford), American pop music is perhaps as protest-oriented as it’s been since the Nixon administration.

As for film, 2004 has witnessed political documentaries getting wider distribution than ever before. Michael Moore’s record-busting Fahrenheit 9/11 is clearly the colossus standing over this shifting film climate, but it isn’t alone. On local screens, Fahrenheit was preceded by Errol Morris’ brilliant The Fog of War, a profile of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that has enormous relevance to our current foreign misadventures. And it’s been followed by Control Room, which profiles Arab news network Al-Jazeera as it covers the invasion of Iraq, and The Hunting of the President, which (rather clumsily) documents the right-wing fire-breathers who conspired to bring down the Clinton presidency. Meanwhile, independent-minded folks at the Memphis Digital Arts Co-operative have hosted several screenings of recent political docs, including the Fox News exposé Outfoxed.

There’s more on the way between now and Election Day: The much-heralded documentary The Corporation and the Vietnam-rehashing Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry are both expected to receive local bookings. Fictional films set to weigh in will include John Sayles’ Silver City, with actor Chris Cooper as a Bushlike pol, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s gonzo satire Team America: World Police.

I tend to think that Jon Langford’s big-hearted, wide-eyed but gently sarcastic record All the Fame of Lofty Deeds is the political artwork of the year, but I’d be surprised if it’s sold more than 20,000 copies, which won’t move many bodies to the ballot box. Instead, this year belongs to Fahrenheit 9/11. After it opened, some around the Flyer offices predicted it’d be gone in a couple of weeks, but according to Jeff Kaufman, vice president of film for Malco Theatres, it’s the only film that stayed on local screens the entire summer, enjoying a longer local run than Harry Potter or Spider-Man 2, for example. And even as its run ends, the documentary might reappear as part of a planned re-release by its distributor.

“The country is not stupid/Even though it’s silent/It still has eyes and ears/It just can’t find its mouth,” Langford sings hopefully on his underdog of a record. And Moore’s film is nothing if not an attempt to answer him — a way to give a voice to the outrage and disbelief of a segment of the citizenry that feels the country slipping away.

The $100-million-plus grossing Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a movie about something; it’s a movie trying to do something. That something is to defeat a sitting president intent on driving the ship of state right over a cliff. (Unless, of course, the Rapture comes first.)

It’s difficult to come up with commensurate examples of truly popular entertainers directly taking on a sitting political leader. The best I can do is the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Like those two works of art, Fahrenheit 9/11 is often crude, using any and all recourses to attack its subject — pies in the face, upturned middle fingers, outright mockery, whatever it takes. Yes, it’s as much a howl of anger as a reasoned argument.

This lowbrow nose-thumbing rubbed some gatekeepers on the left the wrong way, as did some of the film’s relatively minor fact-bending and perhaps misleading low blows, which some employees of this paper have criticized in print. The same kind of hand-wringing and honorable self-criticism has been virtually absent on the right side of the political divide this year. (Oh, and memo to John McCain: Moore isn’t suggesting that life under Saddam Hussein was an idyllic paradise, only that the country was largely populated by innocent civilians trying to lead normal lives, not TV-news caricatures of angry Arabs, and that these people died in the bombing as easily as Saddam’s henchmen.)

Frankly, I was more put off by the few distracting tangents (the lone state trooper guarding the Oregon coast — somehow I doubt that al-Qaeda is preparing to storm the beaches, Normandy-style) than Moore not letting viewers know that Al Gore had spoken to the same crowd of high-rollers Bush jokes is his base or even the unfortunate suggestion that just-passing-by Tennessee congressman John Tanner was a hypocrite on the war.

Sometimes facts can be sketchy without negating essential truths: The Bush administration does pander to its wealthy supporters in ways even more extreme than politics-as-usual. The people who decided to allow this war are not the people sending their kids to fight it. These truths and so many others need to be shouted as loud as possible from the highest mountain. By any means necessary. And that’s precisely what Moore has accomplished.

Besides, what Fahrenheit 9/11 gets right is so much more important than what it might get wrong. Moore is not a technically brilliant filmmaker or a precise thinker. (See The Fog of War for topical political filmmaking with both traits.) The work is like the man — big and messy and garrulous. But with Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore’s juxtaposition of found footage is filmmaking at a level that dwarves his previous work. By following a callow, smirking Bush telling NBC’s Tim Russert that he doesn’t intend to testify before the 9/11 commission with a tough but tearful confession by a 9/11 widow that the investigation is all she has left to live for, Moore comes up with the most damning political ad of the year. And by undercutting Donald Rumsfeld’s bluster about the military’s precise targeting with footage of a hysterical Iraqi woman in front of her demolished home, praying for vengeance from Allah, Moore suggests the self-delusion and awful pointlessness of the war in Iraq.

But even those bravura moments are only set-ups for what is most compelling about the film: its portrait of an American military misused by civilian leaders, where the least among us sacrifice the most and do so proudly. For their sake, and your and mine, let’s hope Moore’s movie has a happy ending. •

Every year, when the Best of Memphis issue hits the city’s bars and restaurants and the winners start to plan what they’ll wear to the big awards party, inevitably, the tears begin to fall.

All around the city, those not voted Best of Memphis laundromat or pet groomer or whatnot open their papers and see … someone else’s name. Perhaps their competitor’s. Worse, perhaps, someone they’ve never heard of.

Oh, it smarts. It really smarts.

But it’s no good dwelling on this year’s results. Instead, it’s time to plan for next year’s contest. So how do you sew up a Best of Memphis distinction?

We talked to Layne Provine, political consultant to candidates, including Joyce Avery, a county commissioner, and Brent Taylor, a City Council member.

Follow these easy steps and by this time next year, you’ll be dressing up for that awards party.

First, make a name for yourself.

“If they’ve never heard of you, they’re not going to vote for you,” says Provine. When Avery ran against incumbent Clair VanderSchaaf, there was some evidence that people wanted change.

“In Joyce’s race,” says Provine, “the challenge was to make sure people knew she was the alternative to VanderSchaaf. They had to know there was a challenger. People will vote for the devil they know over the devil they don’t.”

So you want to be the devil they know. Unfortunately, there are tons of devils, um, Memphians who have plenty of name recognition already. How can you compete?

Design a logo and come up with a catchy slogan and put it on everything from yard signs to T-shirts. Political candidates usually try to run TV spots at least three to four weeks before the election. Get your friends to spread the word to their friends.

Experienced politicos also know the value of face time, door-to-doors, and kissing babies. You just need to figure out why you are the Best of.

“Candidates craft a message to what people want to hear,” says Provine. “If they don’t, [the people] aren’t going to listen.”

You could also hire someone to help. One regular mistake Provine sees candidates make is trying to do it all themselves.

“If your car breaks, most people don’t try to fix it themselves,” he says. “If you’re going to spend $50,000 or $100,000 on a race, hire someone to help you. Just because you’re a good candidate doesn’t mean you’re a good strategist.”

Provine advises a little investigating, the same way companies do market research. That way, you’ll know your audience.

As a candidate for Best of, you need to hit your target audience. Some are easy calls. Your Aunt Maude in Michigan? No. Your friends who can’t even return a phone call? No. They’ll never finish a ballot, much less send it in.

Provine uses voter files to plan a candidate’s strategy. If someone’s not registered to vote, they’re not going to receive information on a candidate. If Provine suspects voter turnout will be low — like last August’s local election — he’ll look at voter histories and target those people who are most likely to go to the polls.

The Flyer doesn’t keep information like that (so don’t call us for it, okay?), but you should ask around and see who fills out their ballot every year. Those are the people you want to bombard with kindness and cookies.

The week before the ballots are due, you’ll want to follow up with your supporters. You wanna equate liars and politicians? Well, Provine says the voters are just as bad:

“Everybody tells the candidate that they’re going to vote for him. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re really hurting the candidate.”

You can’t believe everybody who says, “Sure, man, I’ll vote for you.” Provine says that even people who really are intending to vote for someone sometimes won’t because they won’t bother voting at all.

When a candidate is going door-to-door, they keep track of the people who have promised them the vote. Then they try to make sure those voters get to the polls.

“It’s very important that they know where and when to vote and how they can vote,” says Provine. “At the end of the campaign, we call the people who indicated they would vote for our candidate, and we’ll call and pester them until they get out and vote.”

And don’t forget to vote for yourself. •

Every year, when the Best of Memphis issue hits the city’s bars and restaurants and the winners start to plan what they’ll wear to the big awards party, inevitably, the tears begin to fall.

All around the city, those not voted Best of Memphis laundromat or pet groomer or whatnot open their papers and see … someone else’s name. Perhaps their competitor’s. Worse, perhaps, someone they’ve never heard of.

Oh, it smarts. It really smarts.

But it’s no good dwelling on this year’s results. Instead, it’s time to plan for next year’s contest. So how do you sew up a Best of Memphis distinction?

We talked to Layne Provine, political consultant to candidates, including Joyce Avery, a county commissioner, and Brent Taylor, a City Council member.

Follow these easy steps and by this time next year, you’ll be dressing up for that awards party.

First, make a name for yourself.

“If they’ve never heard of you, they’re not going to vote for you,” says Provine. When Avery ran against incumbent Clair VanderSchaaf, there was some evidence that people wanted change.

“In Joyce’s race,” says Provine, “the challenge was to make sure people knew she was the alternative to VanderSchaaf. They had to know there was a challenger. People will vote for the devil they know over the devil they don’t.”

So you want to be the devil they know. Unfortunately, there are tons of devils, um, Memphians who have plenty of name recognition already. How can you compete?

Design a logo and come up with a catchy slogan and put it on everything from yard signs to T-shirts. Political candidates usually try to run TV spots at least three to four weeks before the election. Get your friends to spread the word to their friends.

Experienced politicos also know the value of face time, door-to-doors, and kissing babies. You just need to figure out why you are the Best of.

“Candidates craft a message to what people want to hear,” says Provine. “If they don’t, [the people] aren’t going to listen.”

You could also hire someone to help. One regular mistake Provine sees candidates make is trying to do it all themselves.

“If your car breaks, most people don’t try to fix it themselves,” he says. “If you’re going to spend $50,000 or $100,000 on a race, hire someone to help you. Just because you’re a good candidate doesn’t mean you’re a good strategist.”

Provine advises a little investigating, the same way companies do market research. That way, you’ll know your audience.

As a candidate for Best of, you need to hit your target audience. Some are easy calls. Your Aunt Maude in Michigan? No. Your friends who can’t even return a phone call? No. They’ll never finish a ballot, much less send it in.

Provine uses voter files to plan a candidate’s strategy. If someone’s not registered to vote, they’re not going to receive information on a candidate. If Provine suspects voter turnout will be low — like last August’s local election — he’ll look at voter histories and target those people who are most likely to go to the polls.

The Flyer doesn’t keep information like that (so don’t call us for it, okay?), but you should ask around and see who fills out their ballot every year. Those are the people you want to bombard with kindness and cookies.

The week before the ballots are due, you’ll want to follow up with your supporters. You wanna equate liars and politicians? Well, Provine says the voters are just as bad:

“Everybody tells the candidate that they’re going to vote for him. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re really hurting the candidate.”

You can’t believe everybody who says, “Sure, man, I’ll vote for you.” Provine says that even people who really are intending to vote for someone sometimes won’t because they won’t bother voting at all.

When a candidate is going door-to-door, they keep track of the people who have promised them the vote. Then they try to make sure those voters get to the polls.

“It’s very important that they know where and when to vote and how they can vote,” says Provine. “At the end of the campaign, we call the people who indicated they would vote for our candidate, and we’ll call and pester them until they get out and vote.”

And don’t forget to vote for yourself. •

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Tough Titty,” the newspaper column that does everything it can to capture the energy of talk radio and the excitement of cable news. Today we have Kelly Jacobs, a full-time mother and a full-time activist for the Democratic Party. She lives in north Mississippi, but she’s become a fixture on Memphis roadsides where she’s been known to loiter, waving around a sign that says “Fire Bush.”

Now folks, you see the out-of-focus picture of Ms. Jacobs on this page. You see that she wears a fringed leather jacket like it was 1968 — and this is in the summertime. So she’s the kind of person who wears a leather jacket in the summertime.

Anyway, you see that her jacket and the dress underneath have anti-Bush buttons on them. And I’m talking dozens. But to really understand how thoroughly freakish this is you you would have to hear the awful clanking racket she makes when she walks into the room.

Flyer: Ms. Jacobs, welcome to “Tough Titty.” Let’s get right to the interview. How does something like THIS happen to a person?

Kelly Jacobs: How did I become an activist? Well, I’d always heard if you were going to be a good parent you had to join the PTA and you had to go to school-board meetings

So you decided to fire Bush at a school-board meeting, okay

I was the only parent sitting at this meeting when a new school-board member stood up and said, “I haven’t read them, but I understand if young boys read books from the Goosebumps series, they become violent, and if young girls read Babysitter Club books, they become pregnant, so I want the books taken off our shelves.” And everybody agreed and that was the end of it.

So you think little girls getting pregnant from a smutty book is a good thing?

They didn’t let the public make any comments. That’s just outrageous. I got parents whose kids were hooked on this series to join me.

Hooked? Interesting choice of words.

I got them to join me so we could investigate this allegation

Shut up! Shut up or I’ll turn off the tape recorder! None of this has anything to do with wanting to fire George W. Bush. Now Ms. Jacobs, we know you’re a partisan Democrat. You were a DNC delegate from Mississippi. You’ve been a civil rights activist and won Mississippi’s Fannie Lou Hamer Award.

At my son’s school, they had elections to vote for class favorites

I wasn’t finished.

Look at the ballot. They wanted the kids to vote for one black child and one white child. Black and white. Is that all there is?

Okay, okay, we get the idea.

Here’s the thing. In 2000, I thought Al Gore would win. So I didn’t do anything. I never donated money. I just went and voted. So when Gore lost, I felt like I’d failed him.

Gore lost. Get over it! Besides, you’re not a public official. You’re not EVEN a celebrity. You’re just some Mississippi windbag who thinks she has the right to tell people what to think.

The right is in the Constitution. And it’s the right of other people to either listen to me or not listen to me. You don’t have to be a celebrity to have an opinion.

But celebrities don’t do the most effective campaigning, anyway. Average citizens who just walk up to your door and say “Would you please vote?” do the best campaign work. Volunteering is all about finding out what you like to do. Maybe you share important documents on the Internet. Maybe you register voters or maybe you stand beside the road getting flipped off and called a whore, and a crackwhore, and a [censored], and a terrorist, and a communist, but never, NEVER called a Democrat!

And all this anger doesn’t tell you you’re not wanted? You’ve even had run-ins with the police.

I’ve had confrontations with the police a lot. Not African-American officers, only white officers.

The race card. Coulda seen that coming.

Lamar and Winchester is a great place to work because of the truck drivers. They get into it and honk. Anyway, this officer (who I’d had run-ins with before) pulls up with his partner. He gets out of the car and gets toe-to-toe with me. Puts his face in my face and says, “I thought I told you to leave. You are nothing but a prostitute, and you’re going to get murdered, and you’ve got no business being where you are doing what you’re doing.” I said, “Unless you tell me I’m breaking the law, I’m not leaving.”

What about guns? I’ve heard there were guns?

One time someone, probably a Republican, saw me, called the police, and told them I was waving a gun and obstructing traffic. That was all a lie. Five police cars came with their sirens on. But that was ridiculous. I didn’t have a gun.

So you constantly ignore the police and your fellow citizens.

The police know me now. If somebody calls to complain they say, “Oh, that’s just the ‘Fire Bush’ lady.” Sometimes they’ll come out because they got a call. They’ll say, “We just wanted to make sure it was you,” or “We thought it was you. We just want to know where you are.”

Yeah, I’ll bet they want to know where you are. And, there you have it, folks. Crazy Kelly Jacobs. We need more liberal loonies like her to scare conservative Democrats into the Republican Party. Keep up the good work, Kelly. This has been “Tough Titty.” •

Every state has laws that make a sane person go “hmm.” For instance, make a false promise in Louisiana and you could be sentenced to a year in prison. In Idaho, it’s illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than 50 pounds. It’s against the law to sniff glue in Indiana.

Usually, these laws are holdovers from a time when life was a little simpler, nothing was more important than honor, and people didn’t bathe every day. These are laws that have somehow evaded the watchful eyes of legislators and remain in effect to this day.

Tennessee also has plenty of weird laws. In Dyersburg, it is illegal for a woman to call a man for a date. In Knoxville, a hitching post must be installed in front of each business. And in Lexington, no one may eat ice cream on the sidewalk.

And then there is Memphis, where it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians. It is also illegal here to take unfinished pie home from a restaurant and for frogs to croak after 11 p.m.

The laws mentioned in the preceding paragraph are no longer enforced. There is, however, one weird law that is enforced, one that the Memphis City Council devised only 10 years ago. It’s the law that requires panhandlers to have a permit before asking for money.

In 1994, City Council members passed the panhandling ordinance, which became active in 1996. The ordinance requires “Any person panhandling to have a permit, as issued by the city treasurer, or his designee, in his/her possession at all times.” The law restricts panhandling in areas such as parks, golf courses, libraries, the Main Street Mall, and the Mid-South Fairgrounds. When the rule was first enacted, panhandlers had to fork over $10 for the permit. Today, the permits are free for the asking.

So what made the City Council, with more important things to discuss, such as budgets, personnel, and ice storms, decide that panhandling had to be regulated with a city ordinance? According to Memphis Police Department spokesman Sgt. Vincent Higgins, panhandling had become a major problem downtown, and the department was looking for a better way to crack down. “At the time, the Downtown Precinct was seeking a more substantial penalty because patrolmen could lock panhandlers up but could only fine them $50 for violating the city ordinance,” says Higgins.

Let’s get this straight: Panhandlers were fined $50 for begging for money they didn’t have and then were required to pay for not having money? Correct, said Higgins. Surprising to no one, the offenders were not paying the fine and were not forced to spend a night in jail. “Most of the officers familiar with the law will ask to see the permit,” he says. “And if [panhandlers] want to abide by the law, they will, but there are those who won’t. It’s difficult to enforce.”

The job of maintaining panhandling-permit records falls to the city treasurer’s permit-license manager Lilli Jackson, whose office is located on the first floor of 201 Poplar. Looking through Jackson’s records, the Flyer found six panhandling permits on file. Attached to the one-page form are photos of each applicant. Most of the permits are good for one year, but there is a variety of time limits.

“Some people ask for just the time they need,” says Jackson. “We’ve had people come in and ask for a one-month, one-week, and even a one-day permit.” One day? What’s the point of even applying? “Sometimes when the [panhandlers] know that they are only passing through the city, they only need the permit for a short time.”

But Jackson’s unit is not just in the business of signing permits and sending applicants on their way. This department means business. Before leaving the office, applicants are given a talk on the nefarious uses of the permit. Jackson says many have tried to use it for soliciting, which is not the same as panhandling.

So, has the new law made much difference with police and patrolling? Not at all, says Higgins. Like other crazy laws, this one doesn’t really do the city justice. •

Not to get all Dickens on you, but this little stretch around the Flyer‘s Best of Memphis issue is both the best of times and the worst. It’s a fun issue to put together, and it’s the one time of the year we get to really interact with our readers.

But, geesh, the complaints. For a few weeks after the Best of Memphis issue comes out, we get calls from readers who are furious with the results. This place is not the best, they say. Well, that’s how our readers voted, we reply. But nothing we say will soothe those who are irate.

One year, I received a call from a man who had just found out that one of our winners in the Food & Drink section uses frozen meat. Now, this particular restaurant has about 100 locations, so the idea that this place has a freezer was not alarming to me. This guy, however, felt very, very betrayed and was further incensed by my obvious indifference. Don’t you think your readers who vote for this restaurant should know? he asked. But this place has such a stranglehold on its category, I told him, that it probably wouldn’t matter if they served puppy. That was when he hung up on me.

The point is, the readers control who wins. Winners are not, as some believe, solely those who advertise with us. The only influence we have over the ballot is weeding out the stuffers.

I’m certain that a few cheaters have squeaked through to make it into the Best of Memphis list. (I hope their victories feel hollow.) But, over the 11 years we’ve been doing this, we’ve come up with a number of strategies to make cheating harder.

Each year, after all the ballots are received, they are given to a group of people independent of the Flyer. As they tally the votes, they set aside any suspicious-looking ballot. After the counting is completed, the ballots are given back to the Flyer, where each ballot is looked at by at least three staff members, which results in more ballots being thrown out. For instance, last year, about a third of the ballots we received were tossed.

Stuffers are relatively easy to spot. We might receive 30 ballots filled out in purple ink in the same handwriting. Or, all the answers will be the same. Usually, these ballots are sent from one place at one time, so we’ll get them in a bundle. The stuffing becomes obvious rather quickly.

A couple of rules we adopted early on have made it tougher on stuffers. At one time, we let readers drop off their ballots at our office. That meant we’d get huge stacks of ballots delivered at one time. (You can just picture a bar full of people filling out the ballots at the behest of the bar’s owner.) Now, we make readers mail ballots individually. We also started requiring readers to fill out at least 50 percent of the ballot. The result was that we no longer had to deal with stuffers who filled in just one category.

For the first time this year, we offered an online ballot. Registration required the voter to enter an e-mail address, which then could not be used again. The Flyer‘s tech guy had several of his friends try to hack into the system. They couldn’t.

I’m not sure people are aware how difficult it would be to successfully cheat. Say you’re desperate to unseat Jarvis Greer, the perennial winner of Best TV Sportscaster. This year, he got 318 votes out of a total of 460 votes cast in that category. That means you would have had to pick up at least 319 Flyers, filled out the ballots, and mailed each one at a postage cost of $118.03. Doesn’t seem worth it, does it?

Admittedly, there’s a gray area when it comes to what constitutes cheating and what is simply aggressive campaigning. A business owner might ask his regulars to remember him at voting time. That seems okay. Then, again, a business owner might demand to see filled-out ballots before his staff can get their paychecks. That would be uncool.

With the Best of Memphis ballot, as with everything, let your conscience be your guide. •