Tag: Bruce VanWyngarden

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s article, “The Origin Story” …

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer. Congratulations. However, I have to say, as a founding staff member of the Dixie Flyer, that I highly resent editor Bruce VanWyngarden’s reference to our publication as “a hippie paper that was published in Memphis for a time in the 1970s.”

It wasn’t a “hippie” paper, the inference being that it was an inferior product put together by a bunch of pot-smoking losers. In addition to myself as music editor, executive editor Sara Van Horn, and art director Eddie Tucker, we had many other talented people working very hard to produce a paper of which the community could be proud. And none of us got paid a dime. Contributors included Joe Mulherin, John Fergus Ryan, David Less, Phyllis Tickle, Gordon Osing, and many other fine writers, as well as photographers Ebet Roberts, Richard Sidman, Elbert Greer, and other talented people.

I would venture to say that a lot of our features and commentaries were much superior to anything the current Flyer had in its infancy. “Hippie paper” indeed. The truth is that the Flyer put big bucks behind our idea and, 25 years later, they are doing quite well. A little respect for the Dixie Flyer, Bruce. We blazed the trail in the 1970s and your organization turned it into an eight-lane expressway.

Gordon Alexander

Greg Cravens

About the article, “25 Who Shaped Memphis” …

I can’t believe you left out Adrian Rogers, given the religious and political effect that Bellevue Baptist Church has had and continues to have on many Memphians — religious, nonreligious, straight, gay, etc.

Brunetto Latini

Bellevue Baptist is emblematic of why I and so many others have disdain for the suburbanite mob. They hit that sweet spot between ignorance and righteous indignation.

MidtownOnly

You left out Jesus.

CL Mullins

About Chris Davis’ post, “Commercial Appeal Metro Columnist Wendi Thomas Has Been Reassigned” …

Perhaps we can now have a more balanced approach to race relations in the CA. The divisiveness that was Wendi’s M.O. was particularly unsettling to this northern transplant.

Smitty1961

Since when is pointing out the obvious being “divisive”? Oh, that’s right, when you want to pretend that we are in a post-racial world, got it! Oy.

LeftWingCracker

There is much prejudice in the hardcore white commenters in the CA, and it is hard to go against that tide. She will probably go and make an impact somewhere else within the next couple of years. What I can say with certainty is that she always treated me with respect and she helped me in my time of need. Wendi has helped Memphis in many ways and I hope one day she will be more appreciated in the community than she has been.

TruthBeTold

Every kid will be named “Trevon” in Wendi’s articles.

HomerSimpson

Is this only being posted to attract the CA comment trolls?

Nobody

About a visit to Memphis …

My wife and I, with our daughter and son-in-law, visited Memphis to celebrate my 70th birthday with a visit to Graceland, as I have always been a big fan of Elvis. While we were there, we decided to go to the BBQ fest. Having never seen it or even heard about it before, we didn’t know what to expect, but what a surprise! The contestants made us feel really welcome and even gave us T-shirts to remember them (along with a few beers and food). So, we would like to say a very big thank you to all the friends we made in Memphis that day. We truly have never met more friendly people.

Jack, Cindy, Mandy and Choo

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Journey to the Homeland

I journeyed last weekend to my home state of Missouri to visit my octogenarian parents. It was a trip into the heart of a battleground state — and into the heart of my family — fraught with nostalgia and memories, good and bad. Herewith, a few notes:

Interstate 55 runs flat as a carpenter’s dream through the bootheel. Billboards, talk-radio stations, and political yard signs make it clear this is “red” country — Limbaugh-Land. The accents are Southern with a dollop of flat Midwestern tones. At a gas station, I see a cap for sale with a “Yankee Hunting License” on the front. Yeehaw.

Just south of Cape Girardeau, the eastern edge of the Ozarks merges with river-bluff country to give the land the feel of New England. The blue hills roll into the distance. The leaves are turning yellow and red. Pumpkins are everywhere. You can buy jugs of apple cider at the highway mini-marts.

Around St. Louis, Obama signs and billboards begin to appear. The local NPR station is easy to find, and I forego the country music and right-wing talk that has accompanied me for 200 miles. Never has the divide between rural and urban seemed more pronounced.

My hometown is small and rural, smack in the middle of the state. A new sign greets me at the county line: “The Bio-Fuels Capital of Missouri.” Who knew? When I was growing up, we were “The Firebrick Capital of the World.” The brown clay of Audrain County was somehow perfect for building kilns for steel mills. My father worked for one of the brick plants and often traveled to Pittsburgh on business. Now the brick plants are gone, just like the steel mills.

Much else has changed. There’s a brisk new bypass around the town. No longer do you drive past the Wreck-O-Mend auto repair or the ‘Bout New car lot. In fact, the ‘Bout New car lot looks to be ‘Bout finished. There are a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s where once was a soybean field. McCain-Palin signs are back in vogue here.

But as we gathered around the family television to watch the valiant Mizzou Tigers get their butts handed to them by the evil Texas Longhorns, nobody snorted at the Obama ads, like once might have happened in my longtime Republican parents’ home. Even with their set-in-stone politics, my parents were bothered by McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. They weren’t scared of Obama. This I take to be progress.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: The Mediocre American Base

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”

Nebraska senator Roman Hruska made the above remark in 1970 in support of one of Richard Nixon’s nominees to the Supreme Court: G. Harrold Carswell. Hruska, who was once called the dumbest member of Congress, was fighting for his people, his Mediocre-American base.

Of course, Mediocre Americans are not an interest group — at least, not officially. There are no lobbyists demanding tax breaks for mediocre people. Mediocre Americans are allowed to get married and vote and run for office. Mediocre Americans have never been forced to sit in the balcony of theaters or in the back of buses. You are free to be mediocre in America. And proudly so. In fact, I’m surprised there aren’t “Mediocre Pride” parades and T-shirts reading, “It’s a Mediocre Thing. You Wouldn’t Understand.”

Now, in the proud tradition of Senator Hruska, mediocrity is again being turned into a virtue, something to be admired. Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is the political poster girl for mediocrity. She’s “one of us,” she claims, a “hockey mom,” a representative of “Joe Six-Pack.” And, by all the evidence that’s been presented thus far, Palin is being truthful in these claims. She appears mediocre to the core — in her education, her intellect, and her “knowledge” of the issues.

I will concede mediocrity has its place. I don’t mind a mediocre television anchor or a mediocre waitress, for example. I hear mediocre musicians and talk-show hosts on the radio every day. I accept mediocrity when mediocrity doesn’t mean life or death. Some of my best friends are mediocre. (Kidding.)

But here’s the thing: Nobody wants a mediocre pilot or heart surgeon or even a mediocre teacher for their kids. Why would we want a mediocre vice president, a person who is so dense she is unable to answer the question: “What newspapers do you read?” Do we really want to elect a vice president whose primary skills seem to be those of a television sportscaster?

Yes, Palin’s cute. She can read a script. She can repeat things and excite a crowd. But if she can’t handle Katie Couric, what do you think she’ll do when she has to sit across the table from Vladimir Putin? Pop open a Bud Light and wink?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Fans and Dumbasses

Last week I wrote that another name for “low-information” voters was “dumbasses.” I added that I wrote those lines without fear of retribution because “dumbasses don’t read this column.”

Never let it be said that I don’t admit it when I’m wrong.

Not only do dumbasses read this column, so do a lot of very funny smartasses. The responses on memphisflyer.com are much more interesting than my original column.

My favorite: the woman who wrote, “That’s CRAP, buddy. I’m a dumbass and I read your column.” Beautiful.

Our commenters offer ideas, insults, praise, criticism, inanity, and wisdom. Sometimes all in the same post. Regular commenters, we are advised by the Internet gurus, are a vital part of a healthy website. They are, for want of a better phrase, a self-selected “community.”

Our community consists of cranks, intellectuals, crackpots, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, Democrats, and Republicans posting opinions about Flyer articles and columns. It’s instant feedback, and we love it. We could watch “Rantboy,” “Katiedidn’t” and “38103” go at it all day …

A fellow named Kevin Kelly recently wrote an essay called “1,000 True Fans.” His thesis is that in this Internet age, all an artist has to do in order to survive is find 1,000 “true fans” — those who are willing to purchase $100 worth of music, concert tickets, or merchandise a year. (A four-piece band would theoretically need 4,000 true fans.)

The old business model for musicians was to try to sell millions of records. The big money was collected by music corporations, and a small cut was given to the artist. Kelly posits that musicians must now cut out the middle man and build their own “true fan” communities through MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and other social networks.

It’s a lot like what’s happening in journalism, as the major corporate media companies try to figure how to cut their expenses — and manpower — in the face of declining profits for their newspaper products.

Here at the Flyer, we’re lean and mean enough to weather good times and bad. All we need is a nice community of true fans to be happy. So thanks very much to all of you who support us. Some of our best friends are dumbasses.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Low-Information Voters

I’ve been reading recently about “low-information voters.” These are people who, for the most part, don’t read newspapers, political websites, or opinion magazines to learn candidates’ voting records or political positions. They don’t pay much attention to politics at all, which in theory makes them susceptible to whatever information is put under their nose — whether it’s from a talk-radio host, a preacher, a co-worker, a random e-mail rumor, a bumper sticker, or a catchy slogan on a T-shirt.

These are not discerning voters. Another name for them would be “dumbasses.” I say this without fear of retribution, knowing that low-information voters, i.e., dumbasses, don’t read this column. (I can’t wait for someone to write me and say, “That’s CRAP, buddy. I’m a dumbass, and I read your column.”)

But I digress. For years, low-information voters have been seen as easy targets, a group that can be manipulated at will by a clever politician. Nuance and policy positions are for pointy-headed liberal losers. All you need is a simplistic slogan: “Mission accomplished!” “We can’t cut and run.” “He’s a flip-flopper.” “Jews hate Jesus.” You get the idea.

Similarly, complex policy issues are distilled into easy to digest messages: “He’ll raise your taxes.” “She has San Francisco values.” “He’ll take away your guns.” “Drill here, drill now.”

Nationally, we’re seeing a major push for low-information voters by the McCain campaign, which seeks to paint Barack Obama as a vapid celeb. “Hot chicks love Obama” is a tag-line at the end of one of McCain’s latest ads. (Frankly, I think conceding the hot-chick vote is a bad idea for McCain. I mean, what’s the corollary? “Ugly schlubs love McCain”?)

The point is, the campaign seems to think there are lots of fools in America who will decide their presidential vote based on their resentment of uppity celebrities. (“Uppity” being the operative word here.)

Locally, 9th District candidate Nikki Tinker did her best to get out low-information voters — people she perceived would be receptive to messages that painted her opponent as the wrong race and wrong religion. Unfortunately for her — and fortunately for Memphis — there were way fewer dumbasses hereabouts than she was hoping for.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Kudos

Kudos to the Flyer and Jackson Baker for his succinct and invaluable guide to the upcoming election (“A Sleeper Election?,” July 31st issue). There are many of us who rely on your publication and Baker for our political “fix.” Thanks for what you do.

Julio Martinez

Memphis

Creatively Designed

Regarding Charles Gillihan’s letter (July 31st issue): Gillihan is trying to distance himself and the intelligent-design movement away from its predecessor “creation science.” The lecture delivered by Barbara Forrest (“Q&A with Barbara Forrest,” July 24th issue) was not to “offer the alternatives.” That was not her job. Her job was to show in court during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial (and later to her lecture audience) that intelligent design evolved from creationism.

She showed convincingly that intelligent design is creationism and thus religious. By doing so, “intelligent-design creationism” was judged unconstitutional and in violation of the First Amendment as a subject to be taught in public school science class.

I suggest Gillihan read the trial transcript at creationismstrojanhorse.com.

Chris Stahl, Director

Memphis Freethought Alliance

Those in the Discovery Institute and the intelligent-design/creationism movement use code phrases such as “logical analysis,” “critical thinking,” and so forth. Another common one is “teach the controversy.” The irony of those code phrases is that the intelligent-design creationists often do exactly the opposite.

Intelligent-design creationists rarely apply critical thinking, logical analysis, or teach the controversy strategies to ideas about creationism or the Bible (specifically the Book of Genesis). Controversy is rampant in the creationism camp: “young-Earth creationists” argue with “old-Earth creationists.” “Gap creationists” contend that God created and then annihilated man and later annihilated all of humanity except two people. By contrast, many biblical scholars believe that the creation story in Genesis is actually the splicing together of more than one Jewish creation story with varying chronologies.

The point is that there is a lot of debate amongst the Christian communities about the creation story. Intelligent-design creationists instead focus on an imaginary controversy among scientists over the theory of evolution. They also conveniently ignore the fact that a significant number of Christians embrace the scientific theory of evolution.

Jason Grosser

Cordova

Gillihan’s assertion that there are non-creationists who believe in intelligent design is absurd. If anyone takes the time to follow the careers of these people, they were all associated with some sort of fundamentalist religious organization before they got into intelligent design.

Bill Runyan

Memphis

Gillihan wrote: “There are many non-creationists who hold to intelligent design.” This is not so. Creationism is intelligent design. Barbara Forrest did an excellent job during the trial of proving conclusively that in all documentation over the last 10 years, the phrase “intelligent design” has been substituted for “creationism.”

Why? Because the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism as science is unconstitutional. This is absolutely clearcut. Creationism equals intelligent design equals religious instruction.

Steve Aldred

Whiteville

More Fireworks

Regarding Bruce VanWyngarden’s recent 4th of July fireworks Editor’s Note (July 10th issue) and subsequent letters to the editor: There has been serious congestion and gridlock downtown during and immediately after any large public event in the last 25 years or so. And for the last several years, anytime between the hours of, say, 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays, the same problem exists, which is why “no cruise” areas were initiated.

Our family chose to view the fireworks from the top of one of the multi-tenant buildings in the central business district. Afterward, we rode down the elevator to our condo and then walked to dinner, just off South Main. Rather than moving to Germantown, I say support downtown Memphis. Buy a condo!

J. Tucker Beck

Memphis

Editor’s Note: In last week’s Politics column, the following names should have been spelled: Phil Trenary, Jim McGehee, and Michael Floyd.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: 1,000 Times Better

The Flyer was founded in February 1989. On the front cover of that inaugural edition, we put the words, “Our First Issue.” Being nothing if not consistent and literal, we continued to proudly proclaim the issue number on each of the subsequent 999 issues. (There is an unverifiable story that the number didn’t get updated one week in the 1990s and that there may in fact be two issues with the same number. But no one wants to go through all the back issues and confirm this.) At any rate, this one is number 1,000.

That’s a lot of Tim Sampson columns.

Tim was the Flyer‘s first editor and did the heavy lifting during the early years, when the paper was struggling financially. His cynical sign-off for his “We Recommend” column (“I don’t care what you do because I don’t even know you”) was no doubt born from having to endure weekly fist-pounding meetings with the publisher (the kindly, handsome, and easygoing Kenneth R. Neill).

The fist-pounding stopped after a couple years, when the Flyer started making a little money (and when Ken’s watch exploded off his wrist after a particularly forceful pound). But the damage had been done and Tim hasn’t been the same since. Poor man.

Dennis Freeland took over as editor in the early 1990s. He was a great fellow and a brilliant sportswriter as well. Under his leadership, and that of managing editor Susan Ellis, the Flyer blossomed and grew into something of a local institution. If you hadn’t read John Branston’s City Beat or Jackson Baker’s Politics or Dennis’ sports columns, you were out of the loop.

I began working here in 1993 as editorial director. I became editor on a “temporary” basis when Dennis fell ill with cancer. Following his sad and untimely death in 2002, I moved into the editor’s office and never left. This is probably my 350th issue or so. But who’s counting?

The people who do count are those who create your weekly Flyer — the writers, editors, art directors, ad sales folks, and others who make this publication possible. Do me a favor. Turn to page 6 and read the masthead, just this once. It’ll make me feel 1,000 times better.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Book Features Books

“Aquarius Revisited” Reissue Celebrates the Sixties

The 40th anniversary of the Sixties’ “Summer of Love” has spawned television shows, books, films … and this paperback reissue of Aquarius Revisited, written by Peter Whitmer with Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden, waaay back in 1987.

Aquarius Revisited features interviews with (and life histories of) Sixties icons William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Hunter Thompson, Ken Kesey, Tom Robbins, and Norman Mailer, as well as writing about James Dean, the Rajneeshi commune, and more groovy hippie-era stuff.

The new version features 36 pages of updated information and new photos. Available through Amazon.com.

Get high and buy several hundred copies for your friends. Peace out.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: The Tale of the Silver Carp

Fisherman are known liars, but this is a true story.

A friend and I were fishing on a lake near Marion, Arkansas, several weeks ago. It’s an old ox-bow lake, a former channel of the Mississippi that’s been isolated by the vagaries of time and mud and current. It floods every spring, replenishing the fish supply, and we’ve caught many a nice bass there. But it was August — a deathly hot and still evening — and we weren’t having any luck. The only thing biting were the mosquitos.

But there were herons and ducks and geese to watch and a nearly full moon on the rise — and we had cold beer to drink and lies to tell.

Then we heard a motor. Headed our way was a jonboat containing three shirtless teenagers, all standing. The one in the middle was holding a bow and arrow. As they approached, fish lept from the water, right and left — big fish. And as we watched in utter amazement, the kid with the bow shot a fish in mid-air and hauled it into the boat with a line attached to his arrow.

“A country boy can survive,” as the song goes. In this case, a country boy can astound.

We waved them over and they pulled up to our boat, flashing grins. The bottom of their boat was ankle deep in big fish.

“What the hell … ?” we said, or words to that effect.

“Mr. Sample [the lake owner] told us to shoot as many of these dang silver carp as we could,” one of the boys said. “They’re killing off all the game fish and he’s tryin’ to get rid of ’em.”

It was my first encounter with the phenomenon of silver carp. I did some research and learned that the fish, an Asian import, was originally stocked in Southern fish-farm ponds to control algae. As was no doubt predictable, they escaped into the Mississippi River system and now threaten to take it over completely. They screw up the food chain; catfish and bass and other game fish are usually eliminated in waters where silver carp live. They grow to almost four feet long and cannot be caught by rod and reel. Their defining characteristic is the fact that they jump out of the water when a motorboat approaches.

These waterborne kudzu have spread to the point where they are now threatening the Great Lakes. The lesson is an old one: Don’t fool with Mother Nature. A corollary: Don’t water ski without a helmet.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com