Tag: Mike Pence

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Twitter End

It’s so nice when we finally get a slow news week.

I mean, except for the whole “Let’s instigate a mob attack on the nation’s Capitol to go after Congress members and senators and get five people killed and build a gallows so we can hang Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi” thing. Which was almost a week ago. So.

I want to talk about social media. It’s hard to imagine the Trump presidency playing out as it did (or even happening) without Twitter. No one has ever used a social medium more effectively than Donald Trump. Twitter was his hammer and everything was a nail. He utilized it to communicate directly with his base, to tap into and spur their anger, their frustrations, and the racism that still infects so many of them. Via his tweets, Trump demonized Muslims, Mexicans, and Blacks. He tweeted warnings of “caravans.” He tweeted no-fly bans. He tweeted outsized fears of immigrant gangs. He tweet-fired cabinet members. He amplified white supremacists and QAnon conspiracists by retweeting them. He tweeted about his wall, about being cheated out of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump also used Twitter for “diplomacy,” tweeting derisively about “Little Rocket Man” and leaders of Canada, France, Iran, and Germany. He tweeted threats of war. And Trump used Twitter to offer helpful criticism about television shows and networks; from SNL to OANN to Fox to CBS to CNN, Trump had an opinion to tweet. And, of course, Trump used Twitter to misinform Americans about COVID, over and over again. You name it, Trump tweeted about it.

Now it’s finished. Twitter has muted Trump, banning him from the platform that he could reasonably argue he helped build into what it is today. Many of Trump’s supporters are calling Twitter’s decision an assault on free speech. It is not. A private company has the right to refuse service. Twitter’s move is more like a bar kicking out a drunk who’s chasing off other customers. Or a bakery refusing to create a cake for a gay wedding, if you prefer.

Many Trump supporters got another shock when the right-wing social media platform Parler was effectively disabled by Google, Apple, and Amazon. And the shocks may keep coming. It was revealed on Monday that Parler’s entire trove of user data has been hacked and stored, to what end we still don’t know.

Social media works by collecting our data and selling it, and they’ve got a lot of it on all of us. So do cell phone companies, which came as a shock to many of the “patriots” who ransacked the Capitol last week. Turns out the building has a massive cell phone infrastructure, one that can (and will) be used to determine what cell phones were in and around the area, and who they were communicating with. Using that data, law enforcement officers pulled many rioters off their return flights last week by tracking their cell phones, much to the Trumpers’ shock and dismay. (The hashtag #noflylist on Twitter and Facebook has compiled a number of videos of these folks being hustled off planes and out of airports, in case you’re needing a quick dollop of schadenfreude.)

It’s still astonishing to me that so many people apparently thought they could break into a federal building, destroy public and personal property, attack the police, take selfies of it all, and then just hop on a plane and head back home with no consequences. Sorry, folks, if you had your cell phone with you in the Capitol last week … well, oops. And according to what limited geographic cell phone data has been released thus far, quite a number of folks in Shelby and Crittendon Counties should be expecting a call from law enforcement soon.

Meanwhile, members of Congress were given a briefing Monday about numerous plots and demonstrations still being planned for Washington, D.C., in coming days. The FBI is also warning of demonstrations of one kind or another for state capitals around the country. Whether the takedown of Parler and the arrests of what will soon be hundreds of Capitol terrorists will impact these nefarious plans is anyone’s guess.

In any event, with another impeachment in the works and the Biden inauguration still to come, the week ahead looks to be another challenging one for all of us living in these turbulent and not-so-United States. Buckle in. Stay safe. We’ll get through this. The current wave of madness is surely cresting.

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Film Features Film/TV

Sacha Baron Cohen Returns to Skewer Us in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

In 1831, a French magistrate named Alexis de Tocqueville conned his government, known as the July Monarchy, into sending him on a trip to the United States, ostensibly to investigate the prison system. For nine months, he and a friend traveled through the young republic, making cursory visits to prisons while observing the people and institutions that had grown up in the four decades since the Constitution was adopted.

The French Revolution, which quickly followed the American one, had ended in terror and failure, reverting to a constitutional monarchy. De Tocqueville asked why the United States succeeded where the French had failed. What did it mean for a subject of a monarchy to become a citizen of a democracy? And how, the abolitionist Frenchman asked, did the country that so valued equality and human rights reconcile those views with the institution of slavery? In 1835, he published the first volume of Democracy in America. The book is considered one of the first works of modern sociology and political science, and is required reading for any student of American history.

Maria Bakalova joins the expedition as Borat’s daughter, Tutar.

Around 174 years later, in 2006, “Borat Sagdiyev” toured America in order to make a documentary he could take back to his native Kazakhstan, so the people of that brutal post-Soviet dictatorship could learn what it meant to be a citizen of a democracy in the 21st century. The resulting film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, became something of a modern classic — for some people, anyway. Kazakhstan, and the plaintiffs behind seven lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages from the film’s producers, were less impressed. But Kazakh diplomat Yerlan Askerbekov wrote that the film allowed audiences to “get an outsider’s view of the U.S. and reveal the prejudices of the Americans who Borat interacts with, functioning as a sort of 21st century Alexis de Tocqueville.”

Borat is, of course, not really from Kazakhstan. He’s British-born comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The character Borat first appeared on Da Ali G Show, the British comedy show where Baron Cohen would adopt different personae and do interviews with unsuspecting people in “real life” situations. Airing on HBO in the U.S., it was a game-changer, blending reality television with fairly high-minded pranks. At least, they were high-minded compared to the oodles of prank shows that now infest YouTube.

On the eve of the most important election in America in generations, Baron Cohen brought Borat out of retirement and once again sent him on a tour of America. What he found in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a country at once familiar and transformed. Since Borat is now a known prankster, he brought along his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) to take point on some of the more delicate operations.

Borat’s mission, as it says in the title, is to bribe Vice President Michael Pence with the gift of a monkey. When the monkey doesn’t survive the trip from Central Asia, Borat decides to use his daughter as the bribe instead. The high point of Subsequent Moviefilm is when Baron Cohen walks into the Conservative Political Action Conference dressed in KKK robes, changes into a rather uncanny Donald Trump costume in the bathroom, and interrupts Pence’s speech with Tutar thrown over his shoulder.

The looks of horror and confusion in the room full of Republican activists are what you want out of a Borat movie. But what comes before is even more shocking. The conference was held at the end of February 2020, and Pence dutifully repeats the administration’s line that only 15 people have COVID, and that the coronavirus was no threat to Americans. As I write this, more than 225,000 Americans have died of the virus, more than any other country in the world. CPAC is suing, but not for that.

Baron Cohen adapted to the pandemic, which broke out while he was filming, by quarantining himself with a pair of alt-right QAnon fans. The scenes are equally funny and queasy. I am not a huge fan of cringe comedy (it makes me cringe), but I found Borat repeatedly wringing laughs from me. Borat is cluelessly retrograde in his social beliefs and mores. This time around, he makes himself the butt of the joke even more than usual, foregrounding Tutar’s arc into a kind of feminism. Bakalova is the star of the instantly infamous scene where she entraps Rudolph Giuliani into what he thinks is going to be a tryst with a naive young reporter in a hotel room. In context, it’s kind of anticlimactic. They’re probably going to get sued again.

One thing’s for sure: Baron Cohen and Bakalova have ice water in their veins. Sometimes their counterparts are not unwitting — scenes with a Black babysitter look more like a pro-am improv session. But when it works, it’s a sight to behold. Subsequent Moviefilm delivers queasy laughs for a queasy time in America. Watch it before or after you vote.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Come On, Lamar! There’s Still Time for Senator Alexander to Show Courage

It seems all so obvious now.

Last January 31st, Lamar Alexander, Tennessee’s senior senator, voted to dismiss John Bolton’s testimony at the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Had Alexander voted for presentation of further evidence, several others in the Republican Party may well have joined him. And we as a country might be in a very different place than where we are today.

Now that everyone knows the contents of Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, the testimony that the former National Security Advisor was willing to give might well have tilted the Senate toward a Trump conviction, resulting in a Pence presidency.
Six months later, there is no point crying over spilt milk. But it is worth taking a moment to think about what might have been, had Donald Trump been removed from office last winter.

Lamar Alexander

The past six months under a Pence presidency would have been difficult — the pandemic could care less who’s in the White House — but perhaps he would have handled the virus’ omnipresence differently. He’s no favorite of mine, but I believe a President Pence would have approached the crisis altogether differently. He certainly would have listened more closely to the doctors. And he wouldn’t have played so much golf.

Pence would have made mistakes; after all, everyone on the front lines did at first. But he and the governors, I feel confident, would have put together a cogent federal/state pandemic plan. Having been a governor himself, he would have worked closely with others from both parties.

I also believe that a President Pence would consider hourly tweeting beneath the dignity of his new position. And he would know that his new job was way bigger than his ego, well aware of where the buck stops.

By now, President Pence’s policies might have saved 25,000 lives, maybe more. At the moment, he would be in the middle of a closely contested election race, just 77 days away. The outcome would be a toss-up at this point.

The interim President would be well liked, and so would Lamar Alexander, the man who demanded that John Bolton’s testimony be heard. The retiring Tennessee senator forever would be remembered for not letting the Bad Cat out of the impeachment bag.

Lamar Alexander was our governor for eight years in the Eighties, our senator now for the past eighteen. I don’t know a Democrat in Tennessee who hasn’t voted for him a time or three. Alexander’s public service reflects competence, dedication, and civility.

Sad, isn’t it, then, that his distinguished Senate career is ending on an ambiguous note. Sad that all but one GOP senator chose to ignore evidence of the President’s criminal behavior regarding the Ukraine. Shortly after his acquittal, Donald Trump rode a victory lap in his limo at the Daytona 500, and the rest is history. Real history, unfortunately, not what-might-have-been.

Things have gone from bad to worst this past week, with President Trump’s blatant attempt to disrupt the USPS so completely in the weeks and months ahead as to make voting by mail well nigh impossible. This President’s bald attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election goes far beyond what any of his 44 predecessors had ever contemplated. Most contemporary American historians now speak with one voice, already calling Trump’s blatant power grab one of the darkest political gambits in our country’s history.

Here’s how I think our state’s senior senator could achieve a degree of redemption for his January vote. Lamar Alexander could recover much of the integrity for which he has always been admired, if he simply announced his retirement now, rather than waiting until January 2021, and by just stating the obvious: “I have lost confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability to govern these United States.”

He need not say another word; let others whose political futures are in the balance slice and dice Donald Trump’s decidedly dangerous behavior. I believe a one-sentence resignation would be well-received by most Americans, a large percentage of whom remain terrified by this human loose cannon, still rolling around in the White House.

It’s a small gesture, but perhaps Senator Alexander’s resignation would inspire others in his party to stand up to the President’s blatant attempt to meddle with our country’s electoral process. We find ourselves now in a very dark place; our retiring senator has a genuine opportunity to make things inside that place a little bit brighter.

Kenneth Neill is publisher emeritus of the Memphis Flyer, which he helped launch in 1989.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

American Idiot

Was it only a little more than three months ago when President Trump was loudly disparaging countries that hadn’t controlled the coronavirus — like China, Italy, Greece, and Germany? When the president of the mighty United States was smugly banning travel from China and the European Union?

Well, yes, actually, it was. I know it’s hard to keep up with such things when every day brings six new scandals, but on March 12th, in a nationally televised speech, the president unilaterally and abruptly announced that the United States would ban travelers from Europe, following an earlier ban on travel from China.

At the end of his 10-minute speech, Trump added this amazingly arrogant and stupid prediction: “The virus will not stand a chance against us.”

Actually, COVID-19 now stands a better chance against the United States than against any other country on the planet. Along with Brazil and Russia (two other countries with incompetent leaders), the United States is now a raging epicenter for the COVID pandemic. With 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus cases — and 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. The infection level in this country is rising at an unprecedented rate, as several Republican governors scramble to close down their states after arrogantly and stupidly opening them for business as infection rates were rising — following our “stable genius” president’s lead. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee gets a special “I’m Extra Stupid” award for even now not allowing the state’s mayors to require masks in their cities. (And for pushing through an illegal and unenforceable abortion ban bill. But I digress.)

Science is so overrated, apparently. Karma, unfortunately, is not.

Thanks to this administration’s incompetent response to the global pandemic, my wife, a French citizen, can no longer go visit her family — nor can millions of other Americans who want to do business or take vacations or visit family in Europe. Now, we are a shithole country, banned from traveling to civilized societies.

Several other significant stories have broken recently, collapsing on top of each other like a tower of Jenga blocks, each a stunner that would have destroyed any presidency before this one.

The president’s personal lawyer, aka Attorney General Bill Barr, has been stepping all over the justice system — getting friends of the president out of stiff sentences, releasing them from jail, and firing the attorney general in the Southern District of New York (who happened to be handling several cases involving Trump and his allies). Barr’s behavior was so egregious it caused longtime Justice Department prosecutors to turn whistleblower. But, meh, now it’s just another small explosion in Trump’s media minefield. A mere diversion.

Then CNN broke a story from Trump officials who had witnessed the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. Here’s a sample: “In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior U.S. officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers, and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the president himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

“The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials — to conclude that the president was often ‘delusional,’ as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders.”
CNN.com

One final detail: Our president called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “stupid.” Merkel, it should be noted, has a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry.

Okay, so Trump screwed up the coronavirus response and got us banned from Europe; his AG is deconstructing the Justice Department; he’s stupid, ill-informed, and abusive on phone calls with foreign leaders. A pretty devastating week, right?

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that little thing where Trump was informed that Russia had set up a cash bounty hunt with the Taliban on U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan — and ignored it.

The president at first denied he’d been informed about it. The next day, The New York Times, citing two U.S. intelligence officials, reported that the information was in Trump’s daily briefing on February 27th. The White House spokesperson then responded that the administration was still considering its options.

The United States has become a banana republic, run by a narcissistic grifter, the kind of guy who blithely posts a video of a man shouting “white power” and then goes to play golf. We have a vice president who again this week praised the president’s response to the pandemic as “wonderful.” We have an administration run by incompetent toadies and lobbyists. And we have the entire leadership of a major American political party marching in lockstep with it all, as if blindfolded.

I’ve run out of faith that the American democratic institutions that have guided the country past the pitfalls of nefarious leaders and human inadequacy for 250 years are going to put the brakes on Donald Trump. Except for maybe the election process. Maybe. At this point, our only hope seems to be to survive this idiot until November and vote him out, along with his corrupt enablers. Only then can we begin the long and painful recovery from this unprecedented disaster of an administration.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Space Force: The Final Frontier of Lunacy

Sorry, border wall. You’ve been demoted. Trade war, you’re on notice. There’s a new boondoggle in the ole U.S. of A., and its name is Space Force. Because what this country really needs — before we can even think about securing our elections or rebuilding Puerto Rico — is to hunker down for a Space War.

Print 1,000 copies of this and plaster them to my car if I’m wrong, but Space Force may be the dumbest idea of all time. For a president whose avocation is spraying free-association word bricolage from his mouth and Twitter fingers 24 hours a day, that is quite an accomplishment.

Yes, we have played this game long enough to know last week’s announcement is a set of jangling keys meant to divert our collective attention from some sinister immigration policy or looming Mueller investigation bombshell. And, sure, the cockamamie proposal may end up flying warp speed through a Republican Congress whose members are cozy with the industries who stand to make big bucks on anti-gravity space blasters. For now, though, it feels good to laugh.

Watching Vice President Mike Pence detail mercifully vague plans to launch the Space Force by 2020, I almost felt sorry for him — as much as it’s possible to feel sorry for a guy who thinks the movie Mulan is liberal propaganda. He asked for this, though. He wanted to be vice president so badly he’s willing to stand on the Pentagon dais and brief military professionals about an interstellar defense strategy that sounds like it was lifted from one of those YouTube videos of doped-up teens after wisdom tooth extractions. With a straight face!

Like many others who have served at the whim of capricious bosses and clients, I too have been dispatched to look into the feasibility of an “out of the box” idea from above. However, I know the best and quickest approach to these requests is to get an estimate. If a quick number-crunch doesn’t elicit a “Jesus, that’s how much it would cost? Forget it,” get another estimate. The next best approach is to avoid the person or change the subject whenever he brings it up, until he moves on to something else.

Either would have worked in this scenario. The price tag for research and development of a space army would make any true fiscally responsible conservative weep. Name-dropping Barack Obama or CNN before scrambling away would have bought at least 280 Twitter characters’ worth of time. Then again, Pence may have viewed the task as God’s punishment for making eye contact with a lady server and ordering a ginger ale before his wife sat down for dinner in 1993 or something. Nowadays, one must self-flagellate a little in order to be a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land.

I love Space Force because it’s 100 percent the kind of idiotic million-dollar idea people come up with when they’re blasted out of their minds. Having worked in bars, I’m quite familiar with cocaine gibberish. A space army that fights … um, TBD … is exactly the stuff I would expect to hear from a patron who has taken a few too many trips to the restroom. To be clear, I would never accuse POTUS of tooting — that would be downright unpatriotic. But I’m willing to bet at least one fun-loving individual has woken one afternoon with an empty wallet, save for a bar napkin with “SPACE FORCE” scrawled on it. Maybe he muttered “Space Force? What the hell is this about?” before tossing the napkin into the trash. He may have forgotten about his revolutionary strategy for weaponizing the cosmos until weeks later, when a concerned friend mentioned how weird he had been acting. “Bro, you were babbling about space weapons and you were like, ‘Space Force all the way!’ Do you remember? What was that about? Is everything okay with you?”

The name “Space Force” belongs on a child’s generic astronaut costume or a poorly counterfeited Stair Wards or Battlestart Galtactical figurine, not a serious branch of the United States military. I can think of at least a dozen Space Force puns without even trying. Space Force these clowns out of the White House, am I right? Here’s a tagline: To Infinity and Beyond Ridiculous. And do not get me started on the comedic potential of Space Farts. Did no one warn these people about Space Farts?

This administration is a Space Farce.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing strategist.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Mixed Signals on Trump

Summing up from a variety of reactions, there would seem to be a consensus that Republican nominee Donald Trump fared better in his second nationally televised Game of the Dozens (read: presidential debate) with opponent Hillary Clinton than he did in their first encounter. 

That’s basically an evaluation of Trump’s improved level of coherence, the semblance of an organized game plan on his part, and his use of an effective zinger or two — all that coupled with a diminished level of poise on the part of Clinton, who still scored high on logic and policy points but who, in contrast to her gleefully confident, shimmy-prone self of the first debate, seemed at least slightly unnerved.

But Trump’s “comeback,” if it is one, would seem in the long run to come at his own expense. His best riposte — “because you’d be in jail” — was delivered in response to a dismissive line of hers expressing relief that someone like Trump hadn’t gotten his hands on the nation’s legal machinery. 

That echo of the “Lock her up!” refrain from the GOP conventioneers’ chant in Cleveland — aimed at Clinton’s email issues and a host of other alleged misprisions — had to be greatly satisfying to Trump’s populist base, the 40-odd percent who stick with him in poll after poll, regardless of policy muffs and salacious “locker room” asides about women.

But the line, auguring a heavy-handed use of presidential power, linked up in the minds of a good many others with the bullying tactics so often on display with Trump, sounded troubling. 

The reaction of two key Tennessee Republicans is indicative of Trump’s dilemma.

Governor Bill Haslam this week lent his voice to the chorus of Republicans who’ve had enough of Trump: “It is time for the good of the nation and the Republican Party for Donald Trump to step aside and let [vice-presidential nominee] Governor Mike Pence assume the role as the party’s nominee,” Haslam said.

A more indulgent and salutary view of Trump’s circumstances came from one of Memphis’ — and the nation’s — ranking members of the GOP, Republican National Committee general counsel John Ryder. After last weekend’s release of an 11-year-old videotape of Trump’s unguarded, sexually explicit conversation with Access Hollywood principal Billy Bush, Ryder had referred to Trump as a “flawed messenger” but insisted the “message” Trump channeled of unrest and desire for change in national policy was still valid, live, and well.

Ryder also theorized that the rush to the exits by numerous Republicans — some, like Haslam, calling for Trump to step down as nominee, others, in Tennessee as elsewhere, merely withholding their support — would likely abate. He cited the technical obstacles to bringing about a change in the ticket as insuperable, especially since early voting had already started in many places.

And, while acknowledging that Sunday night’s encounter between Trump and Clinton in St. Louis “was one of the meanest debates I’ve ever seen,” the RNC counsel thought the meanness worked both ways. And, while Ryder was hesitant to comment on Trump’s chances of winning the presidency, he was confident that the nominee had managed to “stop the bleeding” in Republican ranks internally and that any likelihood of the presidential race’s adversely affecting down-ballot races involving other Republicans had been made more remote. 

Not so sure of that, clearly, is GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has sworn off campaigning with or for Trump and is pointedly focusing his efforts on shoring up Republican congressional campaigns.

• One of the more active public-policy groups on the political scene is the Tennessee Nurses Association, which regularly holds seminars, forums, and information sessions on medical, veterans, and other issues it regards as significant to the public realm.

The TNA was scheduled to host several of the candidates in the November 8th election at its latest legislative forum at Jason’s Deli on Poplar, Wednesday, October 12th. Attending, besides an extensive corps of TNA members, will be various candidates for state, local, regional, and federal offices, including aldermens’ and school board races, and spokespersons for the campaigns of presidential candidates Trump and Clinton. 

• The matter may have more voyeuristic than political consequence, but the legislators mentioned in that report by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery about the sordid sexual escapades of now disgraced and expelled state Representative Jeremy Durham (R-Franklin) have now been outed.

The Nashville Scene has published a full list of the state representatives who were cited in the report as either Jane Doe or John Doe, with a number assigned to them to establish their place in the narrative.

Whatever the embarrassment quotient to them, most of the legislators so named do not figure in ways that could be considered incriminating. But the Democrats on Capitol Hill in Nashville are having fun all the same, turning the spit on their named colleagues, all of whom happen to be Republicans.

The most inconvenienced legislator in the list would have to be Representative Mary Littleton (R-Dickson), who is described in the attorney general’s report as firing a staff assistant, one of the non-legislative Jane Does mentioned as having had some sort of relationship with Durham or at least as having had a place on his hit list.

As written, the AG report doesn’t make Littleton’s motives clear, though it does state that she and Durham were considered to be good friends and frequent companions in their own right.

Of the 10 legislators whose identities were supplied by the Scene, none of them represent any part of Shelby County, though one of them, Representative Gerald McCormick (R-Chattanooga), is a native Memphian who attended high school in Germantown. His role, as described in the report, can fairly be described as one of fact-finding — consistent with his position, since relinquished, as GOP majority leader in the House. 

Once expelled from office, Durham — who, previous to expulsion, had been defeated in a reelection race this year, closed down his Political Action Committee and transferred its financial contents to his campaign committee.  

Looking through his report, The Tennessee Journal newsletter commented on two matters therein — an expenditure of $956 for University of Tennessee football tickets and a $999 contribution to the unsuccessful 8th District congressional campaign of state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown). Though he himself was not involved in the altercation, Kelsey was Durham’s companion at the recent Vols-Florida Gators game in Neyland Stadium from which Durham was evicted for slugging a Florida fan in the face.

• After breezing through a series of more or less pro forma committee sessions last Wednesday, the Shelby County Commission may well indulge its well-established taste for controversy on Monday when, after a week off for Columbus Day, the commission holds its next regular public meeting.

One of the matters scheduled for consideration is County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s nomination of lawyer Kathryn Pascover, formerly of the FordHarrison law firm, to be county attorney. In something of a surprise move, Pascover, a specialist in labor/management law, was named interim attorney last month, succeeding in that role Marcy Ingram, whom several commissioners had thought was in line to become permanent county attorney.

Pascover probably has enough votes to pass muster, including some from members of the apparent commission majority backing two pending measures to restrict the mayor’s appointive powers. But she can expect some hard questioning during the debate on her nomination from one or two members who are seriously dialed into the body’s ongoing power struggle with Luttrell.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Back to Bettyville

I just finished a book called Bettyville. It’s by George Hodgman, who grew up in Paris, Missouri, near my hometown, then went to the University of Missouri school of journalism in the 1970s. After graduation, he went off to New York City and became an editor at various magazines.

The book is a memoir of his return to his hometown to care for his 90-year-old mother, Betty, who is resistant to moving out of her home, though her health is failing.

Bettyville is getting lots of good reviews, as it should. It’s funny and poignant, and since it’s set in the counties and towns where I grew up, and I have a 94-year-old stepmom who still lives in my hometown, I found it very compelling. I have a lot in common with the author. Except he’s gay and I’m not.

His memories of growing up “different” in a small town in rural America are sometimes painful to read, but Hodgman writes with wit and humor and grace. I found myself laughing out loud at some of his observations of small town life. But Paris has changed, and not for the better. As he writes, three great forces have destroyed much of rural America: the death of the family farm, Walmart, and meth. And homophobia, while maybe a bit distilled, is still rampant in the hinterlands.

If you need further evidence of that, see the current brouhaha about Indiana’s “religious freedom restoration” act, which basically allows people — and businesses — who feel “compelled by sincere religious beliefs” to refuse to do business with gays. It’s institutionalized bigotry and there’s no way around it. A few decades back, people used the same “logic” to refuse service to African Americans and to those in mixed-race marriages.

The negative fallout has been spectacular and has spawned a “Boycott Indiana” movement. Several major corporations and national organizations have announced they will no longer do business in the state. The state’s governor, Mike Pence, has stumbled his way through several appearances on national television, attempting to defend the act. It’s a black eye for Indiana, and it will cost the state millions of dollars. And, of course, most GOP presidential candidates are defending it.

It could have been Tennessee suffering through this stupidity. Last February, state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown proposed nearly identical legislation in Nashville. It was quickly dubbed by opponents as the “Turn Away the Gays” bill. The reaction was vociferous — in Memphis and Nashville, particularly. Local restaurateur Kelly English vowed to hold a fund-raiser to defeat Kelsey; LGBT activists here and nation-wide raised a stink. Kelsey backed down, withdrew his sponsorship, and the bill died in committee.

Score one for decency and common sense — and for Bettyville.