Tag: Myron Lowery

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Opinion

Flat World, No; Flat Field, Yes

Myron Lowery is not running for president.

As a gag, the Memphis city councilman sent out an e-mail purporting to distance himself from an upstart “Myron Lowery For President” movement at the Democratic National Convention, which starts Monday in Denver.

“I’m trying to stop some of my friends from placing my name in nomination for president,” Lowery says in the e-mail. He is a superdelegate to the convention.

The do-it-yourself video link — variations of which have been circulating for several weeks — features a bogus television reporter for “News 3” talking about “a growing grassroots movement born on the Internet to elect a virtual unknown to the office of president.”

The video clip has all the requisite features, including a talk-show host and former model, mock political analyst Dr. Arnold Franklin, a reporter spouting inanities about “people from all walks of life,” and a grandmother who turns her butt to the camera and displays a “Lowery for President” tattoo on her bare lower back.

I confess that it didn’t seem implausible. Lowery, a former television news reporter and anchor, has run or thought about running for political positions including convention delegate, council member, Charter Commission member, and mayor.

The list of people who really sought or are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination this year includes (in addition to Barack Obama) D.R. Hunter, Willie Carter, Randy Crow, Lee Mercer, Frank Lynch, and Grover Cleveland Mullins. And, of course, Stephen Colbert. Why not Myron?

“You were not alone,” Lowery told me this week. He said he showed the spoof to fellow council member Janis Fullilove, and “she looked at it and her mouth dropped.”

Lowery has been to every Democratic convention but one since 1988. He has been a delegate four times. Next week he is supporting Obama, although he began the year as a Hillary Clinton supporter.

“I will not be voting for her” when her name is placed in nomination, despite several entreaties from Hillary diehards to remain true, Lowery says.

In a way, that’s too bad. National political conventions need some drama and unscripted suspense. There used to be actual battles over who would get the nomination, what the platform committee would do, whether a peace plank would be adopted, and whether some state’s delegates would walk out.

Now the conventions are giant four-day parties for political insiders. They’re programming for television between the Summer Olympics and the start of the new fall shows. Watching them is a little like attending the Memphis in May barbecue contest as a spectator and watching the tents full of people drinking, cooking, eating, and having fun.

If the Democrats or Republicans want a plank for their platform that really gets people excited, they should support moving up the opening weekend of the college football season to the first week of August, damn the heat, baseball, and summer vacation. Give red-blooded Americans what we want.

We’ve overdosed on the Olympics, and there is almost another week to go. We know way too much about Shawn Johnson’s quest for the elusive gold, about Misty and Kerri and Phil and Todd and beach volleyball, about synchronized diving and the secret to Chinese dominance.

I don’t want to read another Geoff Calkins column about the danger of cycling in Beijing, the brilliance of the Chinese in ping-pong, or the lovable losers of swimming. I don’t want to watch Bob Costas, with the seriousness of a judge at a murder trial, question Bela Karolyi about the unfairness of gymnastics judging or see Brian Williams and Katie Couric coming to you from the Bird’s Nest.

I don’t want to watch conventions orchestrated in every detail as the culmination of an endless campaign to pick the leader of the free world, appease the Clintons, and choose a running mate for a job once compared to “a bucket of warm spit.”

I don’t want a flat world and global marketing and China against the U.S.

I want a flat field and Ole Miss against Memphis, surrounded by a crowd of people screaming about something that pretends to no more or less importance than first downs, interceptions, touchdowns, and bragging rights.

Let the real games begin.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Council Karaoke: “Myron’s Girl”

In this week’s Flyer, Bianca Phillips recounts the highs and lows of last week’s downtown karoake contest. Our favorite number featured councilmen Edmund Ford Jr. and Myron Lowery.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Time’s Up

CREDIT: MILOSLUZ | dreamstime.com

With City Council committees already running late, Myron Lowery issued a strict edict at last week’s planning and zoning meeting. “My commitment to everyone is that we will end, on time, at 3 o’clock,” he said. “Any item we don’t finish won’t be finished.”

It was an all-too-common reminder for the council that it is running out of time.

Come January, nine members of the 13-member City Council will be gone. Longtime members Jack Sammons and Tom Marshall didn’t run for reelection. Neither did E.C. Jones, Brent Taylor, Edmund Ford, or Dedrick Brittenum. Carol Chumney lost her bid for mayor. And mid-term replacements Madeleine Cooper Taylor and Henry Hooper ran for, but didn’t win, their current seats.

Which means if the council wants to do anything, it needs to do it now.

In October, Marshall, the current chair, proposed 11 items the council should undertake before the year ended, including a tourist development zone around Graceland, an anti-blight initiative, a redevelopment plan for the Fairgrounds, and a revision to the city’s billboard and sign ordinance.

But the billboard and sign ordinance was one of the things that got caught in the crunch last week.

Duncan Associates consultant Eric Kelly was ready to present the proposed changes to the current sign ordinance when Brittenum made a motion to delay the item until it had been heard by the Land Use Control Board. Brittenum read a section from the current zoning regulations that stipulated any changes have to be heard at Land Use before coming to the council.

“My contention is that this matter cannot be heard until the Land Use Control Board hears it. Who knows what Land Use is going to say?” Brittenum said. “If we do it this other truncated way … I’m telling you, we’re subjecting ourselves to legal action.”

But waiting didn’t sit well with other council members.

“It doesn’t say anywhere it cannot be submitted to the council,” Marshall said. “We’re doing it in tandem with the Land Use Control Board.”

The changes are scheduled to come before the Land Use Control Board at its December meeting. The ordinance and Land Use’s recommendation will then be heard by the council December 18th, the last meeting of the year, and for most council members, probably their last meeting.

And since each ordinance has to go through three readings (and be approved in the meeting minutes), that puts the sign ordinance outside the realm of the current council.

“I put in hours of time with [the Office of Planning and Development] and the consultant. The consultant is here today to talk about this thing and to afford this council honest discourse on the subject,” Marshall said. “To simply throw that away because of some sort of bureaucratic glitch … We’re the anti-bureaucracy up here. We’re the guys who are supposed to break the bureaucratic red tape and deal with things, not find reasons not to deal with them.”

But the committee decided against hearing the consultant’s presentation. It will wait for the recommendation from Land Use.

“If there was some urge to get the sign ordinance finished, why didn’t we get it started early enough so that it could go in the proper order?” Brittenum asked.

It’s a fair question. Marshall has been a member of the council since 1986, or for the mathematically challenged, more than 20 years. His term is old enough to drink.

Sammons has spent a combined, though not consecutive, 16 years on the council. Jones and Taylor have both been council members for more than a decade.

But government is a slow business. Not only does each ordinance take three meetings before it is enacted, there are also countless hours of research and discussion. The ordinances get sent back to committees for more discussion; they get deferred when committees are too busy talking about something else. And that’s how it should be.

But a ticking clock can be a powerful motivator: Think about alarm clocks, bombs, Captain Hook.

With time running out, there seems to be a rededication on the part of the council to getting things done. That’s not to say that what they’ve accomplished before doesn’t count or took too long. I just haven’t seen this much urgency in a while. Frankly, it’s a good argument for term limits.

But, then again, what do writers know about deadlines?

Categories
News

Libertyland, Part 1,287

Libertyland advocates had another reason to say, “pip, pip hooray,” after Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The parks committee voted in favor of a resolution preserving and protecting both the Grand Carousel and the Zippin Pippin pending further study.

“Basically, [this will] save it for the time being,” said resolution sponsor Myron Lowery.

Committee chair Scott McCormick questioned whether the resolution might mean unforeseen expenditures.

“This could go on for another two years. The Pippin is a wooden structure. What if the wood starts to rot?” he asked. “Are we going to have to rebuild it?”

Lowery said the intent was to keep the roller coaster in its current state: “Let’s save the Pippin.”