Tag: Ophelia Ford

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Political Pains

State senator Ophelia Ford was hospitalized this week after experiencing chest pains. Not to minimize the senator’s obvious health issues, but one has to wonder if the latest round wasn’t brought on by an interactive e-card circulating around Memphis featuring a cartoon of Ford spouting off some of her more infamous one-liners like, “You need to get knowledged” and “What you’re saying ain’t hittin’ on nothin’ with Senator Ford.” The card originates from http://www.foxfunnies.com/.

Weird Marketing

A recent article about Northern Tool + Equipment, the toy store for tool lovers that took over part of the former Kmart in Summer Commons, revealed the company’s curious Memphis marketing strategy. Unlike Lowe’s and Home Depot, which cater to men and women in equal measure, Northern caters to a more testicular crowd. Roger Bunn, vice president of retail for Northern, told The Commercial Appeal, “We’re after the blue-collar customer who works with his hands and even in his spare time, works a lot with tools. … The Memphis market was a natural for us.” Of course, if the execs at Northern are really as market-savvy as they seem to be and they really want to make Greasy McHammerpants a regular customer, they might want to change their name. “Southern” has a nice ring to it.

Hard Knocks

New rules enacted by Memphis City Schools mean expulsion for any student caught participating in gang-related activity at school or during a school-sponsored event. Some exceptions may be made for the Chess Club Disciples.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Ophelia Ford admits that she has a permit to carry a handgun. In a typically rambling statement to reporters, she claims she got a gun because she had a “paranoid schizophrenic crazy” husband. As a result, “he’s my bed partner.” We think she was talking about the gun. But she divorced that husband, and then “I put the honey away.” Again, we think she was talking about the gun. And we think we’ve found the new spokesperson for the National Rifle Association.

Greg Cravens

Eighteen years ago, Rickey Peete resigned from the City Council in the face of an extortion scandal — accused of taking bribes handed to him under the table (literally) at a Shoney’s. Last week, Peete resigned again, again following a scandal, and again involving bribes. He rebounded from that first conviction with a re-Peete. Let’s hope we skip a three-Peete.

Robert F.X. Sillerman, who owns the majority of Elvis Presley’s estate, announces that he wants to spend $250 million to upgrade Graceland and the surrounding area, as just one step in his plan to double attendance at the mansion. Sillerman’s company, CKX, also owns the rights to Muhammad Ali and American Idol, so the man obviously knows a thing or two about marketing. But if it involves that Sanjaya fellow, then we want nothing to do with it.

Presidential hopeful John McCain visits Memphis and drops a hint that, if elected president, he wouldn’t mind having a rather well-known Memphian named Fred Smith as a member of his cabinet. No word yet on how Smith feels about that, but quite frankly, we need him here to run FedEx.

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, announces he will move his M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence from Memphis to Rochester, New York. Considering all the crime in this city recently, who can blame him?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/John Russell

I haven’t read any letters to the editor in quite
some time — uh, except for one in this paper that someone pointed out to me recently in which the writer advised that I would be well served to stop
being so violent to women and so homophobic, and I will certainly do what I can to keep those two things in check
— but I can only imagine the outright hysteria going on regarding the antics of one Senator Ophelia Ford. There’s got to be a lot of hand-wringing going on about this, with people embarrassed to death about what Nashvillians must think of us here in Memphis, since we did elect her to office. And I’m sure plenty of people are worried about her spending their tax dollars on expensive hotels and such while she misses more legislative sessions than she attends. And of course, there’s the famous tirade during the session that she did attend, during which she told her colleagues, “You guys need to get better and you need to get more educated. … What you’re talking about ain’t hittin’ on nothin’ with Senator Ford!” Yowza! And then allegedly falling off that barstool in the concierge bar on the 24th floor of the Sheraton in Nashville and the ambulance coming, and then coming out of the Wild Horse Saloon with a blanket over her head and allegedly attacking the cab driver and then hiding in her hotel room when family members went to get her, and now she seems to be missing and on and on and on. Yes, I’m sure many of you are very frustrated with this kind of behavior and leadership or lack thereof. I, for one, however, am not. This is just twisted enough to be fabulous. Now, if she does have anemia and/or a problem with alcohol, that’s sad. But if she’s just as wild as she appears to be, then more power to her. She needs her own television show. And she is certainly no worse than that imbecile in the White House and his crooked gaggle of cohorts or the new Congress that just passed that $100 billion bill to keep the Iraq war going indefinitely. So she likes to knock back a few drinks and shack up at decent hotels? I’d rather pay for her to get bombed than for Dingbat to go and bomb the wrong country. The weird thing is, there seems to be very little background information out there about Ophelia and what she did before getting into politics. I did read one news account that said she had been married to and divorced from a man who killed his own mother and chopped her up into pieces. And you’re going to fault her for a few cocktails? My, how empathetic! But the one thing Ophelia does need to learn is that if you are going to take on being a public figure, you gotta do at least some of this partying in private and not run around all the time from bar to bar, even if you are trying to just “get me some soup,” as you put it. I’ve been to that concierge bar at the Sheraton in Nashville, and I can say with certainty that you can get just as happy in your own room and just sleep it off. There is no need to be falling off a barstool and giving the press that much more to hound you about. And don’t have dead people vote for you. And please don’t try to choke your cab driver when all he is trying to do is help get you somewhere safely. He even gave you your shoes back. Or he gave them to the police. I can’t remember. So calm it down for a while. Lay low until things cool off a little, and by all means, eat. Believe me, you don’t want to end up in rehab, because it is expensive and time-consuming. I imagine the food’s not all that great, and they are certainly not going to be serving drinks.