Tag: Wendi Thomas

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YWCA Links With Wendi Thomas’ Common Ground Group

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The YWCA of Greater Memphis announced a merger with Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas’ Common Ground race relations group.

“Common Ground: Conversations on Race, Communities in Action” was founded in 2008 by Thomas to bring together diverse Memphis residents for discussion on how to bridge the city’s racial divide. More than 1,500 Memphis residents have participated in Common Ground over the last three years. After the merger, Common Ground will become part of the YWCA’s existing Racial Justice program.

Common Ground meetings occur every Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Kingsbury High School through April 26th.

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Fly on the Wall

Fluffy Wonder

Pray for CA columnist Wendi Thomas. She’s been having a hard time lately and will no doubt benefit from divine guidance as she faces many difficult decisions in the days ahead. Her Sunday column, “Serve Me Well, Oh Fluffy Wonder,” was a brave confession:

“Right there — in that stuffy space between who you are and who you’re expected to be — is where life can go horribly awry,” she wrote. “A man who knows he’s gay but marries a woman anyway. A college freshman who has an abortion because she cannot bear to disappoint her parents. A wife who stays with the man who beats her, because the fear of being alone hurts more than the fists sting. In ways big and small, many of us are unable to be ourselves because we have convinced ourselves we should be otherwise.”

So true. But what caused Wendi to identify with self-loathing gays, knocked-up teenagers, and battered wives? She had to buy a new sofa.

“My best friend walked into the living room and declared rather rudely, ‘Girl, you need a new couch,’ Wendi courageously explained, adding that her mother had offered “more than once” to pay for an interior designer.

Trapped between socioeconomic pressure and family expectations, Wendi’s dilemma was exactly like battered spouses living in fear for their lives or the plight of an unwed, uninsured teen.

“Not unlike the candor of an AA meeting, I had to confess to my sponsor (read: interior designer) who I really am,” Wendi concluded. “My name is Wendi, and I enjoy long naps on my sofa, as does my Rottweiler. I read on my sofa, write there, practically live there. I cannot promise not to drool on the upholstery during a siesta. I will not vow to eat only at the dinner table.”

It’s special that Wendi trusts her readers enough to turn her column into a personal ad, but this sounds oddly reminiscent of a fluffy fetish. That is what this was about? Right?

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Fly on the Wall

Wendi’s City

Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas is to be commended for her noble attempt to rescue the city of Memphis from all the terrible plagues that have descended upon it. Thomas, turning her pen against hip-hop, the true source of all harm, has called for a boycott of North Memphis’ Three 6 Mafia. After all, it was DJ Paul who taught residents of the Hurt Village housing projects how to smoke crack back in 1983. It was his partner, Juicy J, who convinced all local banks to pull their branches from Memphis’ poor black neighborhoods while Three 6 alum Gangsta Boo worked a deal to bring in more predatory lenders. It should be pointed out that Three 6 had almost nothing to do with spreading the fetid garbage that litters the streets of South Memphis. That work was accomplished by Orange Mound’s DJ Squeaky with a little assistance from Al Kapone and II Black. According to an anonymous source, the master plan for filthifying Memphis was originally developed by Project Pat in the early ’90s, based on his firm conviction that if our once paradisiacal city becomes a truly shitty place to grow up in, then the next generation of rappers will bust positive-themed rhymes about Jesus, butterflies, and how to treat a lady.

Arkansas Follies

The following letter was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on April 16th: “You may have noticed that March of this year was … the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. … As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate.”

The letter, a bit of satire written by prankster attorney Connie M. Meskiman, accused liberals in Congress of trying to fool people into believing in global warming. It ran in the ADG‘s Letters to the Editor section under the presumably misspelled headline “Daylight Exacerbates Warning.”