Boner Awards 2007

An Inconvenient GoofAl Gore hadn’t even come down from his Academy Awards high—what with winning an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, being sweated by Leonardo DiCaprio and having Ryan Seacrest ask who he was wearing—before the dung-based biofuel hit the fan. When a Tennessee think tank released stats on energy use in Gore’s Belle Meade mansion, which sucks up 20 times more juice than the national average, it became clear that Captain Planet had some ’splaining to do. Sure, he made Tipper screw in some more compact fluorescent bulbs and paid penance with carbon offsets, but the Goracle of Green missed the downsize-and-conserve point entirely. Gore’s camp blamed everything from his home office to frequent party hosting—in that heated pool, perhaps? Which reminds us, Al—we’re still waiting for an invite to a slippery game of Marco Polo with Tipper, in that steaming pool of hypocrisy.

My Darling ClementBob Clement: where do we begin? Starting with his many inanities during community forums—”Cleanliness counts!” and “Let’s turn lemons into lemonade!”—and ending with his bizarre comparison of himself to Jesus lost in the wilderness, Clement’s entire mayoral campaign was one long senior moment. It must have been embarrassing for the lifelong Democrat to run as a right-wing Republican, palming himself off as the Buford Pusser of immigration reform while castigating Karl Dean as a tax-happy criminal coddler. In an interview with the Scene, Clement actually tried to make the case that Dean, as Metro public defender in the ’90s, should have given accused criminals something less than his best efforts. Who needs the Bill of Rights, anyway? The good news? There may not be an office left he hasn’t run for.

The Full ConteTennessee first lady Andrea Conte needs to get over herself. She’s getting ready to chop down stately oak trees and dig a gigantic hole in the front yard of the governor’s mansion to build an underground banquet hall. Her neighbors, worried about additional traffic in their bucolic little part of town—not to mention the possibility of dynamite blasting during construction—are up in arms, but Conte seems bent on having her way. Neighbors point out the Bredesens don’t live in the mansion and therefore won’t have to endure the dust and noise of the great excavation. Note to the first lady: Chuck E. Cheese rents great party rooms.

And Speaking of Giant Rats...Got a black hood and an ax? Loan them to state Correction Commissioner George Little, who did his best to return Tennessee to ye good olde days of drawing and quartering the condemned in the village square. With the blessing of the governor’s office, Little torpedoed the recommendations of a committee appointed to review the state’s methods of carrying out lethal injections. His reasoning? He was afraid the change, which was intended to help ensure more humane executions, might prompt new legal reviews and slow the pace of state-sanctioned death in Tennessee. Later, also apparently to avoid snags in the execution schedule, Little tried to mislead a federal judge about much of what had happened. Good thing that’s not a capital offense.

The Thin Red LineweaverThe thing about being juvenile court clerk is, well, you gotta do more than show up at any rubber-chicken dinner that has more than one voter—which, in all fairness, is Vic Lineweaver’s forte. But there’s also that niggly “clerk” part of the job—you know, keeping files and shit. And in this regard, the mighty Vic proved he could lose a bowling ball in a manila envelope. By August, his chronic incompetence had become such a butt-ache that his colleague, juvenile Judge Betty Adams Green, actually had him arrested for failing to produce records the court had requested. He was booked in Metro’s jail for the offense, which, um, will go down in his permanent record. And get lost with all the others.

Aporkalypse NowTennessee lawmakers grandstanded against pork-barrel spending this year, but that didn’t stop them from tossing $20 million in taxpayer cash into a pot for so-called “community enhancement grants.” Right—and bribes are “facilitation enhancement grants.” Only a few legislators refrained from staking claims to the money. “I’m not going to call any names, but they’re all lined up,” says Secretary of State Riley Darnell, who’s parceling out the cash. “The folks who railed against it the most are right in there with the rest of them.” Soo-eeee!

WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ BONERS!

As resentment of illegal immigrants reaches an election-year fever pitch, it’s worth pausing to recognize those hombres locos who are working to make the world a more divisive place.

Broken EnglishOh, Eric Crafton, why did you do it? Your “English only” amendment in Metro Council this year was the legislative equivalent of the Maginot line: a useless, expensive monument to irrelevance. “This bill says we’ll simply do the governmental business in English,” you told us at the time. But guess what? Metro government already does business in English! Why not make it a law for humans to breathe oxygen, or dogs to have tails? This being the council, though, the damn thing passed—and we all had to slog through months of hot air, nationwide scorn, and hand-wringing from both sides until the bill mercifully died with a slash of the mayor’s pen. Gracias, muchacho—por nada.