Confederacy of Dunces

This week’s winner

Sen. Doug Henry, an 81-year-old Nashville Democrat, explaining to the state Senate his votes surrounding amendments to the abortion resolution: “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it’s simply, ‘Let’s don’t go forward with this act.’ ”

Juvenile (clerk) behavior

A devastating WSMV-Channel 4 “I-Team” story last week found, among other things, that Juvenile Court Clerk Vic Lineweaver, who was arrested six months ago for repeatedly failing to produce court documents, doesn’t seem appropriately chastened. Reporter Jeremy Finley and a crew followed Lineweaver over a period of seven randomly chosen week days, discovering that he showed up for work only about half the time. At one point, the crew filmed a pasty-white, chicken-legged Lineweaver decked out in a bathrobe and fetching his mail at 2:45 in the afternoon. From his cell phone, Finley calls Lineweaver. “Did I catch you at a lunch or something?” Finley asks. “Me, no. I’m meeting about this grant,” Lineweaver says. “Let’s be clear. When I called you, you told me you were in a meeting, but we just saw you in your bathrobe at home,” Finley says. “I believe you, and I don’t recollect that, Jeremy. I really don’t, and I apologize,” Lineweaver said. The piece—and a follow the next day in which Lineweaver requested a chance to redeem himself—was low-hanging but very sweet fruit. TV news hasn’t been this good since Phil Williams discovered former County Clerk Bill Covington’s afternoon beer runs.

Long overdue prescription

A note to Tennessee doctors: Having sex with underage patients won’t get you in much trouble, but false advertising might. Just ask Dr. Richard Feldman, who had his medical license revoked last week for a year because he promoted and prescribed a questionable weight loss technique. The treatment is called “mesotherapy” and involves injecting a cocktail of medications, vitamins and supplements into the skin of obese patients. According to claims on Feldman’s website, the injections “dissolve fat” at the rate of “one pound of fat per week…equal to four sticks of butter!”

The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners—which regulates medical licenses—found such claims fraudulent, temporarily revoked Feldman’s license and fined him $41,300. This is not the first time that Feldman has run afoul of the medical board. The doctor has been disciplined three times since 1998 for offenses ranging from sexually inappropriate behavior with patients—he had sex with a 17-year-old patient, according to medical board documents—to false advertising, though he’s never received much more than a slap on the wrist from the board. (The Ohio medical board yanked his license years ago.) These offenses and others, including a drunken melee at a Nashville eatery, have been chronicled in the Scene (“Dr. Feelbad,” Aug. 24, 2006; “Dr. Feel Worse,” Sept. 21, 2006; and “Birds of a Feather,” June 28, 2007).

As long as this suspension is enforced, Tennessee’s self-proclaimed “No. 1 Diet Doctor” may not find himself in these pages quite as much.

A short dance

Only two years after the Tennessee Waltz bribery scandal prompted a ban on most wining and dining of state lawmakers, guess what? They can’t take it anymore. The legislature’s joint Ethics Study Committee is plotting ways to return to the good ol’ days when lobbyists were forced to pay for lawmakers’ nightly boozing around Nashville.

House Majority Leader Gary Odom is leading the charge to roll back ethics laws, claiming illogically that the wining-and-dining ban cuts off lawmakers from hearing from constituents. Another House Democratic leader, Ulysses Jones, says he feels like a “space alien” because he actually has to pay his own way at times. Awwwww.

One proposal is to let the state’s hundreds of lobbyists spend $75 a night filling up the cocktail glasses of each legislator. That should keep Odom happy while he’s hearing the concerns of constituents.