Boner Awards
By the Committee of Inbreds • Illustrations by Kyle T. Webster
Every December, as we have for the past 17 years, we look back on the past 12 months and think, “It wasn’t really that bad a year, was it?” We drift off to sleep, secure in the knowledge that crime is down, civility rules and our public officials are hard at work protecting the common good.
And then we wake up and realize it’s Boner time.
Oh yes: as Frank Sinatra sang, it was a very good year. It was a very good year—for crooked pols with their hands in the till, us footing the bill, getting kicked in the grill. (Frank would’ve sung it better.) Even so, despite a sting operation that stung at least one major Boner benefactor—we’ll spare you the suspense; look at the cover—the surprise was that there was even more to lament about 2005 than Operation Tennessee Waltz. Inside, you’ll find the Boner Awards, our yearly fools’ parade of the faces, places and disgraces we come to bury, not to praise. Turn the page, dear reader, and console yourself with this thought: at least it’s not a double issue.
And now, we whip out the Boners. >>>
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Have You Driven a Boner Lately?
Hail, hail state Sen. John Ford, a Boner for life, who is to this annual issue what Ashley Judd is to “Brad About You.” In 2005, though, the Bluff City’s blustery nuisance set the bar for future Boners almost impossibly high, all but declaring himself King Boner and swatting at biplanes from atop the state Capitol. Forget the firearms, forget the speeding tickets and assault charges, forget the squabbling wives and mistresses. Forget the many cronies and relatives on the public payroll. Forget the time he criticized an ethics bill designed to stop state board members and commissioners from awarding public contracts to their relatives. (As Ford memorably argued, “I’ve got so many brothers and sisters, they won’t be able to do anything.”) This year, the Scarface of the State Senate declared, “Say hello to my little Boners!”—and aimed a bazooka at each foot.
So He Changed His Name to John Hitler.
In May, Ford was the highest-profile casualty of Operation Tennessee Waltz, an elaborate FBI sting operation that caught state senators and representatives (mostly Democrats) taking bribes from a recycling company, E-Cycle Management, to support favorable legislation. Unfortunately for Ford—and for Sens. Ward Crutchfield and Kathleen Inez Bowers, former Sen. Roscoe Dixon, and Rep. Chris Newton—E-Cycle was actually run by Feds targeting crooked lawmakers. Said Ford, in a letter of resignation to the Senate, “I plan to spend the rest of my time with my family clearing my name.”
Who Says You Can’t Buy a Ford For $10,000?
Regrettably, Ford faces a minor obstacle to clearing his good name. At a court hearing in May, the FBI produced a black-and-white videotape that showed an undercover agent counting out $10,000 in $100 bills—which Ford stuffs in his back pocket on camera.
Ford Tough.
Ever the ethicist, Ford raised concerns in February about possible FBI investigations to Tim Willis, a family friend and Memphis political operative who represented E-Cycle. “Well, let me ask you a question. You ain’t workin’ for none of the motherfuckers,” he asked Willis, to his friend’s nervous amusement. “If you are, just tell me. I got a gun. I’ll just shoot you dead.” Unfortunately for Ford, Willis was indeed working for the motherfuckers—who had wired him as a confidential informant and caught the conversation on tape. Ford’s lawyer claimed it was “jovial conversation.” Ford’s charges escalated to threatening a witness.
Father of the Bribe.
Almost better than Tennessee Waltz was the ongoing drama of Ford’s child-support hassles, where the embattled senator displayed the titanium testicles that are his trademark. First, Dana Smith, the mother of Ford’s 10-year-old daughter out of wedlock, sued him for an increase in court-ordered child support. Ford asked to pay less than requested, citing a new state law that offers relief for people with multiple families—people like, say, a Democratic state senator from Memphis who claims to have two separate households with unmarried mothers. Who wrote this law? You guessed it: John Ford. Despite this heartwarming show of parental responsibility, the court nearly quadrupled Ford’s payments. Attempting to make lemonade from his latest truckload of citrus, Ford then asked to have the payments reduced because he was going to suffer a six-figure loss of income this year—from the public scandal that ended Ford’s cushy “consulting” deal with managed-care group Doral Dental.
The Ties That Bind Your Relatives Over to the Grand Jury.
After prolonging the inevitable announcement of his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Congressman Harold Ford Jr. finally picked the right time in May. Too bad it turned out to be the day before his uncle, John Ford, was arrested for accepting bribes as part of Operation Tennessee Waltz. “I love my uncle, but I don’t understand what he’s accused of doing,” the younger Ford said, as reported in papers across the state. “If you could find a way to choose your family, you could market that and make millions.”
A Boner in Every Pot
It wasn’t even an election year, and still our public officials found ways to amuse, confuse and exasperate us—even those whose names weren’t Ford. Join us in saluting your other protectors of the Boner Bill of Rights.
It Was Pretty Easy to Tell Who Was Brain-Dead.
With the warm bedpan manner that has made him one of the most shameless and inept political opportunists on the national scene, Sen. Bill Frist, M.D., inserted himself into a controversy that hardly needed more armchair analysts. In the matter of Terri Schiavo—the comatose Florida woman who became the center of a political fight between religious conservatives and right-to-die advocates—the Senate’s Doogie Howser weighed in with his own expert opinion: Schiavo did not seem to be in a persistent vegetative state. This came after a thorough personal examination, right? “I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office,” Frist announced, to the astonishment of doctors who had seen Schiavo in person. “She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.” To recap: Frist—whose specialty is cardiology, not neurology—made a life-or-death diagnosis on the kind of scrutiny Blockbuster renters use to find Jessica Rabbit’s nether regions on the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? DVD. Physician, fuck thyself.
The Bitterest Phil.
When it comes to public-relations strategies, taking away health insurance from the working poor and then belittling them in the national news media isn’t regarded as one of the best. Gov. Phil Bredesen cooled some of that presidential ardor earlier this year as the TennCare debacle left him looking less like a realist than a remote bureaucrat who can only relate to constituents on an abacus. In one low point, Chilly Phil used his lofty perch to attack TennCare enrollee and activist Lori Smith in a January Washington Post article. “Unprompted,” the story reads, Bredesen, in an interview, “denigrated Smith, and many of the 30,000 TennCare clients deemed ‘uninsurable,’ for making ‘lifestyle choices’ to work for small businesses that do not offer insurance rather than finding jobs with the state or large companies that do.” (Right, like Wal-Mart.) Told of his remarks, Smith cried.
Blogging for Dummies.
When state Rep. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville started his own blog, he intended to give the public a behind-the-scenes look at Capitol Hill shenanigans from the point of view of a conservative Republican backbencher. Unfortunately, his inarticulate cyberscribblings were awash with embarrassing misspellings, grammatical gaffes and annoying non sequiturs, telling the world a lot more about Campfield’s deficiencies than those of his legislative colleagues. For example, of colleague John Ford, Campfield wrote: “It makes you wonder what our lieutenant governmor [sic] was thinking when he put him in charge of the committees he is in charge of. Possibly he was lost in the cosmos with which he so in tune [sic].” Campfield briefly served as the laughingstock of the Tennessee blogosphere, but he at least showed some good humor in his response to critics, as quoted on the Myopic Zeal blog: “To evary bodey who rote tanks fer yer inpoot ill tri harder next tim.”
Such as Our New Ethics Chairman, John Ford.
Former Gov. Don Sundquist was a good Republican soldier for over two decades. So it’s easy to understand why a GOP White House would want to reward “Sunny” with a crisp little cracklin’ from the pork barrel. But both Republican and Democratic jaws dropped around the state when the Bush Administration named Sundquist—yes, the man who shepherded Tennessee’s TennCare program from just bad to really, really, let’s-steer-the-ship-toward-the- iceberg bad during his eight-year tenure—to the chairmanship of a federal commission charged with reforming Medicaid. As an editorial in The Tennessean put it when the appointment was announced, the commission’s “best hope now is that Sundquist will convene the meetings, but leave the talking to others.”
The Improvement to Channel 3: Priceless.
Granted, the urge to silence the Metro Council strikes us often, but we fight it. Just when you thought the city’s legislative body had plumbed the darkest depths of unprofessional behavior, however, a council prankster—likely a council member—came along and disabled a few members’ microphones, in the process breaking them. The cost to taxpayers? $144.
Crazy Like a Fox.
Lebanon Mayor Don Fox puzzled city folk and country constituents alike this year when he took to the radio airwaves to denounce the state legislature as a “maggot ball.” Whatever Fox meant by the colorful phrase, it wasn’t a compliment: Hizzoner was angered that the legislature would not shift local elections to let him extend his term in office by 13 months. After an outcry over the remark, Fox resigned his position as vice president of the Tennessee Municipal League. No problem: voters sided against the maggots, reelecting Fox to a fourth consecutive term in October.
Miller’s (Double) Crossing.
Republican state Sen. Jeff Miller may be an icky, slimy, sanctimonious creep by all accounts, but he deserves credit for stamina. At the same time the married Cleveland Republican was tub-thumping for a ban on same-sex marriage—to protect the sacred bond between man and woman—the blowhard was boinking a legislative staffer. That’s got to be a lot of work, but what’s the Miller motto? That’s right: live responsibly. (No, wait, that’s the Miller Beer motto.) Miller’s wife of 15 years was duly unimpressed. Filing for divorce in February, she called her husband “very hypocritical, fighting for the sanctity of marriage and not keeping his own.”
When Boners Attack
Mother and son share some quality time by plotting a convenience-store caper. A home invader ends up bound and gagged in his targets’ home. Crossville oncologist Young Moon gets indicted for allegedly giving patients partial doses of chemotherapy side-effect medications but billing for the full amount. Not even these folks could crack our roundup of the year’s least illustrious lawbreakers. Come out with your Boners up!
Dial M for Moron.
Two criminal masterminds in Church Hill pulled off the perfect Boner with a harebrained robbery attempt. Jason Anthony Arnold, 29, and James Keith Benton, 38, thought they had a foolproof scheme to swipe a refrigerator from a mobile-home dealership. Unfortunately, as the crew was about to discuss the plan in great detail, Arnold accidentally hit a button on the cell phone in his pocket that dialed 911. When operators answered, they listened for 45 minutes as the hapless Dr. Evils spelled out the where, when and how of the crime. When Arnold and Benton emerged with the refrigerator, they were stunned to find police mysteriously on the scene. They should have noticed the date: April Fool’s Day.
Dude, Where’s My Brain?
Three Centennial High School students were arrested after a videotape they turned in for a class project showed them shoplifting at two local stores and destroying a mailbox. The tape, which was submitted in an ecology class, revealed the three boys driving around and blasting loud music to demonstrate how to break Franklin’s noise ordinance—which they also read aloud at the end of the tape. In between, the video showed them stealing merchandise from two local stores and destroying a mailbox with a pole. Their teacher turned the tape over to school officials, who gave it to police. When he confronted the boys, said Franklin Detective J.P. Taylor, “I asked them what they were thinking and they said, ‘Ahh, man, we don’t know.’ They said they thought it would just be funny.”
Must Have Sharp Eyes, Quick Reflexes, Light Fingers.
Last winter, after some fishy inventories, the Parisian at CoolSprings Galleria started investigating the possibility that an employee was ripping off the store. In February, the thief was caught red-handed: Glenn “Doug” Webb, 27, who was nabbed at the employee’s entrance with cologne and women’s clothes. But there wasn’t a bonus for the store’s theft-prevention manager—since that person was Webb.
A Touch of Boner in the Night
Here’s where 2005 shows a little skin, gets a little raunchy, violates a few statutes. Hey, sailor, want a Boner?
The Kid Stays in the Teacher.
In a story that echoed the Mary Kay Letourneau case—in that the morning paper and local TV wouldn’t shut the hell up about it—Warren County PE teacher Pamela Rogers Turner, 27, was arrested on 28 sexual misconduct charges involving a 13-year-old boy at her school. Of course, the media attention had everything to do with serious allegations of statutory abuse, and nothing to do with the fact that Turner was a blond knockout who had been a Ms. Monday Nitro of World Championship Wrestling in 1997. For amusement, viewers counted how many times anchors and reporters felt compelled to point out—vainly—that the student was really a victim, not the envy of every guy in America with pubes.
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