Last Wednesday morning, hours before the state House was set to vote on the income tax, radio talk show host Steve Gill implored his listeners to protest outside the state Capitol. As quoted in The Tennessean, Gill encouraged his followers to “help us run the cockroaches back to their baseboards.”
In his “Equal Time” column Sunday, The Tennessean’s Tim Chavez compared House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh to a “despot.” He characterized the speaker’s efforts to keep the income tax proposal alive as “tyrannical,” and the actions of some of his Democratic colleagues to derail charter school legislation as “despicable.”
Arguably, Gill and Chavez are the two most talked-about local media people right now. Gill, especially, has been elevated to prominence by employing virulent and sometimes irresponsible anti-government rhetoric. Chavez, while not the kind of one-issue drumbeater Gill represents, is nevertheless hot on his heels. Gill and Chavez are smart, decent guys, and they have every right to use their platforms to oppose an income tax and ridicule the legislators who support it. In fact, that’s why the collective media are known as “the fourth estate.” But there’s danger in being a one-note wonder. And they walk on dangerous ground when they quite literally dehumanize those who think differently from them. (And that’s what you’re doing when you call people “cockroaches.”)
But even in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when we’re supposed to show renewed faith in our public institutions, anti-government journalism seems to be popular fare in Nashville.
Perhaps the third most prominent journalist in town is Phil Williams, WTVF-Channel 5’s investigative reporter. Over the last six months, Williams has earned winning ratings for his station by mercilessly portraying public officials and employees as blundering idiots. It’s not that any of Williams’ reporting has been proven false, but his talent seems somewhat wasted on what are too often small-stakes government targets.
Chavez, Gill and Williams should stroll to the downtown branch of the Metro Public Library and pick up a copy of Paradise Screwed, a collection of columns from the Miami Herald’s Carl Hiassen. A gifted journalist and best-selling author, Hiassen can skewer politicians with wit and skill. But he also takes on the private sector, gleefully exposing the ravenous commercial fishing industry, greedy real estate developers and corporate polluters. Upon reading Hiassen’s work, you realize that government is no more or no less just, efficient or prudent than many of the large controlling institutions in the private sector.
That’s a perspective we’re missing.
Scene and gone
Catherine Darnell, who for a quarter of a century has covered the city’s catty social scene for The Tennessean, is leaving the paper June 7, the day before what would have been her 24th Swan Ball and on the 25th anniversary of her hire.
“Now they are asking me for advice,” she jokes about the organizers of the snooty Belle Meade fundraiser. “I have been to more Swan Balls than the Swan Ball chairwoman.”
Married Sunday to Jeff Adamson, Darnell has a new home in Hickman County. “We live too far for me to commute,” she says. “I’m also leaving because I can. Twenty-five years is a long time, and I want to leave with dignity.”
Darnell and Adamson, who works at Saturn in Spring Hill, met through an e-mail exchange following one of her columns.
“I wrote something about Fairview and how when I grew up, I wanted to have a screen door slap me in the butt,” she says. “He e-mailed me, and we kept up the correspondence. He had been looking for an excuse to e-mail for a long time.”
One of the paper’s more popular writers, Darnell wrote the juicy “Scene & Heard” social column for nearly 10 years before ditching it to write about gardening. In her decade-long reign as the city’s top disseminator of idle gossip, Darnell angered more than her share of uptight socialites, but her playful sense of humor endeared her to everyone else whose party invitation was lost in the mail.
Sex sells
Someone liked the recent sight of a slim and sexy Chely Wright on the cover of the Scene so much that he made a poster of it. Then the misguided entrepreneur posted the tantalizing image for sale on e-Bay. Problem is, the seller didn’t own the rights to the image. (They belong to photographer Dean Dixon.)
The perpetrator pulled the item off e-Bay when Wright’s publicist sent an electronic nasty gram. But if Wright’s musical career goes the way of Mindy McCready’s, she probably could do quite well as a model. Before the item was pulled, the high bid for the poster stood at $172.
Correction
Last week, this column characterized WTVF-Channel 5 as Nashville’s second-oldest television station. In fact, WKRN-Channel 2 (formerly WSIX-Channel 8) came on the air in November l953, eight months earlier than Channel 5. The city’s oldest station, WSMV-Channel 4, started broadcasting in l950.
Thanks to an alert reader for pointing out the mistake.
—Henry Walker
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