Here we are, three-and-a-half decades after the inception of the Scene’s annual Boner Awards issue, and Nashville’s elected leaders, country stars and other public figures just keep topping themselves.
From a nude liquor heist to a lube-assisted handcuff escape, here’s our roundup of 2024’s most Boner Award-worthy small-time crime
Back in 1990, these annual anti-awards were named for single-term, scandal-plagued Nashville Mayor Bill Boner. Even so, Mayor Boner’s transgressions seem downright quaint compared to what lands in the Boner Awards nowadays. This year’s issue has it all: state leaders passing conspiratorial legislation about chemtrails and vaccinated vegetables; a scandal-plagued country star chucking furniture off the roof of a honky-tonk; U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles doing just about everything wrong.
Read on for a list of this year’s biggest screw-ups, compiled by the Scene’s editorial staff. See also: our petty-crime roundup, in which former staffer and current contributor J.R. Lind highlights some of the dopes and ding-a-lings arrested for Boner-worthy criminal behavior in 2024.
A Bill That Should Have Been Squashed
There’s certainly a human propensity to panic — ask Satan. One of the latest subjects of this tendency is vaccinations, especially in Tennessee. During this year’s legislative session, Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) tried to claim that the government could vaccinate a person against their will, through their vegetables. They’re vaccinating our vegetables! Cepicky’s conspiratorial legislation sought to prohibit the manufacture, sale or delivery of the hypothetical vaccinated foods without proper labeling. The labeling would require, however, that this is a scientific possibility. Oral vaccines are rare, and it’s simply not possible to infuse them into produce. Despite a committee room that sounded like a comedy club, the legislation ultimately passed.
The Tin Foil Hat Caucus
There are plenty of issues affecting the lives of Tennesseans that we’d love to see our state legislature take action on. “Chemtrails” and theoretical “geoengineering” are not high on that list. In this year’s session of the Tennessee General Assembly, a bill designed to ban intentional modification of the atmosphere was sponsored and pushed by Republicans in the state House and Senate. During discussion of the bill, some elected leaders referred to “chemtrails” — the subjects of long-debunked conspiracy theories involving top-secret toxins being sprayed in the atmosphere for malevolent purposes. “If you look up — one day, it’ll be clear,” said Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) at a March hearing. “The next day they will look like some angels have been playing tic-tac-toe. They’re everywhere. I’ve got pictures on my phone with X’s right over my house.” Despite making national (and international) headlines and being labeled “nonsense” by environmental experts, the legislation passed easily in both chambers.
A Different Breed
When a fellow lawmaker is trying to prohibit marriage between first cousins, sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all. Republican state Rep. Gino Bulso of Brentwood learned this lesson in a committee hearing when he very nearly let the completely settled bill pass his desk without his additional comments. Instead, Bulso — like his grandparents before him — submitted to a burning urge, telling his own inbred family history despite the adverse consequences. No one asked, but Bulso shared anyway, informing colleagues that he — the grandchild of first cousins — now stood with them in striking the same statute his grandparents married under.
Reading Comprehension
Official state books are, in theory, a great way to encourage reading across Tennessee. But state Rep. Gino Bulso (who else?!) attempting to put that theory into practice was another situation entirely — especially since some of the texts he proposed in House Bill 1828 aren’t even books. Many of them also don’t have anything to do with Tennessee. In his efforts to get the Bible established as Tennessee’s state book, Bulso suggested that and another nine texts, including George Washington’s “Farewell Address” (not a book). One silver lining to this hot-mess express? America’s sweetheart made the list, as Bulso included Dolly Parton’s children’s book A Coat of Many Colors. The legislation passed.
Gallery Games
At the beginning of the 2024 legislative session, state House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) decided — somewhat randomly — that each member would get one guest pass to allow an individual to sit in the west side of the House gallery while lawmakers conducted business. The east side remained open to the general public, but that didn’t seem to prevent confusion about the golden-ticket matter, as many members of the public were turned away. Sexton said it allowed for legislators’ visitors to get seats. What wasn’t explicitly stated: The tickets created a friendlier crowd for Sexton and his GOP colleagues, with Republicans controlling 75 of the House’s 99 tickets.
Put ’Em Up
Nashville’s public schools have been improving, and Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) wanted to recognize that, introducing a resolution honoring Metro Nashville Public Schools for achieving a glowing review of its post-pandemic recovery. But Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), who infamously said his goal was to throw the whole public school system “in the trash,” disagreed. The two almost came to blows on the House floor this spring after Cepicky moved to kill the resolution and called Nashville schools “shitty,” with their near-fisticuffs captured in an iconic series of photos by Tennessee Lookout’s John Partipilo. The civility police weep.
(Not the) Master of His Domain
If you search for Cosby, Tenn., rep and House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison on Google, you’ll get news about his role passing some of Tennessee’s stupidest bills, or that time he tried — and failed — to pull a referee’s pants down at a kids’ basketball game. But if you see a link to what appears to be his campaign site, jeremyfaison4tn.com, you’ll get a laundry list of his other misdeeds. Lesson one of the internet for any public figure is to own your domain before the trolls do. As the Tennessee Holler spotted, Faison even left the lapsed link in his Twitter bio for a stretch. Considering the fact that JeremyFaison.com also redirects to the wall of shame, it’s not clear what Faison will do for a web presence besides posting corny MAGA memes on his personal social media.
Unchained Weaponry
A bill requiring safe firearm storage was shot down in the Senate Judiciary Committee despite a botched live demo by chair Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga). Armed with bolt cutters, Gardenhire set out to prove how easy it was to slice through a cable securing a gun safe. But the cable wouldn’t budge, even with Gardenhire putting his weight into it. Despite the failure, he insisted a lock could be bypassed by a “professional” criminal. The cable put up a solid fight, but the bill didn’t survive.
Sign Me Up
To run for student council, a candidate sometimes needs 25 signatures from classmates to qualify for the ballot. The threshold is the same for our state legislature, and even our best-funded and most popular local representatives occasionally struggle to find just 25 local voters to sign their forms. Nashville Democratic Rep. Justin Jones — of Tennessee Three and MSNBC fame — seems to enjoy that struggle, as he turned in just 26 signatures to qualify for the ballot in his dark-blue district this year. His GOP opponent objected, and regulators found various issues with a number of the signatures, though not enough to boot him from the ballot. All this could have been avoided by turning in 50, but instead Jones threatened to force Democrats to launch a risky write-in campaign to save the left-wing seat. It wasn’t his first time flubbing the process, as an early Jones bid for Congress was derailed by deficient signatures. But he was outdone by a nearby Republican, as GOP candidate Jennifer Frensley Webb faced similar issues as she qualified for the ballot in a different Davidson County district. Webb went one step further, though: One of her petition signers confessed under oath to the felony of signing the document on behalf of a family member.
Kissing the Ring
Gov. Bill Lee continues to kiss the ring of once and future President Donald Trump — but he’s clearly not respected for it. Lee, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, was called a RINO — that’s “Republican in name only” — by Trump after the two endorsed different candidates for an East Tennessee state Senate seat. Lee supported incumbent Jon Lundberg (a proponent of his voucher legislation), while Trump threw his weight behind Bobby Harshbarger, an anti-voucher candidate and the son of Republican U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger. Just a few days later, Lee told reporters he still supported Trump, but he just has his “own style.” Even now, Lee continues to fall in line with outlandish Trump policies, like the abolition of the Department of Education. Give us a break, Bill.
Labor Pains
Gov. Bill Lee’s pitch to keep Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant union-free stalled out as more than 70 percent of employees voted for United Auto Workers representation. Lee and his Republican allies refused to call it a failure — but it sure wasn’t the “loss for workers” he claimed. Meanwhile, the president of UAW Local 1853 in Spring Hill suggested Lee might be sweating the South’s growing momentum for organizing workers.
Andy Crapp
Looking at his record since taking office, you might think Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles has been trying to make it onto the Boner Awards list. From false statements about his professional and educational background to unaccounted-for money meant for a children’s burial garden, civil penalty payments for multiple campaign finance violations and amended campaign finance reports, he’s certainly put in the work since being elected to Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District two years ago. In August — on the day after Ogles defeated his Republican primary challenger, Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston — the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Ogles’ office and seized his cellphone as part of an investigation into the congressman’s financial reporting. Ogles — nicknamed “Pinocchi-Ogles” by some — characterized the FBI’s investigation as a politically motivated attack on his campaign. But despite all the scandal, the former mayor of Maury County still went on to defeat Democratic challenger Maryam Abolfazli and secure reelection. Maybe this award ought to go to 5th Congressional District voters.
Put Down Your Pencils
Last year, Lizzette Reynolds stepped into her role as Tennessee education commissioner with lawmakers questioning her credentials. Six months in, the calls just got louder. There were some obvious red flags — like the fact that, as revealed by Democratic state Rep. Caleb Hemmer, her primary residence was in Texas — and some statute violations. Despite Gov. Bill Lee’s unwavering support, Reynolds, not qualified as an administrator or teacher, struggled to get around mandates that the commissioner be qualified to teach “at the highest level of education that she oversees.” She enrolled at UT-Martin for teaching credentials a little too quickly. She also signed forms saying she’d worked for the state for more than six months (she hadn’t) in seeking a tuition waiver. She ultimately repaid the taxpayer dollars months later amid damning Tennessean reports.
Dim Tim
At a Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City, Mo., in February, a mass shooter killed one woman and injured 22 people, including 11 children. Instead of offering the traditional “thoughts and prayers,” Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett of Knoxville shared a photo of a man whom he called an “illegal alien” and a “shooter.” Despite being briefly detained by police, that man (Denton Loudermill Jr. of Olathe, Kan.) was not one of the people who was involved or charged in the shooting. Loudermill was instead a parade attendee and a literal victim of the trauma of another mass shooting in America. Burchett later deleted his post and followed up with a statement saying he was incorrect in claiming that Loudermill was an “illegal alien.” The post still used a photo of Loudermill in reference to “one of the shooters.” Burchett blamed “incorrect news reports” for his false statement. Loudermill sued Burchett in a Kansas federal court, though the case was later thrown out due to what the judge argued was Burchett’s lack of a connection to the state. (Loudermill’s attorney plans to refile the suit in a Washington, D.C., federal court.) The Knoxville News Sentinel later reported that Burchett spent $20,000 of his 2024 campaign donations in lawyers fees over the suit.
Closed-’Dores Policy
Most reporters know not to put ourselves at the center of a story. That’s Journalism 101. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable — like when, on March 26, Scene reporter Eli Motycka was arrested by Vanderbilt University police while reporting on student protests regarding campus speech and Israel’s military invasion of Gaza. He was released from custody a few hours later and ultimately wasn’t charged with a crime (because he committed no crime, because he was doing his job), with Judicial Magistrate Timothy Lee not finding probable cause to hear charges against Motycka. Vanderbilt, at the time beset by ongoing student protests and criticism of Chancellor Daniel Diermeier (who wrote a crisis-management book in 2011), subsequently announced that the school had selected Nashville attorney Aubrey Harwell of Neal & Harwell to lead an independent review of the university’s response to the arrest. Harwell recommends in his 27-page report a clearer external media policy, better communication between police and administrators and advance warning before campus police make a trespassing arrest. All of that would be nice to see — as would an apology.
Psych Out
College-campus culture wars have inspired many difficult conversations across dinner tables, department meetings and dorm rooms. Thankfully, one absolute truth doesn’t get a lot of contrarians playing devil’s advocate: Nazis are bad. Austin Peay State University’s Logan Smith, hired as an assistant professor of psychological science and counseling over the summer, seemingly thought the Nazis had some good ideas, actually. Before and during his Ph.D. research, Smith ran popular social media channels dedicated to different categories of hating people, growing to a degree of folk prominence among the American far right. It all caught up with him this fall, when an anonymous anti-fascist group exposed the connections, setting off a short and successful campaign that got Smith out of APSU. Next time, maybe the job interview can include a few questions about extracurriculars.
In a School Zone
If you want to get from kindergarten to first grade, it’s a good idea to learn how to say you’re sorry. Somehow that lesson has evaded school director Amani Reed, who hopped among the nation’s most prestigious private schools before landing the top gig at University School of Nashville in 2022. In the past six months, Reed’s mishandling of sexual misconduct by a former English teacher has managed to turn alumni, teachers, parents and students against him. Within a few weeks of the new school year, students walked out of class in protest, and multiple teams of attorneys were conducting overlapping inquiries — all while parents cut monthly checks toward the $30,000 tuition bill.
Flying by the Seat …
When bro-country dunce Morgan Wallen isn’t packing arenas full of our nation’s tone-deaf citizens, he’s out doing bratty punk shit on Broadway. You know the story by now: He got drunk and threw a chair off the rooftop of Chief’s — an act that could have seriously injured someone. It landed near some cops, which you’d think would bother his more conservative fans, but his listeners shrugged it off. Boys (i.e., 31-year-old men) will be boys, we suppose. The Metro Council wasn’t so lenient, and denied a vertical sign for Wallen’s new honky-tonk — a move that probably doesn’t pass First Amendment muster but did send a message that many Nashvillians are not amused by Wallen acting like a drunk tourist.
Patriot Games
When a gaggle of Patriot Front white nationalist goons marched through downtown Nashville on July 6, they drew condemnation from government and community leaders. And according to The Tennessean, they also breached the contract for the rented U-Haul vehicles they traveled in. A U-Haul rep told the daily: “U-Haul is an inclusive company. Our customers reflect every walk of life — representing every demographic across every geographic area in the U.S. and Canada.” The Tennessean reported that U-Haul’s terms and conditions state that a “customer shall require passengers to ride only in the cab of the truck, pickup truck, and van or vehicle towing any trailer.” U-Haul vans are a common form of transportation for the hate group, which makes sense, because according to U-Haul’s website, their 26-foot trucks can move the contents of a three-bedroom apartment — or about three-dozen basement-dwelling incels.
‘Master Race’ Proponent Is No Mastermind
It takes a lot to earn the direct attention of the U.S. attorney general, but 24-year-old Skyler Robert Philippi of Columbia, Tenn., did just that in November when he allegedly planned and attempted to bomb a Nashville electrical substation as part of a white supremacist plot to throw the region into chaos. Luckily for all Nashvillians, and unbeknownst to him, Philippi was in cahoots with two Federal Bureau of Investigation informants who provided him with fake explosives. But he “believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a release. Philippi also allegedly planned to commit a mass shooting at a Columbia YMCA before moving on to bigger and bolder targets. If convicted, Philippi could face up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine for the charge of attempting to destroy an energy facility. He could also face up to life in prison and a $250,000 fine for the charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Billy Blue Jeans
For a brief moment, the hapless Tennessee Titans seemed to have found their quarterback of the future. That hope was short-lived. Will Levis, the mayo meister himself, became the laughingstock of the NFL early in the 2024 season, regularly turning what should have been routine plays into backbreaking, abstractly dumb turnovers, single-handedly losing a handful of games. The “generational” run of meme-worthy plays will be remembered long after Levis’ career is over.
OutDick
Clay Travis — the former lawyer and sportswriter turned right-wing TV and radio “personality” behind sports and politics website OutKick — could have an entry on this list every year. In 2024 alone, he called for Trump supporters to commit jury tampering, said WNBA star Caitlin Clark is lucky to be getting any salary at all because “no one cares about” women’s basketball, and sicced his racist man-child followers on ESPN reporter Mina Kimes after she praised vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s masculinity. It’s a bummer sharing a city with this doofus.
All Fans Are Welcome, Like It or Not
Nashville SC announced before the 2024 season a new “seated supporters section” at Geodis Park to give more people a chance to watch with the team’s most passionate fans. Ahead of the March 8 match against Inter Miami, however, Nashville SC announced visiting supporters were welcome in the “mistakenly labeled” section. It felt like a betrayal to die-hard fans, who consider themselves an integral part of the match day experience. Many didn’t buy the team’s “mistake” explanation and speculated the change was made to sell more tickets to fans who’d pay top dollar to see Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi live.
Plan Bey
Credit where it’s due: Queer and Black artists were not entirely ignored by the crew behind the 58th Annual CMA Awards. And voting members of the organization gave Morgan Wallen only one of the seven trophies he was nominated for (though it was the biggest one, Entertainer of the Year). But when superstar Beyoncé makes a massive country album, why pretend it doesn’t exist? Setting aside the truth in Luke Bryan’s quiet-part-out-loud comments about how Queen Bey needs to cozy up to the mainstream country “family” if she wants to be part of it, it’s a major miss even on the most commercially crass level to ignore her — along with the slew of Black artists who contributed to her album.
Police in Bio
OK, this one feels a little too obvious for the Boner Awards. Showing poor judgment, even by police standards, a Metro Nashville cop decided to appear in an OnlyFans video groping a woman during a fake traffic stop. All right, he didn’t just “appear.” He drove up in his own cruiser, in his actual uniform, while on the clock and — according to NewsChannel 5 — the video was his idea! The Metro Nashville Police Department had already been investigating Sean Herman by the time NewsChannel 5 broke the story in May, and eventually arrested him and suspended his certification in August.
Cord Cutting
There have been extensive layoffs across the corporate media world in 2024. Paramount Global’s belt-tightening ahead of a planned merger included wiping out years of online content from various assets including MTV News and Nashville-based Country Music Television. In September, Paramount laid off the overwhelming majority of staff at CMT, including longtime senior VP of music and talent Leslie Fram — in other words, a collective of people who’ve worked hard to make the channel better at representing the diversity of who makes and listens to country music. (Also, y’know, giving people a reason to pay attention to a cable network in the streaming era.) From a glance at the CMT website, the plan appears to be to keep the network going in a zombie state to, uh, help promote spinoffs of Yellowstone.
Oh Naur
Male revue Thunder From Down Under has begun its residency at the historic Woolworth Theatre, which was once the site of some of Nashville’s historic civil rights protests. But that questionable choice is not what this Boner Award is for. The Woolworth Theatre was slapped with accusations of breach of agreement and promissory fraud in court earlier this year because of the way they handled another group of hotties — Chippendales. Chippendales Holdings brought a lawsuit against the venue for flaking out on a pending contract, with theater reps claiming they’d received a “far superior proposal.” We’re staying tuned to see if these poor Aussies come close to completing their three-year contract in this cursed venue.
Trouble Jeopardy
Back in June, an episode of Jeopardy! honored Nashville by featuring our fair city as the answer to a clue. “For some authentic hot chicken in this city of its origin,” the clue read, “try 400 Degrees or Hattie B’s.” While we don’t necessarily mind being associated with hot chicken in general or Hattie B’s and 400 Degrees specifically, how do you mention Music City’s most famous dish and leave out the originator, Prince’s Hot Chicken? As the apocryphal story goes, after being served the intensely spicy dish by his romantic partner as punishment for his philandering, Thornton Prince perfected the recipe for hot chicken nearly a century ago. To folks outside of Nashville, leaving Prince’s out of the Jeopardy! clue was likely an unnoticeable error. But to those of us who live here — where Prince’s legendary great-niece André Prince Jeffries is still the face of not just Prince’s but also hot chicken at large — it was a scorching error.
Not En Pointe
Nashville Ballet has a long history of “creating a climate of respect that is supportive of all voices and celebrating diverse stories.” So imagine our surprise when artistic director/CEO Nick Mullikin recently appeared on Mike Huckabee’s TBN show to promote Nashville’s Nutcracker. It’s not as if the former Arkansas governor and recent Trump appointee has been shy about sharing his anti-LGBTQ views. (He once compared marriage equality to legalizing substance abuse, polygamy and incest.) The move might have curried some favor with the Huckster’s long-suffering “War on Christmas” pals, but we have a feeling it also landed Nick on quite a few naughty lists.
Pissed Off in Millersville
It’s rare anyone gives much thought to Millersville, a town of 6,000 straddling Robertson and Sumner counties, best known as a place to get gas if you can’t make it all the way to Cross Plains. Per capita, however, it may lead the state in political drama that sometimes cascades into surrealism. The city fires employees with Steinbrennerian regularity, which led to the police chief becoming city manager. That seems like standard-fare small-town cronyism. Except it led to the assistant police chief running the force, and instead of focusing on whatever Millersville police ought to be focusing on (which, for decades, was pulling over anyone going 36 in a 35), he chooses to engage in conspiracy theories involving foreign adversaries, mortgage fraud and child sex trafficking — theories so febrile and disjointed even 8chan is like “bruh.” It’s all very confusing, which is probably the point, but at some point, the assistant chief drew the attention of the TBI, which raided his home. In a social media video, he accused agents of peeing in his bathtub and tracking urine through his house, which he said was some kind of coded message about “piss on you, America.” In fact, the only pee left behind was from the assistant chief’s dog, who — frightened by the commotion — let loose in the tub before an agent kindly took him outside to finish. Maybe the dog, a husky mix, was one of them foreign adversaries.
Fall Before the Pride
Some two years after Murfreesboro City Manager Craig Tindall raised Cain over BoroPride’s attempt to host an LGBTQ Pride festival, the city agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a federal lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union. That money went to the Tennessee Equality Project, which “advocates for the equal rights of LGBTQ people in Tennessee,” and organizes the BoroPride Festival. The settlement agreement also repealed a city ordinance aimed at banning drag performances from happening on public property and meant that the city would accept any future event permit applications from the group, which successfully held its 2023 festival months later at Murfreesboro’s Miller Coliseum.
Google It
If you do some online research on Freedom Valley, a few results will come up — including an adults-only campground in Wisconsin, and another nudist-oriented campground in Ohio. While the name evokes adults-only retreats in the minds of some, the Clarksville-Montgomery County Board of Education thought, “What a nice name for an elementary school!” The name Freedom Valley Elementary was pitched as a patriotic nod to the area’s Fort Campbell history, and it was initially the board’s favorite out of a list of 40 options. But ultimately, after a bit of light research, the name was rejected. As reported by Clarksville Now, one school board member said, “If you want to know why we oppose this name, go out and do your research.”
Money Pit
This year’s sinkhole in the Gulch is probably second only to the Tower of Babel in terms of heavy-handed construction metaphors. The ongoing build of a fancy condo complex had already obstructed traffic and annoyed neighboring businesses, and in January, as workers dug trenches for utility lines, the road collapsed. (Fortunately no one was injured.) As The Tennessean reported, it wasn’t the first time Yates Construction, the company overseeing the site, had received stop-work orders, but it was maybe the most visually dramatic of the stoppages. While a growing Nashville needs to build, these haphazard construction sites — aimed at wealthy out-of-towners — only highlight how some developers will happily make life worse for everyday Nashvillians in pursuit of profit.
You Don’t Want the Smoke
At Roy Meat Service, you can choose your soda and you can choose your sides, but you can’t choose your neighbors. January will mark almost two years since a new neighbor filed a lawsuit against the beloved meat-slinging corner store for the fumes billowed by its smoker — and the Scene can’t remember a worse-picked fight. Social media caught wind of the suit about a year after it was filed, and Jeff and Christie Roy have raised more than $45,000 to cover legal fees and reported a spike in business since they became the heroes of their own East Nashville folk tale. Their litigious neighbor — the owner of this particular Boner — has apparently gone silent, and according to The Tennessean, Roy bought a second smoker to keep up with demand.
Brainworms on Parade
In May, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for a “Night of Country and Comedy” — where he praised the power of laughter but talked no policy in his approximately 10 minutes of stage time. Minutes before showtime, a spokesperson for Kennedy told reporters that the longshot candidate would not attend the event due to a “weather/family emergency” in Florida. That story quickly changed when a performer informed the crowd that Kennedy would be late due to a family emergency. The show started more than half an hour after its advertised start time, and RFK Jr. took the stage just before 11 p.m. — after the crowd was warmed up by some of the … brightest and funniest comedians of our time, including accused rapist Russell Brand and Jim Breuer, who went from being a Saturday Night Live cast member to being a darling of conspiracy-obsessed Christian nationalists. The lack of policy talk (or interaction with the non-ticket-holding public, or with local reporters) wasn’t an issue for RFK Jr. fans. And hey, he’ll have plenty of time to talk policy (and potentially damage America’s public health initiatives) if he’s confirmed as President-Elect Donald Trump’s next Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
Grants Tomb
Nashville’s art world is generally a fairly Boner-less arena. But whenever government funding is involved, Boner Awards are sure to follow. Such was the case with the Metro Arts Commission, whose botched 2024 grants process involved a tug-of-war between institutions and individuals that unfolded like a convoluted soap opera. The commission started the year with what seemed like an unfortunate enough Boner Award — it could barely retain enough members to make a quorum. A tumultuous and brief tenure from the commission’s director and a $3 million fund set aside by Nashville to handle Metro Arts’ issues left everyone — even submitters to our annual “You Are So Nashville If …” competition — confused. Submitted reader Trent Hanner: “After multiple explanations and podcasts, you still don’t understand what happened at Metro Arts.”
Choose How You Move On, Emily
Former Metro Councilmember Emily Evans made hating public transportation her whole personality this year. In addition to whining on social media, she founded the lethargic and ineffective Committee to Stop an Unfair Tax. She also floated strange ideas she said were just jokes in a story by the Nashville Banner: saying there’s an “assault” on drivers, suggesting the city pay for Uber rides and conjecturing that Elon Musk could build a tunnel to the airport. The referendum won big at the polls despite Evans’ … uh, imaginative messaging. In a final act of desperation, Evans and the Committee to Stop an Unfair Tax are suing the city to stop the referendum — which the city’s legal director calls “a nuisance.”
