The name of the Scene’s annual Boner Awards isn’t just a sophomoric joke, it may surprise some new Nashvillians to learn. It is that, of course, but the name also honors (such as it is) a former mayor whose dalliances were even more embarrassing than that of his most recently deposed successor.
Bill Boner was born, appropriately enough, on Valentine’s Day 1945. A star basketball player at East High and later the hoops coach at Trevecca, he entered Nashville politics when the most important requirement to do so was “being born east of the river.” He served nearly a decade in Congress (winning his first race because his predecessor suffered a massive stroke just days before the withdrawal deadline and the rest of the primary challengers dropped out in deference to the circumstance) before coming back to run for Metro mayor in 1987 — in part as a way to avoid a pending investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Boner’s campaign was successful largely because of the aforementioned geographic accident of birth, as he won a runoff against a heretofore unknown challenger, the suspiciously Northern-sounding in-mover Phil Bredesen.
Boner’s tenure was relatively ho-hum until he started galavanting around town with a woman-not-his-wife, an aspiring country music singer named Traci Peel, who once told a Nashville Banner reporter that the mayor (who was married to his third wife at the time) could sustain his passion for seven hours. Peel and Boner later appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, where Boner accompanied his mistress on harmonica while she sang “Rocky Top,” as the duo often did at honky-tonks in their hometown. The spectacle — on national television — caused most of Nashville to cringe in collective mortification.
While the parallels may seem obvious between Boner and a certain recent successor also brought low by extramarital dalliances (especially considering the fact that Boner was also reported to have had an affair with a bodyguard during his tenure), there are some obvious differences. Barry had the good sense to keep her affair a secret for as long as she could and the good manners to at least seem embarrassed by it, proprieties that never seemed to occur to Boner. And though she had insisted she wouldn’t, eventually she resigned. Boner never did, though he did not seek re-election, a move that more or less euthanized the East Nashville political machine that had propelled him to office. After Boner, Nashville wouldn’t even elect a native — from either side of the river — as mayor until, of course, the current holder of the office, David Briley.
And so it is in the grand tradition of royal screw-ups established so skillfully by Mayor Boner that we present to you our annual Boner Awards. Read on for a list of this year’s biggest blunders — boners so bad that no other name will do.
Mayor of Bonerville
Kid Rock may be doing his best to ruin Christmas, but there’s no doubt that the grand marshal of this year’s Boner Parade is former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry. Herzonner’s scandal and subsequent resignation are so obviously Boner Award-worthy that we’re even declining to use all the boner jokes we really want to make here. The facts, if you’ve forgotten: After admitting to a sexual affair with the head of her security detail, police Sgt. Rob Forrest, Barry tried to weather the storm and stay in office. The result? A drip-drip-drip of details that included graveyard trysts and questions about every trip the two went on together, including some time they spent alone, like a few days in Greece, among other things. Barry eventually resigned after pleading guilty to theft (because the affair took place in part on government time). It’s a downfall worthy of being mentioned alongside this issue’s infamous namesake.
The Wrong Boneyard
An important component of a clandestine affair — one might even point out that it’s 50 percent of the concept — is keeping the thing hidden. When Mayor Megan Barry wanted to spend some quality time with her lover, she inexplicably picked the city cemetery — one of the flattest spots in town, surrounded by a low wall that people in passing cars can easily see over, and bordered by businesses with security cameras.
Boner decision.
If she’d taken the extra five minutes to drive over to Mt. Olivet Cemetery, she would have found herself a graveyard full of hills and nooks and crannies, most of which are completely hidden from view. You get down in that low spot by Captain Ryman’s grave, and we guarantee no one in a neighboring business is going to see you and squeal.
Bodyguard Blunders
The Boner Awards were created for moments like Megan Barry’s affair with her bodyguard, Sgt. Rob Forrest. But perhaps the most award-worthy moment of the entire scandal belongs not to the ousted mayor, but rather to Forrest. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Forrest took photos of a nude woman, believed to be Barry, on his government-issued phone while on the clock traveling with the mayor, emailed the photos to his government email account and then deleted them. Barry’s attorney issued a forceful statement denying that the mayor knew about the photos, but Forrest’s digital breadcrumbs would play a role in Barry’s eventual resignation and plea deal.
DelRossi Disruption
The race for vice mayor was mostly uneventful. Metro Council members Jim Shulman (the ultimate winner) and Sheri Weiner respectfully and quietly campaigned for the seat left vacant by Mayor David Briley. But one part of the election was not so civil: outsider candidate Matt DelRossi’s campaign. He was forced to apologize for a cruel Facebook comment about Megan Barry’s deceased son, he was charged with violating an ex-girlfriend’s protective order in the middle of the campaign, and he posted bizarre videos of a rambling public tirade against another political candidate, Metro Council member and state House contender Jason Potts. And yet somehow after all that, DelRossi managed to scrounge together enough votes to force a runoff between Weiner and Shulman, costing taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars. DelRossi pulled off an impressive feat this year: earning a Boner while facing off against someone literally named Weiner.
Only the Lone Lee
After reading the accusations against Lee Beaman in his divorce proceedings — which included allegations that he cavorted with prostitutes, emotionally abused his wife and watched porn while in the same room with his kids — we can’t help but wonder if Beaman thinks morality works on the indulgence principle. Like, does he think that if he pours money into conservative causes such as opposing gay marriage or abortion, he’s buying himself some wiggle room that makes it OK for him to force his wife to watch videos of him with sex workers? (Allegedly.) Pope Boniface IX didn’t buy that argument in 1392, and no one’s buying it now. If you don’t value your morals enough to live by them, they’re not worth imposing on others.
Falafel Kerfuffle
Karl Dean and Bill Lee’s mostly courteous governor’s race was interrupted late in the campaign after one of the state troopers guarding the candidates was removed from his post for divulging information about Dean to Lee’s team. According to an internal investigation, the trooper let slip that Dean would be attending a “Muslim event” in Knoxville, and either Lee himself or one of his aides “jokingly” asked if they could get a photo of their Democratic opponent at the event. Though Lee’s campaign was quick to say the candidate did not remember the supposed joke, the Republican reached out to Muslim groups anyway. And despite the campaign’s implication that Dean’s appearance at a so-called “Muslim event” would somehow help Lee politically, it was a simple meet-and-greet at Yassin’s Falafel House, a Knoxville favorite that Lee would weeks later celebrate upon the restaurant being named the Nicest Place in America by Reader’s Digest.
Phil the Burn
Phil Bredesen’s senatorial campaign relied heavily on him trying to convince voters that he is an independent thinker, someone who could make difficult decisions that might put him on the outs with his own party. But there’s a fine line between “independent” and “idiot,” and Bredesen threw himself across it repeatedly when he issued a statement saying he would have voted to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and then doubled down on it when he faced backlash. The problem wasn’t just his support of Kavanaugh. It was how that could be reconciled with his praise of Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, whom Bredesen called a heroine.
What? Both things can’t be true. If Ford is a hero, that means you believe she did something worthy of the word — that she was bravely speaking the truth, even though she knew it was going to cost her dearly. In which case, how do you take the side of the person who put Ford in the position to need to be that brave? But if Bredesen felt no hesitation in voting for Kavanaugh, it would have to be either because he doesn’t believe that what Kavanaugh did to Ford was that big a deal (in which case, she wouldn’t be a hero to speak out about it), or he doesn’t believe that Kavanaugh did the things Ford accused him of — in which case, again, her testimony doesn’t make her brave. It would make her either deluded or a liar.
Bredesen’s attempt to have it both ways cost him liberal support and didn’t gain him any conservative support. It was a stupid, needless self-own.
Unhinged Left
Phil Bredesen’s Democratic Senate campaign ended up looking flaccid as the results came in on election night. But the real Boner was the Republican response to Jason Isbell and Ben Folds performing at a Bredesen rally. The National Republican Senatorial Committee blasted out a press release calling the two songwriters members of the “unhinged left.” In our estimation, both Isbell and Folds are badasses in their own way, but “unhinged”? Recall that Isbell famously sobered up ahead of his recent run of success, and Folds, a pop-rock pianist, led the effort to save local landmark RCA Studio A. Also, you know, they’re not spewing racist invective at their audiences. As Isbell put it at the eventual rally, these two sound “hinged as hell” to us.
You Too?
As theaters, film studios, media companies and producers reckoned with the cultural tidal wave that was the #MeToo movement, our very own Nashville Film Festival screened the 50-year-old classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby back in May. What’s more, they used the iconic image of Mia Farrow with her eyes wild with terror on everything from ads to programs to volunteer T-shirts to the throw pillows in the VIP tent. You don’t have to be a cinephile to know that the film’s auteur, Roman Polanski, was convicted of statutory rape in 1978, ultimately fleeing the country. (The details — sorry, we won’t spare you — include raping a 13-year-old girl vaginally, orally and anally. It’s too sick for a Boner joke, people.) The festival’s artistic director told the Scene that in light of #MeToo, he hoped the film and imagery would provide an opportunity for people to talk about abuse in Hollywood. But no such opportunity was advertised, and attendees had to look no further than the screen-printed tote bags to gauge the tone-deaf quality of the fest. It raises the question: How broken is our moral compass when we can’t turn our backs on a convicted child rapist who fled punishment? It’s enough to break your brain.
Kid Rock It Up and Down Your Block
This year Nashville got a new mayor. The Predators finished first in their division. Local grassroots activists managed to get civilian oversight of the police. James Shaw Jr. stopped a mass shooter at a Waffle House. The city is not short on people who would have made great grand marshals for the annual Piedmont Natural Gas Nashville Christmas Parade.
Instead, the parade organizers went with the John Rich of the North — human pedal tavern Kid Rock. Perhaps best known nationally as a rich-from-birth suburban Detroit white guy who made a career out of performing music invented and perfected by poor black people (hip-hop) before switching to music invented and perfected by poor white people (country), Rock is famous locally for getting arrested for fighting with a DJ at a strip club. Even though he’s from Michigan, a state that lost 15,000 Union soldiers in the Civil War, he used to wield the Confederate battle flag as a stage prop. And he didn’t take his hat off inside the White House when he went to visit his buddy, President Trump.
Thus began a great game of Chicken — in which we all waited to see if Kid Rock could make it from the announcement of his grand marshalcy to the actual parade without embarrassing himself or the city. Nope. He could not. The day before the parade, he went on national TV and called Joy Behar a bitch, people began dropping out of the parade, and organizers had to scramble to see if the aforementioned Shaw could step in and save the event. Lower Broad barkeep Steve Smith (owner of Tootsie’s and Honky Tonk Central, among others) was so mad about Mr. Rock’s ouster that he even threatened, before ultimately folding, to sue in order to recoup his parade-related donation to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. In the end, everyone but Shaw ended up with egg on their faces.
Give the Dog (Spot) a Bone
We can relate to the desire to remove all negative commentary about one’s professional performance from the internet, and we’re not here to argue that the East Nashville Facebook Group is a good place. But The Dog Spot more than earned this award when it sued two members of the aforementioned viper pit for posting about the alleged mistreatment and death of dogs at the doggie daycare. It turned out that it wasn’t the first time the business had gone after former customers for saying unkind things on the internet about their experience. And amazingly, at the same time The Dog Spot was suing two people for talking about dogs dying while in their care, the company was being sued over a dog dying while in their care. Woof.
Where Will the Censorship End?
What do you get when you cross the epic poems of ancient Greece with the fear-mongering tactics of the Tennessee GOP? This year, the official Twitter account of the Tennessee Republican Party gets a tricky Boner — it’s so bad that it’s actually great. Days before the November election, @TNGOP put then-senatorial candidate Phil Bredesen on blast with an attack ad for the ages. Using footage from the film Troy, the GOP plastered Bredesen’s face on the famed Trojan horse as it’s pulled through Troy’s city gates. Night falls, and the superimposed heads of Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer emerge from the horse to sack the city. Just when you’re drawn into the drama, the clip pivots to CNN footage of radical feminists protesting the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This truly perplexing ad left us in awe. But dearly beloved, the Scene recently learned that the ad has been removed from Twitter in response to a complaint from a copyright holder. Copyright law, as we all know, is the most nefarious Trojan horse of all. RIP, wacked-out political attack ad, and here’s a tricky Boner Award for your efforts.
Dismissing Demetria
Let’s play a game called “You’re the Decider!” We’ll present you with a set of facts, and you make the call on what to do: You’re the station manager at a struggling NBC affiliate in a top-30 market that rhymes with Smashville. You’ve been getting your ass kicked for a few years by local competition and need to shake things up. On your talent roster, you have a beloved local figure who not only has been the face of the station for three decades, but is also a decorated journalist who’s won more Emmy awards than you can count, a bunch of investigative prizes and other assorted broadcast trophies that line the walls of your station. How should you treat her?
A) Promote the hell out of her as the last remaining link to the station’s glory days.
B) Build up the talent around her to climb out of the ratings hole.
C) Fail to renew her contract, try to make it look like she retired, and burn the last shreds of your station’s reputation in a fire that will ultimately reignite every time someone mentions her name.
If you chose C, congratulations! You’re now ready to run WSMV. And though Demetria Kalodimos may be gone from the airwaves, she’s certainly top-of-mind for the execs at the station. Kalodimos just hired the high-powered attorneys at Lieff Cabraser to do to Channel 4 what the firm has done to the tobacco companies for the past few years — wring millions out of them while showing the world what Boners they are.
Daily Blues
If John Seigenthaler were here today … well, he wouldn’t be, because the past year of editorial page editor David Plazas running the tattered remains of his once-powerful section would have killed him.
The legendary Tennessean editor likely could have abided many things, but the devolution of the voice of the paper’s editorial board into constant blubbering about civility would never have happened on his watch. Sure, these are troubled times, but Plazas’ constant calls for everyone to just get along has all the effective power of Kevin Bacon getting run over by a mob while pleading “Remain calm! All is well!” at the end of Animal House. All of these cries for niceness have been collected into a well of awfulness labeled “Civility Tennessee” and commissioned as a full-blown initiative by editor/Titanic captain Michael Anastasi, including public events where literally tens of people show up to wring their hands in unison.
But wait, it gets worse.
The daily Boner’d up its presidential endorsement two years ago by endorsing “the legitimacy of the U.S. electoral system” and achieved the rare feat of uniting both Democrats and Republicans in saying, “Pick a side, morons.” Surely they couldn’t top that fiasco, right? Welcome to 2018, when they spit the bit on their endorsements not once, but twice in a calendar year! In March, The Tennessean refused to endorse a mayoral candidate, instead highlighting five candidates for “special consideration” from the field of 13, as if the editorial page endorsement had become one of those “Three Things to Know” listicles the paper is fond of churning out in place of news stories. One of the hopefuls they wanted people to consider? CAROL SWAIN! That’s right, the Vandy professor and Islamophobe was given serious merit by Plazas & Co., a sign that they’re so bored with their own op-ed page that they missed the wack-job columns she’s been writing for them for years. The fact that they thought a far-right pundit, who has never actually run anything, should be given “special consideration” for the biggest job in the city shows just how far things have fallen.
In October, The Tennessean once again refused to endorse anyone, providing bizarre “analysis” pieces instead. That’s right, there were two former Nashville mayors on the ballot in statewide races, and the city’s daily paper whiffed on backing either one of them over right-wing opponents. We’re trying to imagine Seigenthaler in this situation, and we calculate that there’s a less-than-zero-percent chance of him allowing the paper to look so meek — either to his readers or to candidates.
At this point, The Tennessean has Boner’d away any credibility in regard to future endorsements. Congratulations, guys! You’ve been able to piss away whatever power the editorial page spent decades building. Thank God Seig isn’t here to see it.
A Load of Schmitt
The Tennessean has been without a regular Metro columnist for a while. And it shows — mostly when they get Brad Schmitt to weigh in on a topic in which he’s invariably out of his depth (we won’t even get into the godawful food lists he’s been doing). Maybe he was supposed to be representing the betrayal many Nashvillians felt after Mayor Megan Barry’s resignation when he wrote a column titled “Megan Barry used us, Nashville — and it really hurts,” but it really came across as a giant case of personal pique. The mayor just pleaded guilty in court, and the best he could muster is you made us feel bad? Really? Then, a month later and apparently still cranky, Schmitt wrote a piece criticizing the former mayor for getting on with her life on social media instead of posting pictures clad in sackcloth and ashes. Love Barry or hate Barry, it’s Bonertastically awkward for the daily’s columnist/whatever-he-is to play the role of personal scold. Maybe just stick to writing about burgers the week after the Scene launches our annual citywide Burger Week, OK?
Bigoted Boners
The rampant racism from right-wing political figures is hard to keep up with at this point, but the Republican primary in Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District was impossible to miss. John Rose and Bob Corlew got into an advertising arms race in which dog whistles were replaced by airhorns. The result was a campaign throbbing with bigotry, perhaps most easily exemplified by Twitter ads from the Rose campaign. One referenced “the illegal immigration invasion,” and was complete with an image of tattooed men who were supposed to scare you. The second included a map suggesting violent immigrants were invading Middle Tennessee. To the state’s shame, Rose went on to win the general election. Sometimes when we hand out a Boner Award, we really are talking about a dick.
FOP Flop
If The Committee of Bellyachers were ever to run an election campaign, we know what textbook we would use — the local Fraternal Order of Police’s. We would read it cover to cover, and then do the exact opposite of every word in it.
The FOP — already on tough public-relations ground in the wake of a fatal shooting by police this summer, the second in 18 months — ran a campaign against the civilian oversight amendment that was so disingenuous it was nearly laughable. Not only could they not make a good public case against the proposal, the TV ad they aired was also chock-full of lies, including a whopper about a yes vote being a vote for a giant tax increase. (The cost of the commission is equivalent to a rounding error in the Metro budget.) And then, when it came time to file campaign finance disclosures with the city and state, the FOP filed two conflicting documents that raised questions about the legality and source of the half-million dollars that funded its efforts.
Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising, because the campaign was run by the local Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, the Davidson County Republican Party, a group of Boners so incompetent that a major Southern city voted against the police. Maybe next time don’t pick a partisan fight in a city that’s 70 percent Democrats, OK guys?
Drop Top
We at the Scene are going to go ahead and share this particular Boner with the fine folks at Lower Broad bar, restaurant and entertainment complex Acme Feed & Seed. In this year’s Best of Nashville issue, we named Acme’s rooftop our Best Rooftop Bar, citing great vibes and a great view. That was all well and good — except for the fact that between the time we went to press and the time the issue hit the streets, Acme’s rooftop deck partially collapsed. Despite damage that forced the venue to cease operations for a day, there were, thankfully, no injuries — but that didn’t stop our BON award from going out. Hey, obviously neither Acme nor your old pals at the Scene has a crystal ball, but we’ll still go ahead and award ourselves a Boner trophy for the unfortunate timing.
Horse of a Different Color
The management of the Iroquois Steeplechase, long a source of Boner-tastic drunkenness on the infield, created a little Boner magic of its own this year by demanding copies of the photos taken by media organizations as a condition of their credentials at the event. Kedran Whitten of Brand825 (the new flacks hired by Steeplechase) wrote on May 3 that “each media outlet that will have photographers in attendance will be required to upload at least 100 photos from race. ... This will be a requirement moving forward to obtain press credentials for future races.” Several outlets, including the Scene and our sister publication NFocus, refused to hand over the copyright to their pictures and instead boycotted the event. The day before the event, an incredulous Whitten barked at a Scene representative who had told her that nobody — not the NFL, the Rolling Stones or virtually any other legitimate public event — makes such a requirement. A Boner to Whitten for making the policy, and a Boner to the Steeplechase for hiring a PR firm that doesn’t seem to understand how media works.
Swain, Swain, Go Away
After the Antioch Waffle House shooting, which was actually stopped by a guy without a gun, mayoral candidate Carol Swain released a statement that read in part: “If one of the patrons had been armed, the situation may have turned out differently and lives could have been saved.” Or, you know, more people could have died, caught in the crossfire. Or the imaginary armed patron could have been shot before he had a chance to pull his gun. Who knows? Maybe the shooter and the imaginary armed patron would have seen that they both loved to take guns to Waffle House, and they would have fallen in love and gotten married? At some point, we need to stop indulging in these fairy tales in which everything could have worked out fine, if only everyone had a magic wand. Er, we mean a gun.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha
Marsha Blackburn, one of Tennessee’s most prolific Boner exporters, was victorious in this fall’s Senate race — but we award her here for the way she won. In short, the Williamson County Republican and Donald Trump acolyte mimicked all of the president’s worst characteristics and offered a clear picture of what today’s Republican Party really is — her rhetoric was both racist and dishonest. She stoked fears about a “caravan” of poor migrants, referring to them as an “illegal alien mob” even as media reports showed them to be a crowd largely made up of desperate women and children fleeing violence and extreme poverty in their home countries. She also repeatedly lied about her opponent Phil Bredesen’s record. And for all that, Tennessee voters rewarded her with a promotion to the Senate. Shame on us.
Nobel Efforts
Let’s take a look at the past few Nobel Peace Prize winners: an Iraqi woman fighting to stop sexual violence; a man trying to end 50 years of civil war in Colombia; a Pakistani activist trying to make sure education is a right for girls and not just boys.
Now add to that list Donald Trump. (Sing along with us: One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong.)
In the wake of a Singapore summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, three of Tennessee’s dimmer congressional lights nominated the crypto-fascist-cheeseball for the honor, despite the fact that most of the world thought it was a PR stunt by North Korea. But not Diane Black, Marsha Blackburn and Scott DesJarlais! They thought POTUS’ bold gesture made him worthy of being elevated to Desmond Tutu status. Their optimism turned out to be a Premature Boner: Kim has generally stalled after the talks, the North Koreans continue to test nukes, and the only diplomats who have had meaningful meetings with the despot are the South Koreans. Meanwhile Trump continues to live-tweet Fox & Friends on a regular basis, which may be enough for the three stooges to nominate him again next year.
I Know It When I See It
In a speech during her failed gubernatorial campaign, U.S. Rep. Diane Black said violent movies and pornography are “root causes” of school shootings — this on its own is pretty normal for Black. But going beyond the characteristically Bonerific moves Black consistently manages to pull off, she went on to say that folks could find porn in the … grocery store. “Pornography — it’s available,” Black said. “It’s available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there’s pornography there.” As of press time, we could not find any Kroger or Trader Joe’s carrying Hustler — not even way up there on the very top shelf. And trust us, we checked!
Shit Sandwich
State Sen. Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) was a sometimes-rogue part of a tiny Senate Democratic caucus. He voted with Republicans on a number of notable occasions, including on bills related to Confederate monuments and defunding Planned Parenthood, drawing the ire of his fellow Democrats. Over the summer, as he faced a primary challenge from fellow Democrat Katrina Robinson, Tate was caught on a hot mic joking with Republicans about how Democrats were “full of shit.” Tate lost, and Robinson will be among the new Senate Democrats coming to Nashville in the new year.
Passing the Puck
On a Saturday night in June, Nashville Predators winger Austin Watson was arrested and charged with domestic assault after witnesses claim they saw him shoving his girlfriend in a parking lot in Franklin. During the arrest, the woman, who had multiple marks on her body — including scratches on her chest — told officers Watson “sometimes gets handsy.” The following month Watson pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to three months of probation and ordered to take a 26-week batterer-intervention course. Then in September, after doing its own investigation, the NHL suspended him for 27 games without pay. (That number was later reduced to 18 games by an independent arbitrator.)
It was a sad situation, but to make matters worse (or at least more hypocritical) Watson had taken part in the “Unsilence the Violence” campaign earlier this year, in which he and other Preds players recorded a PSA saying: “I’d never hit my wife. I’d never hurt my girlfriend. So why wouldn’t I speak up if I hear guys saying nasty things about any women?” Despite promising otherwise, the Preds did not speak up. They stayed quiet for months, saying they wouldn’t comment until the NHL’s own investigation was complete. And even then, they ultimately said nothing, holding a wishy-washy press conference about standing by both Watson and victims of domestic violence. Watson also didn’t comment publicly at the time. In fact, the first person to really say anything about the incident was Jennifer Guardino, the victim of the assault.
In her own statement, Guardino took the blame for what happened, saying the incident was not domestic and admitting to having a drinking problem, which is what, she said, caused the argument that night. It’s admirable that Guardino would be so open about her own struggles with alcoholism, but people saw Watson “get handsy.” And Watson himself admitted to police that he was physical with her. Drunk or not, that is assault. For the Preds to allow the victim of the situation to take full blame is more than worthy of a Boner Award. It’s downright cowardly.
Giving Us the Bird
Drop a few scooters in an already-hectic downtown overnight, and all hell breaks loose. Stern statements were issued, riders were hit by cars, and scooters were impounded. Though scooter startup Bird angered a few politicians — and residents — with its better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission approach to launching in Nashville, the Metro Council eventually allowed them and other companies to operate here. The regulations our esteemed legislative body put into place have been mostly ineffective: Many users still ride on sidewalks and leave the devices in already-crowded pedestrian rights of way. Future historians may well divide Nashville history into two eras: “Before Scooters” and “After Scooters.”
Something’s in the Water
After data showed that water at a few dozen Metro schools contained high levels of lead, some schools bought filtration systems. But then NewsChannel 5’s Phil “Scoopageddon” Williams got hold of a recording of some Metro school officials saying they could just bypass the filters, or bust out the lights indicating the filters needed to be replaced. The district was apparently worried about spending a whopping $8,000 a year on filter replacements. Keeping Phil off your ass is reason enough alone to fork out the eight grand.
The Boners Are Back in Town
In March, WSMV published allegations from three former high school basketball players who said David Byrd — their onetime coach, now a state representative — sexually assaulted them. Republican leaders called on Byrd to resign, but instead he ran for re-election. In October, Byrd came under fire after officials at the school where the allegations originated told students to wear Byrd campaign shirts on a school-sanctioned field trip to the Capitol. And what did District 71 voters do? Re-elect Byrd with nearly 80 percent of the vote, despite the efforts of his challenger, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation official who called himself a “very conservative Democrat.” No Roy Moore moment for Tennessee, it seems. Not to be outdone, voters in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District sent repeat Boner winner U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais back to Washington with nearly two-thirds of the vote.
Southern Culture on the Skids
In late 2017, Ryman Hospitality Properties opened Opry City Stage, a two-story Grand Ole Opry-themed restaurant in New York City’s Times Square. Some smartasses might say they took too much of Lower Broadway to Broadway. As contributor Jonathan Bernstein reported in the Scene in January after he visited a couple of times, the business projected a cluster of conflicting ideas about Nashville. Country music history! Well-heeled suburban party utopia! Everything good you’ve heard of that’s from east of Texas and south of (checks map) Virginia! Ultimately, the restaurant didn’t draw enough of a crowd, and “temporarily paused for intermission” — that’s “closed” to us regular folk — in September. Here’s hoping Nashville itself doesn’t have to learn a similar lesson the hard way.
Mmhmm? Uh-Uh.
Landing an artful put-down in a song requires that you know where to aim the punch. (See “You Ain’t Woman Enough” or “Fist City.”) Folk-pop duo mmhmm, featuring Raelyn Nelson and Hannah Fairlight, managed to pop themselves straight in the face when they released their self-titled debut album in June. It included a track called “Lookin’ Like a Tranny Blues,” in which they lay into the appearance of a woman who won’t leave their man alone — and call her a slur commonly used to dehumanize transgender people, who are at extraordinary risk of being victims of violence and discrimination. The duo responded appropriately to criticism by making a public apology and having the song removed from digital platforms. But it’s still a head-scratcher of Boneriffic magnitude that neither they nor anyone on their team seemed to have given the song a second thought.
Where the Women At?
You can’t lay everything wrong with mainstream country music at the feet of the Country Music Association — but there are times when it feels like the voting membership can’t see past the end of their Boners. Despite a wide range of outstanding work from women who make country music (including Maren Morris, Ashley McBryde and Margo Price, to name just a handful), very few of them were nominated for this year’s CMA Awards — as usual. And the women who were nominated tended to receive nods for appearing on the songs of male artists. With powerful players from Carrie Underwood to Kacey Musgraves (both CMA Award winners this year) and beyond calling out the gender imbalance in the business, how long will it be before they just abandon the country music ship?
Tragic Mike
The CMA Foundation — that’s the nonprofit philanthropic arm of the Country Music Association — helps provide funds for music-education programs in public schools. It’s good work, to be sure. But the organization really boned things up back in March when it appointed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to its 12-member board of directors. Yes, the same Mike Huckabee who once said of gay marriage, “Until Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain saying he’s changed the rules, let’s keep it like it is.” (That’s just one little sampling from the vast pile of boneheaded horseshit the conservative pundit has managed to dump on the American public.) The backlash was swift and fierce. Within hours of the announcement, openly gay music-biz honcho Jason Owen responded with a seething open letter to the CMA calling the Huckster’s appointment “heartbreaking” and “shameful.” Not long after, the CMA Foundation issued a statement saying that the failed presidential candidate would be resigning from the board, effective immediately. It’s good that the foundation ultimately parted ways with the guy, but the fact that the blockheaded appointment was made in the first place earns the organization one big, fat Boner Award.
She’s Alone in the Noise Pollution
In May, famed folk-pop-hip-hop-rock fusionist Beck brought his tour in support of last year’s Colors to city-owned riverfront venue Ascend Amphitheater — but apparently, not everyone was stoked about it. Even though the amphitheater has an 11 p.m. curfew and a 98-decibel cap at its property line, some of the “Where It’s At” singer’s tunes were heard in East Nashville, with cranky residents taking to social media to complain about the, um, new pollution. The fracas ultimately saw all kinds of folks chiming in. “A curfew is good but reducing sound levels for artists and audience is not,” tweeted legendary shredder Peter Frampton. “I purposely made the sound drop off to nothing at the property edge,” noted Beck’s front-of-house-sound guy, Paul David Hager, in a tweet. “But a humid night is going to make sound travel if there is no wall to stop it. My show level was well within the sound limits.” Promoter Live Nation agreed, pointing out in a statement that “at no time during the Sunday night Beck show did decibel levels eclipse the acceptable level that Metro Parks and Live Nation have agreed for shows at Ascend.” Sounds to us like East Nashville — at one point known as the city’s hippest neighborhood — just doesn’t wanna rock. And so it’s with this Boner, East Side, that we salute you.
Highway to Bonerville
The man driving a dump truck down I-40 that got stuck under an overpass during rush hour on a Friday afternoon in April told police he “thought” he was authorized to drive on the interstate. He was wrong. Look, we all make mistakes, but what we’re wondering is — even if he believed he had the proper permits to operate on a highway — what did he think as he approached the overpass? There are pictures of this — it wasn’t really even close. The driver was cited for operating a vehicle that’s over-height and over-width, among other things. As with all Boners, it’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it.
Boners Behind Bars
It’s hard to know exactly why (*cough* money *cough*) the nonprofit Nashville Public Education Foundation would allow Damon Hininger, CEO of the private-prison giant CoreCivic, on its board. Private prisons are total garbage — and that’s probably why NPEF left out exactly what CoreCivic does in its press release about putting Hininger on the board. Not only that — the board’s then-director Shannon Hunt decided to use “pipeline” in the release, which is probably not best word to use in connection with schoolchildren and a prison CEO.
Doing the Hokey-Polky
The Tennessee General Assembly is basically a Boner factory these days, churning out turgid nonsense with rapidity. But some ideas are so egregious they unite opposition factions that normally wouldn’t touch one another with a 10-foot pole.
Take the push by malefactors from Maury County to relocate the remains of President James K. Polk and first lady Sarah Polk from their tomb on Capitol Hill to a house in Columbia that, despite the specious ramblings of the would-be grave robbers, was never a long-term residence of the 11th president. Among those who did battle against the resolution authorizing the move: liberal darling Jeff Yarbro, flat-topped ex-prosecutor and general law-and-order hardliner William Lamberth and, uh, Susan Lynn, taking time from protecting us against no-go zones and tracking devices in consumer products.
The gist is this: Folks down Columbia way say that despite the president’s will — which says, quite specifically, that he wanted to be buried in Nashville — and despite the fact that Sarah didn’t change her will in the four decades she survived her husband, what they really would have wanted was to be hauled up out of the ground (it would be the fourth burial for the president and the third for the first lady) and driven 50-some-odd miles down I-65.
Ultimately, the legislature passed the resolution — among those voting in favor were Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell and House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh. Neither of their flaccid gubernatorial efforts was bolstered as a result. That left it in the hands of various state commissions.
First up? The Capitol Commission, which no one’s ever heard of. At a recent meeting, they heard from the pro-exhumation faction that the move had the support of a bunch of county mayors, the UAW and the Farm Bureau. An august group of history experts indeed, but when staff from the state historical commission offered testimony, they noted that the move is opposed by every professional historian in the country.
Dumb Cops
Wearing a badge and carrying a nightstick doesn’t give a person Boner immunity, as evidenced by this spurt of dunderheads.
Take, for example, the case of twin brothers Quindarius and Quintarius Jordan, arrested in October 2017 after a 62-year-old woman was shot in the hip, apparently caught in crossfire. Investigators say Quindarius fired the shots and Quintarius wheeled the getaway car. Quindarius, charged with attempted murder, received a $150,000 bond and Quintarius, as an accessory, a much lower $5,000, but a typo in the clerk’s office put the former in as the latter. Quindarius bonded out and went on the lam in June. “That’s one thing that I can lay directly on us,” Clerk Howard Gentry told WKRN, understatedly. After these shenanigans — worthy of a dark HBO remake of a Hayley Mills project — the right Jordan was eventually re-arrested, found hiding under a sink.
If convicted, he’ll of course become acquainted with some jailers. He might even share a cell with one, like the 54-year-old, now former corrections officer arrested in February, charged with watching kiddie porn … five times … on a computer … inside Riverbend. Child-sex offenders and ex-corrections officers are usually very popular on the inside, right?
Distraction may well explain why 38-year-old Andy Williams, doing a five-year hitch for burglary, was able to simply walk off his from his work crew at the Polk Office Building downtown and steal a truck in the middle of a bright May afternoon. Williams was eventually apprehended — 90 minutes and 100 miles later. If you don’t remember hearing about it, it’s not because the blood flow to your brain is being redirected: It’s because the Department of Correction didn’t feel the need to inform the public that a felon was speeding toward the Cumberland Plateau in a truck.
Williams got a lot farther than 24-year-old Hendersonville police officer Derick Brewer, pulled over in the wee hours of June 21. After allegedly admitting to drinking five Jameson-and-Red Bulls, Brewer was charged with DUI — and in our eyes, violating the laws of good taste.
Dumb Criminals
Sometimes it seems that if there were no Boner-prone criminals, there’d be no criminals at all. Criminal masterminds exist, for there are prodigies in every field. But criminal masterminds trafficking 44 pounds of marijuana don’t usually forget their weed-containing luggage at Nashville International Airport (forgetfulness typically comes after smoking 44 pounds of pot). But that’s just what a Seattle man did on Thanksgiving Eve 2017. And wise drug traffickers also know that the stink of their 60 pounds of good-good can’t be hidden by soaking the grass in Febreze, as another dumbass pot peddler learned at BNA in July. Drug-sniffing dogs-with-jobs aren’t as easily deceived as, say, your mom.
And maybe luggage isn’t the best hiding spot, anyway. Why not try a trash can, as one alleged carjacker did in July? According to police, after stealing the car on Charlotte Pike, the man tried making a high-speed escape on the undulating Hillwood Boulevard, lost control and crashed his purloined ride in a fiery wreck. The plumes of smoke sorta hinted at where the thief had gone, and when police descended on a Wilsonia Avenue home, they found him hiding in a trash can. It was relatively easy to extract him, unlike another fugitive — a convicted sex offender — who got stuck inside the wall of a northeast Davidson County barn for eight hours after trying to hide from police in the roof and falling (and failing).
Some other Aristotelian wonders who’ve turned to a life of crime don’t feel the need to be sub rosa with their bad behavior. For example, the man who was huffing in a McDonald’s women’s bathroom and taken into custody while doing jumping jacks in the nude. Or the semi driver who rolled his rig on the interstate, spilling its load of shredded cheese across the roadway, and was found, according to police, to be extremely drunk and alongside a cooler full of beer.
Or the gentleman — who was already the subject of numerous warrants — who caused a stir at Central Precinct when he strolled in carrying a complicated device with wires and batteries that the desk sergeant believed looked a little too much like a bomb. MNPD’s bomb squad determined the device was harmless, at least to humans. The wanted man explained he used the device to catch fish via electroshock — which, in addition to being not very sporting, is illegal.
Not that we would ever tell an artist how to do his job, as a customer at a North Nashville Subway tried to do. When the man got a little too kibitzy on the finer points of sandwich construction, the Sandwich Artist pulled a gun. When police arrived, they found the pistol hidden inside a vat of mayo. Be careful when you order a sandwich with everything.
