Oh, Nashville. As America's current li'l darling, the world is seeing you as nothing but a place for opportunity — a magical world filled with shiny new Rolling Stone offices, Seinfeld-approved hot chicken and maybe, eventually, Justin Timberlake. But before you get too cocky, Music City, we want to remind you that you're not so perfect. In the past year alone your citizens and Middle Tennessee neighbors have done a lot of very stupid things. And we do mean a lot. There was the country music star who fell down over and over (and over) again onstage, the time Gov. Bill Haslam skipped a meeting with the president of the United States of America, and of course, the Murfreesboro Casanova who publicly humped an ATM. Obviously, despite our being thrown into the national spotlight, the legend of Bill "The Original" Boner lives on in our little city. But don't worry: We'll keep on loving you ... especially now that Stacey Campfield is out of office.
BONER OF THE YEAR: Lonnie "ATM Humper" Hutton
After Years of ATMs Screwing Us ...
Among this year's woodland of Boners — hell, in the awards' quarter-century pantheon — one mighty sequoia looms above all comers. We refer, of course, to Lonnie Hutton, age 49, who perked up sleepy news desks across the nation in May with his dropped-trou escapades at a Murfreesboro dive. Hutton went into The Boro Bar and Grill, a longtime MTSU-area watering hole, and walked up to the cash machine. Without so much as an Al Green record to set the mood, he pulled down his pants and underwear and began having what the police report described as "intercourse" with the ATM. Police arrived, only to find a pantsless Hutton air-sexing the room after his attempted night deposit. (They escorted him outside and placed him at an outdoor dining area — at which point, the report says, he got busy again and "engaged in sexual intercourse with the picnic table.") Hutton was charged with public intoxication. No word about penalties for early withdrawal.
CAPITOL BONERS: Some of the exceptionally dumb things our leaders have done
Bailing on Obama
When President Barack Obama swung through Nashville to speak at McGavock High School in January, it was kind of a big deal. Hundreds came to see him. One notable absence: the state's governor. The reason? His schedule. When the president comes here, Gov. Haslam tends not to be around. Like the year before during a visit to Chattanooga. In January, Haslam jetted off on one of many out-of-state economic and community development meetings, secret meetings the governor's office refuses to let the public in on. Did he bail because his fellow Republicans would be pissed? Or because he doesn't want to be seen with someone he disagrees with philosophically? We can't figure it out, but insisting it was because of his schedule seems like weak sauce.
Supreme Boner
Where to begin with Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey's Supreme Boner? Perhaps with the way he expressed opposition to the direct popular election of judges because it would drag the judicial branch into high-dollar political campaigns, but then turned around and poured nearly half a million dollars into a bitterly partisan effort to oust three state Supreme Court justices in this year's retention election. Or maybe the fact that he proudly called for the resurrection of the death penalty in Tennessee, then accused the justices of scheduling the executions he desired for political reasons, then casually bungled the facts of a death penalty case he tried to use against them. No, just as well to begin at the end — when Ramsey saw the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had raised for the campaign wasted as the justices won re-election to the bench. Afterwards, Ramsey dispatched his flack to tell the press it had all been worth it because the public had learned so much. We know a Boner when we see one, and we know that isn't rain on our leg either.
A Loser's Loser
2014 is a year that Joe Carr will want to forget. First, he decided to go after one of the more popular Republicans in recent history, Lamar Alexander, but four years after the anti-incumbent wave of tea party gasbags like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. Then he did some shady campaign financing by "loaning" money to wingnut financier Andy Miller and collecting interest on it, all to get around donation limits. Lamar won, Carr petulantly refused to endorse him against Gordon Ball in the November election, and then Lamar put up even bigger numbers against Ball. So then Carr decided to run as the "true conservative" candidate for state party chair against Chris Devaney and got crushed. And if that's not enough loss for one year, Carr's fallback plan of getting appointed to Jim Tracy's seat fell apart when Tracy couldn't beat scandal-plagued Scott DesJarlais. The upside? There are no more races Joe Carr can lose in the short term, so it will be a Boner-free 2015.
Who Knew Williamson Loved Anal So Much?
The Williamson County School Board would seem an unlikely place for Boners, and yet after Victoria Jackson and the other crazies down there got a tea party majority in the August elections, the first thing they did was install Mark Gregory as the chairman. Yes, it's the same Mark Gregory who was the brains behind the ButtleOpener, a device for popping the top off of your bottle by jamming it up a prosthetic female ass. What better person to have guiding the best school system in the state than a man who once looked at a woman's behind and probably thought, "Shoot, that looks tailor-made for a Miller Lite." Sensing that they had gone, perhaps, a Boner too far, Williamson County residents pressured Gregory to step down as chair in October, but he remains on the board.
Trademark Appropriation FTW!
Sheriff Daron Hall ran a re-election campaign that looked suspiciously like he was going to upsize it into a mayoral campaign. It was full of glossy TV ads and campaign mailers that issued fake "Get Out of Jail Free" cards. HAHAHA, GET IT? BECAUSE HE'S THE GUY WHO PUTS PEOPLE IN JAIL. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Those cards looked suspiciously like they were just stealing the Monopoly version, which is big-time no-no. A campaign spokesperson said "the graphic that we used is not the same as the one on the Monopoly board." Except for the same typefaces. And almost exactly the same words. And the same Mr. Moneybags-flying-out-of-a-cage image, lazily Photoshopped onto the new card. Alas, Hall isn't running for mayor next year after all — meaning Nashville has missed its chance for now to become the Baltic Avenue of American cities.
Deny, Deny, Deny
Rep. Rick Womick in Rutherford County wants to take on Nashville's Beth Harwell for speaker, the top job in the state House of Representatives. An unmerry band of Republicans have been steamed at Harwell for saddling up too closely to Gov. Bill Haslam's political priorities, so a picture began circulating Capitol Hill depicting her as a puppet whose strings are pulled by the House clerk. Next came a robocall to select legislators calling Harwell corrupt and urging a Womick win. Womick's response? Fire off a press release saying he had nothing to do it. Oh, and blame Haslam's top lieutenants, saying the governor's friends are putting out robocalls questioning their "strongest political ally." Sure, because that makes the most sense.
Actually, Citizens of Tennessee, You're the Boner
Yes, a lot of Boner-riffic stuff has happened this year — a man humped an ATM, Murfreesboro was outsmarted by a bucket, and Stacey Campfield ... well, Stacey Campfielded. But you know who just might be the biggest Boner of all? You, people of Tennessee. It's YOU. Because according to FiveThirtyEight, Tennessee had the second lowest midterm election voter turnout in all of America. Only 29.1 percent of the state's eligible population cast a ballot, which is even less than in Mississippi. MISSISSIPPI BEAT YOU, TENNESSEE. Sure, now you're able to buy wine in grocery stores, and that's cool, but don't you people give a shit about women's rights? Where were you for Amendment 1? Have you just given up on Tennessee's future now that Taylor's a New Yorker?
Tennessean: Newsroom of the Failures: The Newsroom of the Future doesn't look so bright after all
Gannett's Humiliating Hunger Games
Let's say, hypothetically, you've been working at a job that's been slowly sucking out your soul for a few years, with corporate bean counters making you do more and more with less and less. And let's say, hypothetically, the company decided to reorganize the entire operation and slap new titles on everything in a barely disguised bid to cut out a bunch of middle managers. What could fix morale? How about making everyone reapply for their jobs! Yup, that's what the Boners at Gannett corporate decided to do, making even decorated veterans already working 50-plus-hour weeks — without any overtime — submit résumés to and interview with corporate HR schlubs brought in from outside of Nashville. Sound humiliating? It was. And, as an added bonus, some jobs were eliminated or assigned lower pay grades. Because nothing says Boner like turning your place of work into a real-life version of The Hunger Games.
Put It All In
In England, you pledge allegiance to the Queen. At the Tennessean, you pledge allegiance to the Newsroom of the Future and its queen, editor Stefanie Murray. After making the cuts to the staff, Murray gathered her new charges in the building's recently christened "Ideation Room." Like Jim Jones asking everyone to drink the Kool-Aid, Murray had everyone stand in a circle and drop a poker chip in the center to signify they were "all in." She says it was just an icebreaker that she picked up at a workshop, but in a room full of people who just watched longtime colleagues get axed, it went over like a power play by Scott Stapp on Celebrity Poker Showdown. In the following weeks, a succession of high-profile resignations showed that if you make people push in their chips too soon, they're likely to just leave the table.
The Absurdity of Being Earnest
When the folks at 1100 Broadway appointed Beth Inglish — a local visual artist and founder of the Nashville Creative Group — as the paper's new "Engagement Editor," many wondered what the hell an Engagement Editor does. Apparently, it has something to do with making better journalism by fostering a relationship between the newsroom and the community it serves, which suggests that the position would require some familiarity with working in a newsroom. This Boner stayed at half-mast until Inglish posted a flowery Facebook status update stating that journalism is failing because media focuses too much on news that makes her feel sick to her stomach. If bad news makes you queasy, working at The Tennessean these days is a seven-course meal of last week's Kroger sushi.
Unsportsmanlike Conduct
At one time, The Tennessean's Sunday Editor's Column was a way to write about ideas or thunder about an injustice. But Editor Stefanie Murray has hit a new public relations low, pimping hashtag campaigns, new hirings and that Best of Nashville rip-off the Toast of Music City awards, their Sixlets to the Scene's M&Ms. Each week brings some strange bit of news, whether it's the fact that Murray doesn't know who longtime editorial page voices like Dwight Lewis and Sandra Roberts are, or that the paper has renamed the weekly gridiron tab the bafflingly dumb "Football Y'all."
The Boner-tastic best was when Murray touted the paper's new hockey beat writer, Eric Stromgren. The column itself was a banal intro, but when you put it up against the timeline of newsroom changes, it looked much worse. Murray not only laid off Stromgren's well-respected predecessor, Josh Cooper, but also revealed that Stromgren came to her months ago and told her he wanted the job. Way to uphold the Seigenthaler tradition.
Nit-Twits
The Newsroom of the Future got far-out, man. Directing readers to a story about Bridgestone Americas' highly incentivized six-mile relocation, The Tennessean tweeted "STUDY: @BrdgstoneArena relocation carries $87M annual impact." The problem, of course, is that Bridgestone Arena isn't going anywhere (and even if it were, the mind boggles at how that would be accomplished). Pressed by a curious reader (OK, us) whether the arena was moving, the faceless tweeter said to ask Joey Garrison, the reporter behind the story, for clarification. Dutifully, we did, while @Tennessean asked, "Why is it wrong in your opinion?" Well — our opinion is that if the arena were moving, it would be humongous news. Not to mention awesome to watch.
WILLIAMSON'S WEIRDOS: One county, so many Boners
#ShutUpDontBeRacist
Don Alexander of Brentwood heard the rallying cry of protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, and he had an idea. He raised enough money from like-minded assholes for a billboard that, instead of the demonstrators' "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," would read "#PantsUpDontLoot" — a racist stereotype combined with a reference to the actions of a destructive minority within the protesters. That a man from a suburb where residents can't even abide the sight of homeless people selling newspapers on their sidewalks would lack empathy for people with less privilege shouldn't surprise us, but somehow this one did. After all, we wouldn't want to make an ignorant generalization about a large group of people we know nothing about. In any case, pull up your pants, Don. Your Boner is showing.
So Sorry Miss Jackson — Oooh — But You Are a Boner
Former SNL cast member and current Williamson County resident Victoria Jackson is nothing if not a reliable Boner — and this year she did more than just rant. She took her homophobic, tea party-loving, anti-Obama bullshit and ran for Williamson County Commission. She lost, earning only 632 votes (winners Judy Lunch Herbert and Betsy Hester earned 1,422 and 1,380 votes respectively), but the fact that she got any votes at all is terrifying. Her latest and completely absurd crusade is against Common Core, which she says "has an Islamic agenda." She also claims that President Obama wants Ebola to come to America, and she backed that opinion up by posting it alongside a photo of a laughing Obama captioned with, "I made a bet with ISIS that I could kill more people quicker than them." It'd be one thing if Jackson just kept her dangerous opinions to her dumb blog, but now she's thirsty for power. Bring back Goat Boy.
Sturgeon's Got a Gun
OK, here's the thing — if you post on Facebook about your new purse designed for carrying a gun, don't take that purse into a school building. You're kind of telling everyone, "HEY! I HAVE A GUN!" And yet tea party favorite and newly elected Williamson County Commissioner Barbara Sturgeon did just that in November. A grand jury indicted her last week because, even if you didn't mean it, it's always a felony — and a Boner — to carry a gun into a school, even if you've got a permit. Maybe the next time Sturgeon goes over to the school board building to ban a book, she'll remember not to pack heat.
SCHOOL DAZE: Tennessee's educational system isn't always so smart
Haslam Teases Teachers, Goes Limp
After admitting that gratitude alone goes only so far in showing teachers the state appreciates them, Gov. Bill Haslam and his administration promised to make teachers' pay in Tennessee the fastest growing in the country by the time he leaves office. Teachers liked the sound of that. The governor called it a "year-to-year deal," building up pay raises consistently but a little at a time, and Haslam declared in this year's State of the State address that it would begin with a 2 percent raise this year. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Two months later, he dropped the raises like a hot potato. His administration had overblown revenue estimates, and they couldn't keep their promise. Here endeth the lesson.
Speaking of Haslam ...
Gov. Haslam said time and again he didn't want to back down on high education standards and vehemently defended Common Core despite colleagues further to the right in the legislature railing against them. With Haslam and House Speaker Beth Harwell locking arms, the Republicans in the state House of Representatives who say they'd win a "conservative" pissing match insisted there's too much federal interference in local education. So they went behind their speaker's back, befriending the Democrats who have been twiddling their thumbs on the House floor. Together, they got the governor and key leaders — Haslam, Harwell, the Ed Commissioner — to say uncle, ultimately scrapping the new Common Core-aligned state test Tennessee was going to use. Haslam's administration has since scrubbed the dreaded Common Core name from many of the state's websites and is asking people to comment on each of the thousands of standards. Vanderbilt's holding the line better these days.
Register Doesn't Know Which Way to Point It
With the state singling out 15 Nashville schools as the worst performing in all of Tennessee, Metro Director of Schools Jesse Register is having a nightmare of a time trying to make everyone happy. For example, after meeting with parents at Inglewood Elementary School, he said he couldn't see giving IES to a charter school. But — prepare yourself for whiplash — Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools was actively planning to hand over IES to pre-approved KIPP charter schools (which had been promised a low-performing school for months and had been carefully watching Inglewood's scores drop with fidelity). Then — brace for it — Register flipped again, saying although he said  he'd be "very hesitant" to give the school to a charter, he's still very much considering it. At the end of the day, he covered up his Boner and said he'd give KIPP Kirkpatrick Elementary instead.
Department of Ed: Boner Ate My Homework
One day the governor and state education commissioner are bragging to education reporters across the country about how zipped up the state's education is. Practically the next day, they're telling schools they'll be late turning in their homework. The data-driven, accountability-minded Tennessee Department of Education was so late finalizing student test scores that many schools across the state had to forego factoring those scores in students' final grades — which is required by law. So at a time when teachers are under the microscope for every movement they make in the classroom, the DOE gets to turn in its work whenever it wants.
Credits for Sale!
A little old lady based at Coleman Park Community Center is selling high school credits. Children and parents write her $360 checks, and she hands them four booklets. Once the students turn the booklets back in, she sends their school a credit. Want just half a credit? Buy half the books for $180. What a deal for a semester's worth of work, plus no End of Course exam! Students all over the county have been buying credits from Nashville Academy to replace that F in chemistry or incomplete in English, and the grading standards boil down to whatever the grader thinks the student should get. What does the district have to say about the questionable credits? And how it's affecting the city's growing graduation rate? They say they have no control over it — they'd accept credits from any ol' private school, although the work pales in comparison to what students would do in class.
CRIMINAL MINDS: The boners that popped up in our law and justice system
The Secret Service's Stupid Charades
It's the Secret Service's job to track down threats against the president, large and small. When local agents went to the home of a man who had made some Boner-rific statements on Facebook, they were frustrated when the guy slammed a door in their face. So what did they do? They called the cops, who showed up and found no legal reason to go inside, even if the man had a gun, for which he had a permit. Then, according to Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson, "one of the agents then asked a [police] sergeant to 'wave a piece of paper' in an apparent effort to dupe the resident into thinking that they indeed had a warrant." Yup, the feds wanted the locals to fake a warrant. Anderson put it in a letter to the D.C. brass, whose response was, at best, condescending.
They Should Be Called the Moreland Awards
In itself, developer David Chase's arrest for domestic violence against his girlfriend would be sad, but not Boner-worthy. But instead of Chase sitting in jail for a mandatory 12-hour cooling-off period, his lawyer, Bryan Lewis, picked up the phone and called Judge Casey Moreland and got him to waive the cooling-off period. Chase promptly returned home and administered a second beating. Lewis was able to get the waiver because he knew Moreland. And he's given money to Moreland's campaign. And they served together on a foundation's board. AND THEY VACATIONED TOGETHER IN COSTA RICA. Welcome to the Boner Court of Appeals, where a phone call from a buddy can get your client out of the slammer faster than a grand jury on Staten Island.
ROCK AND BALLS: The best Boners in sports and music
BONERBALL
Everybody wants to like minor-league baseball, even if no one actually wants to watch minor-league baseball. So it's always disappointing to see the local team pop foul balls over and over again.
First the Sounds abandoned parent club Milwaukee, even after the Brewers had been extraordinarily patient with Nashville's failure to erect a new stadium. Ownership said the switch to Oakland was a desire to be in a winning organization, though the affiliation with the Brewers had produced the most successful seasons for the Sounds in 30 years. Then the team rolled out a new logo and color scheme. The former, a stylized guitar pick, is fine — even if we in Nashville don't need to be hit across the face with the fact we are Music City at every turn. But the colors, particularly their names, form a rainbow of meh. The "Neon Orange" isn't particularly neon or orange. "Sunburst Tan" makes no sense. "Cash Black" sounds like what John Rich wants his car to be painted. The worst is "Broadway Burnt Orange," which is actually brown and is named not for any iconic street near the stadium's Sulphur Dell site, but for a tourist corridor more than a mile away. The stadium itself is named for a bank, not the historic site — a beanball if ever there was one.
To cap their tone-deafness, bone-headedness and willful geographic blindness, the Sounds (and their minions in the city) have rewarded us by adding a predictable $5 million to the final bill of the stadium because they didn't account for obviously needed improvements to the infrastructure around the new stadium site. Play ball!
Already Famous
This year, Nashville resident and former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell sold out three consecutive nights at the Ryman Auditorium, and he won three trophies — Artist of the Year, Song of the Year for "Cover Me Up" and Album of the Year for Southeastern — at the 13th annual Americana Honors and Awards ceremony. But apparently no one at The Voice got word of Isbell's success. In November, Isbell tweeted a screen-grab of an email sent his way by a clueless producer for the NBC talent competition. "I came across Jason Isbell online and was hoping to chat with him about auditioning for us if it's something that interests him," the email read. "These are NOT open calls." Swing and a miss. Obviously the accomplished songster is a few steps beyond auditioning for Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton — the latter of whom is likely familiar with Isbell — on a crappy singing-competition program. Isbell definitely had the last laugh with his follow-up tweet: "My audition on 'The Voice' will be a solo vocal and French horn rendition of 'Oh Comely' by Neutral Milk Hotel. I will wear a #bikini."
Awkward-ish
Of the many innocuous zingers that co-hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood delivered to keep the CMA Awards crowd in stitches, this wasn't one of them: "If any of you tuned in to ABCÂ tonight expecting to see the new show Blackish, yeah, this ain't it," Paisley said upon retiring from a commercial break. "In the meantime, I hope you're all enjoying White-ish."
Don't get us wrong: The joke was hilarious, and perhaps many watching at home thought so, too. But inside Bridgestone Arena, where the awards show was being held, the joke totally bombed, detonating an explosion of awkward vibes throughout a hall filled with WASP-y Music Row types and conservative country music fans. Perhaps it was because many in the building were still scurrying back to their seats and only halfway paying attention, realizing that they really just heard what they thought they'd heard. Regardless, the "White-ish" joke met with mild white-ish blowback, with Paisley once again stumbling into charges of accidental racism. But to be sure, this Boner ain't on Brad this time, it's on the stodgier types in the CMA Awards crowd.
Saved By the Boner
All things considered, Tim Reynolds is a lucky son of a gun. Not only did the Brentwood condo developer walk away $1.5 million richer from the controversial deal to purchase then raze Music Row's famed RCA building, he also narrowly avoided becoming the most hated businessman in Nashville when Leiper's Fork philanthropist Aubrey Preston made an 11th hour $5.6 million bid to buy the Studio A-housing building. Reynolds was still seen by many, though, as a villain — the face of Music City gentrification — as the Studio A saga unfolded. And he didn't do himself any favors by telling the Scene he only planned to move forward with his plans if Studio A could be saved and incorporated into his condo development, then months later arguing that it could not before announcing demolition plans.
Luke Bryan Falls Down ... Three Times
It's been a big year for booty-wriggling pop-country pretty boy Luke Bryan. He's played dozens of dates on his That's My Kind of Night Tour, bolstered by the success of last year's multi-platinum Crash My Party, and he took home the Entertainer of the Year trophy at this year's CMA Awards. There's one thing the "Drink a Beer" singer can't seem to manage, however, and that's setting foot on a stage without falling the hell down. It all began at a February show in Greensboro, N.C., where Bryan, while strutting around stage with a guitar strapped to him, attempted to hop onto a platform, missed, and ate it pretty hard. Then, just three months later in Charlotte, while covering Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' "Can't Hold Us" with fellow bro-country bros Lee Brice and Cole Swindell, the poor jabroni toppled off the stage and into the crowd, sustaining an injury that required a "few stitches." The pièce de résistance of this year in doofusdom came in August, however, when — at an Indiana tour stop — Bryan went to catch a beer behind his back, overstepped, and fell right into a pit of screaming female fans. Then again, there are worse places to land.
UNCATEGORIZABLE BUT UNFORGETTABLE: The year we were outsmarted by buckets and geese
The Bucket That Cried Ebola
Requiescat in pace, World's Largest Cedar Bucket in Murfreesboro. We thought we were over your wanton destruction nearly a decade ago, but another ding-a-ling prank has us missing your wood even more.
Befitting a city forever on the cutting edge, on Nov. 25 (a couple of weeks after most of the Ebola quarantinees in the U.S. had been de-quarantined) some ambitious Murfreesboroan plopped a bucket outside of MTSU's Business and Aerospace Building reading, "Do Not Open Ebola."
What did this mean? Was there Ebola inside? Was it a warning to Ebola to not open the bucket because the bucket was full of avenging Ebola destroyers? It took nearly four hours for MTSU police and various Murfreesboro public safety organizations to determine that there was no threat (not even to Ebola itself) and it was just a prank. (During that four hours, 17 Murfreesboro-based noise bands formed and disbanded; 14 were named "Ebola Bucket.")
Duck, duck! Goose?
Some Boners come with the best intentions. In January two ducks were discovered stuck in the middle of the partially frozen pond in Centennial Park. Television news crews were dispatched, and with their cameras trained on the stranded fowl for an hour, Nashvillians watched on TV and Twitter as a dramatic rescue attempt began. Eventually a Metro parks employee slid across the ice on a kayak until he reached the birds, broke the ice with a mallet and proceeded to carry them to safety. Hooray! There was much rejoicing ... until it was discovered that the ducks were actually geese. If that seems like small revelation to you, imagine if the Bellevue Beaver was revealed to be a raccoon. We have to do better, Nashville.
When Boners Boomerang
You know who else committed flubs aplenty this year in their ongoing quest to be snarkier than thou? Yours truly, the Scene, that's who, which practically tried to erect its own pedestrian bridge from the Gulch, constructed of Boners. Was it the archival photo of the late John Seigenthaler that caused his obit to appear prematurely on a search engine? (When it comes to Internet knowhow, editor Jim Ridley consistently displays the technological finesse of a manatee trying to operate a toaster. Which he somewhat resembles.) Was it the "Headline Homes" column that called attention to high-dollar houses — only to run pictures of completely different properties? Was it the music column that took the group Slipknot to task for seemingly vile sexist lyrics, only to learn the lyrics had been misprinted by an Internet source? Was it the public apology to Slipknot? We leave it to you, dear readers, to determine the Boner that broke the bank.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT BONERS: Some Boners are forever
Stacey Campfield
Stacey, Stacey, Stacey. The legislature just won't be the same without you, Mr. Campfield. What will we do without your crazy bills to ban events like Sex Week at UT and allow guns in parks? What legislator will step up to make remarks as offensive as the one that got you in trouble in this spring: "Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory [sic] sign ups for 'train rides' for Jews in the 40s"? Is it possible that any other state politician will inspire a parodic musical? Is is possible any other incumbent senator will ever lose his seat by such a wide margin?
People really hate you, Stacey, and we have to say that it's not without cause. You were mean to your constituents, telling those who dared to disagree with you that they need therapy. You were mean to small children. You were mean to people who just lost their jobs, then you made up lies about about those people, just like you make up lies about everything, from the origin of HIV ("it was one guy screwing a monkey") to the substandard condition of your rental properties to your community service involvement to the real reason you were kicked out of the UT Judo Club. (Oh, yes, we know about that, too.)
We confess that without your antics, without your grammatically incompetent blog chronicling the session, reporting on the legislature next year will probably be a little more tedious. But that's not to say we'll miss you, because, Lord, we won't miss you one bit. We doubt most of the Capitol will miss you either, especially your fellow Republicans — you were an embarrassment to them. You were an embarrassment to politics in general — and trust us, we don't say that lightly.
We have some hope — against all hopes — that this is the last time we give you this award, but we kind of doubt it.
And, with apologies to Mr. Geisel ...
Please don't ask why; no one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that your shoes were too tight.
Or it could be that your head wasn't screwed on just right.
But we think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that your heart was two sizes too small.
Jim Summerville
Outgoing state Sen. Jim Summerville would be a haunted-household name if it weren't for fellow Lifetime Achievement Boner winner state Sen. Stacey Campfield. Summerville is the would-be NBA star with the misfortune of playing alongside Michael Jordan; no matter how hard Summerville's Boner raged, he was destined to be overshadowed by that red-headed troll from Knoxville who might as well have just uploaded his brain to the Huffington Post servers. But make no mistake: Summerville, the man who famously declared that he didn't give a rat's ass what the black caucus thinks, is a Hall of Famer in his own right. This was an elected official who placed a handwritten sign on his neighbor's fence that read, "Just keep it up. You've been warned" after tensions rose over his loose dogs; a man who lost his Republican primary race in August, promptly announced that he'd quit the party and was then arrested three times over the next three months (with two of the arrests occurring in the span of 24 hours). Campfield can't have all the glory — Summerville is a Boner of legendary proportions, too.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com
