I’m starting to think Republicans Andy Ogles and Cameron Sexton were cursed by the same witch to opposite fates. As we all know, state House Speaker Cameron Sexton is cursed to love Nashville so much that he lives here even though he’s not able to represent us. U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, on the other hand, has to represent Nashville but is terrified of the city, as evidenced by him hiding here behind locked doors inside a building that used to be a Civil War fort.
I admit, I had been confused about how Ogles was going to campaign in a city he’s too chicken to visit, but this week, Ogles once again called for the National Guard to be deployed to Nashville — and now I get it! If he can have a National Guard escort, he can visit more places in town than just the Tennessee State Capitol. Hell, maybe he can go to Cameron Sexton’s house and talk about how they can appease the witch who is ruining their lives.
Ogles made his case for the National Guard over on X, writing:
We don’t just need the National Guard in Memphis, send them to Nashville. Comrade O'Connell is using the city as an outpost for international gangs to set up shop in our neighborhoods.
Punish criminals and the Mayors who work for them.
I’ve known Mayor Freddie O'Connell for a long time. A disclosure: We’re friends, so I avoid writing about him, because I’m biased as hell. I like my friends, and I think they’re great. But by God, if Mayor O’Connell is suave enough to be rubbing shoulders with international gangs, I will eat my hat. (I concede that one could argue that Nashville is an outpost for statewide gangs, like the Tennessee GOP, but Freddie’s hardly to blame for that.)
I mean, y’all, how did he meet these international gangs?! Was Freddie at the park, and he saw some gang members riding their bikes bare-headed, so he popped open his car trunk and pulled out a dozen or so bike helmets, gave them to the gang members, and showed them how to properly adjust the chin straps? And they’ve been friends ever since?
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Did he hear that an international gang leader was sick, so he brought him cinnamon rolls from Big Al’s Deli?
Could the gangs not get someone to pick up their recycling, so Freddie came over to take care of it?
Also Ogles is saying Freddie has turned Nashville into an outpost for international gangs — plural? What are we talking here? Is it like the Bloods and the Canadian Bloods, where we wouldn’t expect friction? Or is it like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, where normally we’d expect a war? Is Ogles accidentally accusing O’Connell of being some kind of diplomatic genius? Because we don’t have the kinds of problems you’d expect from a hub of international gangs so powerful that they can buy a mayor.
I thought the mayor did a good job of responding. At his weekly media roundtable on Friday, he said Ogles seems “invested in the city he neither has an office in nor lives in,” and that it seems like he’s angling for favor from Trump in order to secure a pardon. But this has been the truth about Ogles for a long time, and saying it out loud doesn’t seem to rattle him.
Nashville, we need to hit Ogles where it hurts. If he can try to send the National Guard to Nashville, we should send our city guard to Ogles’ house. Oh, you didn’t know we had a city guard? You never saw them drilling in Edgefield? You didn’t smell their terrible pancakes wafting through the streets of town? Have you never heard of the Rock City Guards? People, they have a flag.
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There are some drawbacks to this plan: the Rock City Guards came about right before the Civil War, so these guys ended up all being Confederates, which is going to make them hard to cheer for. They apparently smelled really bad. Also, they’re dead. On the plus side, they had numerous songs written in their honor, so we can provide them with a good soundtrack. And because they smelled really bad, it will be quite unpleasant for Ogles to have them deployed to his house.
But yes, we had our own city guard once, and it’s time to drag those old farts back to the land of the living and start threatening Ogles with them — put them to a non-embarrassing use for the city for once. We don’t even have to tell him they’re all dead. It’s not like Ogles reads the Scene. We can just have Mayor O’Connell make a statement saying he’s looking into how to deploy the Rock City Guards to Ogles’ house and let ol’ Andy make up his own scary scenario of what that might mean.
