One frustrating thing about The Tennessean is that it does such a great job of hiring talented writers, and then saddles them with stupid decisions they can do nothing about. Until they move on, or they’re laid off — then we all sit around hoping WPLN or someone else can scoop them up.
On that note, I have seen many dumb things happen at The Tennessean over the years, but what happened in the opinion section last week ranks among the dumbest. Under the banner of “Civility Tennessee,” the paper ran an opinion piece by notorious longtime evildoer Laurie Cardoza-Moore in which she attacks Kent Oliver, the head of the Nashville Public Library, and threatens his job. She writes:
If Kent Oliver would like to promote the “freedom to read” pornographic, racist, antisemitic and anti-American content within the walls of the Nashville Public Library, he has the freedom to do so.
To build a library promotional campaign around Tennessee parents opposing their children being freely offered pornography and racist content in our school libraries, suggests that Mr. Oliver needs perhaps to be replaced with someone who understands the value of strengthening our communities through classic and traditional literature that reflects our Tennessee values.
This is an example of the civility The Tennessean thinks is going to bring us together? I have had a lot of civil conversations with people I disagree with. I never accused them of promoting pornography and racism to children. I have had uncivil conversations with people I disagree with, and I have said bad things about them, but those bad things are facts.
This is just bearing false witness. Cardoza-Moore is insinuating that Oliver is promoting this material, and that this support suggests he needs to be replaced. The Tennessean offers a mealymouthed refutation of this, saying: “Editor's note: Oliver has not promoted this type of content. To learn more about his position, read his guest opinion column on the ‘Freedom to Read’ campaign.”
Here’s an idea: If you’re the editor of a section of the newspaper and a piece comes in that attempts to assassinate the character of the head of one of the city’s treasures with untruths, why don’t you edit out the untruths? It’s right there in your job title. You’re the editor. You edit things. This running in The Tennessean is ultimately on opinion editor David Plazas. He owes Kent Oliver a huge apology.
But the damage is done. From here on out, people across the land are going to be able to say, “Oh yeah, I read something in The Tennessean about how kids are encouraged to look at porn in the library in Nashville.” As they say, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is getting its shoes on. And the poor reporters at The Tennessean are trying to get at the truth while the opinion page features lies — lies that Plazas knows are lies. What a disheartening mess.
Literally the only silver lining is Cardoza-Moore’s insistence that we strengthen our communities through “classical and traditional literature.” But which timeless works should we teach? The one where a bunch of men squeeze sperm and grasp hands while chasing a giant phallic symbol? The one where the minister has an illegitimate kid and lets the kid's mother suffer in jail without owning up to it? The one where a dude waxes rhapsodically about 28 naked dudes playing in the water? The one where a woman cracks under patriarchal oppression and tries to climb inside her wallpaper? Or the one by a grown man obsessed with a little girl, who wrote stories in which she has all kinds of adventures drinking weird concoctions and meeting a smoking caterpillar?
Or maybe that classic of American literature in which an orphan and an enslaved man take a boat ride together and meet a cross-section of American grifters and bullshit artists and the core joke at the heart of the book is that the one real man in the kid’s life — the one person who cares about him and tries to watch out for him and is not trying to put one over on him — is the one individual who is not a legal person and is never referred to as a man?
That’s a good one, though I certainly understand why it’s fallen out of favor. Still, it’s obvious that people today need more education in what a grift is and how they can avoid being the victim of one. Here’s a good way. If a person is regularly in the media and their bio includes something like “the founder and president of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations, a nonprofit organization fighting against antisemitism and in favor of parents and children,” then you should look up past tax returns for that organization and see if anything strikes you as hinky.
In 2019, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations brought in $1.3 million in donations. Curiously, even though they list nine officers/key employees, Cardoza-Moore is the only of that group listed as making a salary that year: $145,000. The person who prepared the tax return and who is one of these officers was paid no salary. And yet, somehow, that doesn’t strike that person as peculiar. Ten percent of what people gave to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations went into Cardoza-Moore's pocket as salary. She also got $40,000 for an “occupancy expense.” I looked this up, and it seems as though Cardoza-Moore’s own nonprofit pays her this money to keep offices in a property she owns, like rent for having her own home office.
The organization paid $85,000 to her husband’s production company, $1,000 to one child, $5,600 to another, and $47,876 to a third. Without counting the organizational money spent on food and phones (since we can’t say who benefits from that), that’s another $180,494 to the Cardoza-Moore family on top of Cardoza-Moore’s salary and occupancy expense, or $365,000 altogether.
I read through all 50 pages of the 2019 tax return and I could only find four possible things that the organization seems to have done with its money for the good of others. They gave $33,000 split between two domestic organizations and just over $50,000 to some activities in Africa. Cardoza-Moore’s husband’s business benefited more from the donations people give her to do good in the world than did the rest of the world. That’s another sign you’re being conned: when more of the money you’re donating goes toward the family of the charismatic person asking you for money than it does to the things she claims to be doing.
Which brings us back to The Tennessean. By platforming this grifter and treating her outlandish, untrue statements as opinions worthy of consideration, you are signaling that she is a contributing member of society with worthwhile goals and opinions, and not someone who leeches off of dumbasses. You then make it easier for her to target more dumbasses to part from their money, because you’ve given her legitimacy.
Shame on you.
