Students get pugilistic, onlookers gawk, local media swoons

Daily deadlines. I've been there. Makes news out of crap and mountains out of molehills. For some reason, a dust-up at Hunters Lane High School is front and center. Here's how the headlines should read. Two kids engage in fisticuffs, a crowd swells and shoves and jostles to get a look. An unfortunately assigned school resource officer panics, envisions riots, gang signs as students gawk.

News is made. Some scratch heads absentmindedly.

On the 145th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, wanna see several guys in stovepipe hats, bristly whiskers and long coats in one room? Stop by the Belcourt tonight at 7 p.m. for the screening of Being Lincoln: Men with Hats.

In his lighthearted documentary, Nashville filmmaker Elvis Wilson delves into a nationwide subculture of Abraham Lincoln presenters—men who study, dress and perform in character as the 16th president. Their members include several Nashvillians, including Dennis Boggs, a familiar face (heh) at local historical events, and retired home inspector John Mansfield, whose quest to win a Lincoln look-alike contest is one of the movie's narrative threads.

Above is a clip of the Lincoln of Lower Broad, Mike Cox. A fixture in the city's boisterous downtown tourist district, where bouncers and bartenders see him as a calming influence—would you pick a fight with Abe Lincoln?—Cox hopes he inspires the people he meets in honky-tonks to reconsider their wicked ways.

"I get a lot of satisfaction knowing I've touched other people's lives—maybe they won't take drugs or do whatever they do," Cox says. "When they sober up the next morning, maybe they'll think about changing their lives."

Or maybe they'll swear off the bottle if they remember chatting with Abe Lincoln at Tootsie's. Whatever the case, Cox and other Middle Tennessee Lincoln presenters will probably attend tonight's screening, so be sure and make them feel at home. After all, they're bound to be somewhat uneasy attending the theater.

Stephen Dubner, nerd rock star.

Last night, Stephen Dubner, one-half of the pop-psych duo behind the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics, spoke at Vanderbilt's student life center. Dubner, if you recall, is Mr. Hyde, the stenographer slash translator to University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt's mad scientist Dr. Jekyll.

Together, they're the guys who predicted Jackson and Emma would be 2015's most popular baby names and sought to explain reduced crime rates as a result of increased abortions.

Whether they're right or wrong is immaterial. What matters is that they make theories, back them up with data and, as such, provide us lesser minds with countless hours of cocktail-party chatter.

Because Dubner asked that the roughly 800 Vandy students and professors in attendance not spill any details about their follow-up (titled, naturally, Super Freakonomics), we're forced to reduce the contents of last night's speech into a handful of truisms:

- The big "No Vacancy" sign on Wall Street will force would-be egghead bankers to find different jobs, thus having unintended positive consequences in fields like education
- A doctor wearing a tie is the single biggest threat to your health in the hospital
- Econ students, and their professors, are cold-hearted bastards

And...

- Al Gore's method for global climate change is ultimately doomed (shocked face) because it asks for too much behavioral change

Basically, if you've never heard an economist, or a journalist who's co-opted an economist's way of thinking, speak, your take-away is this: People are not necessarily good or bad, they're just lazy, incentive-driven creatures. All of which relates to Dubner's final point, after a student asked him his thoughts on the Big Three Bailout.

Based on conversations with people in the know, Dubner said there was "no way politically" they'd allow GM to sink into bankruptcy. He also offered an explanation for the automakers self-inflicted wounds.

"It's called moral hazard," he said. "If you think someone's going to bail you out, you'll do something wrong. There's no consequences."

Freaky, indeed.

Republicans are promising more openness in state government now that they're running things. OK, I'm willing to buy that until they prove otherwise. But is anyone fooled by all this chest-beating over the fabulous new process for selecting the constitutional officers?

“We are honored and humbled that the voters of Tennessee have trusted Republicans to hold a constitutional majority in selecting these officers, and we take that responsibility very seriously,” said Leader Mumpower. “Tennessee voters asked for change and they are ready for transparency and accountability in government. A new day has dawned on our state and our opening up this process of selecting Tennessee’s constitutional officers is the first step in bringing about a positive change in state government.”

Please. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see how the end result here is going to be any different. Republican hacks will replace Democratic hacks in those jobs, right?

What is this--a mountainous L.A.? Not that Smoky.

Prepare to see the Smokies through a pall of smog.

Unless a petition for reconsideration goes through--leaving the final say-so to Obama--the EPA is going to make it a hell of a lot easier for coal-fired power plants, lead smelters and oil refineries near national parks to vomit pollutants with abandon, according to a report by The Washington Post. Ever since the passage of the Energy Policy Act, W. has turned the gatekeepers of our wild lands--particularly the Bureau of Land Management and the EPA--into rubber stamps.

I saw it happen firsthand in Wyoming. The BLM issued permits to drill out there like candy on Halloween. The effect: Destruction of sagebrush habitats and the dependent species, and the ruination of ranch land and the ephemeral creeks the high country ranchers so depend on.

This is brazen, though. Bush sneaking in an 11th hour pass on pollution. EPA regional administrators are raising a shit-fit. Now when the EPA starts bitching about energy-related policy decisions, you can rest assured it's egregious. Here's what they plan to do, or not do, rather: Spikes in pollution near national parks during peak energy demand used to be illegal. Instead, pollution levels will be averaged over an entire year. Just imagine what energy company math whizzes can do with an imaginative statistical analysis.

You know The Who song, "I Can See for Miles?" It hasn't been true for a while in the Smoky Mountains, and if this goes through it probably never will be.

Technically, this picture is enough to convict the First Lady of a Class C felony.

One thing most people seem to be sure of regarding our new President-elect is that he doesn't like guns. Not only that, he wishes to take them from our warm, live hands. Last week provided anecdotal evidence that these fears helped to spur a local run on peashooters. Now this week there's proof that the trend has gone national.

According to Slate's Jack Shafer, Obama's victory had a measurable impact on gun sales:

To be fair to the press horde, some sort of "Obama effect" does exist. During the week of Nov. 3-9, the FBI received 374,000 background requests, "a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007," CNN.com reports. Anecdotes collected in some of the news stories indicate that some buyers are keen on buying so-called "assault weapons," which were banned from 1994 until 2004.

It seems the prevailing wisdom here is to get 'em while the gettin's good (and still legal). All of which leads Shafer to an interesting conclusion:

If a genuine run on guns exists, whose fault is it? Blame Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, a well-known "assault weapon" foe. Paradoxically, if Obama wanted to end the purported run on guns, he could do so by opposing any new regulations.

Not mentioned? Option C: Champion a toothless piece of legislation that satisfies the lazier members of your party while maintaining the status quo, thus ending the gun run.

Problem solved. Right?

Schlesselman and Cowart mugging and mugging for the camera

Tennessean Daniel Cowart, one of two skinheads charged with conspiring to murder dozens of blacks en route to assassinating President-Elect Barack Obama, is crying bias, prejudice—racism, even! Why? Because his federal grand jury in northwest Tennessee just happens to be mostly black.

Boo hoo! The situation's as rich in irony as it is in silliness. Cowart's petition sounded awfully scholarly in the Tennessean. I'm going to go out on a limb and say his attorney composed it:

The jury, he said, could not "under the most modest constitutional scrutiny ... be considered fair, impartial and unprejudiced."

Let's see: A grand jury in northwestern Tennessee should exclude black folks during the selection process—even though they comprise a disproportionate chunk of the local population—on the off chance Mr. Cowart and his cohort Paul Schlesselman can round up enough fellow lily-white crackpots to get off? Gotcha.

I don't think race is implicit in the phrase, "a jury of your peers." But if peers are what Cowart wants, good luck finding 12 idiot douchebags who planned to take out a presidential candidate while wearing white tuxedos and driving a vehicle smeared with white-power bullshit.

Odom and his new bride. Photo courtesy of Kleinheider.

Craig Fitzhugh is challenging Gary Odom to become leader of the Democrats in the state House, and the caucus could meet this weekend to vote.

Fitzhugh, chair of the House Finance Committee, is from Ripley (believe it or not), and his candidacy may represent the last gasp of the old West Tennessee Democratic mafia.

He won’t say it, but his sales pitch is likely that Odom is a screwup whose mistakes contributed to the Democratic election debacle. If they elect Odom as their leader, Democrats may be putting their trust in the very one who led them into the political wilderness.

As majority leader, Odom feuded with House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, and some Democrats are complaining that the bickering between the two kept the party’s House campaigns in disarray.

“Call it the taking-your-eye-off-the-ball syndrome,” one Democrat tells Pith. “Remember: Here's a guy who bolted for his honeymoon in Europe during the budget's crunch time this year.”

Some House insiders also are grumbling because Odom fired the caucus' longtime polling and mail vendors. These guys arguably had a better sense of the House districts than the folks Odom replaced them with. Additionally, Odom apparently got crossways with the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helps organize and fund legislative races around the country. They sat out of Tennessee for most of the cycle.

Odom’s message to the Democrats? You owe me. Late in this year's cycle, he raised more than $126,000, then gave at least $39,000 of it to more than 30 House candidates and incumbents. (As an aside, it should be noted that one of Odom’s single-largest sources of money was the Bells Bend developer crowd; from them, he raised nearly $10,000, including $4,000 from the May family, $3,000 from would-be bridge builder Bell Construction, and $2,500 from Waller Landen’s PAC).

The caucus was planning to meet Sunday, but to avoid a conflict with the Titans game, the meeting may be delayed until later in the month. It will likely be closed to the public.

Update: Hobbs slaps Fitzhugh, and Kleinheider kneecaps Odom.

Update II: We called Odom for his comment, but he's not talking to Pith ever since we wrote about how he was fighting on the side of the incredibly wealthy last session and wanted to slap a new tax on Wal-Mart. Gary, we miss you.

Update III: Odom's fight for very rich people curried favor with the aforementioned Bells Bend developer crowd, which later gave lots of cash to Odom. We just thought we'd point that out. C'mon Gar, give us a call.

We talked to Fitzhugh this morning from Ripley. Here’s the Q&A:

Calm down fellas. We just want them to lose ONE game.

The Titans and New York Giants won again this Sunday, making them 10-0 and 9-1 respectively and making the job of national sportswriters everywhere that much easier. The people who get paid to predict what will happen in the NFL like storylines. They like subplots. And thankfully for them, the two best teams in the league are eager to provide them.

For one, the Titans and the Giants look alike. Punishing offensive lines. Interchangeable, Chinese-fire-drill D-lines that produce in spite of injuries. A multi-headed Hydra of a running game. Largely superstar-free rosters. In short, they both look like good teams because that's what they are: good teams.

Second, the Kerry Collins angle. Collins goes to the Super Bowl with the Giants in 2001. The next year they draft QB-of-the-future Eli Manning, Collins gets pissed about a lowball contract offer and the two sides part ways. It is, oddly enough, a similar scenario to what may take place this offseason. But we digress.

The comparisons work. They make for decent column fodder. And they give us an excuse to say the words COLLISION COURSE (and really, who can resist the urge?).

The Titans are unlike the Giants, however, in one important way: They're still perfect. And that could be a problem...

The legislature's new Republican majority has yet to meet a single day, and already the Christian Right is making threats. "Values Issues Should Get Top Billing," is the headline of the latest message to evangelicals from David Fowler of the Family Action Council of Tennessee:

... [T]hose who say the Republicans need to concentrate on the budget, education, and jobs correctly note that these need to be priorities…. too. But to assume that the legislature is only limited to dealing with two or three issues is nonsense. Values voters just won’t buy that should the Republicans ignore their issues and concerns.

In fact, Republicans should move SJR 127 and some of the other issues early in the next session in order to be able to concentrate fully on economic issues once the revenue numbers come out in late April. Moving these issues early does not mean Republicans don’t care about the other issues or that these issues are their only priority. No, it will show that they want to be able to focus fully on the economic issues once the revenue picture is clear and they know what they have to work with. Republicans getting these “social issues” off the table when budgetary work is limited due to the absence of revenue numbers is showing that when it’s time to work on the budget, it will be the priority.

It's not so much SJR127 or gun bills that might cause trouble for Republicans with moderates and independents. It's "some of the other issues" that Fowler doesn't detail. How about Stacey Campfield's bills to force women to look at ultrasounds of their fetuses before abortions? Or to obtain death certificates for their fetuses after abortions? Legislation to force the teaching of creationism in public schools might not go over so well, either. The list goes on.

OK, so 10-minutes of Fox News seems like more than any rational being could bear. But trust us when we say: You have to watch this video.

Peter Schiff is one of the only pundits (and almost certainly the only one who garnered a significant airtime) to correctly predict the economic clusterfuck in which we're currently mired. Best of all, he made said predictions at a time when most people (Ben Stein!) still thought the stock market was made up of puppies and rainbows.

So sit back, relax and watch the old clips as Schiff calmly warned us exactly how screwed we'd be, while other analysts laughed at him and "Bueller" practically demanded that you buy stock in Merrill Lynch.

Europe is in love with our new president to be. Everybody remembers the scenes of unbridled joy from Berlin to London as the election results poured in a few weeks back. But while our allies across the pond celebrate Obama’s historic election, they would do well to remember that he will soon be calling on them for a pretty big favor.

Obama’s plan is for the U.S. to up the ante in Afghanistan, with significant increases in troops and resources likely to be coming soon after inauguration day. At that point, some of our European NATO allies—who have long used Bush’s unilateralist posturing as cover to stay out of the wars we started—will have to put up or shut up.

"Afghanistan will be viewed in Washington as a litmus test of whether Europeans should be taken seriously as strategic partners," says Daniel Korski, of the European Council on foreign relations in an interview with Time. "It will be the issue that pushes them to take more responsibility for global problems themselves."

This puts European leaders in a tough spot. They will either have to get behind wars that most of their constituents oppose, or face isolation from the U.S., a valuable strategic partner with a legitimate argument about the connection between Afghan stability and global security.

The issue will likely be the first big test of the Obama administration’s foreign policy chops. Europeans are good at nation building—they’ve had plenty of practice in their own backyard—so they can be valuable partners in the U.S. effort to bring some kind of normalcy to the region.

The question is, will they?

Though I’m not this paper’s resident feminist—that honor falls to Tracy Moore—I have been watching a developing discussion about Michelle Obama with increasing interest. This essay in Salon rightfully laments the “Momification” of Lady Obama over the past weeks, as the president-elect’s wife has softened her image to appear a smidge more maternal than her career-oriented resume might otherwise suggest.

…With progress comes inevitable regress, and in our stouthearted dash to fit this family into a comfortably familiar tableau, we have fallen back into other, far too familiar, cultural traps: you know, like forgetting everything we've learned in recent decades about female achievement and identity.

The majority of the coverage of Michelle Obama in the week since her husband was elected has centered on her clothes. Not just the firecracker of a dress she donned on Election Night, but on her personal style, and what she will wear to the Inaugural balls.

A rejoinder to this piece appeared on Slate’s XX Factor blog, where Melinda Henneberger asks, “Can smart, strong women not choose traditional roles? Everything I know about Michelle Obama tells me that this really is her choice, not her consolation prize.”

Perhaps. But Michelle Obama has always appeared slightly wary of her husband’s political ambitions and very dedicated to her own extremely successful career. It’s not so much that I think she’ll miss her career. I just can’t imagine how she wouldn’t resent having to be stuffed into some kind of Jackie O/Barbara Bush mold where she has to write books about the White House cat and hold fancy teas.

At the same time, the negative reaction to Hillary’s forceful personality and agenda—which I’ll grant may have stemmed from retrograde gender stereotypes to begin with—straitjackets a woman like Michelle Obama. Remember the Hillary nutcracker?

Obama has said that she has no political or policy aspirations. That’s a good thing for her and her husband—Hillarycare, anyone?—but what does that leave for a fantastically well educated, smart and capable person to do all day?

Living, still breathing human being, Bill Bates.

Hopefully, sometime in the past month, one of Bill Bates' five kids did not Google his dad's name alongside the word "died." Because if they had, they would've found this and then this; fake obituaries with a decidedly un-Onion like seriousness.

Bates, a former UT grad, Pro-Bowler with the Dallas Cowboys and all around feel-good story, is actually very much alive. And if you're a worried bride in the Celinas, Texas, area searching last minute for a suitable place to get hitched, he's got you covered.

So why is his alma mater saying he died in a plane crash over Kansas? And then Rome?

Blair Bolick, author of the second obit, explains:

I apologize. This was no prank. I am a student at the University of Tennessee, and for our journalism class, we were set up to do a MOCK story on tnjn.com. My professor tells me that we are the guinea pigs in this experiment. It was never supposed to be released in any way that it could be searched or Googled. I'm fully aware he is alive, but this was strictly a class assignment. I assume it was for Charles as well.

My sincerest apologizes,

Blair

Thanks, Blair. Now, as an added bonus, please enjoy the following video, which helpfully documents the origin of Bates' nickname: That Guy Who Got Run Over By Herschel Walker.

In The New York Times this morning comes advice for the GOP from Lamar Alexander. To bounce back, Republicans need to be more like Lamar, according to Lamar. Here is Alexander doing what he does best: Talking without saying much of anything.

“We can stand around and talk about our principles, but we have to put them into actions that most people agree with."

“What people were listening for in this election is, what are you going to do about my pocketbook, my health insurance, my electric bill. We need to step back and fundamentally change the way we talk about issues and be focused more on what we can do to help the country rather than what we can do to help the Republican Party.”

Lamar is touted in the article as a successful Republican whose advice should be heeded. And of course, he's correct that the party needs to appeal to independents and moderates. But to win elections, it also helps if the Democrats in your state are too pathetic to put up a fight.