Do they have to keep embarrassing us? Does it have to be so bad?
The Boner Awards 2009, via the Nashville Scene included a few of our local lawmakers.
"We should have known this decade was born to suck right off the bat in 2000, when the Volunteer State up and volunteered to put the nail in native son Al Gore's presidential coffin. But who knew that in some ways, that was as good as things would get? Along came devastation, war and political turmoil— accompanied at home by a furious hard-right shift that wouldn't even leave the scab of the Snopes Trial unpicked.
By this year, we as a state couldn't even embrace whatever hope the rest of the country felt in electing Barack Obama president. Tennessee Republicans cackled, gloated and used their newfound clout to advance reactionary agendas so blatant the rest of the nation watched in dawning astonishment. Tennessee Democrats, meanwhile, put up about as much resistance as pamphlets in the path of a leafblower— with one notable exception.
So what is our little blue oasis of Nashville to do, awash in red-state rancor? Put down our pitchforks and reach for our Boners—the Scene's 20th annual round-up of the year's biggest scoundrels, bumpiest scandals and strangest snafus. In these pages, you'll find moving targets ranging from finger-wagging philanderers to a certain loudmouth rapper, with lots of bad behavior and public catastrophe in between.
Should we dare to hope that the next 10 years will be better? We remember asking something similar 10 years ago about this time—and now as then, against our better judgment, we'll answer...yes? But if another decade of infamy such as this one lies in store, we'll give you the only consolation we can offer: Our Boners will be standing by.
Why, here they come now....
Poor Jason Mumpower. Kicking off the Boner sweepstakes just a few weeks into January, the 35-year-old Bristol lawmaker thought he would make history as the first Republican speaker of the state House in 40 years. So certain was his coronation, after the red tide rolled across Tennessee, that the state website already proclaimed him the new House potentate. All that remained was to make it official. On the day of the vote, no fewer than 65 state flags—intended as keepsakes for special constituents—fluttered over the Capitol per instruction from the mighty Mumpower to commemorate his triumph. Let's hope he kept the receipt from Flagz R Us. In one of the most brazen and outrageous FU's in Tennessee political history, Mumpower watched gap-jawed as the Democrats rose up in a collective sneak attack and elected Rep. Kent Williams, an obscure Republican restaurateur from Elizabethton with whom they'd cut a clandestine deal. The ensuing pandemonium required a state trooper to restore order. It also created a climate of contention, fury, hypocrisy and hostility that set the tone for the year in state politics—for which the grizzled stool-fillers at the Capitol Hill reporters' hangout Brandon's would like to say, thank you.
Dr. Evil goes down.
Once the shock of seeing effectively organized Tennessee Democrats wore off, a show of sympathy after the House vote would have been immediate—had the victim been anyone other than Mumpower, whose bully-boy hubris was memorably documented in a Tennessean profile not long before the vote. "[During] one roll call vote last session," the morning daily wrote, "he stalked up and down the aisle, glowering and tapping in his hand the metal baton he used to press his voting button." The article even had a gloating Mumpower, just a monocle and fluffy white cat away from becoming a Bond villain, quoting Machiavelli after an earlier victory: "A new dawn has arisen, and a new order is at hand." His nemesis Jimmy Naifeh couldn't have said it better. After decrying "the web of lies" that led to his downfall, there was nothing for the sulky Mumpower to do but go the time-tested Al Gore consolation route: grow a beard.
As if to prove Williams' election had opened an alternate universe where scheiss was now Shinola, who should pop up in moral outrage but Rep. Brian Kelsey, the General Assembly's champion grandstander? Mustering all the righteous fury of Col. Sanders condemning the frying of chicken, Kelsey lodged an ethics complaint against Williams for supposedly sexually harassing Rep. Susan Lynn in the Legislative Plaza parking garage. (Williams reportedly told Lynn, "I will give a week's pay just to see you naked." Shoot, that's just earmarking appropriations.) But first, in a move somewhat unusual for an ethical stickler, Kelsey sent Williams an evident offer to back off in exchange for a committee chairmanship. Kelsey admitted he sent the following text message—"Tell Kent I'm willing to talk about reconciliation if he's willing to talk about chairman of the full committee"—but explained that it didn't mean what it clearly meant. Others wondered why Kelsey and the GOP's shining knights suddenly picked now to defend the flower of Southern womanhood, since they twiddled their thumbs when the alleged incident was reported to Mumpower in 2007.
Gone with the windbag.
When the nutty guy rattling a can at the bus station claims to know what God is thinking, out come the men in white coats. But when Rep. Tony Shipley does it, people are supposed to nod gravely. In March, on the OpenPen blog, a children's-issues lobbyist described an alleged encounter where the Kingsport Republican made a list of claims that ranged from spurious to wacko—starting with the assertion that God would plonk California into the ocean for its gay-adopting ways, and continuing with an apparent veiled threat of civil war. "If [secular progressives] keep pushing and pushing and pushing, they're pushing us too far," Shipley said, according to the lobbyist, "and something will happen—just like we did in 1860."
The list goes on, but you get the drift.
