One rainy afternoon when I first went to Nashville to cover politics for the Knoxville Journal, back in the days when we had two competitive daily newspapers in this town, I dropped into a legislative office to visit a prominent committee chair. I shared a bag of cookies and he told me funny stories but warned me to hush when I’d laugh out loud.
“Be careful,” he warned, pointing back over his shoulder at the wall that separated his office from that of an even more powerful committee chair.
“He’s under investigation. They’ve got his office bugged.”
A few months later, he – not the other guy – got busted for extortion.
That was more than 30 years ago, back when Democrats controlled both houses of the General Assembly plus the governor’s office. Investigations named after country music songs (“Rocky Top,” “Tennessee Waltz”) had begun to uncover scandals that sent some to jail and drove others to suicide, although none of it ever touched the wily and likable Gov. Ned McWherter, who was deemed personally honest – sort of a petunia in an onion patch.
New to Nashville, I was appalled. Those Democrats were terrible. (Note: As always with generalizations, there were many exceptions.)
There was a kind of “Animal House” atmosphere. Some of the ’80s pols snuck liquor into their Donald Duck orange juice on the House floor before adjourning to chase women and stuff themselves with jumbo shrimp at the lobbyist-paid-for receptions across the street. Country boys and Memphis slicksters walked over to Printers Alley and stumbled back to their hotels. There was lots of bipartisan cooperation – they took care of their friends and their friends took care of them. They got stuff done without blaming it on God.
They did cite their version of the Golden Rule, however – “He who’s got the gold makes the rules.” Somehow, I doubt that’s changed much.
But the Republicans who rule the roost now are different. They’re on a Mission From God, and they hate who God hates – foreigners, feminists, gun-grabbers, gays, abortionists and UT students.
Take Speaker Glen Casada. (Please.)
Casada checks the MFG boxes. He’s anti-gay and anti-immigrant and a birther, to boot. In 2015, he wanted to round up all the Syrian immigrants in the state, with no regard for legal status, and send them back to where they came from – presumably including Falafel Hut owner Yassin Terou, who came here in 2011, started a business, became a citizen and has won just about every honor a Knoxvillian can claim.
It’s unclear whether Casada’s most recent hit was divinely inspired, but he sure made headlines when he put three-time accused child molester David Byrd (who is on tape apologizing to a victim) on the Education Committee and appointed him chair of an Education subcommittee. Byrd’s appointment was already raising eyebrows before Casada told a former congressional candidate with a video camera running that rape victims who are afraid of being ostracized should simply move someplace else. Former Speaker Beth Harwell and Senate Speaker Randy McNally wanted him to resign.
(Seeing as how we’re talking religion here, I’ll refrain from describing Byrd as a Mitch McConnell lookalike, since McConnell would have to take to wearing a mangy possum as a wig to complete the look.)
Getting back to Casada, appointing Michael Curcio to chair the House Judiciary Committee is probably part of the Plan, too. Curcio, who is from Dickson, and evidently a quick study, has jumped right into the busybody business. He’s messing with the state’s large cities with a bill that would strip civilian review boards of subpoena power and place them under the legislature’s thumb.
Curcio probably wasn’t around when Republicans were preaching about keeping governments small and close to the people. Evidently Ronald Reagan had it wrong: God loves big government.
Not sure how Casada feels about Jefferson County Sen. Frank Niceley’s bill messing with city zoning authority, but based on facts already in evidence, he’s probably OK with it, which must mean it’s part of the MFG, too.
But still, he and his band of saints are only human, and there’s just so much they can do. They can’t go expending all their energy messing with Madeline Rogero – it’s almost time for Sex Week, and the saints have got pearls to clutch.
I miss the sinners.