GREEN continued
According to MPD spokesman Lt. Richard True, Green has been consulting exclusively with MPD Director Walter Winfrey.
Green also helped write the mayor's response to last year's Guardsmark study on crime in Shelby County. Hoffman says Green helped her start organizing the Shelby County Crime Commission, a panel of private citizens partnering with the public sector to address crime issues.
Last week Green organized a conference of mayors and city officials from a variety of cities across the country to discuss urban problems such as crime and the weakening of the American family. Hoffman says Green was instrumental in securing a $40,000 private grant necessary to run the conference.
The Ohio professor has deferred all questions to the mayor. During Green's urban affairs conference last week, a Flyer reporter tried to ask Herenton to elaborate on the Sungold connection, but the mayor refused to comment. Instead, he briskly told the reporter that the only questions that could be asked were those relevant to the conference. As he stormed back into the conference, he swung back around and said, "I don't intend to say that any more."
Herenton did, however, make a few public comments at the conference about Green. He said he has known Green for 25 years. He called him an "able scholar, excellent administrator, and researcher."
Green was dean of the College of Urban Affairs at Michigan State University from 1974 to 1980. According to a summary of his biography, he has written several books. The summary, however, listed only two, The Urban Challenge: Poverty and Race, which is out of print, and Metropolitan Desegregation, which was published in 1985.
Herenton has repeatedly stated that his private business dealings would not interfere with his position as an elected official. At the time he became involved in Sungold, legalization of gambling in Tennessee was an open issue. Herenton openly made bringing casino gambling to Memphis a top legislative priority. The Tennessee General Assembly, however, wouldn't change the state's constitution to accommodate the mayor.
Sungold is no ordinary casino company. It doesn't operate any casinos, nor does it have any experience operating casinos. The company was previously involved with promoting a battery-powered necklace to repel mosquitoes and other entrepreneurial ventures.
The company's stock is volatile and has not traded since late February, when the Vancouver Stock Exchange halted trading in it for the second time in 12 weeks. To resume trading, Sungold has to provide the stock exchange with certain reports that would protect investors' interests. It is not clear when trading in Sungold will resume or what price Herenton could get for his stock if he wanted to sell it.
by Phil Campbell
POLLSTER, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL adviser, and prostitute solicitor Dick Morris quietly slipped into town last week to test the format for a possible new talk show that he would host.
With the help of former Clinton TV ad-maker and Memphian Marius Penczner, Morris showed up Friday at a studio at 3535 Park Avenue. Penczner gathered his friends and contacts, both professional and political, to participate in a private testing of the show, tentatively titled The Hot Button.
Morris says he would ideally like to take the show from one city to another, using local town-hall-type audiences to give the production a fresh feel each time. No deal has been struck with anyone over how, when, or where this show might be aired, says Penczner, but he and Morris would like to start on cable first. Given Morris' and Penczner's contacts, however, cutting a deal is probably not going to be their biggest problem.
The medium-brow concept falls somewhere between Nightline and The Jerry Springer Show in terms of intellectual content. Morris uses his own polling data to see what issues the public has on its mind the "hot buttons." Then he gathers an audience of politically aware, possibly politically active citizens together, and he leads the discussion based on a yes-no issue. It's a town hall for the politically and/or economically advantaged. And, unlike The McLaughlin Group, it's just one issue per half-hour episode.
Morris hopes to obtain a Sunday-morning time slot. When all the political pundits are blathering, Morris will have average people giving their opinions on similar topics.
The hot-button topics discussed at Friday's trial taping were:
Should we abolish teacher tenure?
The Justice Department recently developed a remote metal detector which would allow police officers to determine if pedestrians are carrying a knife or handgun from 100 feet away. Should officers be legally able to stop someone after they've used the device to discover a possible weapon?
Affirmative action keep it or end it?
Morris is a studied listener. When someone else is talking, he puts his hands in front of him, his fingernails barely touching. He stares intently. Yet he keeps the audience members reined in, interrupting when they seem to get off the main topic or when they start repeating themselves. Morris has immersed himself in statistics and the general comments people make on direct-mail pollings. In the last six months he seems to have made a smooth transition into radio, where he is subbing for talk-show host Jim Bohanan. He didn't seem to be having any problems with this new medium.
"As you can tell, he likes to talk," Penczner noted from his seat behind the audience. "I think he's coming along. I think he's going to do great."
After the tapings had finished, Morris led the audience in a free-wheeling discussion on the topics of their choice. He had most of the crowd won over. They all knew his past that business with the prostitute that forced him to resign his position as Clinton's adviser. After the tapings, one woman openly admired his "courage" for admitting his wrongdoings. This created a spontaneous round of applause, much like a Jenny Jones crowd.
"My polling says I have a bunch of people who forgive me and I have a bunch of people who don't," Morris said. He compared the issue to the time John F. Kennedy was asked how he became a war hero. "It was purely involuntary. They sank my boat," was the reason.
"Because [Morris] got his head cut off when they did that," a man yelled out. The audience was losing its sense of elitism the longer this issue stayed out.
"I wasn't as good at my life as at my job," Morris continued. "[The fall-out from the prostitute incident] was the biggest growth experience of my life. I was too arrogant, too self-centered."
Based on the test screenings, Morris' approach to the show smacks of chicanery. Thanks to his polling, Morris already knows what Joe and Jane Citizen's opinions are beforehand. He establishes that point at the beginning of the show, and then tries to maneuver the audience into seeing that point of view. Near the end of the show's time, he repeats that point, making it sound as if he has reached a conclusion. He then thanks the audience with a signature good-bye ("And that was our hot button this week"), waves, and walks off the set to a round of applause.
It's a wrap. But did Dick Morris just say what he thinks, or what he thinks you think?
Then again, if it boosts ratings for a host not to have his own opinions, but instead to try to reflect the opinions of the masses, sort of an anti-Rush Limbaugh, there may be nobody better than Dick Morris for the job.
by Phil Campbell
HUSEIN ABDELHADI JUST WANTS TO BE left alone. So do his neighbors.
The owner of Club Fantasia says he's been harassed from the day he opened his dance hall at 1819 Madison Avenue. Recently, Abdelhadi says, somebody left a message on his answering machine calling the Kuwaiti proprietor a "sand nigger." A few days after that incident, his Mazda 929 was stolen from the club lot. When it was found, it had been stripped and burned.
His next-door neighbors, the residents of Idlewild Commons, want him to shut down his business. Those who live closest to his club say they have to wear earplugs when they go to sleep, and on Wednesday nights they have to call a tow truck to take away the cars of the club patrons who park in their lot.
Abdelhadi's late-1995 decision to open a dance club at Madison and Idlewild has met with opposition from the beginning. Two council members have sided with the neighbors first Jack Sammons when he was running for an unsuccessful reelection, and now John Bobango. The neighbors say they have bad memories of Red Square, the previous dance club located there, in a building that once housed the Idlewild Theatre.
Abdelhadi's club operates in an area zoned commercial-highway, which allows him to operate a dance club and sell beer.
Still, the war goes on. Last week the neighbors sought assistance from the Memphis Alcohol Commission. Abdelhadi had been arrested three weeks ago after he protested a citation from police. The police department's Organized Crime Unit said that he and four bartenders sold $2.50 Miller Lites to a 20-year-old working undercover for police. Abdelhadi denies the charge, although his attorney, Ronald L. Harper, admits that the owner later discovered one bartender selling beer to minors because she was getting better tips.
The alcohol commission otherwise known as the beer board voted 3-0 to either fine Abdelhadi $500 or impose a 21-day beer permit suspension. Either way, his permit would be on probation for 90 days. Abdelhadi promptly paid the $500.
"Zoning allows this establishment to exist, but it does not allow it to break laws and wreak havoc on the neighborhood," says Gary Rowsey, the neighborhood association president for Idlewild Commons, which isn't really a neighborhood but a condominium complex. "The entire neighborhood has suffered tremendously."
Abdelhadi's response is terse: "Why do I get all this from them? They haven't given up after two years. Leave me alone." He compared the residents to schoolyard bullies.
Both Harper and the neighbors try to take the beer board's mind off the direct issue at hand selling alcohol to a 20-year-old and onto what they believe to be broader issues. The neighbors focus on the noise and parking situation, while Harper stresses potential racism.
He reads a transcript of the message left on Abdelhadi's machine. Here's an excerpt: "You better get your fucking cars out of the parking lot at Idlewild Commons. I have just about had it with you and don't think this is not a threat. It is a fucking promise, you sand nigger."
Under questioning, Rowsey admits that one specific neighbor may have been responsible for the message. No one knows who stole and torched Abdelhadi's Mazda.
Club Fantasia isn't doing too well, anyway. Abdelhadi's biggest night is Wednesday, when he changes the music to '80s dance tunes. He doesn't even open on Thursdays, when more established clubs such as Six-One-Six are filling up. On a typical Friday or Saturday night, there are only a handful of people in the club. Perhaps not surprisingly, Abdelhadi says he's in the red.
The only person who might be benefiting from all this commotion is Harper. After the attorney's thorough questioning of the condominium residents, a man of Arabic descent came up to him and asked for his business card.
by Jacqueline Marino
The board chairman of the Memphis Housing Authority has accused Congressman Harold Ford Jr. of using MHA's current HOPE VI default status with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to advance his political agenda.
On April 23rd, HUD sent a letter to MHA warning the authority of being in "default" of its HOPE VI grant agreement. HUD gave MHA 90 days to remedy a portion of its plan or risk losing $47 million to redevelop LeMoyne Gardens.
In two letters to Mayor W.W. Herenton, one dated April 23rd, Congressman Harold Ford Jr. indicated there is a "crisis of confidence" at HUD over the ability of the housing authority to develop an acceptable plan for the HOPE VI funds. Ford also expressed similar thoughts in a press statement released the same day.
In a May 2nd letter to the mayor, Ford reiterated points made in the default letter from HUD and criticized parts of MHA's revised housing plan. For example, Ford said MHA's "funding strategy" lacked "substance and professionalism."
"It is clear anyone who reads the correspondence from the Congressman's office can see his letters went far beyond the tone and tenor of the HUD letter," says Ricky E. Wilkins, MHA board chairman.
"They reflect the congressman's personal thoughts or his office's thoughts about MHA and Hope VI," he continues. " It is not my intent to get into a verbal spat. But I do not take it kindly when people take unnecessary cheap shots. It's not warranted or geared toward moving efforts forward."
Ford says Wilkins' assertion is "preposterous."
"I sent the letters to express the urgency of this matter," he says. "We are now 69 days away from having $47 million taken from us. I have not received any feedback from the letters until this. I find it deeply troubling, especially for the residents of the [LeMoyne Gardens] community.
"The long-term implications of this are enormous. It was under the former congressman's leadership that this money was created. It's now at its most critical stage. I don't want to see it lost. I want to see it saved."
Wilkins says members of the HUD technical team who visited Memphis Friday told MHA they felt confident the housing authority could complete an approvable plan for the HOPE VI grant. Ford said Kevin Marchman, a top HUD official who also authored HUD's default letter, accompanied the team at the request of his office.
In January, auditors from the Office of the Inspector General said MHA was not providing "decent, safe and sanitary housing for low-income families." They requested a third party or the federal government take over the management of MHA's maintenance and modernization departments.
Auditors say MHA's buildings, grounds, and apartment units are in "extremely poor condition due to age, lack of maintenance, and ineffective use of modernization funding,"