Let Us Count the Ways

Yes, it’s a hoary thought, but as we pause for the annual Thanksgiving remembrance this year, there are some things that we in Memphis and Shelby County ought to be properly thankful for.
Let’s start with the obvious: For all the clamor attendant to the current annexation/incorporation controversy, for example, we are not Bosnia nor Rwanda, just two of several areas in the world where people are unused to sitting down, at peace with themselves and their surroundings and their neighbors, for a bit of turkey and all the trimmings.
Nor do we, in Memphis or Shelby County or in Tennessee or in the U.S.A., reside in such economically imperiled parts of the world as, say, the Japan of 1997. (May we confess to a twinge of guilty satisfaction in getting to say that?) The Great Stock Market Crash of 1997 – like that of exactly 10 years earlier – came and went without, it seems, derailing the current long-term national boom. (Hold on to your turkey wishbone and hope that it stays that way.)
We are grateful, too, for solid evidence that downtown Memphis is in the midst of an obvious renaissance. Yes, yes, we know we’ve said that or something like it before, but lookit, after Jakob Dylan and his band helped us open a brand-new Hard Rock Cafe on Beale Street two weeks back, the rest of us, er, wallflowers took heart that we might become a magnet to mankind, after all – something more, in any case, than the Newark-to-Nashville’s-New York that an infamous article in The Tennessean portrayed us as some weeks back.
And yes, we know that the national drop in the rate of serious crimes hasn’t showed up locally yet, but, as they say, we’re working on it. Everybody from D.A. Bill Gibbons to Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton to police director Walter Winfrey has raised the problem to a fairly high degree of consciousness. So maybe that trend will catch up with us, too. (We’re hopeful now and will surely be thankful then, if and when the reduction in crime occurs.)
Finally, we’re thankful that the city and county governments can manage to put aside their differences and cooperate long enough to put on the annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the Homeless at the Convention Center, feeding some 5,000 of our fellow citizens.
This is a hoary sentiment, too, but we ought to be thankful for such an opportunity to reach beyond ourselves and our private concerns for at least that one day every year. n

Congratulations to the Court

The Supreme Court did the right thing in expediting its decision on the case of Chapter 98, and it made the right decision in declaring it un-constitutional.
If the notorious easy-incorporation bill, whose backers concede was slipped through a largely unsuspecting legislature, did not violate the precepts of self-respecting self-government, no legislation ever did. The Court was absolutely correct in vindicating the judgement of Special Fayette County Channcelor F. Lloyd Tatum that Chapter 98’s “caption” (or descriptive summary) not only mis-described but misrepresented its contents.
We do not doubt that Tennessee’s long-established annexation laws need to be looked at with an eye toward ensuring their fairness toward cities and their suburbs alike. But in a democracy such a process must be open and aboveboard.
When the General Assembly reconvenes in January, legislators can take up the subject again. Meanwhile, the Court has ruled correctly, and we congratulate those who, like Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and the various other plaintiffs, were so persistent in keeping the issue alive before the public and before the judiciary. Everyone was well served by their diligence n

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