Planned Parenthood Pushes “Morning-After” Pill Not everyone is happy with Planned Parenthood’s new advertising campaign for “morning-after” pills. Ads show a woman in moody shades of purple looking down, hair sweeping behind her, hands pressed to her temples. Different lines of type above her read, “I forgot to take my pills. The condom broke! He said he’d pull out. I tried to stop him but ...” In big bold letters below her, the text declares, “It’s not too late. Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy after unprotected sex.” The campaign, including ads in the Flyer and posters around town, promotes the “morning-after pill,” technically known as “emergency contraception.” Not to be confused with the French abortion pill RU-486, which is unavailable in the United States, the morning-after pill is a high dosage of birth-control pills taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. Depending on the brand of pill, two to four pills are taken at a clinic, and two to four more are taken 12 hours later. The pills work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. The pills reduce the risk of becoming pregnant by 75 percent, with “absolutely no harm to the woman,” says Deborah Bartelli, education director at Planned Parenthood. The most common side effect is nausea, which can be avoided in many cases by taking the pills with food. If the woman is already pregnant, Bartelli says, “The pills will not terminate an existing pregnancy.” She asserts that the morning-after pill is a way to prevent abortions. Karen McNeil, director of Life Sources, believes that life is being terminated. She says, “If you believe, as I do, that that’s life there … tampered with or destroyed in some way, then that’s abortion.” Bartelli says the decision to push the ad campaign was based on the small number of women who asked for the pills in 1997. Whereas 1,863 women came to Planned Parenthood for pregnancy tests during the last fiscal year, only 59 of them were eligible for and took emergency contraception. Many of the other women had waited longer than 72 hours before getting tested. According to Amanda Grebe, manager of marketing and special events, Planned Parenthood “doesn’t feel like the Memphis community knows about the availability” of the morning-after pill. They have been able to prescribe emergency contraception since the Food and Drug Administration approved it in February 1997. – Meredith Pierce Oilers Sue Memphis Radio Station When the Mid-South Sports Broadcasting Company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December, they left out one debt – of $33,000 to a company called Tennessee Football, L.P., better known around this area as the Tennessee Oilers. John Rainey, president of Mid-South Sports Broadcasting, purchased $49,280 in tickets and parking passes for the seven home games of the 1997 season. He made a partial payment to Tennessee Football but bounced three other checks, according to court documents. At the time of the company’s bankruptcy filing, $33,000 remained owed to the Oilers. The company has operated the all-sports radio station WSFZ-AM Supersport 1030 for two years. David E. Lemke and Robert A. Guy of the Nashville law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis have filed a motion on behalf of the Oilers to file a “late proof of claim” in the Mid-South Sports Broadcasting bankruptcy case. They charge that when the radio station filed for bankruptcy, it neglected to notify Tennessee Football of its bankrupt status. The deadline to file proofs of claim was April 9th. Representatives for the Oilers say they learned of the bankruptcy proceedings on April 23rd and then acted as quickly as possible to file their own claim. A hearing originally scheduled for Monday, July 13th, has been continued; a new date is not yet set. Lemke says nothing new has emerged in the case and that he has not received a response from Mid-South Sports Broadcasting. Perhaps Rainey is too busy with the IRS, which is seeking more than $80,000 in taxes and almost $25,000 in penalties. – Lauren Mutter Dixon Hires Director At least one of Memphis’ arts groups is now operating with a leader. After a seven-month search, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens recently named James J. Kamm as its new director. Kamm replaces Joseph Czestochowski, who resigned in October after a two-year stint at Dixon. Kamm, 47, previously served as associate director of the Wolfsonian Museum and Research Center in Miami Beach, Florida. Before that he was associate director and assistant director at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul. The new director holds a master’s degree in arts administration from the University of Cincinnati, a master’s degree in art history from the Rosary College Graduate School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Southern Illinois University. He and his wife, Patricia, will move to Memphis in mid-July. Our Man In Havana, Part 2 Local restaurateur and all-around bon vivant Thomas “Silky” Sullivan has just returned from another jaunt to Cuba. As reported by the Flyer last March, Sullivan fell in love with the island nation on a trip there earlier this year and has since used his clout as an unofficial ambassador of Memphis to promote a number of events involving the Bluff City and the last communist country in the western hemisphere. He is currently sponsoring a Cuban barbecue team which he hopes to bring to next year’s Memphis in May barbecue contest. He’s also trying to organize music festivals in both countries for the year 2000. In the past, Sullivan has made similar “cultural exchange” trips to Ireland, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Estonia. His most recent visit to Cuba, however, was a particularly star-studded one. In Havana, Sullivan and his party hung out with actor and cigar-lover Jack Nicholson (see photo) and had an audience with Gregorio Fuentes, the longtime fishing guide of Ernest Hemingway and one of the inspirations for the author’s classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Old Man And The Sea. Last week, Sullivan honored Fuentes en absentia on the occasion of his 101st birthday with a party at his Beale Street club. Sullivan is currently planning two more trips to Cuba later this year. – Mark Jordan Lawyer Responsds to Police Union’s Alllegations by Phil Campbell Major Sidney Johnson Major Sidney Johnson of the Memphis Police Department is staying quiet this week about his million-dollar libel suit against Lt. Steve Brown, the president of the Memphis Police Association. Johnson’s lawyer, however, was more than willing to respond to Brown’s public accusations that Johnson was guilty of gross violations of police policy during an investigation last year. Attorney Randall Tolley talked to the Flyer this week about Johnson’s accusations of libel against Brown. Tolley says he plans to add more details to the lawsuit file to back Johnson’s claims, including incident reports and official internal-affairs records that the department has been keeping out of the public eye. The libel case centers on an incident that took place in October 1996. Two MPD officers had chased two men driving a white Mustang over the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge. Johnson, the commander of the department that oversees internal affairs, appeared on the scene and became the ranking officer. Both officers and suspects returned to Memphis for an interview in Johnson’s office downtown. The suspects were ultimately released without being charged with any crime. That’s about all Brown and Johnson can agree on. The rest becomes a battle of what Brown has said versus what Johnson’s attorney is now claiming. Brown talked last year to WMC-TV Channel 5, WHBQ-TV Channel 13, WPTY-TV Channel 24, and The Commercial Appeal, as well as talk-show hosts Janice Fullilove and Mike Fleming. Johnson, Tolley says, has been unable to respond to Brown’s accusations. “By virtue of his position as commander of the security squad, he was not supposed to be going public with this, and he did not do so,” Tolley says. Here are the radical points of disagreement between the union president and the head of internal affairs: • Brown says the two patrol officers claimed they had written consent from the men in the Mustang to search the car. Tolley claims they searched the car without permission, and that officers from the department’s Organized Crime Unit (OCU) then appeared and searched the car, after receiving written permission. • When one of the men complained that $1,000 of his $5,000 was missing, Brown claims, it was quickly found under the floorboard of the car; Johnson’s presence to investigate the potential wrongdoing of officers, therefore, was unnecessary. Tolley, however, says that OCU officers unsuccessfully searched the car twice to find the missing $1,000. One of the patrol officers then searched the car and somehow found the money where OCU had not, under the front passenger seat. “The money [that had not been missing] was folded up neatly, but the $1,000 [that was found] was all balled up and wrinkled,” Tolley says. “You have potential theft going on here –in Arkansas [out of the officers’ jurisdiction], not Tennessee. And this is what Major Johnson was investigating.” • Brown claims Johnson confiscated $7,068 from the men without cause. Tolley claims that it was OCU officers, on orders from their superiors, not Johnson, who confiscated the money. • Brown claims the men found two blunts of marijuana in the Mustang. Tolley claims those blunts were actually found in the glove compartment of the officers’ squad car, after the entire group had been interviewed in Johnson’s office. • Brown claims the officers had also found a .45 caliber handgun along with the pot, but that it was not confiscated. He also claims that one of the men was a convicted felon who legally carried a gun. As the highest-ranking officer at the scene, Johnson did nothing to address this situation. Tolley’s response? “I don’t know where the gun came from, but, on the scene, neither Major Johnson nor OCU saw it.”

			Fly on the Wall Revenge of the Radio Reader? As listeners might have noticed, WKNO-FM 91.1 was silent for several days last week due to problems with its antenna. The station went off the air from Thursday morning until Sunday afternoon, to be exact. Perhaps coincidentally, The Radio Reader program had just finished its run on the station after being discontinued to make way for other programming. The programming changes actually went into effect last Monday, but Radio Reader, which consists entirely of books being read aloud, was in mid-book so it was carried until mid-week. Then the antenna went down. Don’t let that milky voice fool you. It’s not nice to fool with Dick Estell. Headliners A few weeks back, we reported on a switcheroo over at The Commercial Appeal involving a headline that made a scholarship fund sound like a Ponzi scheme. Since then, we’ve stumbled across a few more CA headlines that, let’s say, lend themselves to multiple interpretations. “Hyter kicked off Union Avenue music series,” a column headline on July 9th, almost had us hopping mad at the apparent injustice done to celebrated crooner James Hyter, at least until we realized he had merely “started off” the summer concert series. The same day, the sports section looked as if it had somehow copped a headline from the weekly food section. “French toast a winner,” it said, surely angering waffle-eaters everywhere, not to mention World Cup fans who were pulling for Croatia. The best of the lot, however, comes from the July 2nd sports section. We were shocked – shocked – by the apparent misogyny of it. Who was behind this? Surely the Southern Baptist Convention was somehow involved. We were relieved to learn it was only about Wimbledon. The headline? “U.S. women eliminated.” Really Tough on Crime Speaking of nitpicky literalism, have you looked at a Memphis Police Department speeding ticket lately? The penalty for non-compliance sounds a little extreme: “Failure to comply with this summons will result in a default judgment being taken against you in an amount not less than the forfeiture established in city ordinance 21-50 but, up to fifty (50.00), plus cost, for each offense,” it reads. “Execution will follow.” Is this part of that “No Deals” thing? Dubious Statistics Well, the June results are in for the Lanacane Summer Itch Index (TM), whatever the hell that is. Actually, it’s some sort of scientific measure aimed at helping Lanacane sell more anti-itching products, we suspect. Anyway, Tennessee made a big showing by this questionable measure, boasting three of the “Top 10 Itchiest Cities.” Nash-ville was first with a 95 percent itch-index, Knox-ville was second with 94 percent, and Chattanooga was eighth with 38 percent. Memphis did not make the top 10. Which is a good thing? An outrage? We really can’t tell.