Boner Awards 2010 -- Source:: Nashville Scene
Uh-oh, Nashville.
Here we come, once again, to pee in your eggnog, trample your fruitcake, and leave our lumps of coal (or something) in your stockings. It's the 21st annual running of the Boner Awards, our yearly time capsule of the events we'd most like to forget (if not always forgive) from the previous 12 months.
The bad news? It seemed like the forces of bigotry, intolerance and just plain incivility cut loose this year with spittle-flecked abandon. The good news, though, was that in this year of natural and unnatural disasters, the vast majority of Nashvillians responded with fellowship and fortitude — along with a healthy and growing inability to suffer fools gladly.
And on that note, Nashville, our Boners stand ready for inspection.
AND BONERS FOR ALL
Think racist stereotypes and resentment of gays are things of the past? Boners, put on your "I Heart Lady Gay-Gay" T-shirt, stand up and be counted.
There goes the "intelligent design" argument.
In one of the year's early scandals, Walt Baker, CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, sent a "joke" email comparing first lady Michelle Obama to Tarzan's chimp Cheetah. Introducing the message by saying, "Quoting Larry the Cable Guy ... I don't care who you are, this is funny" — a statement that should make all of us think twice before citing the wisdom of Larry the Cable Guy — Baker forwarded the racist email to 12 prominent Nashvillians, including members of the media. It turned out to be no laughing matter for Baker, who was fired. He apologized but never seemed to get it, calling his email "political humor" and expressing confusion over why anyone would find it offensive.
What was that about monkeys and typewriters?
Mark Cook, columnist for various Gannett-owned newspapers in Williamson County, had a great story: Ward Baker — well-known Republican kingmaker, sought-after campaign consultant, adviser to Williamson County's own Rep. Marsha Blackburn — was caught sending an email to various movers-and-shakers depicting the first lady as an ape. It would have been a bombshell, but for one minor detail: The sender of the notorious email was actually Walt Baker — as had been established dozens of times over in the week before the column ran.
Is it too late to return the Uncle Ben costume?
We thought Smith County Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver had earned her Boner Lifetime Achievement when she voted the wrong way on a key procedural vote, setting off a chain of events that ended with Kent Williams' usurpation of the House Speaker's gavel. But in her push to become the Meryl Streep of the Boners, she gave her most valiant effort yet. After Halloween, she posted a photo on Facebook in which she posed with her preacher, who was in costume as Aunt Jemima — yes, blackface included. Just to be clear, the representative captioned the photo, "Aunt Jemima, you is so sweet." Once the picture started making the rounds, Weaver took it down, but she managed to issue this forehead-smacker of a defense on WSMV: "I'm the least racist of anyone. Some of my greatest friends are black." And some of her favorite preachers pretend to be.
Give these dopes some Soap on a Rope.
Congressional candidates Ron Kirkland and Randy Smith beat their chests like cavemen and engaged in a little gay-bashing in their debate in the 8th District primary race. Kirkland, a Vietnam veteran, said of his time in the military: "I can tell you if there were any homosexuals in that group, they were taken care of in ways I can't describe to you." Not to be outmanned in manly manliness, Smith, who served in the first Iraqi war, added: "I definitely wouldn't want to share a shower with a homosexual. We took care of that kind of stuff, just like [Kirkland] said." Their opponent, Stephen Fincher, took care of them both at the polls without needing any shower tribunals.
The words "No room at the inn" come to mind.
For summa cum laude honors in Boner cultivation, look no further than Belmont University's spectacular public humiliation over the apparent ouster of Lisa Howe — the women's soccer coach who either was forced out once university officials discovered her same-sex partner was pregnant (as her players told the media) or voluntarily resigned (as the university hastily claimed). Issuing contradictory media statements in a matter of hours, then mouthing empty platitudes about diversity and acceptance that didn't exactly square with booting an expecting family into the cold at Christmastime — an irony lost on no one — Belmont has given a master class in mishandling a PR disaster from the first whisper.
Plenty of Dickens, no great expectations.
That goes double for Marty Dickens, the chairman of Metro's Convention Center Authority as well as Belmont's board of trustees, who told The Tennessean that Belmont holds its faculty, board members and administrators to "high moral and ethical standards within a Christian context" — implying, without coming out and saying it, that gays and lesbians automatically fail to meet that standard. (Commenters on various online threads suggested that some members of Dickens' peer group wouldn't pass that sniff test either.) Dickens' remarks should be a big help as the city tries to lure conventioneers to pay for that $600 million big box downtown in coming years. (Everybody knows gay people don't travel.) Not only did his remarks infuriate Belmont students, faculty and alums, who were incensed to see the university destroying years of PR goodwill and advancement, they brought a resounding (and widely cheered) public counterpunch from one of Belmont's biggest benefactors, music-biz heavyweight Mike Curb, who asked whether the school wanted to be a progressive university or a church.
