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A Towering Question
There's a persistent rumor emanating from the Sequoyah Hills zipcode that National Wireless is ready to pack up its telecommunications tower blueprints and look for a site in a less contentious area. So we called their lawyer and asked the question.
Here's the answer from Steve Roth:
"Bahahahaha! No way, no how."
When he regained his composure, Roth said his clients have appealed the Board of Zoning Appeals decision to revoke their building permit. When asked how he likes their chances for a City Council reversal of the BZA vote, he was politely sarcastic: "I'll just go and take my punishment."
You will remember, of course, that National Wireless received a city permit this spring to build the tower in the Sequoyah Hills business section and were proceeding with construction when ticked-off neighbors started calling the mayor's office. A stop work order was issued forthwith.
Roth said he has filed a motion to intervene in the neighborhood's "ostensible" lawsuit against the city, "where they are actually working hand-in-glove," and that he has offered to take the dispute to a mediator.
Public sentiment seems to be running against the neighborhood in this case, and Roth said he has "...been extremely gratified about the support we have received, everywhere but Sequoyah Hills..."
Reggie Back in the News
As you surely know, Ear is constantly searching for new stuff, and this week, that search led to the supermarket checkout line, where we found the latest on some high-profile chaps with local ties. Does it get any better than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Rockin' Reggie White? A highly credible source that happens to be The National Enquirer is reporting that Reggie is going back into the ministry business, and will team up with the now-divorced and remarried Jim and Tammy Faye to re-open Heritage USA, the Christian theme park the Bakkers used to separate thousands of believers from their dough.
At the same time, Reggie has issued a salvo against the University of Tennessee in his new book, Fighting the Good Fight, where he makes the shocking allegation that Athletic Director Doug Dickey tried to get him to give UT money. In the early '90s, White said he started thinking about having his jersey retired, and when he approached Dickey (who had been trying to wheedle money out of him for years) with the notion, the AD said "We can negotiate."
To cut to the chase, he says Dickey told him that jersey retirement is an honor reserved for fallen war heroes, something that did not sit well with White when Peyton Manning's jersey was retired in 1998.
"If the University of Tennessee ever sees fit to retire my jersey, I won't be at that ceremony."
We Think, Therefore...
Although you might not have read or heard about a recent history-making Supreme Court decision in local news media, it's possibly one of the biggest stories to hit this state since Dollywood opened in 1985. According to the nationally distributed newspaper The Onion, residents of Tennessee are now considered legally sentient:
"WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)—In a victory for advocates of states' rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 yesterday that Tennessee citizens are sentient beings with a capacity to make certain decisions for themselves.
"Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing the Court's majority opinion, stated that, 'The absence of higher forms of cognitive thinking skills on a statewide level does not preclude the application of the individual liberties guaranteed in the First Amendment to the residents of that state, no matter how strong the evidence is toward their collective lack of intelligence.'"
Despite the evidence cited to demonstrate Tennesseans' non-sentience—such as "...the state's dead-last ranking among U.S. states in citizens-to-books ratio (70,000:1)"—Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that "...countless Tennesseeans who exhibit no sign of cerebral activity are sentient solely by virtue of the blood flow to the brain..."
(You can read it yourself at www.theonion.com.)
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