Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Blue Tuesday

If you found yourself peculiarly sober this week, well, we all did. For the first time since 1988, Mardi Gras came and went without a downtown parade. The always-inspired Community Shares Mardi Gras parade, usually held on the Saturday before Fat Tuesday, could draw thousands to Gay Street on a pretty day; the subsequent Gumbo Cookoff drew several hundred. But the board of the umbrella charity, which raises funds for 41 social-change organizations, called it off this year. "We finally had to decide, Is it really worth the amount of time we spend on it?" says the organization's development director, Angelina Carpenter. Despite the parade's obvious popularity, she says it was never much of a money maker; the main event was the following Tuesday's Gumbo Cookoff, a paid-admission banquet—which, truth be told, might have worked as well without the floats and masks and plastic beads.

Community Shares will try to fill the hole in our souls with an awards banquet called Circle of Change at the Foundry on Sat., April 13. They're now accepting nominations of people and organizations who have contributed to positive social changes in the Knoxville area; honorees in several categories will be recognized at the banquet. The MacDaddies will try to make it almost as festive as Mardi Gras.

"We hate to disappoint the public," Carpenter says, adding that she hopes she's not destined to be remembered as the one who killed Mardi Gras (colleagues agree it was a board decision). "We're sad about it, too."

Sweat Pants

A column from the Internet news service "Tennessee Politics" is making the rounds downtown, drawing belly laughs. Written by Joe Sweat, a former executive director of the Tennessee Municipal League (before a Victor Ashe-led initiative forced him from his job there awhile back), the column portrays Ashe as "a rubber-toothed bulldog" whose snapping and snarling has gotten easier to ignore as time passes.

Sweat uses Ashe's most recent cause—a proposal to divert Tennessee Department of Transportation money earmarked for roads to causes like state parks and education—as a jumping-off point for this roundhouse attack on "the Knoxville Bulldog."

He quotes state Sen. Tommy Haun as declaring that "Victor is full of s... (sic)" and vowing not to let Ashe raid TDOT funds. Sweat says that Ashe has been turned down flat by most of the organizations and individuals to whom he has gone for support. The TML board (of which Ashe is a past chair) adopted a policy "directly opposite of what he argued for, i.e. that '...the state should take no legislative action to alter TDOT funding sources or use...'"

Sweat continues the dog metaphors, calling the TDOT proposal "skewed as a dog's hind leg." He catalogs Ashe's political transgressions over a 30-year period (it's a long column).

Ashe says he's not sweating the column, which "...has more untruths than a dog has fleas....

"Joe is still bitter, and correctly so, over the lead effort I took to terminate his employment as executive director as well as his wife and daughter (three family members) from TML...Once he was terminated, I then led the effort to reduce an excessive buyout for his departure which I am glad to say was eventually reduced...Sweat had made TML a family enterprise. Nepotism was rampant.

"I should also add," Ashe says, "that in 1996 Joe Sweat was extremely complimentary of my leadership skills and honesty during a FBI interview done as part of the background check on my nomination by former President Clinton to the Americorps board...his view of me has only undergone a dramatic shift since he was terminated from TML..."

Not Young, Not Old

Kim Ramsey and Melissa Isaacs went to great lengths to ensure that the 40th birthday party at Lord Lindsey Saturday night for Tom Ramsey and Greg Isaacs really was a surprise. The signs at the entrance said "Junior League Social." Ramsey got suspicious when a photographer showed up at the Isaacs & Ramsey law firm the week before. He wasn't entirely satisfied when he was told that she was doing a photo essay of young Democrats, since he figured that he and his partner were pushing 40 and therefore no longer young. Isaacs remained blissfully ignorant of the unfolding event until just a few minutes before when someone at another party asked if it was his birthday or something.

The party was attended by 240, including the Isaacs kids Mary Grace, Zachary, Jacob and Jared, assorted politicos, movers, shakers, Nucleus Knoxville types, party animals and legends in their own minds. A high point came late in the evening when the birthday boys unwrapped gifts, including a blow-up doll that party-goers kept trying to prop up next to Tim Burchett, who ran like a scalded dog.

The More Things Change...

The Knoxville Fire Department is conducting an Internal Affairs investigation of hazing practices at its training center. Investigators are looking into allegations that recent KFD rookies were forced to "buzz" like bumblebees, walk like ducks and pick up cigarette butts as part of their "training." The Knoxville Firefighters Association requested the investigation, which got under way last week.