Tennessee's Biggest Carpetbagger Strikes Again
Good afternoon, everyone.
One of the more baffling components of the recently-passed transit referendum is its insistence on expanding rarely-trafficked bike lanes. Talk of empty buses is one thing, but bike lanes are inert, permanent installments that just take up roadspace.
In the Washington Post of all places, Marc Fisher penned a critique of bike lanes this morning. “[Bike lanes] are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving,” he writes. Fisher, writing specifically about the nation’s capital, noted that bike commuters peaked in 2017 and have decreased each year since, even as the city has built more lanes and seems to view them as the tip of the gentrification sword.
The numbers in Nashville—I couldn’t find them—are probably so miniscule as to barely warrant mention. But if your goal is to make it difficult for drivers, I can’t think of a better way to do so than to just erase lanes of a road and install what might as well be a moat with alligators between the road and the sidewalk.
Onward.
“I can do a lot of damage with a little phone,” Justin Kanew proclaimed when the Nashville Scene ran a cover story on him last fall. The line was so buzzy that the alt-weekly used it as the subheading for the piece, which chronicled Kanew’s time turning his news site, The Tennessee Holler, into a must-read publication for those on a diet of lowest-common-denominator lefty pablum. But, as The Holler’s October 18th coverage of the plans for a Christmas parade in Cookeville, TN, proved, Kanew can do just as much damage without his favorite device.
According to the Holler’s Instagram, “The city’s Christmas parade is requiring parade participants to sign a ‘Statement of Faith’ including a belief in the Bible, Jesus, only man-woman marriage, anti-abortion & anti-trans statements.” By noon that Friday, rumors abounded on social media that the Putnam County city of 35,000 had gleefully toppled the separation of church and state. The city’s PBS affiliate, WCTE, even released a statement about its support for inclusivity. For Kanew, the willfully inaccurate story was the latest in a line of stunts meant to ridicule the widely held religious beliefs of most Tennesseeans, a way for the California native to assert his superiority over folks down on the Cumberland Plateau, who, a couple weeks later, would vote for Donald Trump and Marsha Blackburn by a near 3/4ths majority.
The only problem is that the city of Cookeville wasn’t sponsoring the parade at all. In fact, it never had any direct role in an event that the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce ran for years. After a controversy erupted last year when the Chamber rejected the participation of activist group Upper Cumberland Pride over concerns that its overtly political messaging violated the parade’s family-friendly policy, the event was handed off to a group of business leaders and members of Life Church and The River Community Church, who decided on their 2024 theme: “Celebrating the Light of CHRISTmas.”
⧖⧗⧖ SHOW YOUR SUPPORT ⧗⧖⧗
If you want to support our work at The Pamphleteer, a recurring donation is the best way. We have a $10/month Grub Street tier and a $50/month Bard tier. Membership gets you access to our comments section and free access to upcoming events.
🚨 Violent Crime Still Plagues WeGo Yesterday, police arrested a 15-year-old teen for fatally shooting another teenager at downtown’s Central WeGo bus station. Last Friday, a woman was killed after being stabbed at a WeGo bus stop in South Nashville. These are the latest incidents in a long list of WeGo-related shootings, stabbings, and sexual assaults.
Add this to the various crimes plaguing Music City. Just yesterday, MNPD issued press releases regarding a Maplewood High School student charged with threatening to bomb and shoot up a school on social media and the apprehension of a former Donelson Christian Academy coach charged with the aggravated statutory rape of students. They also provided another update on the issue of gun theft. So far this year, 1,095 guns have been stolen in Davidson County, 804 of which were taken from vehicles. Many stolen gun cases continue to be connected to repeat offenders—offenders who go on to commit more violent crimes— raising questions about whether the city is doing enough to address recidivism.
💰 Capital Spending Yesterday, Mayor Freddie O'Connell submitted his $527 million Capital Spending Plan. The East Bank will be getting some love with around $40 million for infrastructure improvements, as well as Vision Zero and traffic calming which scored $6.8 million in funding. There’s also $10 million earmarked for sidewalks and bikeways, and $500,000 for the transportation management center and signal upgrades. O’Connell highlighted his continued commitment to MNPS with around $98 million for Metro schools. Also tucked into the plan is nearly $43 million is set to fix up roads and bridges, and $88 million set aside for a new Juvenile Justice Center.
📑 What’s On The GA Docket The Tennessee legislature is already busy filing new legislation for next year’s General Assembly. House members have filed fifteen bills, and Senate members have filed six. Aside from the Education Freedom Act of 2025 to establish school choice in Tennessee, Representative Michael Hale (R-Smithville) is proposing an $800 annual training pay bonus for campus police officers and public safety officers.
Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) and Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) filed a bill to require law enforcement agencies in custody of an illegal alien to file for an immigration detainer and “detain such individual for the maximum period as specified in the detainer.” It would also require them to transport detainees “not taken into federal custody to a sanctuary city.” The would then have the ability to Department of Revenue “request reimbursement for costs of detention and transportation of illegal aliens.” If the reimbursement request were to go unfulfilled, the bill outlines that the state could withhold federal petroleum taxes.
Additionally, Senator Hensley joined Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) to introduce legislation requiring the Department of Safety to redesign licenses and permits issued to “lawful permanent residents of the United States” so that they are easily distinguishable from temporary licenses, permits and other photo IDs issued to noncitizens.
DEVELOPMENT
- Southwest Value Partners seeks to sell downtown building near Nashville Yards (NBJ)
- Vegas-started entertainment venue set for Second Avenue (Post)
- Investor buys religious property in The Nations (Post)
- Seafood restaurant slated for River North (Post)
✹ REVIEW: ANORA (2024)
As legacy pundits struggle to understand the cultural shift that led to Trumpworld’s return on November 5th, isolating its first rumblings has proven most difficult. Sydney Sweeney’s February SNL hosting stint may have started it all. True, too for the director of Twisters emphatic promises that the film intentionally avoids talk of climate change in the lead up to its box office dominance last summer. But the real harbinger of things to come happened last May when American director Sean Baker won Cannes’s Palme d'Or and became an Oscar frontrunner for his latest regional character study, Anora.
Superficially, Anora has all the hallmarks of pat indie sensations past that induce a sense of amnesia soon after their year-end awards runs: a Brighton Beach setting full of grit and what passes for realism, a focus on twentysomething stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) that approaches its sex and nudity with nonchalance, and a distanced probing of how the other half live. Always a singular filmmaker, Baker has long self-sabotaged his otherwise engaging works about American lowlifes like The Florida Project and Red Rocket through an almost anthropological gaze that has never quite shaken off an air of superiority. But in detailing Ani’s impromptu nuptials to the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eidelstein) and his family's forceful attempts to annul the marriage, Baker taps into a sense of sheer artistry rarely seen since the heyday of American 70s cinema.
Though Anora works largely due to the impeccable casting of Madison and Yuriy Borisov as a put-upon Armenian pseudo-hood, Baker’s choice to anchor his world within the realm of Russian-American strivers and smalltime oligarchs gunning for global respect allows him to rewrite romcom and indie conventions without ever descending into the most obvious strains of white liberal guilt. Indeed, Anora may well be the first study of urban deplorables awakening to the hollowness of their betters and rediscovering the powers of authentic masculinity in a culture hostile to such notions. As Baker so eloquently posits, Ani doesn’t have to deny her heritage and second-generation identity as she strives for legitimacy; she’s been more than legitimate all along.
Anora is now playing in theaters.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.
TONIGHT
🪕 Steve Huber and The Flatheads @ Station Inn, 9p, $20, Info
🎸 Dogs In A Pile @ The Basement East, 8p, $26.71, Info
🎸 Hotline TNT @ DRKMTTR, 8p, $16, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
+ vet community here
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.