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Sanitizing Phil

By Kleinheider Posted on May 12, 2008 at 3:01 pm

Via P. J. Tobia, we discover that former Tennessean political columnist Tim Chavez has a blog. In one of his first postings, he argues that former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell should run for Governor because he needs to do for Tennessee what he did for Nashville — clean up after Phil Bredesen:

Purcell will run because someone will be needed to repair the state Democratic Party after Gov. Phil Bredesen destroys what’s left of its core values with his upcoming budget cuts. The fact that GOP legislators are more in favor of his proposed budget than Dem legislators shows how deep the destruction will go.

Purcell is used to cleaning up Bredesen’s messes and excesses. He had to repair Nashville after Bredesen’s tenure as mayor. His big deals with millionaires — including one topped by the falsehood that the arena would be making a profit — left the city in tough financial straits when it came to meeting the needs of ordinary people and their neighborhoods. Nashville now must first commit more than $20 million annually to pro sports and its facilities before getting to the rest of the city’s needs.

Someone will have to return Tennessee government to the ordinary people after Bredesen finishes with his budget cutting. His tired contention that the state should be run as a business does not induce confidence.

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One Responses to “Sanitizing Phil”

  1. Donna Locke writes
    May 12th, 2008 8:39 pm

    I kind of pick on Tim Chavez, because his Tennessean columns — the ones I read after I moved back to Tennessee in 2002 — were such hypocritical things, collusion or not with his editors. I haven’t read his columns before that year, so I don’t know what they were like before Chavez decided he was, conveniently?, a “conservative.” I found his ensuing product outrageously and apparently unintentionally funny, when it wasn’t simply outrageous.

    This was during a long period when The Tennessean simply dismissed truly conservative voices, particularly on immigration-related issues. The paper still does that, except for one carrot toss.

    The Tennessean seems to believe it has remedied its literal ignorance of true conservatism by adding Phil Valentine to the op-ed page. I like Valentine very much and we agree on many, not all, immigration-related things, but I don’t consider Valentine a true conservative. My idea of true conservatism includes keeping the government out of our personal lives.

    Anyway, I read a bit of Chavez’s postings on his new blog, where he has written something about Hispanic journalists being ignored. I have to take issue with that. Good heavens, Chavez had a column in a major newspaper for many years. And many Hispanic reporters have a major part in controlling what the American public reads about immigration in this country. I have been interviewed by several of these reporters in a few states. With two or three exceptions, their reports have been heavily unbalanced toward open borders and unfettered immigration. It was always a surprise to be interviewed by a Latino reporter who behaved like a journalist.

    Newspapers actively seek Hispanic reporters. These journalists aren’t being ignored.

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