America was once a country that had something called the Bill of Rights. Now it’s a country where you have to piss in a cup to get a menial job, where you can be locked up for months on end without having been convicted of any crime, and where freedom…
She Mail The review of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (“Curious Georgia,” Michael Sragow, November 27) contains an error that is becoming increasingly common in written and spoken language: the use of female pronouns when referring to a drag queen. What writers and speakers need to remember…
High noon on a spring day in 1994. The stranger steps through the gates of the Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, takes one look around and shakes his head. Everywhere, he sees things that don’t belong, from buckskinners clutching cans of Pepsi and eating foodstuffs wrapped in Ziploc baggies to…
The old Democrat answers the phone at state party headquarters. He takes a message for party chairman Mark Fleischer. Ask Fleischer, says the caller, what is the future of the Arizona Democratic party? The old man chuckles. “Sorry, I just had to laugh at the question,” he says, adding an…
For some reason, the gifted actress Kasi Lemmons–she played Jodie Foster’s roommate in The Silence of the Lambs and the interviewer in Fear of a Black Hat–hasn’t become a star. So she’s become a filmmaker instead. Her first feature as writer/director is the coming-of-age story Eve’s Bayou. Set among the…
Passport Scotched? J. Fife Symington III’s globetrotting days will soon be over if U.S. District Judge Roger B. Strand requires the fallen governor to surrender his passport. The Fifester has been sighted on several trips to foreign destinations since his September conviction on seven bank and wire-fraud charges. Prosecutors first…
Challengers in Tempe’s upcoming city council race have been rebuffed in attempts to gain access to the city’s popular Web site (www.Tempe.gov) to promote their campaigns. Tempe’s mayor and six council members all have photographs and brief biographies posted on the city’s Web page, which receives more than 200,000 hits…
Doubling Down Regarding the Bruce Babbitt/Paul Eckstein “Indian gambling” accusations (“Babbitt’s Department of Ulterior,” Michael Lacey, November 20), supposing the Department of the Interior decision had gone the other way? Then Eckstein could be portrayed as “the high-paid mouthpiece for gambling interests exploiting impoverished Indians to justify locating a casino…
Why are public records called public records? Because they belong to the public. And if you think that’s an obvious answer, you haven’t had to deal with the Scottsdale Police Department. My last two columns have reported cases of intimidation and brutality by the SPD. The first story told how…
James Cornell “Butch” Harrod is on trial, possibly for his life. He’s on the witness stand, trying to convince a jury that he didn’t commit one of Arizona’s most sensational murders. He’s accused of the April 1, 1988, execution of wealthy Phoenix heiress Jeanne Tovrea, who was shot to death…
To some foodies, this idiosyncratic chef is the populist Wolfgang Puck–a charming kitchen magician who, whether stuffing fans or providing annual Thanksgiving dinners to the needy, is a candidate for culinary sainthood. To others, however, he’s the surly Pizza Nazi–a single-minded megalomaniac whose bullheaded brand of “my way or the…
Getting Mad and Even Insiders at Sheriff Joke Arpaio’s office tell the Flash that recent revelations about the Jokester have sent the Crime Avenger into orbit with rage. Those reports were bolstered by a French reporter who was interviewing Arpaio in his office when a call came in from a…
Two weeks ago in this space, I reported a display of brutality by two Scottsdale police officers who entered a home and assaulted two residents. It would be reassuring to think this was an isolated incident, but the opposite seems to be true. Since the story appeared, several people have…
Joe’s Boys After reading more than 40 column inches of Barry Graham’s raging against Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s political machine (“Joe, Jane & John,” October 30), I am offering my services to New Times as an editor. Clearly, the entire content of Graham’s column could be boiled down as follows: I…
Dave Knutson must have looked out of place at the Aspen Correctional Facility in Phoenix, compared to the inmates and corrections officers working on renovations at the facility. The inmates wore their dirty prison blues, covered with the dust and grime of the work they were doing. The officers wore…
Bear the front door of his northeast Phoenix home, Richard Aiello has screwed a small brass plaque to the stuccoed wall. It reads: NEVER MIND THE DOG–BEWARE THE OWNER. On the roof at the back of the neatly maintained home he shares with his wife, Helen, and his 4-year-old daughter,…
For Steve, a Door? In recent days, Arizona Republic managing editor Steve Knickmeyer has busied himself doing in-house damage control. By the end of last week, he was spinning from desk to desk in the newsroom, struggling to dispel rumors that ranged from his termination to upper management’s call for…
Trailer Thrash “Journalist” Barry Graham insulted a lot of good people when he characterized Joe Arpaio as being “low-class. He’s one step from the trailer park” (“Waiter, There’s a Lie in My Soup,” November 6). I would judge that the 500 or so grandmothers and grandfathers living at the “trailer…
Like many Arizonans, I want to believe both Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and his former colleague Paul Eckstein. Each man has an almost folkloric reputation for integrity. Yet the Senate hearings that have spawned a Department of Justice probe into Babbitt’s 1995 denial of an Indian casino permit…
Hoot Gibson was spending a few days at his vacation condo near San Diego when he got the call that changed his life–and ignited a controversy that still smolders between the Phoenix Fire Department and City Hall. For 36 years, ever since he was 24 years old, Robert “Hoot” Gibson…
Samaritan will be the pre-eminent nonprofit healthcare system in the Southwest. –from Samaritan Health System’s Mission Statement The right to be free from misappropriation of funds, and from medical, psychological or physical abuse. –Number 14, Good Samaritan Care Center Residents’ Rights Jafet Coronado worked as a certified nursing assistant at…
Putting the “X” in Xmas J. Fife Symington III–bankrupt fraud and disgraced former governor–must have been looking forward to one last starring appearance before his February sentencing in federal court. But his swan-song social event–one of Phoenix’s most festive Christmastime gatherings of the rich and powerful–has been canceled. Probably just…
