Eric Gomez Crawls Back Down

As if to emphasize the appropriate nature of the group's name, as well as demonstrating his uncertain grasp of First Amendment jurisprudence in the defamation area, City Councilor Eric Gomez initially threatened to sue community organizer Julie Hall and the organization Who Owns Tulsa for this allegedly defamatory statement:

"And, that has been a pattern that we've seen with him and his voting, when his constituents voice their concerns, he votes the other way,"

Now it would appear that Gomez has abandoned the notion of litigation and is willing to "settle for an apology". Actually, an apology from the City Council to the residents of the regrettably named White City neighborhood would be far more in order.
The Council has done a first-rate job of portraying the White City protest as a simple NIMBY problem, and one must concede that there is some of that involved. But then one remembers that the construction/development interests downtown want the YMCA relocated because it interferes with their backyard, and specifically with their misguided and phantasmal vision of a revitalized downtown (I've lived through at least four of these doomed schemes already and I've come to know a boondoggle when I see one). The White City residents noted that Tulsa has a much more appropriate setting for the mental patients and alcoholics living at the "Y" - a location boasting excellent proximity to high-quality medical care and good access to the public transportation lines which would connect the new neighbors to the social services and blood banks downtown. Yeah, you got it....Utica Square would be the perfect new location for the "Y" and would permit the downtown Mob an opportunity to develop their nascent egalitarian impulse. Maybe some of the Cascia hall moms could swap their prescription Somas for a little crank or junk with the new arrivals to the community.

Who owns Tulsa? We already know the answer to that one, and it ain't us. But Julie Hall and her friends deserve a salute for fighting the good fight, anyway.

Alternative Tulsa Needs To Pass The Smoke

....because it's gotta be some pretty good shit.

Yet the election of Bell puts Tulsa Republicans increasingly out of step with the public, even with Republican voters. Bell, after all, is a proud John Birch Society member and its a safe bet that few GOP voters under 40 have ever heard of John Birch.

Bell's Ron Paul connection is equally problematic since the deservedly obscure Rep. Paul proved to be a colossal dud among GOP primary voters last year. (How many primaries did Paul win?)

Then there's the losing record of Bell herself, defeated in her race for county commissioner in a heavily Republican county.

Add in her ties to GOP has-been Chris Medlock, former city councilor who lost a race for mayor and the state legislature, and you have local Republican leadership so hapless, cranky and right-of center that anyone even remotely interested in sensible public policy is likely to flee to the Democrats.

As we said at the outset, with Sally Bell in charge, it's a great time to be a Tulsa Democrat.

Wow. Where to begin? First of all, during the Presidential, Tulsa marched in lockstep with every other Oklahoma County to join Alabama in the ranks of "least progressive State" in the Union. Some of that was due to our good ol'fashioned, unreconstructed racism, but not all off it. If our Democratic talent doesn't come from Muskogee or Cherokee County or, God Forbid, from Little Dixie it doesn't come at all. It is easier to find a live octopus here than it is to find an elected Democrat. Texas will go blue before Tulsa does - count on it.

Secondly, by his vigorous opposition to much of the construction and realty interests that treat City Hall as their own personal fiefdom, Chris Medlock actually takes the more progressive position. Greater transparency, neighborhood empowerment....what's so Neanderthal about that?

Lastly, Ron Paul performed shockingly well in the Republican Primaries, particularly since his anti-war, anti-deficit zeal flew right in the teeth of the putative leader of his Party as well as being in harp deviance from the Republican base. Yet, IIRC, he outpolled the "inevitable nominee" Rudy Giulianni and may well have factored in McCain's win in South Carolina.

I'm all for Democratic optimism, but a little realism is usually a good thing.

The Voices Of Oklahoma

A stray comment over at Batesline has put me in the mood to listen to a bunch of the old Texas Playboy recordings from their heyday (1935-1945, say). And, since I live right next door to the old transmitter tower, I had to ruminate a bit about the impact of KV00, the "Voice of Oklahoma".
Between cable TV and the intertubes, it is probably easy for us to forget that how profoundly local the so-called "mass media" was for most of the Twentieth Century. Heck, even when I was a teenager it was still possible for a pop record to be a big hit in Tulsa while dying up in Kansas City.
But KVOO was true mass media....when it went to 50,000 watts in the mid-1940s on a clear night it could be heard west to the Sierra Nevadas and north to Canada. This immense reach virtually ensured the success of a hot band like the Texas Playboys.
The usual riff on the origin or Rock n' Roll is that it was the result of the shotgun marriage of R n' B sounds with country music and a disproportionate amount of credit goes to Worthy musicians such as Elvis and Bill Haley, over looking the country/blues/boogie collision that Bob Wills had already popularized.

Take their version of "Ida Red", which is almos' the same tune as "Maybelline". Or better yet listen to "Three Guitar Boogie". Forget about The Allman Brothers or The Yardbirds, The Bob Wills bands had a patent on dueling electric guitars. Often on these recordings guitarist Eldon Shamblin would just hop right past the blues and head off into jazz territory.
Wills himself recognized the connection to the Rock explosion back in 1957 in an interview with the Tulsa Tribune:""Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!...We didn't call it rock and roll back when we introduced it as our style back in 1928, and we don't call it rock and roll the way we play it now. But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important."
To his credit, Wills always acknowledged his debt to other, earlier performers who married jazz-pop stylings with country music, such as Jimmy Rodgers.
Seems like everyday I manage to walk right past the Ida Red Boutique here in Brookside without remembering to set foot in the place. Maybe I'll rectify that omission today.

Culture11 Fails To Get Tulsa

Look, I really enjoy much of Culture11. Good articles, eccentric point of view. But their article "Pins On A Map: Tulsa" by Gary Lee is the kind of puffery that would not be out of place in any given issue of such outlets of Babbittry as Urban Tulsa, the Tulsa World, or propaganda mailers from the Mayor's Office. The notion of pushing Tulsa as the arts capital of, um, anything is just too ridiculous for words. He does visit the usual high points for an article like this....the hoary Cain's Ballroom, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall Of Fame and the Thomas Moran collection at Gilcrease Museum (the bane of many a childhood school field trip). Brookside gets a mention, as does Cherry Street and the Brady District....The kind of places he can imagine taking one of his Georgetown buddies.

Real Tulsa history - from our infamous race riot to Dwight Twilley to Bob Wills to Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker (the cool stuff, in other words) - get nary a mention.

Fortunately, they are running an article at the same site which says more about real Oklahoma culture, albeit accidentally, than all of the travel section bullshit ever written. The article "Bluegrass Apoalypse" treats the complex and contradictory relationship between country music and culture, gospel, and the capitalistic ethic with no hint of condescension. The rich history of Tulsa lies in it's weird, unholy brew of evangelical passion, jazzy urban sophistication and sheer greed generously spiced with a seething blend of racial and class hatred. The best window on this world lies right there in that music, standing as it does with one foot in a folk tradition and the other in a burgeoning commercial sensibility.

The Mendacity of John Sullivan

I can hardly contain my nausea at John Sullivan's shameless commercial extolling his thriftiness before the ink is even dry on the banking bailout - even Inhofe had the decency to vote against it. I won't even get into his support for the "off-budget" conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. His claims to fiscally conservative credentials are the biggest sham since Potemkin villages.

Speaking Of Surrender....

....John Sullivan has announced that he will support the new version of the Bailout Bill when it comes before the House today.

What has changed? Well, the Bill itself is even worse than it was the first time around. This one is a true Christmas Tree, with presents for many new and different special interests in addition to the banking entities and hedge fund mangers that are the primary beneficiaries.

Since the only remaining reason to vote for a Republican is the fading hope that some of them will not be quite as complicit in expanding the deficit, everyone should be very comfortable voting for Georgiana Oliver in the upcoming election, as she will not be a whit more fiscally irresponsible than Mr. Sullivan as well as being more socially progressive.

Secret Justice

Public 'left out' as Oklahoma court records sealed

This is quite pitiful.

There are good reasons to seal records, but normally (as with juvenile matters, mental health affairs, etc.) these are already defined by statute or by court rule.

Occasionally a Judge will seal a record as a matter of forbearance, taste, or mercy. However, forbearance, taste, or mercy, while not unknown downtown, are in extremely short supply.

Corruption, or it's cousin "good-old-boy-ism", is rather prevalent.

I will say more when I stop grinding my teeth.

Michael Bates and BatesLine

A lot of my liberal friends can't abide the Michael Bates column in Urban Tulsa, and to be honest I would say that I'm in vociferous disagreement with him on about 95% of his opinions (except that I like Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys almost as much as he does) but he is the go-to guy when it comes to issues surrounding land use and urban planning....if you want to dispute his points you had best have your ducks in a row because he has thought long and hard on these matters and his arguments are often deep and multi-layered. So I decided to add his BatesLine to my list of preferred blogs.


What makes Bates unusual is that he will actually get down into the nitty-gritty.....do his research, read the statutes and relevant codes, familiarize himself with the agenda of administrative boards that most Tulsans don't even know exist....and then he does a yeoman's job of explaining all of that to his readers,and usually without over-simplifying things. He is also without fear when he determines to pick a target. His nose for smelling out bullshit is remarkable. It's been a long time, if ever, since the Tulsa World did comparable work (I'll make an exception for Janet Pearson's reporting, but her best stuff is generally concerning social agencies and not the development industries that constitute the World's power base).

In short, he's not just an opinion hack, he works as a reporter - and he might be the best one in Oklahoma, either in-print or online.


Am I giving short shrift to anyone? Does anyone have an Oklahoma journalist that deserves a shout-out?