Nelson: A tale of two cities, and both belong to Elvis
Las Vegas, like Memphis, is still Elvis' town.
Michael Nelson
Columnist
55 articles by Michael Nelson :
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September 2019
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Nelson: Tennessee's sad history with impeachment
Four of the first six federal officials to be impeached by the House of Representatives were Tennesseans, including the first president ever indicted for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Tennessee’s Andrew Johnson.
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August 2019
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Nelson: Who's smiling after Mississippi's GOP runoff? Democrat Jim Hood
Mississippi Republicans nominated Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, their weaker candidate for governor in Tuesday’s runoff primary. Hood, the state’s four-term attorney general, sailed to victory with 69% of the vote in his party’s Aug. 6 primary.
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Nelson: Jefferson, Hamilton, Sinatra — and AutoZone Park
Memphis decided to bring the best of the urban past into the vitality of the urban present in a minor league ballpark.
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Nelson: Marking the three Civil War battles of Memphis
The city was the site of two battles during the Civil War, but the worst one came afterward.
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Nelson: Led by Memphians, Tennessee ratified woman suffrage. Here’s why that matters
Modern-day progressives like to think that progressives from earlier eras were, like them, enlightened about everything. It ain’t so now and it wasn’t so then.
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Nelson: Jack arrived, Anthony stayed. They launched a startup that's changing physics education
Positive Physics reaches about 13,000 students a year in 50 states and 76 countries. Memphis teacher Jack Replinger writes the problems. Memphis computer scientist Anthony Fizer maintains the site.
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July 2019
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Nelson: 'Hamilton' moved on, but Memphis' theater scene still dazzles
Memphis theaters have reasonable prices, easy access and, above all, superb talent. When you see a play at one of these venues, you are seeing the theatrical equivalent of the Memphis Grizzlies. Not a team playing in the NBA finals. But definitely major league.
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Nelson: David Kustoff for … governor?
Kustoff’s career has mostly centered on federal offices, but if he’s open to another path to advancement, it might be the time for him to start focusing on Tennessee-specific issues that a candidate for governor will have to address.
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Nelson: A WGC event is ‘like having the NBA all-star game in Memphis every year’
The roughly 75 golfers who qualify will play all four days. If there's a golfer you want to see on Saturday or Sunday, you can count on him being there.
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Nelson: What 'Hamilton' gets that Nike doesn't
Mild inaccuracies mark the play. To which I say, so what?
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Nelson: Biden is in trouble for working with James Eastland. Who was Eastland anyway?
Joe Biden recently suggested maintaining civil relations with even the most difficult people is important to accomplish anything in Washington. The problem? He chose as an example ardent segregationist James O. Eastland, who represented Mississippi in the Senate from 1942 to 1978.
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June 2019
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Nelson: Yeah, no, so ... here’s a possibly annoying column about the English language
Here's a collection of 13 terrific innovations in our language, plus a longer list of major annoyances in contemporary use.
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Nelson: Sam Phillips was a small-town boy with big-city ambition
It’s called the music business for a reason, and from the beginning, Sam Phillips’ never-ceasing struggle was to make records he loved while keeping his shoestring operation financially solvent.
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Nelson: What’s right at MEM (with a modest proposal for FedEx)
We’ve gone from being the nation’s most-expensive airport for travelers to its 28th most expensive. And flights cost less than $10 more from Memphis than at the 20 next-cheapest airports, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
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Nelson: Don't sell Memphians short when it comes to cross-racial voting
Our history of cross-racial voting calls into question whether Memphis might not be ripe for a redistricting of city council and county commission districts that intentionally makes them racially diverse instead of solidly black or solidly white.
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May 2019
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Nelson: When the 'silent majority' was black
In 2019, Black Lives Matter means efforts to “end broken windows policing” and “limit use of force” by officers, among other items on the movement’s “Campaign Zero” agenda. In 1973, Black Lives Matter meant something different.
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Nelson: 'Charged' author aims at Shelby County DA, and misses
In her book, legal writer Emily Bazelon tells the story about District Attorney Amy Weirich and her prosecution of Noura Jackson, whose mother was killed in their East Memphis home. Jackson was tried and convicted of second-degree murder; in 2017, her conviction was overturned.
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Nelson: Why Sinatra came to Memphis
Frank Sinatra spent most of his life not liking us much. The South during the early and middle years of Sinatra’s career as the preeminent vocalist of his era — the 1940s through the 1960s — was a hotbed of racial bigotry, one of the things he hated most.
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Nelson: A tale of two Gores
Al Gore somehow managed to be dealt a straight flush — a booming economy, a world at peace, and a popular administration in which he served as vice president for eight years — and play it into a losing hand.
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Nelson: When it comes to voting legislation, I'm about to make you mad
Tennessee should enfranchise ex-cons and regulate voter registration drives.
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April 2019
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Nelson: Former Channel 5 reporter Basil Hero offers lessons from the moon missions
Aware that the clock was ticking toward the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing this July, Basil Hero decided in 2017 to turn his lifelong fascination with space travel into a book.
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Nelson: How to fight recidivism with great books
The parole board was blown away when a woman who had spent 25 years behind bars, and who was a member of the great books group at West Tennessee State Penitentiary, quoted Herodotus in answer to a question about how she now defined success.
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Nelson: For Democrats in the Mid-South, the presidential election starts now
Democratic presidential contenders will be all over this region in the months leading up to the Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi primaries. None of them has a prayer of winning electoral votes, but all three states will be sending delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
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Nelson: A battle near Memphis 157 years ago changed the face of war
The horrors of the battle fought at Shiloh April 6-7, 1862, made it clear that the weaponry of war had far outstripped the Napoleonic-era tactics taught at West Point.
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