So I went to Knoxville for Thanksgiving. This was my favorite photo from there. I also have some of the Sunsphere (aka the Wigsphere from the Simpsons). They are here.

so I'm from Knoxville, TN. It's an alright place. But now there's all kinds of crazy, hilarious, and bizarre political shenanigans going on - we're talking Boss Hogg/Tammany Hall style. For the longest time, Sheriff Tim Hutchinson has had a sort of political machine in the county - he is kind of the boss of various politicians, has been involved in scandals, and so on, but nothing outright comical.

Now, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court finally ruled that the county government has to abide by a term limits law that the citizens passed in 1994. The politicians had been ignoring it and using various goofy defenses against it - they even tried to cancel the county charter. This means that Sheriff Tim, all his cronies, and most of the county commission will be out of a job soon. So with all legal remedies exhausted, they decided that rather than resign and hold elections, they'd do something else - appoint surrogates.

Commissioner Diane Jordan nominated her son Josh, who mows lawns for a living. Mark Cawood nominated his wife. Craig Leuthold's dad was appointed. Comission chair "Scoobie" Moore appointed his treasurer. Sheriff Tim appointed his chier deputy as sheriff, and he turned around and appointed Tim as chief deputy. And "Lumpy" Lambert asked another nominee to vote for his buddy in exchange for a seat on the commission. He refused, at least.

This stuff would be infuriating if it weren't so comical. It's genuine backwoods political shenanigans that really puts Knoxville in a good light, right up there with the time Knoxville Councilman Cas Walker was on the front of Life Magazine punching another city councilman (pitcured above).

But these shenanigans didn't come out of nowhere. A few years ago, they wrote up a nice resolution saying goodbye to a former councilwoman. However, the Metro Pulse reported that the first letter of each line spelled out "fat ass bitch". Of course, they all denied knowing this, and nobody admitted to writing the resolution.

Here's a good editorial, and for more, see the Knoxville News-Sentinel (who I think described it as "a circus where at any time, Boss Hogg of the Dukes of Hazzard was expected to enter the room") and Wikipedia.