Southern Bookman

Raphael Warnock victory heralds new political chapter

I'll keep the Raphael Warnock sign in my front yard for a day or two.

But Warnock's emergence as a national Democratic leader appears much more long-lasting, after the Democratic incumbent senator's victory over Republican Herschel Walker Tuesday in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff election.

While I was joyful at Warnock's win after a nervous night of seesaw results, I was appalled by the drawn-out campaign and the relentless ads disparaging each candidate's character. 

Raising millions of dollars from political groups outside of Georgia, Warnock outspent Walker, ridiculing the Georgia Heisman Trophy winner's bizarre campaign statements and hammering home his violent acts.

In winning the runoff, Warnock accomplished what national Democratic celebrity Stacey Abrams was unable to - beating Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's political machine.

After distancing himself from Walker's flailing race in the Georgia primary election, Kemp at the behest of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aided Walker's runoff effort, appearing in a constantly repeated campaign ad. The lackluster commercial, in which Kemp blandly linked Warnock to President Joe Biden, didn't motivate enough voters to switch to Walker.

Warnock will now serve his first complete six-year term in the Senate. In 2020, he won a special election to fill the final two years of the late Sen. Johnny Isakson's final term.

The victory re-establishes Georgia as a rising Democratic stronghold, following the party's discouraging shutout in state races during the general primary. None of the Democratic candidates for state offices managed to force a runoff.

State Democratic Party leader U.S. Rep. Nakemia Williams' organization engineered a huge voter turnout for Warnock in Georgia's Democratic-heavy metro areas and raised his numbers enough to blunt Walker's insufficient gains in Republican-dominated rural counties.

The six years of Warnock's new term will bring momentous changes. The victory sets the stage for Warnock's rise as a national Democratic star.

 

 

Goodbye, Tara Theatre, Atlanta's temple of film sophistication

The Tara Theater's closure makes Atlanta a less sophisticated city.

Despite its title dripping with Southern nostalgia -"Gone With the Wind" was the first film shown when the Tara opened in 1968 - the art-deco theater mixed Academy Award-worthy Hollywood spellbinders with foreign movies and iconoclastic productions from independent American filmmakers.

The theater gave a sense of big-city cinema excitement not matched by suburban mega-plexes. Lending elegance to funky Cheshire Bridge Road and sitting at the corner of one of Atlanta's bland shopping malls, the theater expressed the city's international cultural aspirations while remaining a friendly neighborhood place.

Atlanta independent film pioneer George Lefont owned the theater for several years, bringing an avant garde ethos that faltered a bit under subsequent corporate owners like United Artists. But the theater still had a place for films outside the mainstream.

Covid and the increasing popularity of streaming at home led to declining audiences. Its corporate organization mired in bankruptcy, Tara owner Regal Cinema last month shuttered the theater, a major loss to Atlanta's artistic landscape.

That leaves Atlanta with two theaters for art films: the Midtown Cinema and the revived Plaza Theatre on Ponce de Leon, now beset by Atlanta's relentless gentrification.

Another venue once owned by LeFont, the Springs Cinema and Taphouse in Sandy Springs, has recently turned to more popular fare in an effort to compete with the struggling mall theaters. Before Covid, the Springs offered quirky films and revival big-screen showings of classics like "Chinatown" and "The Godfather."

Perhaps some Quixotic entrepreneur will bring back the Tara and present more challenging movies than Marvel extravaganzas and cartoon adventures. More likely, the old movie house will be replaced by another apartment-office-hotel complex, as if the city needs any more.

 

Influential black playwright Adrienne Kennedy makes Broadway debut

I discovered a major American playwright over the weekend: Adrienne Kennedy.

Kennedy makes her Broadway debut this month at age 91 with a production of her one-act play "The Ohio State Murders" at the renovated James Earl Jones Theater, according to writer Scott Brown's engrossing profile of Kennedy in Sunday's New York Times Style magazine.

Starring Broadway icon Audra McDonald and directed by the acclaimed director Kenny Leon, the play is based Kennedy's experience at Ohio State University, which she entered in 1949 and where she suffered intense racial prejudice as one of the few black students at the school.

In the play, written in 1994 and staged several times, a famed writer named Suzanne Alexander returns to her alma mater and discovers painful truths about the racism she encountered there.

Kennedy, who wrote the Obie-winning "Funnyhouse for a Negro" and a number of other plays, writes in a surrealistic, impressionistic style, Brown said. The television writer and former New York magazine drama critic was one of Kennedy's students.

Her work has influenced Suzan-Lori Parks, Charles Fuller and other black playwrights who've received national acclaim  in recent years.

"The Ohio State Murders" is part of a Broadway black renaissance, including an all-black performance of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" starring Wendell Pierce as Willy Loman, and revivals of August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and Parks' "Topdog/Underdog."

"The Piano Lesson," directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks and John David Washington, also received attention Sunday in the Times Style magazine. In a feature on dinner parties around the country, the play's cast was pictured eating pizza before a performance. It was gourmet pizza, Richardson Jackson disclosed.

As with Wilson, Kennedy's plays have been frequently published. If I don't get a chance to see "The Ohio State Murders" in person, I'll look forward to reading the play and other Kennedy works.

 

Nobody asked me, but....

In honor of legendary New York sportswriter Jimmy Cannon's "Nobody asked me, but" columns, here's a few Friday quick hits, as the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers disappear.

*Hey, kids, I still enjoy Chris Berman's three-minute NFL highlights roundup during Monday Night Football's halftime. Berman's he-could-go-all-the-way ranks with Henny Youngman's "Now take my wife, please," and Rodney Dangerfield's "I get no respect" as a vintage catch phrase.

*I rarely find the actual Monday game worth watching. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, paid millions by ESPN to jump from Fox, haven't restored the game's luster. No one will ever replace Frank Gifford, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell. After Thursday night football, Sunday night football and a full NFL Sunday, the Monday night game is like three-day-old turkey.

*PTI's Michael Wilbon keeps knocking the 49ers' Jimmy Garoppolo. But Fox's Terry Bradshaw likes him, and I consider Jimmy G. the most glamorous NFL quarterback since Joe Namath. I enjoyed seeing the Golden State Warriors' cheerleaders swarm around Jimmy G. when he sat on the front row at an NBA game.

*Help. I can't stop watching "White Lotus." The Italian girls are nice, and the Sicilian scenery gorgeous. But the rest of Mike White's HBO show makes me nauseous.

*The arrival of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" on Netflix recalls the thrill of reading the scandalous book years ago, although I preferred "Sons and Lovers." The D.H. Lawrence phase didn't last too long, but I liked the old rogue.

*Kudos to The Washington Post for beefing up climate change coverage. But shame on the Post for shuttering its Sunday magazine and laying off Pulitzer Prize winning dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman. Hello, environmental disasters; goodbye ballet.

*Ted Turner's CNN raised Atlanta's international profile. Rising layoffs at Turner's news channel mark a sad reversal for the city, although CNN has shifted more resources to New York and Washington over the years.

*Early voting for Georgia's Senate runoff set records for people going to the polls, but absentee voting was way down, according to The New York Times.

*I'm hopeful for a resounding Raphael Warnock win, but couldn't the Democratic Party have changed the script for robocalls? Each Democratic worthy repeated the same message verbatim.

*Bah, humbug: the holiday commercials are ho-hum this year. The Scrooge and Santa takeoffs have jumped the reindeer.

*No, Mr. Macron, France can't have Louisiana back. The French president is visiting the state this weekend after a gala state dinner at the White House and a visit with President Joe Biden. Macron's traveling to France's former colony to strengthen economic ties and encourage the teaching of French in Louisiana. That won't save the state's imperiled Cajun dialect.

*Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and Rep. Steve Scalise attended the White House dinner for Macron, along with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

*For some reason, Louisiana's Republican senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy weren't on the guest list. Cassidy is a proponent of increasing Louisiana's liquid natural gas production, which would help France withstand Russian fuel cutbacks because of the Ukrainian war. Perhaps the White House considered Kennedy's Col. Cornpone act too embarrassing to show the suave French leader.

*First lady Jill Biden's glittering dress was the talk of the city. No word on what the second husband, Douglas Emhoff, wore.

*Presumed Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was invited. But Marjorie Taylor Green was left off the list. Too reminiscent of Marine Le Pen?

*You can throw the record books out the window when the U.S. plays the Netherlands.

 

 

 

New Nobu luxury hotel at Phipps Plaza in Buckhead highlights Atlanta's economic disparity

The Nobu luxury hotel has arrived in the city with the nation's highest income disparity between rich and poor.

Atlanta's glaring economic divide punctures the city's rosy claims of offering prosperity to all. While rich parts of the metro area boom with developments like the Nobu, many Atlantans are mired in poverty.

The newest bauble in a chain founded by noted chef Nobu Matsuhisa, famed actor Robert De Niro and film producer Meir Teper, the hotel opened Tuesday at Phipps Plaza.

With 152 rooms and suites that cost up to $1,000 a day, the hotel includes a Nobu restaurant, a health club and a 12-story office tower. Goldman Sachs and Novelis have already signed up as tenants, according to the AJC.

Delayed by the Covid epidemic, the hotel tied up Phipps' accessible back parking deck for years and replaces a retail area last occupied by a mid-level Belks store.

Phipps owner Simon Group hopes the hotel complex boosts the struggling mall, where customer traffic hasn't recovered from Covid. A Hermes luxury store will further brighten the mall's prospects. But many Atlantans can't afford the new high-income Phipps, which used to draw middle-class crowds.

The Nobu is Buckhead's first newly built luxury hotel since the St. Regis opened on West Paces Ferry following the 2008 recession, according to the AJC, which also reported this week that Atlanta leads the nation in income disparity, even outpacing cities like New Orleans known for intractable poverty. Atlanta also tops New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, all too expensive for middle-class families.

Those wealthy Buckhead citizens who want to form a new city can enjoy their fancy meals and drinks at the Nobu, never worrying about those who struggle to live.