There’s nothing Jaxson won’t do for fame. Unfortunately, fame has remained elusive.
Welcome to CL’s annual catalog of impotence: the 11 Least Influential. You’ll meet folks who tried to achieve an ambitious goal, but fell short; people who’ve devoted themselves to a personal mission in near-total obscurity; and ordinary losers who can’t get anyone to pay attention to them. Every day until the full issue hits the streets on Nov. 11, we’ll bring you a new story of failure — some noble and heroic, others abject and pathetic.
Subject: Jonathan Jaxson Failing: Can’t make it to the A-list
Jonathan Jaxson has been angling for fame since the tender age of 15. But even after tabloid television appearances, the launch of a celeb blog and stints as a publicist for fellow D-listers, the Atlanta-based PR rep just can’t get to the next level.
The 26-year-old’s futile attempt at fame began in 1999, when he reconnected with his estranged father on the talk show “Forgive or Forget.” A year later, he came out to his dad on a “teen secrets” episode of the “Sally Jess Raphael Show.” Jaxson allegedly became the head of publicity for the Backstreet Boys the same year, after winning backstage tickets to the boy band’s concert. And from there, the 16-year-old continued to network with celebs.
Relying on the fame-by-association theory, Jaxson ran the now-defunct celebrity gossip blog JJsDirt.com where he trashed his supposedly Hollywood “It” girl friends. In an attempt to score privileged information from the queen of all media, Perez Hilton, Jaxson sent the blogger sexually explicit videos of himself. In return, Hilton filed a federal defamation suit after Jaxson claimed Hilton asked for those videos.
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY: A passenger reported a Florida man talking strangely on a shuttle bus at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The man reportedly said this was the third time Delta had made him miss his flight and made him stay overnight in Atlanta and that someone needs to blow up the airport.
A Delta Airlines employee called police, and an officer spoke with the 61-year-old man from Palm City, Fla. “I asked him if there was anything said on the shuttle bus on the way to the airport,” the officer wrote. “[The man] advised that he was mad because this was the third time Delta made him miss his flight. They made him stay in Atlanta costing him to pay for a hotel. He did say he wanted someone to blow up the airport, but he was mad and was not serious, he is just tired of Delta making him miss his flight and costing him more money. He said he was sorry and didn’t mean any harm. He will just never fly Delta and not fly through Atlanta anymore.” No charges filed.
SUNSHINE STATE STRIKES AGAIN: A 36-year-old man said he called a personal chat line while he was waiting for his cousin to pick him up from the Greyhound bus station. He said he talked with a woman he knows as “Little Florida” on the chat line — and Little Florida offered to give him a ride from the bus station if he gave her gas money. The man agreed. When Little Florida arrived, the man put all his personal belongings in her silver pickup truck and they drove away. The man said they stopped at a gas station on Northside Drive, and he went inside to pay for gas. He said while he was inside, Little Florida drove away with all his stuff. He says his stuff is worth $5,000 and Little Florida won’t return his calls.
Welcome to CL’s annual catalog of impotence: the 11 Least Influential. You’ll meet folks who tried to achieve an ambitious goal, but fell short; people who’ve devoted themselves to a personal mission in near-total obscurity; and ordinary losers who can’t get anyone to pay attention to them. Every day until the full issue hits the streets on Nov. 11, we’ll bring you a new story of failure — some noble and heroic, others abject and pathetic.
We begin with one of the latter. Enjoy.
Subject: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Failing: Can’t nut up enough to endorse candidates
One of the perks of being the sole daily newspaper for a major metropolitan city is that you can tell folks what to do. Where to eat. What movies to see. What books to read. And who to vote for. That goes double for a paper with a storied history of taking strong editorial stands on the issues of the day, such as Ralph McGill’s impassioned columns blasting segregation.
But what if, in giving an opinion — even a modulated, rational, well-argued one — you happen to say something some people don’t wish to hear. Horrors! We can’t have that. What if readers stopped subscribing to the paper? Oh, yeah, they’re already doing that… Perhaps it’s best to remove any opinion, insight, conclusions or point of view from the paper altogether.
At the GOP rally/Tea Party at the U.S. Capitol yesterday, Rep. Paul Broun (R – CrazyPartsOfGeorgia) had a stern warning for Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:
“Go tell your Congressman you’re not going to eat this rotten, stinking fish that is . . . [awkward pause] Pelosi health care!
We’re going to put a stop sign in front of her steam roll of socialism! Go to it, patriots!”
I haven’t played Rock-Paper-Scissors in a while, but I’m pretty sure steam roller beats stop sign. Here’s a video. Broun’s comments begin at the 4:35 mark.
While we’re on the subject of gratuitous dumbassitude masquerading as steadfast patriotism, at the same event yesterday House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner’s held up what he claimed was his copy of the U.S. Constitution and read aloud from the section he described as its preamble:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In January, state lawmakers will convene in Atlanta to shake hands, eat at fancy restaurants, and maybe pass a law or two. Because it’s an election year, these men and women will introduce a bunch of ridiculous proposals and resolutions to earn some brownie points with voters. But they’ll also have to tackle such serious issues as water, transportation and tax reform.
On Nov. 11 and 12, state lawmakers who represent Fulton County under the Gold Dome will hold three public meetings at the Coverdell Legislative Office Building to discuss local issues. Among them: Grady Health Systems, MARTA and education.
At the annual citizens’ public hearing on Nov. 11 at 6 p.m., you’ll have a chance to tell lawmakers what you’d like to see them focus on during the session.
The meetings are free and open to the public. Meeting dates and details are after the jump.
>> Scientist are discovering more animals appear to be having sex for pleasure, including Australian redback spiders that have 100 minutes of foreplay and fruit bars that have oral sex. The discovery brings to light the debate of “what’s natural” and if sex exists purely for procreation. Next, the Supreme Court will be debating whether the animal porn observed by these scientists is considered obscene. (Fox News)
>> Someone who knows a thing or two about animal pleasure: A 50-year-old South Carolina man was sentenced to five years in prison after having sex with the same horse for a second time within two years. The horse’s owner became suspicious when she noticed Sugar, her 21-year-old horse, was getting infections again. In the man’s defense: it was a female horse. (New Orleans Examiner)
>> More seriously: Twenty-three American CIA agents as well as two Italians were convicted by the Italian court for kidnapping an Egyptian cleric off the streets of Milan and taking him to be tortured in Egypt. This practice of shipping arrested people (sometimes innocent) to countries where torture is illegal, common under Bush’s war on terrorism, is now brought to the international spotlight as illegal. (the LA Times)
Write-in candidate Dr. Tiffany Brown got in the neighborhood of 60 votes city-wide. That’s about one vote for each time the line “Vote for Tiffany Brown” was used in her catchy campaign rap song.
At the end of September, mayoral front-runner Mary Norwood had a huge campaign warchest. But over the past month, she burned through more than $600,000, spending more than Kasim Reed ($274,000) and Lisa Borders ($300,000) put together. As of Oct. 25, Norwood and Reed each had about $166,000 in cash on hand (although Reed had loaned his campaign about $100,000 of that amount).
High on the list for the the Hall County Republican who’s also running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination? He and some congressional colleagues will kindly ask President Barack Obama to show a copy of his birth certificate.
Expecting the “Oxendine demands Obama birth certificate” press release in 5…4…3…
UPDATE: Invasion of the body snatchers! John Oxendine says Deal needs to back off the president. From his campaign:
“While I will lead the conservative charge to oppose President Obama on policy issues, candidates running for Governor need to understand that we have a responsibility to do business with the President of United States,” said John Oxendine. “For the sake of the taxpayers of Georgia, a high degree of respect is required and questioning his citizenship after he has been elected to the highest office in our land is disrespectful.”
The AJC’s Christian Boone today brings us the story of Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgendered woman who three years ago was fired from her state Capitol editing job. Why exactly? Well, her higher-ups feared she might be “extremely harmful to work operations” and make state lawmakers uneasy and
Glenn, who was born Glenn Morrison, filed a federal suit against her former employers to get her old job back.
Here are some choice quotes from the deposition of Georgia Legislative Counsel Sewell Brumby, who was Glenn’s boss at the Capitol:
“It makes me think about things I don’t like to think about, particularly at work … I think it’s unsettling to think of someone dressed in women’s clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing,” said Brumby, in a deposition taken May 11th in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. [...]
“I think some members of the legislature would view that taking place in our office as perhaps immoral, perhaps unnatural, and perhaps, if you will, liberal or ultra-liberal,” [Brumby] said.
Now on that last quote Brumby does have a point. The Georgia Capitol, after all, is a beacon of morality. No one’s ever raised flag about anything scandalous allegedly happening at the Gold Dome. Nope. Never. Check out Boone’s entire profile. UPDATE: Southern Voice has done an excellent job covering the story since it broke. Matt Schafer has a thorough article here.
ALCOHOL: Making people publicly pee and fall off horses
>> Give pees a chance: A 19-year-old university student may be jailed after being photographed urinating on a war memorial poppy wreath. If a drunken Brit can’t publicly pee without being hassled, then there’s really no point in living in England, now is there? (Reuters)
>> More wonderfully boozy news: The annual Todo Santos Cuchumatan horse race in Guatemala was ruined when riders and onlookers consumed copious amounts of homemade moonshine, leaving some riders to fall off their horses and many tourists to drunkenly stumble through the nearby village. I’ve never wanted to go to Guatemala so badly. (Reuters)
>> Brigitte Harris, who chopped off her father’s penis and sautéed it after he allegedly has raped her since the age of three, is now taking cooking classes in prison. And here I thought revenge was a dish best served cold. (the New York Daily News)
>> Obama totally embarrassed his daughter Malia when he revealed that she made a 73 on a science test. If he’s trying to revamp “No Child Left Behind,” he’s not doing a very good job. (the New York Times)
>> And finally, coming out of the Florida panhandle: A baby who had been missing for five days was found alive under her baby-sitter’s bed, and the parents may have known about it. At least that baby’s dad didn’t tell the whole world she got an F on a test! (AP)
StoryCorps, a national oral history project that documents stories of everyday people, will be recording in partnership with Atlanta public radio station, 90.1 (WABE-FM), launching its newest StoryBooth on Oct. 22. Interviews have already been collected from over 50,000 Americans in all 50 states. During StoryCorps’ year in Atlanta, it will record stories and life experiences from about 1,500 local residents.
The StoryBooth is located in the WABE studio, 740 Bismark Road, in Atlanta. Make reservations if you want record your story on StoryCorps’ 24-hour reservation line at 1-800-850-4406 or online at www.storycorps.org.
Probably the biggest surprise of Tuesday’s elections was Lisa Borders’ poor showing. Granted, various polls had showed her support waning and Kasim Reed’s numbers growing. But no one I talked to had expected Borders to net only 14 percent in what was widely perceived as a three-way race. I mean, City Hall shouter Dave Walker got nearly 10 percent in the Council president’s race and he didn’t raise a dime!
So how did the former runoff hopeful become an also-ran? A few thoughts:
1. She didn’t define herself — Easy for us to say, but it’s true. Mary Norwood positioned herself as the throw-the-bums-out, anti-City Hall candidate, a spokesperson for everyone sick of business as usual. Reed cast himself as the determined outsider, criticizing those on whose watch the city had faltered and promising to restore hope to inner-city neighborhoods. Quick — what did Borders claim to represent?
Creative Loafing staff photographer Joeff Davis visited the election night parties of four Atlanta mayoral candidates, including Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed, Lisa Borders and Kyle Keyser on Nov. 3.
I hate to pile on the AJC with regard to their election coverage, because they’ve already taken plenty of lumps for cravenly weaseling out of endorsing candidates in the Atlanta city elections.
But, sweet Jesus, did they screw things up! As my colleague Thomas noted in an earlier post, someone over on Marietta Street just plumb forgot to add in the results from precincts in DeKalb County. (Granted, DeKalb, which is usually very facile with online data, has made it excruciatingly difficult to find said results.)
The snafu is most noticeable in the District 6 Council race, where the AJC online graphic suggests that Tad Christian made the runoff, rather than Liz Coyle:
While the DeKalb numbers didn’t alter who won or who survived in any other Council districts, they did change the percentages in all the city-wide races.
Our federal overlords are currently mulling climate change legislation that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing the impact of global warming. (They’re doing it for the children, ya skeptics.) Some carbon belchers — as well as some Republicans — aren’t thrilled about the bill.
According to a study reported by E&E, a subscription-based energy industry and policy publication, Atlanta-based Southern Co. would be hardest hit if the legislation passes. The article’s only available to subscribers, but here’s a snippet:
Atlanta-based Southern Co. will suffer most from a federal carbon cap-and-trade system, facing $393 million in costs to comply with legislation to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, according to a new study by Point Carbon, a carbon market information firm. Two other energy producers, American Electric Power and Duke Energy, round out the top three firms in the nation facing the most risk, with those two companies expecting to incur costs of $252 million and $125 million, respectively, Point Carbon analysts said.
In an attempt to flesh out the “winners and losers” of federal cap and trade, analysts zeroed in on 18 companies that are expected to represent 40 percent of any future U.S. market in emissions allowances. Southern Co. is characterized as the worst off, while Chicago-based Exelon Corp. is seen as the best off. Point Carbon believes Exelon, the nation’s biggest nuclear power producer, could actually see net revenues of $1.7 billion from the sale of its surplus allowances.
Before we get sucked into a “Buckhead vs. Southwest Atlanta” narrative for the run-off, consider this: the spreadsheet users over at the AJC say Mary Norwood won a significant number of votes yesterday from predominantly black precincts.
Political Insider Jim Galloway posted results from Atlanta’s top five predominantly black districts, and the top five predominantly white districts. Norwood received an average of 21 percent of the votes in the top five mostly black districts, while Reed received an average of just under six percent of the vote in the top five mostly white districts.
Norwood clearly has stronger appeal outside her geographic base than Reed does outside his.
Last night, longtime community activist Liz Coyle was edged out of a Dec. 1 runoff against Alex Wan by darkhorse candidate Tad Christian in the Atlanta City Council District 6 race.
Or so we thought.
CL just spoke with Coyle. And the Atkins Park resident says she’s ready for a runoff.
“Huh?” we asked.
Coyle said the election results reported for the six-candidate race didn’t include three DeKalb County precincts that are considered part of the City of Atlanta. When you add those results, Coyle says, she leads Christian by 65 votes.
“So I’m ready for a runoff,” she said. Work begins today on her Dec. 1 showdown with Wan.
We’ve reached out to the Christian campaign. We’ll update when we hear word.
>> Virgin Atlantic Airways has launched a Flying Without Fear app to help people overcome their travel trepidation with video, FAQs and a fear attack button for emergencies with breathing exercises. Who needs a therapist or a close friend when you have an iPhone? (Reuters)
>> More on mobile phones: Fanatical Muslim insurgents Al Shabaab have banned non-Islamic audio for people’s ringtones since seizing parts of Somalia, saying they do not tolerate “anything that may corrupt the people.” Come on, when did a “Poker Face” ringtone really hurt anyone? (Reuters)
>> A new American Eagle store in Times Square will be open until 1 a.m. and include a “15 Seconds of Fame” feature which lets shoppers submit their picture to be broadcast on a Times Square screen minutes later. But honestly, who would want to advertise to the world that they buy crappy logo decal shirts at one in the morning? (Womenswear Daily)
>> Finally, hit hard by the recession, Ohio is set to vote “yes” to casinos tied to new jobs after rejecting attempts to bring gambling to the state for the past two decades. Aside from a handful of new jobs, the plan seems like a great way for down-on-their-luck Ohioans to squander what little money they have left at the slots. (Fox News)
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY: A passenger reported a Florida man talking strangely on a shuttle bus at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The man reportedly said this was the third time Delta had made him miss his flight and made him stay overnight in Atlanta and that someone needs to blow up the airport.
Creative Loafing staff photographer Joeff Davis visited the election night parties of four Atlanta mayoral candidates, including Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed, Lisa Borders and Kyle Keyser on Nov. 3.
