His thoughts on the NYC Marathon victory of American runner Meb Keflezighi were utterly vile.

When called out for his bigotry, he stuck by his guns.

Now he’s trying to backpedal as a firestorm of criticism grows on the Twitter!

Here’s what Douche Rovell had to say when Keflezighi became the first American winner of the NYC race since the early 80s:

It’s a stunning headline: American Wins Men’s NYC Marathon For First Time Since ’82.

Unfortunately, it’s not as good as it sounds.

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he’s not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies.

Nationality in running counts. It’s why many identify Kenya as the land of the long distance champions.

As for the United States? Not so much.

It has been well-documented that since the mid-80′s, Americans haven’t had much success in the marathon. Many cite lack of motivation as the root of our troubles, as in our best athletes devote their lives to sports where they can make big money instead of collecting the relatively small paychecks that professional running offers. That, of course, is not the case with African runners, who see in the same winner’s check a lifetime full of riches.

Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

The positive sign was that some American-born runners did extremely well in yesterday’s men’s race.

If any of them stand on the top step of the podium in Central Park one day, that’s when I’ll break out my red, white and blue.

“Technically American”?

If you think that was bad, check out the version Rovell distilled down to 160 characters or less:

Just to make utterly clear how wrong this is, let’s clarify this with a little background from a Sports Illustrated story that is WELL worth reading in full.

I’ve done all my running here: junior high, high school, college, Olympics. How much more American can you get?
– Mebrahtom Keflezighi, October 2005

Keflezighi, who was born in Ethiopia 30 years ago, has led a revival of U.S. elite-level distance running since graduating from UCLA in 1998. He has won two national championships in cross-country, three at 10,000 meters and two at 15,000 meters; broken a 15-year-old U.S. record in the 10,000 (by running 27:13.98, in 2001); and won that Olympic medal. “He’s not just a leader,” says U.S. marathoner Alan Culpepper. “He’s been a pioneer.”

Young runners idolize Keflezighi. In the summer of 2004 members of a high school cross-country team from Southern California were in Mammoth Lakes for a training camp and found Keflezighi’s house. He was not home, but they left a message with one of his friends: Tell Meb he’s our hero. “I’ve told him, ‘Meb, you have no idea how many people you’re inspiring,’” says Salazar.

But he confuses people too. Keflezighi immigrated to the U.S. from war-torn Eritrea at age 12 and took his first serious steps as a runner when he ran a 5:20 mile as a seventh-grader. Still, some Americans won’t credit a domestic distance-running rebirth to a man born in Africa. They whisper and blog. “Meb has my respect as a great runner, a great person and a great American,” says U.S. runner Dathan Ritzenhein, 23. “But I’m sure it’s hard for some people to differentiate between Meb and the East African runners who seem to dominate the sport.”

Says Keflezighi, “All because my name is difficult to pronounce.”

Setting aside the racial component of the story — I, for one, have a hard time believing that Rovell would have called out Keflezighi for being only “technically” American if he had been born in Western Europe — Rovell’s ignorant blog post is offensive because it implies that there is some special status to being BORN an American that a foreign-born, naturalized citizen can never attain.

In my view, this couldn’t be more wrong.

I’m going to let my friend Nils Coq au Vin, Esq. make the case for why this is utter nonsense:

You know what this is like? Telling your adopted son he’s worth less, because he didn’t come out of mommy.

I hate people who belittle the fact that someone chose to be an American. As I’ve argued before, that makes them the most American, as in there is nothing more quintessentially American than emigrating to America.

Everyone who was born here? Sorry, you just won the lottery and missed out on the real American experience.

Rovell immediately drew some blowback, with Deadspin noting: “American Who Won NYC Marathon Isn’t American Enough For Some People.”

Other people read Rovell’s obnoxious nonsense and took the case to his blog, including commenter ILRun1:

Darren, I like your blog for the most part, but you are way off base here and you show how little you actually know about American distance running. Meb moved to the U.S. when he was 12 (22 years ago), had never run a step in his life, and grew into the runner he is today because of the American distance running system. The only people who don’t consider Meb an American distance runner are racist, uneducated fools. I hope you don’t fall into that category. Meb has been featured in commercials before, he’s won a silver medal wearing a USA uniform, and while he wasn’t an American citizen until 1998, as I said earlier, he’s lived here for over two decades, he was married here, and his kids were born here.

You can generalize your statements all you want, but most people actively involved in the distance running community consider Meb an American as much as Ryan Hall. Next time, I suggest you actually do some homework in the distance running community.

To this considered criticism, Rovell responded in a huff:

Slowly, word began to spread about Rovell’s nativist commentary.

Tweets began to trickle out as people passed around the story and shared their outrage online. Calling a naturalized American citizen who came here as a boy a “ringer” is just wrong, and it didn’t take people long to see that Rovell was way, WAY off base.

For one thing, he didn’t even realize that the last American winner of the NYC Marathon, Alberto Salazar, was ALSO not native-born!

One really intelligent commentator shared the story thusly:

Americans across the nation reacted to Rovell’s insulting dismissal of a fellow countryman, one who came here as a child to flee the war-torn horrors of his native land no less — a hero of American distance running, a friend and inspiration to everyone in the American running program.

Darren Rovell was oblivious.

In fact, he’d already moved on.

Word continued to spread and the reaction to Rovell’s asinine native-born outburst gathered into a full blown internet tsunami.

That’s when the good people at CNBC, where Darren Rovell works, noticed the brewing shit storm!

Realizing that this controversy was about to taint them as well, they sent spokeshole Brian Steel (awesome name, BTW) to issue the following statement:

“Of course he is an American. We congratulate Meb Keflezighi on his victory in the NYC marathon and he should be celebrated as one of the greatest marathoners in the world and as an American citizen.”

At this point, Twitter is beginning to light on fire with all the people reading and commenting about this intolerant nonsense.

Check out the search stream: there have been 100 new comments in the time it took me to bang out this article.

The pathetic Rovell finally woke up from his candy bar haze and realized that everyone hates him now. That realization may have been helped along by a phone call from his employer, ya think?

He wrote this sad mea culpa mere moments ago:

Yesterday, I wrote an article about New York City Marathon men’s winner Meb Keflezighi. Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong.

The debate currently on the blogospehere is over whether or not Keflezighi should count as the first American man winner of the race even though he was not American-born.

HAH! The “debate” on the blogosphere? More like you going on with your nativist natterings while everyone else reacts in horror and disgust!

I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American.

All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.

This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

Darren Rovell, Dauphin of Douche, completely failed to do his research before he besmirched the Americanness of NYC Marathon champion Meb Keflezighi.

Rovell with one of his American-born heroes

Thanks to the power of the Internets, he finally came face to face with the utter bigotry of his words and was forced to beat an embarrassing retreat.

So now that we’ve thoroughly flamed Rovell, let’s take a moment to appreciate the champ – Meb Keflezighi.

Congratulations, Meb.

You did the USA proud by torching the field in a tremendous 2:09:15!

To all other naturalized citizens, I say this: Whether you were born here or became a citizen five minutes ago, I’m proud to call you my countryman.

Emigration is what makes America great. Thank you for joining in the American experiment, so let’s make like Meb and go get that American dream!

You’re probably aware that Radio Shack is changing its name to “The Shack.”

The new brand is scheduled to be unveiled Aug. 6 during a three-day launch event in New York and San Francisco, the company said Monday. RadioShack also plans to get the word out through television, print and Web advertising.

“The Shack” was chosen as the new name based on the fact that many consumers were already dropping “Radio” from the company’s name when referring to one of its stores. “We decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world,” Lee Applebaum, chief marketing office for RadioShack, said in a statement.

RadioShack also hopes the new name will help the company change its image.

“We have tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts and batteries, but it’s critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people connected in this highly mobile world,” Applbaum said. “You will see a real focus on mobility and wireless products from leading brands in our new advertising.”

RadioShack announced last month the addition of T-Mobile to its line up of wireless carriers that the company has partnered with in its 4,000 stores as the retailer moves toward a more wireless-focused product line. RadioShack also sells AT&T and Sprint as wireless options for its products.

The Shack (I guess we have to call it that now) realized that it couldn’t stay alive by competing with the Internet for sales of parts and accessories. In a bid to hang onto relevance, the bricks-and-mortar chain is going hard after the youth market and is attempting to position itself as a mobile-phone superstore.

To that end, the company has released a dozen strange 15 second TV spots.

This particular one caught the eye of our tipster SecretM, who has a keen interest in Swedish culture and thus noticed that there was something a little off:

“There’s a weird Radio Shack commercial with a strange Swedish song on it,” he wrote us, “and with imagery that seems to conflate Sweden and Switzerland.“

It appears as though the animators of this commercial are a little confused about the difference between European cultures…

The Alpine setting is all wrong, and the dudes look Bavarian. SecretM admits that the ladies look Scando, but that’s no surprise considering the worldwide reputation of Viking maidens for a combination of beauty and promiscuity.

There’s a mountain goat running around, I guess for a little flavor of Switzerland, for the hell of it? Those countries are all the same, right The Shack?

There’s also a representative of the Sami people in there, which is legit Scandinavia…

The weird thing about this ad is that it nails the archetypal northern Europeans it goes for, it just recklessly extends its reach way beyond the Scandinavia it’s supposedly talking about.

But look, I get it. The entire idea here is to rebrand with irreverent irony, in the manner of Burger King. Factual precision is thrown by the wayside because the only important thing is attracting the flickering attention span of young males with money to spend on electronics.

That’s all well and good, but there is the song they’ve chosen to accompany their ad. This is a Swedish pop confection so insipid, it would repulse the very audience they’re trying to attract, if they could only comprehend it…

So apparently this song is about the summer practice of rocking out in a Husvagn, a sort of trailer that’s the poor Swede’s summer home. Husvagn freaks like to go to the same places every year and party together in little summer communities.

However, to see this song’s depiction of Husvagn culture, it’s little more than a bunch of tubby bitches leering at hoes, engaging in hooliganism, and rapping like the crackers they are.

According to the translation provided to us by SecretM and his associate Nafets, this song is about one thing only: monumental doucheosity.

The first guy, who at times resembles an emo Perez Hilton, sings a verse about how they were all camping out and chilling and the mosquitoes were like everywhere, bro. The best part is when he sings a line about how he “was -almost- cold,” and then does a little dance move like “I’m gonna hug myself cause I’m cold, but actually not, because I’m too cool to be cold for real.”

The girl comes in to sing a verse, but she is quickly interrupted by her loser compatriots, who exclaim that they love to “spy after breasts!”

Then sunglasses-wearing tool and an albino Jared Leto come in and rap MORE about the practice of “spying after breasts” with binoculars in hand. (One then makes a reference to applying “SPF 100″ in order to chill outside on a summer’s day, and as a fellow descendant of Northern European peoples, I can appreciate that sentiment.)

The translation of the song’s refrain is pretty much the opposite of poetry, and trust me, it’s 100% the fault of the source material:

A caravan during the summer
means a party every day
The sun shines through the trees
Almost every day

A caravan, during the summer
One simply has to have
And a camping place in Sweden
one sets up and has a good time

So this is what The Shack’s pitch to consumers boils down to.

A goof-ass commercial that actually makes you dumber while you watch it.

Some comments left at ADWEEK were vicious, slamming The Shack for its tonedeafness:

This [is] the hackiest campaign ever! I can’t believe this work can be so consistently BAD. There’s not a shred of redemption. Bad art direction, awful copy, terrible music — just hokey and cheesy. Everything this brand is has been harnessed into what might be the worst relaunch campaign for any company in YEARS.

They can call it whatever they want – the sad fact is that once you get inside the store, it’s still going to be full of the same irrelevant junk they’ve had for the past 25 years. So maybe they’ll succeed in getting everyone to refer to it as The Shack…as in “The Shack – that place I never shop at”.

what? This is advertising? No wonder people dislike advertising. it is because of garbage like this. Not funny, interesting, smart, conceptual, insightful. Just bad. Really bad.

Just to get the message completely across that The Shack’s hopes of survival are pinned on their new image, Electronics a la Douche, this happened:

Today begins the big re-launch of RadioShack. The stale old corporate name will become The Shack.

To promote the new moniker, RadioShack is holding events in San Francisco and New York today through Aug. 8.

And then there’s the Web site radioshack.com/theshack. You’d think the site would impart interesting information about the new concept for the old corner store.

Instead, however, the site is streaming live audio and video from The Shack events on both coasts.

No, it’s not a discussion about electronics or RadioShack or anything interesting. It’s a radio show (of all things) hosted by some obnoxious, vulgar personalities…

I listened for about 10 minutes, of which 90 percent of the discussion had to do with female body parts. The rest was mostly about the sexual escapades of the female shock jock. Oh, and there was a riff on enemas, including an interview with a passerby about coffee enemas.

“Give that man a RadioShack gift card,” one of the hosts said.

I listened to some clips of the radio show in question…

The haggard female host goes into this long rambling anecdote about hooking up with Eddie Van Halen, but insists that she did not “do” him.

Gross.

What we have learned is that The Shack is delighted with its new image, which has all the appeal of a stale fart trapped in a revolving door.

It’s all the fault of their incompetent co-chairman, Ben Silverman.

While formerly-solid series like “Heroes” circle the drain and new efforts like “Kath and Kim” outright suck, Silverman has adeptly managed to keep his job with corporate-politics tactics like throwing subordinates under the bus.

Witness this Page Six account where he blames all the network’s problems on someone else:

NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman isn’t going to get all the blame for the network’s lackluster fall schedule.

With yesterday’s cancellation of two NBC shows produced by sister company Universal – “Lipstick Jungle,” which starred Brooke Shields, and “My Own Worst Enemy,” which featured Christian Slater -culpability falls on Universal Media Studio President Katherine Pope, who oversaw both doomed series.

Pope, an original producer on “Heroes,” was promoted to the top studio job because of the success of that NBC show.

Almost one year later, with ratings for “Heroes” slipping, she isn’t working out the way NBC planned. Top network brass is now overseeing production of the series in an attempt to save it.

“They call her the black widow. Every program she touches turns to death,” growled our source. “She is on very thin ice.” Pope also produced flash-in-the-pan series “Bionic Woman.”

Another network insider told Page Six, “There are internal concerns that she took her eye off the ball.” A rep for Pope at Universal had no comment.

Of course, none of NBC’s other new shows – “Knight Rider,” “Kath & Kim” and “Crusoe” – has become a hit, either. But Silverman, 37, has been able to cut costs at the network and seems to be satisfying his bosses, particularly NBC chairman Jeff Zucker.

In fact, one network insider actually praised Silverman, saying, “The company is very happy with Ben. He is deep in negotiations to re-up his contract with NBC, and he has the network up 50 percent profit from year to year.”

TV analysts say ratings have become less important as the viewing audience has scattered to proliferating cable channels. Silverman told The Post last summer: “We’re managing for margins and not for ratings.”

Whatever he is managing for, the result is terrible television.

Silverman:  Carving up freshies while the network burns

In his latest genius move, NBC decided to jettison FIVE ENTIRE HOURS of scripted programming each week in favor of a Jay Leno nightly show at 10 pm.

Unable to come up with television shows that anyone wanted to watch, and hemmed in by their rash decision to promise Jay’s timeslot to Conan, Silverman and friends were all, “what the hell, how about MORE late night television…even earlier!”

Leno eagerly agreed, and is now going around claiming that 10 o’clock is the new 11:30:

“More people — and younger people — are going to bed at 11 o’clock because they carpool or they have to get up at 6.”

He totally made that up, BTW.

Silverman loves this plan, since it relieves him of 1/4 of his responsibility to fill the network’s schedule, and Leno loves it, because he doesn’t have to look for a new job.

Unfortunately, everyone else hates this plan because Jay Leno is lame, killing off scripted programming in favor of a pseudo-late-night show is weak, and quite frankly, the affiliates can do a lot better on their own, thank you very much.

Even Conan is pissed:

“I don’t think any of us were expecting a Monday through Friday thing for Jay like that. And there was a period where everybody was just trying to figure out: what does this mean? After about an hour and a half I just started asking if I was still going to be getting the ‘Tonight Show With Johnny Carson’ that I used to watch with my father in my living room in Brookline, Massachusetts.”

The stage was set for some fireworks, and now the first shoe has dropped.

Boston’s WHDH extended a giant middle finger to NBC yesterday, telling them “Leno? Hell no.”

WHDH-TV Channel 7, Boston’s NBC affiliate, is refusing to air Jay Leno’s new talk show in the lucrative 10 p.m. hour in favor of its own hourlong local news show, and NBC doesn’t like it one bit.

“WHDH’s move is a flagrant violation of the terms of their contract with NBC,” said John Eck, president of NBC Television Network. “If they persist, we will strip WHDH of its NBC affiliation. We have a number of other strong options in the Boston market, including using our existing broadcast license to launch an NBC-owned and operated station.”

The decision to program local news instead of Leno, the longtime host of “The Tonight Show” who grew up in Andover, follows the runaway success of the 10 p.m. newscast on rival WFXT-TV Channel 25, Boston’s Fox outlet. WFXT’s newscast averaged 210,600 total viewers in the March ratings sweeps, while the 10 p.m. newscast on WHDH sister station WLVI-TV Channel 56 drew 43,800 total viewers. On some nights, WFXT’s newscast beats network shows in the city, with help from lead-ins such as “American Idol” and “House.”

Leno’s show is scheduled to launch in September.

Ed Ansin, owner of WHDH and WLVI, believes a local newscast at 10 p.m., which he plans to simulcast on both stations, will draw better ratings than Leno.

“We feel we have a real opportunity with running the news at 10 p.m. We don’t think the Leno show is going to be effective in prime time,” Ansin said yesterday. “It will be detrimental to our 11 o’clock [newscast]. It will be very adverse to our finances.”

Ansin wants to air Leno’s show at 11 p.m., but he said NBC told him that “would not be feasible.” For now, Ansin doesn’t plan to air Leno at all, instead airing a local news show at 10 p.m., following it with the current news half-hour broadcast at 11, and Conan O’Brien’s show at 11:35 p.m. when it begins this summer.

“There are a lot more viewers available at 10 o’clock,” added Ansin who also owns Miami’s WSVN-TV, a Fox affiliate that reaps strong ratings and revenue with its 10 p.m. newscast. Said Ansin, “It fundamentally is a better financial plan for us.” Of WHDH, he added, “We are already suffering from weak lead-ins.”

After dominating the lucrative 11 p.m. news race for more than a decade with its flashy graphics and focus on sports news, WHDH has seen its 11 p.m. newscast plummet to third place in the ratings in the last year, behind WBZ-TV Channel 4 and WCVB-TV Channel 5. The station laid off its executive news producer and two anchors, including longtime newsman Randy Price, who was replaced by Kim Khazei. The station recently unveiled its late night anchor team of Khazei and Frances Rivera – the only female duo on a Boston anchor desk. Channel 7 also redesigned its news desk and revamped its graphics to broadcast in high-definition.

Industry officials have noted that having Leno at 10 p.m. would cost a fraction of what a network might pay for a scripted series in that hour. The refusal to air Leno in prime time in the country’s seventh-largest market could cost NBC much-needed ratings. The network has been in a ratings slump in recent years.

NBC officials are hopeful about Leno’s arrival in prime time. His show will be similar to “The Tonight Show,” which is a late-night ratings leader.

“The NBC affiliates are very excited about the new Leno show weeknights at 10 p.m.,” Michael Fiorile, NBC affiliate board chairman, said yesterday in a statement to the Globe. “Jay is a true star with enormous appeal.”

Ansin said his contract with NBC differs from those of affiliates that are owned and operated by the network.

“We have the option of not airing Leno at 10 o’clock.”

Now, we think Ed Ansin is a douche who ruined a formerly-solid WHDH newscast and replaced it with ludicrous “NEWS HAPPENS FAST!!” exploitative, hyperventilating yellow journalism.

But it seems like he is on to something here. The Leno show is a real loser for a lot of the affiliates, and a symptom of NBC’s complete lack of programming creativity.

This could be the first of several struggles as affiliates fight back against late-night-show creep.

Variety reports that the natives are restless…

The first great NBC-affiliate battle over the new primetime Jay Leno show is poised to take place in Boston — the host’s hometown.

WHDH-TV, Boston’s Peacock affiliate, announced via its website Thursday that it plans to launch an hour-long 10 p.m. newscast in the fall.

That would pre-empt Leno’s new, still-untitled 10 p.m. series. NBC swiftly responded, warning WHDH that such a move would make them in breach of their pact with the net — and that the Peacock wouldn’t hesitate to yank the station’s affiliation.

[...]

Insiders said NBC is already looking at contingencies in Boston should WHDH go ahead with its plans — including turning its Telemundo station in the market, WNEU (Channel 60), into an NBC outlet.

[...]Ansin told the paper that WHDH had asked for permission to push Leno to 11 p.m., but the network said no. Instead, he has no plans to run Leno at all, and will continue to air an 11 p.m. newscast leading into “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” at 11:35.

Ansin also claimed that WHDH held a clause in its affiliation contract that would allow the station to dump the 10 p.m. Leno show — an assertion that NBC also vehemently denied.

“That is absolutely wrong,” said NBC general counsel Rick Cotton. “It is clear that WHDH is contractually required to air NBC programming as scheduled by the network.”

The radical move by WHDH comes as several affils nervously wait to see how NBC’s primetime Leno series evolves and ultimately impacts their business.

Now, WHDH is leading this charge not purely due to Leno-hate, but because they are getting spanked in the local news ratings.

As the story above noted, they recently axed longtime anchor Randy Price (who’s sort of a more dapper version of Michael McKean’s character from Best in Show) and are desperately trying to regain their stranglehold on the Boston news audience.

Dunno, guys, maybe people are sick of your ridiculous overhyping of unimportant stories, broadcasting canned pieces from other parts of the country, completely uninformative sports broadcasts, and pathetic roster of imbecilic “talent”?

We could go on for paragraphs slamming their News Team, but here are a few of our least-faves.

Lead anchor Frances Rivera is just weird, sports guy Joe Amorosino is a doofus, Lauren Pryzbyl really needs to change her name – it’s TV news, what the hell is wrong with you?! – and Grant Greenberg looks and reports as if he’s about five years old.

Brandon Rudat constantly appeared on air looking like the walking undead, until they fired him.

Their last high-profile hire, pageant queen/sports gal Julie Donaldson, was almost immediately embroiled in an amazing sex-tape scandal involving booze, courtroom testimony and a “former Slamball player.”

Donaldson: Went down in a blaze of glory.

This after their former news director flipped out at Logan Airport and got arrested. “I’m a big shot in Boston and I’ll have your fucking jobs.” Or, you’ll get fired.

Other than competent weatherman Pete Bouchard, WHDH pretty much stinks at news.

(Oh yeah, and Sorboni Banerjee is kinda cute.)

Consequently, their fall from grace in the nation’s seventh-largest market might not be completely a Silverman-related issue.

However, as the informed commenters at TV by the Numbers point out, this Leno scheme is a real loser for NBC:

Doc Michaels says:

As Ed Ansin (WHDH’s head honcho) points out in the article, WHDH has a unique licensing agreement with NBC — one that was established when WBZ became a CBS outlet — that allows them to do this. He’s incredibly cagey and they don’t make decisions recklessly — they obviously believe they can do this because of their arrangement with NBC, which leads me to think they can and will.

NBC has all kinds of options, there are indie stations like WSBK (which is now owned by CBS) where they can put Leno on. That said, the reach of whatever outlet they go with will pale in comparison to WHDH. And at this point, with NBC falling apart, maybe Ansin feels losing NBC wouldn’t even be the worst thing in the world.

This is bad, bad news for NBC, no doubt about it, especially it happening in Leno’s hometown.

Frank J says:

“Do they really think Leno is going to do worse leading into their newscasts than Law & Order, My Own Worst Enemy, Lipstick Jungle, and Dateline?”

The answer is apparently yes. Or at least they feel NBC should be putting new, and better, scripted shows or reality shows during that hour instead of settling for Leno. I’d be curious to see the ratings breakdown for the Boston area. I bet its slightly different than the country as a whole. In fact, I’d be curious to see Leno’s current ratings for the Boston viewing area.

Jack says:

I work for one of the bigger affiliates and WHDH is not going to be the only one playing this hand. NBC can claim breach of contract but they drew first blood. We are not confident that Leno can maintain any kind of numbers for long in that slot. To take up every 10PM slot is a slap in the face of the affiliates who are confident they can gain bigger ratings with news or alternate programming. NBC shoved this down our throats in an effort to keep Leno from going to FOX. They don’t even have confidence in his ability to hold the numbers for long. NBC hopes to keep him around long enough to give Conan a chance to build up his audience before Leno fails at NBC and does Late Night on FOX. We are afraid that Leno’s ratings will be lower in a month than the lowest NBC rated show is right now.

Boston Born and Raised says:

This is not about Jay Leno at all. This is about channel 7 and it’s fundamental goal of being the tv news leader in Boston. Since buying channel 56 and broadcasting it’s 7 News at 10 o’clock on it, Ansin has been repeatedly embarrassed about being crushed in the ratings by Fox 25. Ansin and his team have been searching for an idea to shake up the situation. After several attempts to tweak the format and change anchors, the idea of moving the newscast to the station with the stronger image is a last resort. Ansin has been amazed that 7’s 10 o’clock news has perfomed so badly next to the smaller operation at Fox 25. He is determined to win and I do not believe he takes NBC’s threats seriously, no matter what the affiliate contract states. NBC’s options are pretty lousy. They are not going to take on the expense of starting an owner operated station in Boston, and even if they were to, it would take close to a year to get on the air. The second option of switching to an independent is highly unlikely. The most obvious, TV 38, would be a step down in visibility in an important market for NBC. Plus, TV 38 is part of the CBS family and they are unlikely to approve an NBC affiliation. The other independents in the market would be a huge step down in visibility for NBC.

NBC – what a frickin’ mess.

As long as Silverman hangs onto his job, things are not likely to improve. And with affiliates jumping ship on the Leno plan, further trouble is in store.

We call it Must Poop On TV.

Charles Barkley made a big mistake.

We’re not talking about the DUI he embarrassed himself with recently, although of course that was a no-no.

Nor are we referencing the humiliating circumstances of his arrest:

According to the officer who wrote the report, “He told me that he ran the stop sign because he was in a hurry to pick up the girl I saw get in the passenger seat.”

The officer continues: “He asked me to admit that she was ‘hot.’ He asked me, ‘You want the truth?’ When I told him I did he said, ‘I was gonna drive around the corner and get a blow job.’ He then explained that she had given him a ‘blow job’ one week earlier and said it was the best one he had ever had in his life.”

The report says when Barkley was taken to the station, he told one of the employees, “I’ll tattoo my name on your ass” if he helped “get him out of the DUI.” According to the report, “He laughed and then quickly corrected himself and said, ‘I’ll tattoo your name on my ass’ and then laughed again.”

Ouch. But still, Chuck’s true blunder was all about location, location, location.

See, if a celebrity does wrong in Los Angeles County, they can always count on the protection of celeb-friendly judges and Sheriff Lee Baca to take care of them…suspended sentences, celebrity jail, early release, all that good stuff.

Elsewhere, sports heroes get plenty of cover from law enforcement – witness the case of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, found passed out in his car at a stoplight with the car in drive and his foot on the brake! He got probation and didn’t even have to show up in court, thanks to the friendly Florida justice system!

Unfortunately, Barkley was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is located in Maricopa County.

Thus he has fallen into the clutches of America’s most obnoxious and wicked sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

It’s tough to know where to start with this douche, a Masshole transplanted to the desert in a grand quest to promote himself and trample on the Constitution.

So we’ll refer to “Inhumanity Has a Price,” a wide-ranging takedown of “Sheriff Joe” by John Dickerson, published in the Phoenix New Times in late 2007:

Vermin, filth, medical care suggestive of POW camps, chronic mismanagement, the wanton destruction of records, and a steady parade of corpses in Maricopa County jails have cost taxpayers an astonishing — and until now, undisclosed — 41.4 million dollars.

Joe Arpaio has perpetuated his reign as “America’s toughest sheriff” with an open checkbook.

Your open checkbook.

The Sheriff has captured the imagination of voters with his almost cartoonish contempt for the prisoners in his charge. He’s subjected inmates to pink underwear, chain gangs, and rancid bologna sandwiches, and he’s garnered big wins at the polls. But Arpaio’s jail policies have generated a tsunami of lawsuits from prisoners and their families.

There simply isn’t another jail system in America with this history of taxpayer-financed litigation.

New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, for example, collectively housed more than 61,000 inmates per day last year. From 2004 through November of this year, these same county jails had a combined 43 prison-conditions lawsuits filed against them in federal courts.

In the very same three-year time frame, despite housing a mere 9,200 prisoners per day, Sheriff Arpaio was the target of a staggering 2,150 lawsuits in U.S. District Court and hundreds more in Maricopa County courts.

With a fraction of the inmate population, Arpaio has had 50 times as many lawsuits as the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston jail systems combined.

Based on records produced under the Freedom of Information Act, a review of federal and state records and a comparison with other correctional facilities, the picture that emerges is clear: Cruelty costs.

[...]

Every sheriff gets sued over jail conditions. The problem is that Joe Arpaio gets sued thousands of times more than any of the others.

The article is chock-full of startling brutality cases, several of them against people who had only been arrested, not charged or convicted…

Sheriff Joe not only runs his jails in a draconian and hateful manner, he is also a total media whore, who revels in attention such as was provided by this 1999 CNN article:

The tent city looks like a military camp in the desert, with thick canvas sleeping quarters spreading out in a remote area of Arizona.

The inhabitants, however, are not soldiers, but residents of an unusual, some say brutal, prison run by legendary lawman Joe Arpaio, called the toughest sheriff in the West.

For the Maricopa County sheriff, who opened the nation’s largest tent prison in 1993, saving taxpayer pennies matters more than comforting convicted felons.

“We took away coffee, that saved $150,000 a year. Why do you need coffee in jail?” says Arpaio, patrolling the dusty, barren grounds. “Switched to bologna sandwiches, that saved half a million dollars a year.”

Arpaio makes inmates pay for their meals, which some say are worse than those for the guard dogs. Canines eat $1.10 worth of food a day, the inmate 90 cents, the sheriff says. “I’m very proud of that too.”

Critics rail against harsh conditions in the prison, where temperatures can top 100 degrees.

“We still have rights, but they act like we’re scum,” one inmate complains.

Adds Eleanor Eisenberg of the ACLU: “Sheriff Arpaio has conditions in his jail that are inhumane, and he’s proud of it.”

Arpaio boasts of his chain gangs for men and women, which “contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to taxpayers each month,” according to his Web site.

Inmates follow strict fashion and lifestyle guidelines. They are forced to wear old-fashioned prison stripes and pink underwear. Prohibited items include cigarettes, adult magazines, hot lunches and television — except for his bedtime story reading, a self-styled literacy program broadcast nightly to the inmates.

We have a friend in Phoenix who applied for the bedtime-story-reading job when she saw the incredible salary it offered.

Then she found out that the inmates routinely take out contracts on the lives of people who read “Great Expectations” to them at nightfall…such is the odium for the trappings of Sheriff Joe’s power.

Another insane element of Sheriff Joe’s regime is his “Posse,” a bunch of middle-aged wanna-be lawmen who wear silly uniforms and specialize in persecuting Mexicans and pseudo-legal operations like this totally-inadmissible-in-court sex sting from 2004:

First, the undercover officer handed the suspected prostitute $40. Then he undressed. There was dirty talk, kisses and a massage. Finally, the woman agreed to perform a sex act for an additional $100.

The deal done, the woman should’ve been hauled off in handcuffs — the charge: Solicitation of prostitution, prosecutors say.

Instead, the posse member continued playing his role for several more minutes, stopping just shy of intercourse.

Nearly 60 women arrested in November during a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office prostitution sting will not be prosecuted because the investigators went too far, the county attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

More than 70 people were arrested Nov. 13 on suspicion of solicitation of prostitution or operating a house of prostitution as part of Operation House Call and Operation Destiny — touted as possibly the nation’s largest single-day crackdown on the illicit sex trade.

Authorities said many of the women arrested were operating brothels out of middle-class homes and massage parlors throughout the Valley. More than 30 homes and 10 massage parlors were raided.

In announcing that the women would not be prosecuted, a news release from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said, “the techniques utilized by the undercover sheriff’s deputies and posse members undermines prosecution by reducing the likelihood of conviction.”

Records detail instances in which deputies or posse members fondled the breasts and genitals of the women and allowed the women to touch their penises with their mouths and hands — all in the hopes of convincing the women they were not law enforcement officers.

Officers going nude is unacceptable, said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant county attorney. Participating in sex acts is that much worse.

“This behavior is not appropriate. We don’t approve of it and we never authorized it. I want to make that clear,” Lotstein said. “I have never read a report where a law enforcement or a representative went as far as these people did.”

If there is one thing Sheriff Joe loves more than illegal deeds in the service of retributional “justice,” it’s a celebrity prisoner in Tent City.

That’s a two-fer for the Sheriff – he gets to show off for the cameras and lay a medieval smackdown on someone who, unlike him, is famous for something other than violating civil liberties!

Here are some highlights from Sheriff Joe’s nonstop press availability when Mike Tyson came to Tent City…

We’re sure putting on that ridiculous uniform showed Iron Mike the way back to the straight and narrow. Oh wait, no it didn’t, it was just an opportunity for Sheriff Jerkoff to parade around before the adoring press corps…

So the question becomes: Could it be Barkley’s turn to don the pink undies??

As the New York Daily News reports, the concept of beneficial treatment for local celebrities might not be totally dead in Phoenix.

The former Suns star might dodge Tent City after all!

Charles Barkley – pretty in pink?

Sir Charles could wind up wearing a prison jumpsuit in that hue after pleading guilty Monday to DUI stemming from his New Year’s Eve arrest in Arizona.

When he was busted, the 46-year-old basketball Hall of Famer told Scottsdale cops he was on his way to get oral sex from a woman who had impressed him with her talents the week before.

Cops said his blood-alcohol level was 0.149, substantially higher than Arizona’s legal limit of 0.08.

He also jokingly offered to “tattoo” a cop’s name on his rear end if it would get him out of trouble, police said.

The retired superstar also pleaded guilty to running a red light in Monday’s proceedings.

He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, which would be reduced to five if he enters an alcohol rehab program, and must pay $2,000 in fines.

The former Phoenix Suns superstar and current TNT basketball commentator goes to the hoosegow March 21.

As of now, he’s slated to do his time in the Lower Buckeye detention facility in Phoenix, but if things go wrong it’s possible he could be sent to Arizona’s notorious Tent City Jail where inmates must wear pink.

We wish Sir Charles the best in avoiding the ridiculous prison that is more about promoting “America’s Toughest Sheriff” than about any real sense of justice.

Meanwhile, we can’t fathom why Maricopa County residents can’t see through this fraud of a lawman.

The dude can’t even handle a Q&A with his own subordinates, much less a debate with other candidates for office!

There have been several debates scheduled this year between the candidates that are running for the Office of Sheriff. All the candidates have appeared minus one, Joe Arpaio.

Why is Joe so afraid to debate his policies in public with the other candidates? Could it be that he couldn’t read from his “scripted” speech that he has given hundreds of times before other public gatherings where he makes his outlandish claims to fame.

Several years ago Sheriff Arpaio visited the outlying patrol districts of the Sheriff’s Office to what was suppose to be a “question and answer” meeting between his employees. Instead at each of these four meetings he started out with his canned political speech telling the deputies how important he was and that they depended upon him for their jobs. At District’s Two and Three, he was politely asked by Patrol Sergeant’s in attendance if he could answer questions from the deputies. He hesitantly stated that he wasn’t prepared to answer any questions but would try. He was then asked basic questions that involved officer safety issues, the lack of training, and pay issues. Arpaio fumbled trying to answer, and on several occasions sidestepped the question entirely.

Weeks after these meetings, the deputies and sergeants that asked these questions to Sheriff Arpaio were transferred to newly created positions within the office. One assignment was being stationed in the basement of the main jail on graveyard to answer a telephone that never rang, and another to the property room, inventorying items in storage.

After winning office in 1992, Sheriff Joe implemented his ludicrous “reforms” and became extremely popular in the county. He won his 1996 re-election race by a landslide, and a third term in 2000, when he took 66 percent of the vote.

However, shifting demographics and a growing unrest with Arpaio’s misdeeds are gradually eroding his support. The 2004 election saw Sheriff Joe drop 10 percentage points, while still winning a decisive victory; however, his 2008 re-election bid was a tougher go, and he only took 55% to his opponent’s 42%.

We’d say “Wake Up, Phoenicians!” but really the problem isn’t the city dwellers, it’s the unreconstructed hicks and hardliners who live on the county outskirts that keep voting the guy into office.

We can only hope that whether by retirement or ouster, America’s Evillest Sheriff won’t serve beyond 2012.

And Sir Charles – behave yourself in Buckeye, lest you be donning pink underoos.

The cast of The Wire will stick up for you!

So, Mike Phelps took an Olympic-sized hit from a top-of-the-line Roor bong at a South Carolina frat party.

All hell broke loose after the above picture got out…

The local po-po arrested a bunch of hapless stoners and pumped them for info on Aquaman instead of, you know, asking where they got their drugs from. Not that we’d encourage any investigation of small time drug users in a jurisdiction with several unsolved homicides.

Kellogg’s said “Oh hell no” and pulled his endorsements, which we’re SURE was purely for moral reasons and not a cost-saving measure in light of the economic apocalypse.

Then Phelps had to apologize to China for being one toke over the line!! Sweet Jesus.

Well, Phleppsyboy, everything we’ve seen about you out of the pool indicates that you’re something of a douche. We wish we could find a link to the story about Phelps jealously texting male swimmers that their ladies were hitting it with NBA stars in Beijing, just because said ballers were ignoring him. But we can’t, so trust us…

Anyway, you might feel really alone right now, but you aren’t.

Ziggy Sobotka, Bodie Broadus and Bubbles are on your side, according to NYMag’s VULTURE blog!

Let’s start with these amusing comments from James Ransone, who played troubled dockworker Ziggy in Season 2.

“I am literally shocked that he lost the fucking Kellogg’s endorsement. It’s a fucking cereal. What do you think stoners eat?” said James Ransone, who played hapless dock worker and small-time dealer Ziggy, at a Sports Illustrated party on Wednesday.

Does “literally shocked” mean he stuck his finger in a socket because he was so distraught at the injustice?

“That’s my next tattoo. A portrait of Michael Phelps ripping a bong on my back,” Ransone continued.

“The ultimate irony is that I hate weed because it’s disgusting and awful. The last time I tried to smoke pot I was 22. I watched Boogie Nights and cried myself to sleep while eating Cool Ranch Doritos.”

More comments on the situation were forthcoming from series regular JD Williams, the actor who portrayed Bodie on the show’s first four seasons:

“Do you know how long it takes to smoke from a bong? For them to take that picture, he had to be doing the slowest, longest hit ever!”

(That makes no sense, but whatever.)

Bodie takes hits so fast, he can’t be photographed. Be a man!!!

Williams also thought Phelps shouldn’t have copped to the crime so quickly. “I’m not a big advocate of lying, but he probably could have kept us at bay a little longer,” says Williams. “He could have said, ‘Actually, there was no weed in there. I was just showing everybody, like, how if I was doing it, how I’d put my lips on the bong.’ It would have boiled over. But he just gave it up right away! Like, ‘Yeah there was weed in the bong and I was smoking it. I’m young. It will never happen again.’ You’re 23, homeboy! Trust me, if you’re 23 and smoking weed now, you’re gonna smoke some more.”

We can count on the actor who spent the most time on the show, five-season veteran Andre Royo, to give the most forward-looking, pragmatic outlook. The more time you spend with David Simon, the smarter you become.

André Royo, who played lovable junkie-informant Bubbles, thought Kellogg’s loss was medical marijuana advocates’ gain: “At the end of the day, I think it’s a great advertisement for weed,” said Royo at benefit on Monday for Women’s Expressive Theater.

Bubs looks on the bright side…

“It didn’t slow him down. He broke records! I can see Michael being the face of whatever that marijuana-legalization proposition is in California: ‘You, too, can get eight medals if you smoke a bong.’”

So there you have it!

Coming soon, Herc and Carver defend A-Rod against steroid outrage.

The fat, greasy dude who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “oil heir”? The gingerist who called Lohan “fire crotch”? The one-man ad campaign for the inheritance tax?

Davis (at right) and Scott Storch at Esquire magazine’s “Biggest Douches of 2008″ awards.

PAGE SIX is running a schadenfreude-inducing item on B. Dave this morning. Apparently he’s gone from Paris Hilton sidekick to useless mooch and white collar criminal…

BRANDON (“Greasy Bear”) Davis‘ well-documented cash-flow problems just got worse.

The sweaty-palmed oil heir was recently banned from a high-end underground casino in West Hollywood for abusing credit privileges and showing up “zonked out of his mind,” a source close to Davis tells Page Six.

“He would consistently show up behaving erratically and make lengthy trips to the bathroom,” says the source, an investment banker who’s a regular patron of the gambling den where the minimum buy-in is $5,000. “Finally, management told him he was no longer welcome.”

It’s just the latest in a string of credit problems for Davis, who friends say has turned into a “professional, high-end couch surfer” after reportedly being cut off by his parents.

Back in September, Page Six reported that Davis rang up $110,000 in charges on a credit card he stole from Carnegie Mellon heir Matthew Mellon, $75,000 on cards he swiped from art dealer Andy Valmorbida, and an additional $100,000 on the bookie account of a student friend.

Davis is fond of telling people he makes money by dealing art. But HollywoodInterrupted.com’s Mark Ebner reports in his upcoming tome, “Six Degrees of Paris Hilton,” that his “dealing” mainly entails buying paintings from LA galleries and then reselling them to his family at a huge mark-up.

The book also claims that Davis sells stories about his friends to the tabloids and still owes a former Vegas bookie $400,000.

Writes Ebner: “Given the financial sector’s recent precipitous fall from grace, is there any better symbol of our era than a reckless sybarite who’s addicted to borrowed money?” Davis no longer has reps and could not be reached.

He no longer has reps?!?! In Hollywoodland, that’s tantamount to having your utilities disconnected!

Attention unnamed Vegas bookie: B. Davis appears to be becoming more and more insolvent by the day, so we wouldn’t recommend patiently waiting for payment.

You COULD shake him down for money, but you’re probably just going to find some pocket change and a few coupons for Round Table Pizza.

Here’s a better idea: off this guy and sell his blubber to the Japanese!

Thanks to the pesky meddling of Hayden P. and the Whale Warriors, premium fat is selling for pretty high prices in Asian markets these days.

This land whale is worth more dead than alive.

Via ROMANESKO, we learned this morning about a delightful column by the MURFREESBORO (Tennessee) POST’s columnist Stephen Lewis.

It’s tough to know where to begin with this one. How about here:

Even so, history has been made as the first black president has been elected. I still don’t get it though. If Obama has a black father and white mother isn’t he every bit as much white as he is black? Was his father blacker than his mother was white? Didn’t Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney sing about this over 20 years ago? “Ebony and Ivory, lives together in perfect harmony.” My hope is that eventually both races will be able to celebrate in his accomplishments.

First of all, you idiot, that horribly cheesy song does NOT assert that racism is over and that we all now live in racial harmony. It makes the “point” that black and white keys peacefully coexist on a piano keyboard and asks “Why don’t we?” do the same.

Well, apparently we don’t live together in perfect harmony like ebony and ivory because of people like this asshole, Stephen Lewis, who apparently still lives in the 1970s, with his opinions on racial issues thoroughly intact from that era.

Secondly, it was Stevie Wonder. Not Michael Jackson. I guess to Stephen Lewis, all black entertainers look alike…

Breaking news from Stephen Lewis: This guy isn’t REALLY black.

For generations, white bigots defined a person with even 1/8th black ancestry as black. Ever heard of an octaroon? In fact, some views held that ONE DROP of African blood made a person fit to be enslaved.

Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times – but backward douchebags like Stephen Lewis have decided to flip the script, and belittle the historical election of a non-white president by suddenly finding it super noteworthy that Obama’s mother is white.

Oh, it gets so much worse. Dr. Rishi K. Saxena was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Middle Tennessee. He’s a doctor who has lived in the state for 15 years; he has a thriving practice and two kids who have grown up as native Tennesseeans.

On Tuesday, Dr. Saxena got thoroughly thumped by the incumbent, Rep. Donna Rowland, who carried 65% of the vote. Somehow, this isn’t enough for A #1 asscaptain Stephen Lewis.

What about this fellow who ran for state representative, Dr. Rishi Saxena? I’m not sure where he’s from but I’m pretty sure it’s not Rutherford County. From what I read about him he has some very good ideas. My advice to him would be to work on perfecting his southern accent. I’m not talking about southern Bangladesh either. And if he can’t sound southern, he could at least throw in a few y’alls and a couple fixin’ to’s every once in a while.

Yeah, Macaca, welcome to Murfreesboro and the REAL America!!!!

Stephen “The Worst Journalist in Murfreesboro, and Possibly The World” Lewis was unsatisfied that Dr. Saxena merely lost, so he takes the opportunity to kick him when he’s down by questioning his legitimacy to represent Tennessee. Stay classy, Stephen Lewis.

For his final act, this jerkoff decides to deliver a SUPER relevant song parody that’s gonna get to the heart of the matter with satire. What’s an appropriate theme song for Barack Obama’s 21st century presidency? Stephen Lewis dug through his five-page dossier on “All Things Black” and came out with “The Jeffersons”. Of course! A TV theme song from a 30 year old show. Why didn’t we think of this ourselves??

I’m so confident in his success that I wrote a song about it and would like to present it to all Post readers as my “Ode to President Obama.” I do apologize to those of you who are under 30 years of age since you probably won’t “get it.” However, if you will tune into TV Land you can catch the opening of The Jeffersons and it may make more sense to you. And remember, if this offends you, your man got elected. So really you have the last laugh.

(Sung by Obama to the theme song of “The Jeffersons”):

“Well we’re movin’ on up,
To Washington, D.C.
To a deee-luxe pimp pad,
Painted whiiiite.
Yeah we’re movin’ on up,
To the White House.
I’ll be jetting with P. Diddy cross the sky.

McCain can’t score on the east coast,
Palin was just a cute, cheap thrill.
Took a whole lot of campaign promises,
To take over Capitol Hill.
Now we’re livin’ in the White House
Chewin’ on the government fat.
As long as we here
It’s tax, tax, tax!
Ripping off the rich fat cats!

Well we’re movin’ on up
To the big time.
To a dee-luxe sweet crib
That’s just too fly.
Moooovin’ on up
To D.C.
I finally showed McCain I’m the guy!”

Thank you! I’m here all week. Try the veal.

The real point of this posting is not that you should get all outraged over this, demand this guy’s resignation or bandy this about as proof that racism is real.

The point is, this guy is living in the past, he’s not talented, not funny and he’s used a valuable opportunity to speak to the public to air a bunch of bigoted comments. Ultimately, he’s just embarrassing himself.

Commenter “JC1″ skewered Lewis quite skillfully:This column offends me as a journalist. Too many people in our profession are so insulated, so consumed with what amuses them and their cohorts in their newsrooms, that they fail to remember that they are writing for real people. This column is self-serving journalism at its worst – it serves no purpose other than to give one ignorant racist a forum for his childish, shameful humor. No reader is better off for having read this column, no point has been made, no purpose has been served at all. This is worthless journalism, another nail in the coffin of our profession. How can you expect the public to trust any of us if one of us is passing this type of opinion piece off as legitimate journalism?

Stephen Lewis, we officially invite you to go fuck yourself.

—-

UPDATE (3 PM): According to commenters on the original article posted on the Murfreesboro Post’s site, Stephen Lewis the jackass columnist MAY be the same Stephen Lewis who presides over the Rock Springs Elementary School in nearby La Vergne. Commenter “Fitzcomm” states, “I am sure. I called Rutherford County Schools.”

Principal Lewis has not yet returned an email seeking comment.