Megan Barry
Know that thing when there is a news story and exactly zero of your reactions are appropriate? Welcome to this post!
Megan Barry is the very cool progressive mayor of Nashville. From our perch down the road in Memphis, she has always seemed beloved by the city, a rising star, and so on and so forth. Barry made national news for the saddest reason possible last year when her son died of an opioid overdose, and she spoke forcefully and emotionally about it just days afterward, so that maybe her story could help others.
Now she is in the national spotlight again, but this time it is because she was banging her head of security for a long time, on the taxpayer dime. (OK to be fair, we don't think they literally banged ON TOP OF taxpayer money. Or did they ?) At issue is the fact that, unlike her predecessors, Barry took her security detail, including Sgt. Robert Forrest AKA her secret booooooyfriend , literally everywhere. If she went to a conference in Greece, Officer Feelgood came along. (That actually happened. Paris too!) Barry says the police recommended she do that, and therefore it was totally normal for her boooooooyfriend to get to go everywhere. And if that is the case, fine! (Although, reportedly NINE of her official trips in the last year have just been her and her boooooooyfriend , who incidentally made a bunch of overtime moneys for going on these trips.)
Former Democratic Nashville mayor Karl Dean, who is running for governor, told The Tennessean that all administrations are different, and if the cops told her to take security everywhere, then whatever. And if Mayor Barry ends up taking her head of security AS A LOVER, we don't personally care that much? Of course, they probably should check the receipts for all the extra hotel rooms they bought for Sgt. Forrest and reimburse the city for them, considering how it's pretty likely they spent all their time in her hotel room, doing nakeds on each other.
For the record, Sgt. Forrest is not Barry's boyfriend anymore. Also she is not quitting:
“This is a bad day, and there’s going to be more bad days, but this is not my worst day,” Barry told the Tennessean. “And I know the difference between a mistake — which is what I made and I fully own — and a tragedy. And this is not a tragedy. And I want to regain the trust of Nashvillians. And I will continue to serve.”
Nashville is a boom town. It is full of white people who build new condo towers all morning, then spend the rest of their days eating white people tapas lunches and grousing like common white people about why did Memphis get an IKEA before we did, fuck Memphis, right? Real estate is OFF THE CHARTS BUBBLE RIDICULOUS. The city is thriving, and the traffic is so godawful. So our first reaction, from down here in Memphis, was PFFFFFFFFT, Nashville will survive this time of tribulation. And if they don't like what Barry did, or she fails to regain their trust, they'll vote her out and elect a different progressive Democratic mayor. "Mayor Barry got some strange? Huh!" That is the reaction we imagine many Nashvillians had to the news.
Of course, maybe it is because we live in Trump's America now, where the president of the United States is well known for ALLEGEDLY paying a porn star for her silence ALLEGEDLY about the affair they ALLEGEDLY had the very same year the president's third wife gave birth to their son. Regardless, we believe that, aside from any way Barry abused the public's trust or spent tax moneys buying baubles for her booooooooyfriend , the affair is otherwise really not our business. It's between Barry and her husband, and they will work it all out, or they won't.
Oh well, we've written like six paragraphs without mentioning that the only thing that disappointed us about this story is that when we heard Barry was canoodling with her head of security, we were expecting HOT COP. You know, like Melania-grade HOT COP side-peen, ALLEGEDLY.
Instead, this is Sgt. Forrest:
Sgt. Forrest is a gentleman of 58, four years older than Barry, and while he is perfectly handsome in his own way, we really wanted the story to be about this guy, whose picture we snapped at the Republican convention in Cleveland:
And this guy:
What about this guy?
Or this guy?
Or these guys?
Told you we had zero appropriate thoughts about this.
OK, this has been your Southern Mayoral Adultery Sexxxx update. What did we miss in the Russia investigation? Is the memo out yet? Does the memo have a HOT COP in it?
We are just curious.
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[ The Tennessean ]
"Nashville is a boom town. It is full of white people." How racist. Speaking of Mayor Barry, hoe gotta go!
I agree with your second and third sentences. It's their business right up until they spend tax money.