James Hunter Six flaunts British soul at Grey Eagle — See REVIEW, Pg. B1
Asheville rated No. 2 for spring break fun — See STORY, Pg. A4
UNCA named tops in ‘making impact’ — See STORY, Pg. A6
ILLE V E H AS ASHEVILLEʼS GREATEST NEWSPAPER
March 2016
Vol. 12, No. 4
An Independent Newspaper Serving Greater Asheville www.ashevilledailyplanet.com FREE
Asheville celebrates Mardis Gras
Writers risk death voicing truth to power, Rushdie says By JOHN NORTH
john@AshevilleDailyPlanet.com
Special photo by DEBBIE DELL
Special photo from AshevilleMardisGras.org
Really old men in the hood
Q: When I was in my youth, a lot of women I knew fell for bad boys. I’m now a man in my 60s, entering retirement. Amazingly, I’m finding that even women my age prefer bad boys. What’s this about? — Nice Guy A: Since older women often end up dating much-older men, this leads to the question, what’s the profile of the elderly bad boy? Cheating at bingo? Swearing on the
Asheville marked Mardis Gras on Feb. 7 in downtown Asheville, with a parade and celebration, a chili cookoff and other activities. The photo above shows some of the colorful celebrants in eye-dazzling costumes. The parade began on Wall Street and circled back via Haywood Street and Page Avenue. Billed as the city’s longest-running winter festival, this year’s them was “Saints versus Sinners,” The parade was led by the 2016 Mardi Gras royals (left)— Queen Sara Widenhouse and King Robert Bone.
The Advice Goddess Amy Alkon
golf course? Shotgunning Ensure? Some older women — just like the younger ones — go for bad boys because they don’t think much of themselves and feel most comfortable with someone who seems to share their view. But even older women who aren’t emotional shipwrecks can be drawn to the aging delinquent. It turns out that a bad boy’s unreliability has a neurological upside. See ADVICE GODDESS, Page A14
In a harsh world where ruthless dictatorships can reach someone virtually anywhere, writers who speak truth to powerful governments increasingly risk everything — including their lives — in doing so, acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie, who spoke from harsh experience, told an audience at UNC Asheville Feb. 18. About 3,000 people — nearly packing UNCA’s Kimmell Arena — attended his 45-minute speech titled “Public Events, Private Lives: Literature Plus Politics in the Modern World.” In touting freedom of speech and decrying ever-growing censorship, Rushdie spent much of his time talking about the vital role that literature plays in the Internet era. His 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” mixed magical realism with a satirical stab at Islam — dream sequences about a Messenger receiving revelations, or extra scriptures dedicated to three pagan female deities. Many Muslims worldwide considered the book to be blasphemous against the prophet Muhammed. Indeed, Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, expressed outrage and issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for Rushdie’s death. After several assassination attempts, the Indianborn novelist was forced into hiding for 10 years in Great Britain. “I’m not going to say a lot about the Ayatollah Khomeini other than to say one of us is dead — and it’s not me,” Rushdie noted dryly, triggering applause. Rushdie said he also had serious problems — prompted by the content of some of his novels — with leaders of India and Pakistan. Given that Khomeini and his aforementioned two other powerful political foes all are dead now, Rushdie mused, with a wry grin, “So ‘dictator eliminator’ appears to be a service I can perform.” The crowd laughed and applauded. See RUSHDIE, Page A16
Body cam video should not be made public, city safety chair Bothwell says From Staff Reports
Police body camera videos should not be available to the public for viewing, according to Cecil Bothwell, City Council’s public safety chairman and a former journalist, who recently took a firm stance in the national debate about the cameras. Following a number of high-profile violent encounters between law enforcement officers and residents in different cities around the nation, the cameras have become commonplace Locally, his stance pits him squarely against the Asheville Citizen-Times and other news media, who are battling for the routine release of the videos, as well as the Dec. 31 recordings that authorities say led to the firing of two Buncombe County sheriff’s deputies.
Instead, Bothwell, a former managing editor of the Mountain Xpress and a longtime liberal activist, is taking the opposite stance from the local news media, siding with restrictive positions taken by Asheville and other police departments. “While I have long been an Cecil Bothwell advocate of government transparency the broad questions concerning body cams and surveillance cams are complicated,” Bothwell said in a mid-February e-mail to the AC-T. “Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous in our society today, intruding on our privacy and solving crimes at the same time.” See BOTHWELL, Page A7