Joe Carr
Raising Kane and Danke Schoen
Fibbing by politicians, whether about themselves or others, often seems as common and fundamental to their chosen sport of politics as tackling is to the sport of football or dribbling to basketball.
In his memoir With No Apologies, the uniquely straightforward and “tell it like it is” Barry Goldwater described his experiences with the deceitful half-truths and filthy lies of Lyndon Johnson (many of which had been directed at Goldwater himself in 1964), the not-quite-honest but not-so-bad JFK (whom he considered a friend despite their differences in parties and policies) and his dismay at the way Richard Nixon allowed Watergate to spiral out of control (a personal disappointment, since Nixon had been one of Goldwater’s strongest supporters in his 1964 lopsided loss to Johnson).
But Goldwater also noted that he had even occasionally witnessed Jimmy Carter (who has enjoyed a better reputation than Johnson, Kennedy or Nixon for honesty and integrity) stretching and bending the truth about himself and the extent to which he was on close and friendly terms with other influential people.
The sport of local, small-town politics may seem quaint compared with that of Washington, but even with lower stakes, the players and their games can still come across as oddly familiar.
At the beginning of September, Rutherford County Mayor Joe Carr announced that former professional wrestler and current Knox County Mayor Glenn “Kane” Jacobs had agreed to serve as a “special advisor” for an end of September wrestling match between Carr and County Commissioner Craig Harris.
But a post-Labor Day article by the Tennessee Mockingbird revealed that Kane was not only completely unaware of the wrestling match but also had never even heard of Carr.
Carr, however, continued to claim otherwise, and even posted a photo of himself to Facebook, which had been altered in such a way to appear as though he and Kane were actually embracing one another in the same room.
In her bestselling book Why Politicians Keep Lying (And Why We Keep Believing Them), Cassandra Laurier-Weldon identifies eight distinct types of “lying politicians” and the behaviors and personality traits of each type.
According to Laurier-Weldon, while some political figures, such as Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, display characteristics of most or even all of the eight types, ones like Joe Carr primarily fall into the category that she calls Type 3-B: Celebrity Impersonator.
“The key thing about Type 3-B politicians that I mention in my book is that they lie to themselves just as much as they do to the public - maybe even more so. It’s not only that they see themselves as famous celebrities and want others to see them that way too. It’s that they also have an intense desire to be friends with actual famous people, and so they act accordingly and go into a kind of ‘let’s pretend’ mode. You could say it’s like name dropping only a hundred times more extreme.”
“This business with Joe Carr and Kane is a perfect example of typical 3-B behavior. Even when presented with evidence that his relationship with Kane is a fantasy, he refuses to accept reality and instead seeks out a way to “prove” to the world that his fantasy is true - in this case, the “proof” is the photoshopped picture.”
The Kane incident is not the first time that Carr has inserted himself into the photos of famous men. The original version of a 1977 photo of Ronald Reagan shows the former California governor and future president surrounded by fellow celebrities Bob Hope, John Wayne, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. But in an altered version, which he also posted to Facebook a few years ago, Carr had photoshopped his own face atop that of the cigarette holding Martin, apparently hoping that viewers would be fooled into believing that it was actually Carr in the room with Reagan and the other men.
Rutherford County Commission Chairman Jeff Phillips says he got so tired of hearing Carr repeat his “I was friends with Ronald Reagan story” that he finally confronted him about it.
“Joe would tell anyone willing to listen - and many who were unwilling - all about what great friends he had been with Reagan and how close they were,” said Phillips, “He had made that silly tuxedo photo the wallpaper background on his phone and was showing it everywhere he went, saying ‘have I ever told you about when Ron and I were hanging out with Bob Hope and John Wayne’ or something along those lines.”
“I finally got fed up with his antics and pointed out to Joe that he would have been just nineteen years old at the time, and so the gray hair he has in the picture kind of gives away the fact that he wasn’t really there,” said Phillips, “He cussed me out, called me a communist, and then walked off in a huff.”
An actual photo of Carr from the same time period as the Reagan photo confirms that he did indeed appear quite different in those days from the version of himself purported to be standing next to Reagan:
Phillips added that he would never have tolerated Carr’s behavior from one of his fellow Commissioners. “If he had been on the Commission, that kind of foolishness with Reagan - not to mention his smart mouth backtalk - would have gotten his bottom an immediate and firm spanking from me,” said Phillips.
County Commissioner Robert Peay recalled his own experience with Carr and another one of his alleged celebrity pals:
“Joe told me that Wayne Newton was flying in from Vegas on a private plane and that he was going to be picking him up at the Nashville airport. He asked if I wanted to ride along, and of course, being a huge Wayne Newton fan myself, I naturally jumped at the chance to meet him in person.”
“Joe was playing a Wayne Newton Greatest Hits CD in the car and wouldn’t stop talking about him the entire drive. He kept saying ‘You’ll really like Wayne. He’s such a cool guy and so down to earth’ and then telling me about all the times he and Wayne had hung out together in Vegas over the years.”
“I started to realize that something wasn’t quite right after we had driven in a circle around the airport a few times. Joe was supposedly talking to ‘Wayne’ on his phone, but I could hear enough of the other side of the conversation to tell that he had actually just dialed the number for a recording of baseball scores and stats from the previous week.”
“Finally, after about twenty minutes of that charade, Joe goes ‘Well, it sounds like Wayne’s plane got held up by some engine trouble, so they’re going to have to reschedule his trip for next month. He said to let you know he’s really sorry he didn’t get to meet you today and that he was really looking forward to it.’ This was after about a dozen loops around the airport, and then we drove back home. I think he ended up wasting over three hours of my time that day. He tried to get me to ride along with him again ‘to pick up Wayne’ a month later, but I told him I had other plans that I couldn’t get out of. Fool me once…”
Bryan Terry, who since 2014 has occupied the Tennessee State House seat formerly held by Carr, had an experience similar to Peay’s:
“Back in 2014, right after I had won what had been a really tough primary, Joe said that he wanted to host a general election fundraiser for me at his farm and that Wayne Newton had agreed to be the special guest of honor and to sing a few songs. I remember thinking at the time (in my naivete) ‘Wow, this is really awesome that someone of that caliber would be willing to make a special trip to Tennessee for a relatively minor and low profile political race’ and so I had told everyone I knew about it and persuaded them to buy tickets.”
Terry says the reality of the event proved to be somewhat different from his expectations.
“Apparently you can hire Wayne Newton impersonators for parties from the same companies that provide the Elvis ones, so that’s what we ended up with. Our ‘Wayne Newton’ looked and sounded more like a cross between Chris Farley and Scott DesJarlais than either the real Newton or a fake Elvis. Whatever picture you can imagine in your head about what that might have looked like, believe me, it was far worse. One elderly couple had driven all the way from Crossville thinking they were going to hear the real Wayne Newton, and they were livid. The ‘highlight’ of the night was the guy attempting to sing Viva Las Vegas - except that Joe had paid him a little extra to change the lyrics to Viva Lascassas. You could feel and hear a collective cringe and groan from everyone unlucky enough to have bought one of those expensive tickets.”
Even after the wretched performance, Carr continued to insist to both Terry and the audience that the imposter had been the real Wayne Newton, and Terry was forced to oblige and play along.
“You always have to just go along with it. You can’t say anything to him that contradicts his version of events. If you call him out on it, he throws a hissy fit and stops speaking to you for weeks at a time.”
Jeff Phillips says that what happened to Peay and Terry is unfortunately an all-too-common occurrence in Rutherford County.
“He’s pulled that Wayne Newton routine more times than I can count,” said Phillips, laughing and shaking his head, “For the life of me, I can’t understand why people keep falling for it, but for some reason they do. Sometimes he’ll up the ante a bit and claim that it’s Daryl Hannah, Jesse Ventura or even Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story is always the same though - one of them is flying to Tennessee as a special favor just for Joe.”
Cassandra Laurier-Weldon says that it’s not at all surprising that Carr becomes loses his temper when the veracity of his “celebrity friendships” is challenged:
“These Type 3-B politicians end up adopting what you could call the George Costanza philosophy of ‘it’s not a lie if you believe it’ and then acting out that philosophy in their own individual fantasy land of make believe. When someone questions the narrative, it’s not just their story that’s being threatened, but rather their entire identity.”
She says that if there’s an overall theme to take away from her book, it’s the impossibility of the politicians she writes about ever changing.
“It’s important to understand who you’re dealing with, and part of that understanding is the knowledge that you’re not going to convince them to change. When they tell you that they were great friends with Reagan and Sinatra, or partied in Vegas with Wayne Newton, or wrestled with Kane, and so forth, you can choose to ignore them, or you can pretend to believe them, but you’re never going to change them.”
“They are who they are, and that’s just the way it is.”
You are hilarious and a good writer, however Jeff Phillips never spanked me because Chuck Norris showed up and spanked him with Jeff’s own belt. So I never felt the hand of phillips.