When U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins began putting together one of the nation’s first and largest health-care fraud task forces two years ago, criminal defense lawyers were salivating. They dreamed of a business boom like the one that followed the prosecution of the savings-and-loan bunglers by a similar high-profile task force…
It takes a village idiot It only takes a bumper sticker-reading comprehension level to figure out that the first lady is about as popular in Texas as road construction. So when Paul Hoffman wore his Hillary Clinton T-shirt to a recent political gathering, he was more than a little anxious…
Ann’s a snob In her recent article [“Kiss and tell,” June 6], did Ann Zimmerman really need to wield such a snobbish, cruel poetic license? “Weather-beaten cottage…?” Zimmerman couldn’t have been describing Harry Preston’s immaculately kept home. Did she miss the sculpted English garden that fills Preston’s backyard, and the…
It was really a lot like a Marx Brothers movie–except that these guys had guns. “Get him out of here, man, before I put a cap in his ass,” said Rollie Dean Brazier, defense minister of the New Black Panther Party. Brazier–formerly known as Rolan de Brazier and more recently…
Tonight the shoes of Bishop T.D. Jakes are a three-toned reptilian affair. They are dark gray around the sides and white on top; their laces are speckled prominently with red. Jakes himself is a big man, tall and wide, with a booming voice and perspiring presence that is vibrating through…
Sitting in my car, staring at the modest, one-story house, I figured I was in the wrong place. According to Dallas County tax records, this was supposed to be cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash’s house. But there was nothing pink–or queenlike–about it. The house was white. The 1996 Cadillac in…
Artists Alan Govenar and Kaleta Doolin aren’t the most obvious pair: While he speaks with the rapid cadences of his Boston boyhood, hers are the measured rhythms of a native Dallasite. He projects an active, external hustle–a sense of always leaning toward you–while she suggests hidden currents, processes that continue…
Mad about Ron We finally learned last week that Ron Kirk can get righteously angry. Buzz has been waiting for the city’s celebrated mayor to spend a little of that enormous popularity on both sides of the Trinity to take a stand on something. Anything. Remember Townview and a school…
Some of Dallas’ highest-profile businessmen, including former Dallas Cowboys owner H. R. Bum Bright, are targets of an Internal Revenue Service probe–which amounts to a double whammy for this famous pack of former bankers. “I got a letter from them and sent it down to my accounting firm,” Bright says,…
Kiss and tell off Please thank Ann Zimmerman for her story on me [“Kiss and tell,” June 6], slanted to the sensational and frequently inaccurate as it was. At least she spelled my name right (which she didn’t with Omar–who has only one “f” in his last name). But her…
The middle-class blandness of Garland, Texas, with its great expanse of ticky-tacky tract houses, strip shopping centers, and wholesale stores such as Hypermart, is as far as one can get from the glamour and glitter of Hollywood. Yet every Friday night for the past three years, aspiring local screenwriters, who…
He was a fighting cock like no other, a proud black-and-white without a lick of fear. He took to the pit as if it were his kingdom, his opponent a lowly servant born merely to lay down his life in combat. Roy Bingham can’t say exactly what made his rooster…
At the end of this school year, Mrs. Davie’s fourth-grade class at McKinney’s Glen Oaks Elementary School had expected to be saying goodbye to Kathryn Benton, who is two years older than her classmates and was slated to attend a special-education program in a McKinney middle school next year. Afflicted…
A few weeks ago, as Cheryl Wattley was filling out her daughter’s financial-aid package for Amherst College where she’ll be a freshman this fall, the Dallas attorney and single mother of four paused when it came to questions about her job status. Are you employed? the application asked. Well, sort…
Who’s watching the store? We don’t know about you, but Buzz counts on the Better Business Bureau for information on sleazeballs who might be ripping us off on brake jobs or roofing work or whatever this week’s scam is. So we had to scratch our head when we saw the…
Ban the Bumps I had already determined for myself, through a personal experience, that what the media say is quite often not the whole truth. First of all, the headmistress of the lower school at Greenhill is Carol Morrow and not Gail Maura, as was reported in your story [“Scary…
At 3 o’clock in the morning, Darryl Burrows is prowling a parking lot on the northern fringe of downtown. Night lights from the city’s skyscrapers burn over empty streets, and sunrise is still several hours away. But Burrows is already damp with sweat. His glasses are askew, his hair sticks…
It had been clear for a month that Al Lipscomb–“Big Daddy,” as his grandchildren like to call him–was in deep financial trouble. But on this Friday afternoon in mid-May, Lipscomb seemed full of good cheer, doing what he does best–pressing flesh, meeting and greeting, holding court in the back of…
Daddy dearest Father’s day is coming, and you’re probably harboring the mistaken notion that your dad is Father of the Year. You would be wrong. The Fathers of the Year have already been anointed by the Dallas Father of the Year Committee, and your dear Paw-Paw most likely wasn’t one…
Gather a group of McCommas and Monticello Avenue homeowners together, and traffic horror stories flow as steadily as the cars streaming through their neighborhood at rush hour. For decades, commuters heading east and west between Central Expressway and Greenville Avenue have used the M Streets, particularly McCommas and Monticello, as…
Free verse Seeing fellow poets generate ink in the local press is always encouraging, so I’d like to take a moment to salute Robert Wilonsky’s coverage of the new Leaning House Poetry book and CD package [“Rhyme and reason,” May 16]–but I won’t. I can’t. I can’t because Mr. Wilonsky…
We’d like to feel his pain Whatta guy! Southwest Airlines chairman Herb Kelleher has frozen his own pay through 1999 as a sign of solidarity with Southwest’s pilots. The pilot’s union agreed to a pay freeze in exchange for some stock options. Buzz bets the pilots feel real close to…
