P-Card Theater

One local theater critic disputed Dupree's surmise. He suggested the part of “Lumpy” was taken by former Saturday Night Live comedian Chris Farley, contending Farley faked his own death to take the role. This critic also noted some members of county government may have studied at the Harvey Korman School of Scene Mugging. According to this expert, the unchanging smirks on the faces of county Mayor Mike Ragsdale and former-Chairman Scoobie Moore are trademarks of the Korman style of improv. Another authority opined Ragsdale actually is Korman because no one seems to know what's happened to him.

Several other of the outré personalities in Knox County government have been identified as established character actors. The actor playing “Commissioner Mark Harmon,” for instance, has often played university-twit types, including roles on such TV shows as St. Elsewhere and NCIS. “Commissioner Paul Pinkston” once played an alien on The X-files. The actress starring as “Cynthia Finch,” county director of community services, had a stint on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. “county aid Tyler Harber” was apparently discovered at the same time as Brad Renfro and has a string of art film roles to his credit, usually playing charming juvenile delinquents. Although it could not be confirmed at press time, purportedly, in real life “Commissioner R. Larry Smith” is a French mime. This may explain why he never seems to know what's going to come out of his mouth when it opens.

Observers also believe that the infamous exchange between Ragsdale and supposed citizen Lewis Cosby is another clue to the unreality of the proceedings. What appeared to be Ragsdale referring to Cosby as a "showboat" was actually one actor using a code word to inform another actor that the scene was running too long. Reportedly, such code words are commonly used in theater. Investigations are proceeding into whether “twit” and “peckerhead” are also codes.

In fact, the flamboyant incidents throughout the Ragsdale era – the anti-wheel-tax petition derailment, Harber's e-mail theft, computer concealment and subsequent dismissal, the term-limits lawsuit, the Black Wednesday antics, Lumpy's dramatic tossing of photographs at Finch, right up to the wonky release of the P-card audit – all appear to have been staged. Only the lobster lunches seem to have been real.

Some local observers gave the performance ecstatic reviews. “‘Etonnez-moi!' Diaghilev famously told Cocteau was the prescription for great art,” said local performer, writer and critic Jack Rentfro. “It hardly begins to cover my astonished admiration for the splendid tableaux vivantes presented by the Knox County Commission Players in their climactic run over the past year. Imagine! Crime as government! It's like Teapot Dome or the Grant or Bush administrations on a Podunk level. It's breathtakingly bold! More screwball than Moon over Parador, more noir than The Last Hurrah, more kuntry-kuzzin' kissin' than a DVD of Hee-Haw highlights! And we wonder why we send utter raging doofuses like [state Rep.] Stacey Campfield to the General Assembly in Nashville.”

Former News Sentinel reporter and Metro Pulse editor Jesse Fox Mayshark found the hoax unsurprising in his assessment of the performance. “I always saw Knox County Commission in the lineage of the Theater of the Absurd, not so much a postmodern critique of the relationship between the individual and the state as a metaphorical door-slamming farce in which the joke is always on the audience,” said Mayshark. “I think it ranks with other conceptual achievements of recent years – the Kansas Board of Education, say, or the 2003 California gubernatorial race – as a realization of democracy-as-art. (What Baudoin called ‘the ecstasy of misappropriation.')”

When asked about the truth of the allegations, the county government's media relations officer would say only, “Mr. Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling.”