I just discovered that Bill Ferris is now the [Chairman] of the [National Endowment for the Humanities]. That bit of information pretty much overloaded my synapses for a few minutes, but I recovered just long enough to write this short piece.

I used to work for Bill Ferris at the [Center for Southern Folklore] in [Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]. Bill comes from an old South family from [Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg, MS], and while a college kid, he took a liking to filming the Negroes around his [plantation]. This led to him actually becoming known as a filmmaker, although it was always the underlings who did all the real work for him.

The thing that absolutely floors me about finding this out is this: No one man in this age group from [the South], aside from [Bill Clinton|the man] who obviously gave him this [gig], has ever been known as more of a male whore. He showed up at work one day with a French girl with a [parrot] on her shoulder; he'd brought her all the way from [Paris] to see Memphis. He actually kept a map of the world with pins in it. You can guess what the pins represented.

A parrot on her shoulder! You can't make this stuff up. I wouldn't be surprised to see her on a rope line batting her eyes at the [POTUS] any day.

William R. Ferris (person)