It's not because times are good that Cincinnati seems to be so worried about its image. One certainly can't accuse the city of being narcissistic.
As the story has it, Narcissus was in love with his image, which is a lot different from loving one's self. However Cincinnati feels about itself, the city is at ill ease with its image.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings established the first avowedly professional baseball club in 1869, during classy times when the city had been host to several world fairs while opening a new concert hall, art museum and university. Cincinnati's cultural ambition earned it fame as the "Paris of America."
Today, of course, that appellation passes for little more than historical humor, for the version of America to which Cincinnati aspires is opposed to Parisian trend setting in most every cultural and political manifestation.
The national news to break from Cincinnati in the last several years reveals a place so robustly conservative that it's actually behind the times. Those who've never lived in town know Cincinnati for Marge Schott's racist comments, riots in black neighborhoods triggered by police violence and the prosecutions of Robert Mapplethorpe's photo exhibition and of Larry Flynt.
Locals know Cincinnati for an almost tribal obsession with conformity that drives away young professionals and creative types in droves. This publication has addressed that problem for quite some time. Now the morning paper is picking up on it. The problem is quite obvious.
What is it about Cincinnati that makes creative types and well-humored weirdos look elsewhere? It's not the pretty, rolling geography of hillsides that makes so many drives so pleasant. It's not a lack of museums, live theater, higher education or other access to high culture. The city just opened a new Contemporary Arts Center and a new survey says more Cincinnatians attend artistic performances than sporting events.
As the recent news indicates, though, a certain tone deafness about the joy and forbearance of life pops up all over town. Along with a phobic paranoia of outsiders, the city is gripped by an attitude that's been called a "strict father morality," which aspires to no higher value than that people should stick to the rules and face stern consequences for not following them.
In the main, it's a vindictive approach to life in which the only people entitled to carry spears are the most repressed and pedestrian -- people who are simply too weak to sin. Because so few people are actually that weak, hypocrites often pick up the loose spears.
Many rules are quite important, of course, and we can't live well or prosper if we can't be confident that our property and dignity are protected. But too much orientation to rules misses the idea that some rules really are meant to be broken, provided they can be broken well.
Artists love breaking rules. The best ones trouble themselves to know the rules just so they can break them more meaningfully.
It's really just a matter of proportion. Case in point: the jock tax. Great idea. The city should have done this years ago.
Basically, the city is taxing visiting athletes and other entertainers for their working days in town at the same 2.1 percent income tax rate paid by everyone who works in town. Columbus and Cleveland picked up on it soon after the Ohio legislature decided in 1999 that municipalities could charge the levy. The city could reap as much as $1 million per year, according to estimates.
What could make more sense for Cincinnati? Hamilton County consumers are on the hook for one-half percent on their purchases for another 30-35 years after approving the funds for Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park. Meanwhile, Cincinnati isn't a big enough marketplace to keep top players from signing elsewhere. And the city needed to close a $30 million deficit. So rather than allow visiting athletes to do business for free in stadiums financed from local pockets -- or raise more taxes on residents -- the city is imposing a jock tax.
The taxpayers needed to stop giving so much to sports and take a bit back. At last, in small measure, Cincinnati has made a change in the times work in its favor. Take that!
So how well does the jock tax work in Cincinnati's hands? Last month, the Mobile Skatepark Series came to Cincinnati and put up $80,000 in prize money. And the city's first impulse was to go after these kids to collect every penny of their taxes. Some kids made as little as $200, and the city is chasing them down with tax bills of $4.20!
That's the kind of the approach for which Cincinnati is known in a nutshell. The rules say, of course, that the city is entitled to the tax. But everyone who can hear the music knows the purpose of the tax is to take a little bit back from performers making handsome wages in expensive facilities funded by the public. Loosen up. It's not about going after kids with skateboards.
Vice Mayor Alicia Reece, who voted against the jock tax, talked about trying to repeal it when the skateboard matter hit the news. Rightly, she said Cincinnati doesn't need to be discouraging this kind of event, especially not when performers have been boycotting the city and definitely not if, as the promoter says, other cities haven't taxed the skateboarders.
Other cities on the Mobile Skatepark circuit could tax the performers, because 20 states have allowed jock taxes. In fact, only four states with professional sports -- Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Washington -- don't allow jock taxes, and that's because they don't have any income taxes.
Evidently, the other cities don't bother to collect. Perhaps other cities just have enough sense to know when to let it slide.
It's not the jock tax that hurts Cincinnati's reputation with creatives, nor can it be, because very few large cities remain in which they won't be taxed. What hurts Cincinnati is this stringency. Why take a tax that's intended for millionaire pro athletes and apply it to kids on skateboards? Because it's the rules?
Just as there's a price for breaking the rules, there's a price to be paid for being too vigilant with them. Cincinnati is paying that price in a rapid loss of creative talent and young people. Creative people need slack so they can create. Weirdos need it just so they can pass the day.
Of course, "normal people" can never be too safe. Evidently, people who are scared to death of anyone who isn't just like them will stop at nothing to root out inferiors. Panhandlers, for example, aren't merely human beings who either can't play in the economy or have fallen on hard times; they're a nuisance. So the city decides to make life tougher on panhandlers, figuring it's good enough to bog them down in paperwork if the city can't address the underlying problems.
Now panhandlers must register with the health department. Maybe the city should tax panhandlers on their earnings.
Meanwhile, the county is going after Larry Flynt again -- or at least his brother, Jimmy. Some of the boys at the sheriff's office went into the Hustler store downtown -- under cover, of course -- bought some tapes, popped them into the VCR and spotted pornographic images. The purchase of pornographic tapes is garden variety stuff in some cities, where radio ads blare about the local adult video stores and strip joints in addition to male enhancement pills. Coincidence? You decide.
Anyway, the Flynts are going to fight this, because they're going to fight Cincinnati until they win. And one of their attorneys reportedly says a couple recent court cases could help him win this one.
In 2001, a Hamilton County jury acquitted Elyse Metcalf on charges of selling sexually oriented material. Last month, an appeals court overturned a conviction against Jennifer Dute for pandering obscenity. As juries are generally the gauge for determining community standards, the Flynts' attorneys will argue that community standards have changed.
Imagine what a glorious day it would be for Cincinnati's image if the court lets the Flynts off the hook after finding that community standards have changed. That's a message to shout from the city's rooftops.
Maybe the community wants to live and let live. Sad as it is that the Flynts has to make the point, it could be the start of something big.
Printer-friendly version
