WEDNESDAY MAY 30
If the 1985 film Pee Wee’s Big Adventure taught us anything, it’s that
rich people think they can have whatever they wantwhen someone loves an object enough, he or she will do anything to keep it. That’s kind of what’s going on over at Music Hall these days, as Mayor Mark Mallory insists that the city should continue owning the historic building despite a private group’s interest in owning, operating and renovating it themselves. In response to Mallory rejecting the notion that up to $118 million in private donations to support the renovation will not be offered unless the city gives up the building for free, a representative for the Music Hall Revitalization Co. said, “There’s a lotta things about renovating a building you don’t know anything about, Mr. Mallory. Things you wouldn’t understand. Things you couldn’t understand. Things you shouldn’t understand.”
THURSDAY MAY 31
Most people know what it’s like to fear the penalties that come along with making a late credit card payment — that’s why we make difficult decisions every month regarding what bills to cut in order to pay Visa on time (usually health or car insurance; don’t need them most of the time anyway). Hamilton County today felt the same way when its sports stadium bonds were downgraded by Moody’s credit rating agency, but instead of having its interest rate raised to the maximum allowable in whichever U.S. state has the weakest restrictions, the result is potential difficulty refinancing the bonds to save taxpayer money later. County Commissioner Todd Portune says the agency’s notion that the county lacks the “political will” to cut the property tax is ludicrous and that selling public assets for a third of their market value is a much more politically dangerous act but he does that anyway.
FRIDAY JUNE 1
Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel has had a rough couple weeks — first he had to give back more than $100,000 in campaign contributions in response to an FBI investigation and then his favorite performer on The Voice didn’t get picked by Cee Lo Green. Today, The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Politifact site looked into one of the five claims made by Mandel about Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a new TV ad, and it seems to be pretty false. Mandel claims that his opponent in this year’s Senate race “cast the deciding vote on the government takeover of health care.” Politifact notes that since the health care overhaul passed by the minimum 60 votes necessary, every vote was technically “deciding.” But, on the other hand, it is widely known that Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the final “yes” vote to join. Plus, technically, Brown was the seventh person to vote because it was taken in alphabetical order. When reached for comment about such discrepancies, Mandel told a reporter that it was also Brown’s idea to have the government take over health care and that Brown forged Obama’s birth certificate with the help of the Freemasons.
SUNDAY JUNE 3
We at WWE! have never really thought much about the sexuality of comic book superheroes — the females generally have big boobs but the men don’t seem to have any genitals (plus you can’t have sex with a cartoon, so what’s it really matter?). Apparently such issues exist in the superhero world, as DC Comics today announced that its longtime hero Green Lantern is gay. Similar decisions to include LGBTQ people in comics have been praised by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for portraying positive gay role models, though the move has been called political by conservative blogs, one of which wrote, “Remember when comic books were just comic books and not political agendas and you could pretend to make Batman and Robin sleep in the same bed head-to-toe and people didn’t think you were weird?”
MONDAY JUNE 4
There are plenty of thoughtful and relevant ways to demonstrate the complicated moral, social and legal issues surrounding capital punishment. But rather than trying something that respects its readers intelligence, The Enquirer today took a page out of Criminal Minds and used an anecdote about a local woman who found her best friend and daughter murdered and then decided she supported the death penalty (seems reasonable enough) as its introduction to an analysis of state death penalty statistics. The rest of the story was less dramatic, as it explained how statistics show that Hamilton County has placed more inmates on Ohio’s death row than any other county, despite seeking the penalty less often than counties of comparable size. Though the story failed to determine whether Prosecutor Joe Deters is simply good at choosing cases he can win or Hamilton County jurors are overly open to sending convicts to hell, it gave Deters a chance to respond to critics of capital punishment, which he did by calling them all haters and comparing himself to LeBron James when he took his talents down to South Beach.
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