No Party Poopers Here
You just gotta love those silly racists’ sense of humor. That’s the way Mercy Franciscan at St. John, an Over-the-Rhine social-services agency, is responding to concerns about a fund-raiser featuring WLW talk-show host Bill Cunningham and former Reds owner Marge Schott.
Cunningham, blasted last week by a federal judge for racist banter on the air, and Schott, forced out of Major League Baseball for praising Adolf Hitler, have more in common than their penchant for offending minorities. The two are king and queen of a Mardi Gras celebration hosted by the Northern Kentucky Restaurant Association. Proceeds benefit charity, including St. John and Welcome House.
“Whatever your opinion is of Ms. Schott and Mr. Cunningham, deep down they love the Greater Cincinnati area,” says Nancy Kroeger, development coordinator for St. John Social Services. “This event is a celebration for our city, and who better to lighten the mood and present a festive atmosphere than these two? Mr. Cunningham, especially, must be seen in a lighthearted manner.”
Justice and Politics
At least one juror saw no humor in a trial last week in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, where 18-year-old Keylin Baxter was acquitted of possession of cocaine. In deliberations, jurors said they believed a police officer lied in describing the alleged discovery of a rock of crack cocaine in the Justice Center, where Baxter was being booked on a traffic charge.
The officer testified he couldn’t recall if Baxter was handcuffed or not. But he saw Baxter remove the crack from his pocket and drop it? Jurors didn’t buy it.
Curbing racial profiling is the first priority of Cincinnati City Councilman John Cranley, new chair of the Law and Public Safety Committee. Cranley moved up when Charlie Winburn left council to join the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and spend time with his wife, who has breast cancer. Expect Cranley to have at least a less pro-cop stance than Winburn, who rarely, if ever, wavered in supporting the police.
Meanwhile, the fallout from Cranley’s appointment to council continues to divide Democrats. Scott Seidewitz, who wanted the job and didn’t get it, has “declare[d] war on the leadership of the Hamilton County Democratic Party,” according to a letter by Party Chairman Timothy Burke. Seidewitz says he isn’t looking for a fight; he just wants progressive views well represented.
It was Seidewitz who crafted a campaign commercial for Todd Portune, whose election to the Hamilton County Commission opened the vacancy on city council. Cranley’s appointment left not a single member of council — Democrat, Republican or Charterite — who is pro-choice and endorsed by the gay-rights group Stonewall Cincinnati.
Cincinnati’s illegal-wiretapping scandal will be on the agenda April 6 at the 12th annual Conference Investigating Crimes Committed by the FBI, at Bates College. Maine Citizens to Defend the Bill of Rights, sponsor of the conference, has invited Leonard Gates, the former Cincinnati Bell installer who blew the whistle on illegal wiretapping.
Joe Balter, conference coordinator, wants Gates to describe his wiretaps on vote-tabulating computers used by the Hamilton County Board of Elections. Gates’ confession — which led to confessions by a dozen Cincinnati cops, including three retired police chiefs — could cast light on the vote-counting scandal in the presidential election in Florida, according to Balter.
This Just in
Porkopolis scored its first scoop, coincidentally with the first item in its first column. On Jan. 25, this column debuted with a brief conversation with J.T. Colfax, a Colorado performance artist who had been arrested and jailed for photographing dead bodies in a Denver area morgue.
On Feb. 14, in its coverage of Thomas Condon’s arrest for taking photos at the Hamilton County Morgue, The Enquirer described the case of James M. Thompson (aka J.T. Colfax), who “shared an eerily similar story (to Condon’s).” Eerily similar … because he told it to CityBeat three weeks earlier?
Porkopolis TIP LINES: 513-665-4700 (ext. 23) or pork@citybeat.com
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2001.