I read in a paper last week that Cincinnati City Councilmen Jim Tarbell and David Pepper asked us all to back away from personal comments in the wake of Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen's crack. On Bill Cunningham's talk show (WLW, 700 AM) Allen called City Councilman Chris Smitherman a "smart mouthed punk."
Since coming to council in December, Smitherman has said that as a citizen representative he's one of Police Chief Thomas Streicher's bosses. Some didn't like that.
He also asked City Manager Valerie Lemme to report how many graduates of Elder High School — on Cincinnati's West Side and nearly all white — are members of the Cincinnati Police Department or its leadership.
Both Allen and Streicher are Elder graduates, and more Cincinnati cops have come from Elder than any other high school. If you add Western Hills High School graduates to the numbers, West side graduates represent the largest chunk of the police department.
Still, I don't want to go against Pepper's and Tarbell's wishes. They feel that civility and decorum should triumph over cacophony and vindictiveness.
My own mother asked me in my youth to argue my points with logic, not emotion; to honor someone's name, not call them names.
The Jesuits taught me to use my head and not my fists; to bring order to society, not bitterness and chaos.
I sure as hell don't want to throw down with Allen, a man who knows judges and jailers by first names and has all their home phone numbers in his cell phone memory.
But I've got to be honest with you. When I heard that Allen had called Smitherman a "smart mouthed punk" on a radio station that bleeds into 14 states, I thought, "Allen is calling someone that? Mike Allen?"
I mean, Allen is a pinched-faced little girl in a blue suit. He's a Chicken Little weasel, a barnyard misfit. He's a pointy-headed lizard, a wet-butt baby, a lowlife jack-booted scoundrel, a small-minded, revolting abomination. He's a bottom-feeding, vapid farce; a vulgar, depraved, repulsive moron; an offensive, tawdry, vile parasite.
He's a malodorous, cloying wretch. He's a rogue, a reprobate, a sycophant, a trollop. My God, he's a twit. He's thickheaded, sybaritic, shameless and uncouth.
C'mon, straight up, Allen is a weenie, a petty, pedestrian swine. He's bureaucratic and monolithic. He's incompetent and obsessive. He's a void of existentialism, an intellectual cretin. He's a lout. He's uncivilized. He's tasteless and vapid. He's a farce and a flop.
I mean this with all due respect, but Allen is also a mendacious vermin. He's tortuously myopic and impotent of an idea. He's an endless diatribe of nonsense, an overblown, street-ignorant pencil neck. He's a human mishap. He's loathsome and primitive.
Allen is detestable and appalling. He's an unfortunate miscalculation of DNA. I don't know this for sure, but I've heard that Allen is an insufferable egoist. He talks the talk but stays away from the walk. He's plebeian, too. If you want to meet gluttonous, go shake hands with Mike Allen.
While I'm giving it to you straight, he's also contemptible and inane and sarcastic and foul.
Now this part I mean in the nicest possible way, but he's a hideous menace and a bantering Neanderthal. He's abhorrent and mundane. He's a smart-mouthed punk, an idiot, a barbarian. He's ...
Oh, and Cunningham? He's a racist punk. President George W. Bush? He's a liar and a cheat. So is Katherine Harris. She's an idiot with power.
Damn! Peggy Noonan — are we tired of her, or what? One State of the Union speech for a man who didn't know the eight parts of speech, and Chris Matthews can't get her off his show.
Don't even bring up Ann Coulter. She's the queen of punk and void of truth or sense. If there weren't a herd of empty-headed dunces out there with credit cards, she'd be in the scan-your-own-eight-items line at Kroger with the rest of us.
What the hell is U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot thinking with that hair deal? I mean, he's got options. There are those hair places where you go in periodically and get your real hair cut back and re-tied to your rug. Or some people do get new growth from those topical ointments. Then there's always the screw-you approach: "Hey, I'm bald and I don't care. Deal with it. Oh, but can I please have your vote on Election Day?"
And Peter Bronson. Can they move him any farther back in The Cincinnati Enquirer? Could they maybe put him in the classifieds section next to the garage sale notices?
But lay the hell off of Rob Portman. He walks with kings. He's refined and respected. He's logical, measured, polished and dignified. But in all fairness, you have to say he's the butt boy for George W. Bush, the water boy for Dick Cheney, the puppet for the Republican National Committee, the conduit for millions from Carl Lindner. Everyone knows he's the stooge of the blue suits down on Fourth Street.
Sorry, Mom. Bless me, fathers, for I have sinned. I apologize, Jim and David. Damn, I feel good. I think I'll take a shower.
PUTTIN' OUT THE BONE appears monthly.