Bengals Visit New Orleans and Win Big Despite Saints Fan Being a Real Knobjob
Bengals fans had to put their pitchforks down and stop talking shit about Andy Dalton after the young QB led his squad down New Orleans way and threw three touchdowns during the Who Deys’ 27-10 victory over the Saints on Sunday. Cincinnati led nearly the whole game, and the only point of consternation for our local team’s fans came after tight end Jermaine Gresham scored a touchdown and attempted to toss the ball to a woman in a Bengals jersey in the first row. Unfortunately for her, a Saints fan swung his elbow and reached in front of her to snag it. After rightly being raked over the coals on everything from The Times-Picayune to ESPN to Good Morning America, the fan said he was “a little hurt” by the public’s reaction because “they’re making me out to be a villain” and his taking the ball meant for the Bengals fan wasn’t mean, it was just that “the Mardi Gras instinct kicked in.” This was confusing to most people who don’t live in New Orleans, who are pretty sure that Mardi Gras instinct compels men to get blackout drunk and harass women while wading through ankle-deep puddles of Hurricane vomit.
Mayor Cranley Proposes Renaming Third Street after Rich,
Philanthropic Homophobe
Cincinnati is a city that values and seeks to preserve its rich and storied history, unless it’s a street name that can be changed to honor someone who used some of his wealth to help others and some of it to support a vile organization that spearheaded anti-gay legislation in our city. Mayor John Cranley told The Enquirer that he will seek to rename Third Street to honor deceased billionaire Carl Linder. Speaking for the upper crust of Cincinnati, Cranley stated that, “We are a much better city for what he did both in business by bringing jobs downtown and through his charitable giving.” Cranley glosses over an important point that Cincinnati City Councilman Chris Seelbach raised on Facebook — that despite his charitable gifts, “Mr. Lindner was also a driving force (and large donor) behind Citizens for Community Values and their efforts to pass Article XII in 1993, which made us arguably the most anti-gay city in the country for 10 years.” Cranley doesn’t think this should be a big deal because the Freedom Center is just one street over from Third Street and that should kind of balance out the perception of the value our city puts on equality and human rights.
Teacher Provides Students with Educational In-Class Demonstration; People Get Mad
The American education system is presently set up to encourage kids to go into massive student loan debt to get a college degree or two that won’t do anything to help them land high-paying jobs unless a relative or friend of the family is there to offer it. Furthermore, parents these days love complaining about the shortcomings of those whose job it is to educate their children, even though prison guards somehow make more money than teachers. It’s never the parents’ fault that their kids don’t apply themselves in school or show interest in anything. Even worse, when teachers attempt to think outside the box to present learning opportunities in new ways, people get upset. A 10th grade biology teacher in Idaho’s Nampa School District is facing possible disciplinary actions after showing students how food is made by snapping the neck of a rabbit and then skinning and cutting it up in the classroom. Although students who didn’t want to see the kill and dissection were allowed to leave and avoid doing so, the teacher might still face stiff penalties because the demonstration wasn’t part of the approved curriculum. The rabbit-killing teacher hopes this all blows over soon so he can be reinstated and then invite his wife to attend a class where they will make love in front of the students so that they can better conceptualize where babies come from.
California Newspaper Asks Employees to Deliver Newspapers, Offers Gift Card Bonuses
Libraries and newspapers are dying. There’s no denying that. In 20 years, school textbooks will tell their stories in meme format and print newspapers will be out of circulation completely. The signs of these things happening are all around us. For example, the Orange County Register has launched a pathetically named initiative called “We Care,” which was created after paying a distributor to handle home newspaper distribution became too costly, resulting in thousands of subscribers not getting their papers delivered to them anymore. The paper’s proposed solution to this problem entails asking journalists and other employees to take up paper routes and start delivering the Orange County Register their goddamn selves. The kicker is that the paper is offering to pay for these services with $100 or $150 Visa gift cards, depending on the size of the route. Managers reportedly ended up scrapping a strategy of likening the concept to a pizza place asking its cooks to deliver the food they make, because this analogy makes it crystal clear that asking employees to do way too much work negatively impacts quality and makes the business owners seem like inept penny-pinching pricks.
Cincinnati’s “Commissioner of Fun” Still Working on Ideas
Local businessman Frank Wood Jr. was appointed as “Commissioner of Fun” during his longtime friend Mayor Cranley’s last State of the City address. Fortunately for taxpayers, there is no salary for this position. Wood was behind many of WEBN’s crazy gags and promotions back when people still listened to the radio and used words like “zany” to describe humorous things. Although Wood has not presented any ideas yet, the mayor hopes to hear some proposals in the next few months. In the meantime, Wood is rumored to be doing some research to find out what selfies are.
CONTACT ISAAC THORN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2014.
