By CHRIS PACKHAM
You must click here. I'm always a fan of co-worker David Martin, but today's column is EXTRA good, a whole package of public-interest advocacy, pointed observation and stickin' it to the Man, as portrayed by Robert Culp in Turk 182.
All I have to offer are snotty jokes about local news. This is a test of your character. Which one will you choose to read? Click on the words "today's column" above to read David's column. Or, after the jump, a politician says something really, really stupid during a public meeting. Click here or on culture-jamming Timothy Hutton to sell your soul to empty irony:My boner was out back, busting up an ol' chifferobe for a nickel: Cherokee County commissioner Pat Collins, troubled by a new adult video store in southeast Kansas and the resulting venous blood rushing into area penises, suggested a common-sense approach to address the problem: race-hate vigilantism. "It's time to bring the Klan back and put black, yellow and red people in those suits," he said. Was he really suggesting that white people couldn't be part of his anti-porn klavern? Because if so, that's discrimination, and discrimination is wrong. I guess after Collins suggested dressing up in sheets and burning down the video store, he noticed that everyone in the room was looking at him funny, because according to the report, he immediately backtracked, saying, "No, we don't need the Klan. We need people to take care of their own neighborhoods." Which would make a genius tag line for a political ad, if you think about it.
First, they came for Fred P. Ott's, and I said nothing: I don't go out at night. After work, I take the bus straight home, lower the blinds and listen to the police scanner. On Friday nights, I usually go to the humane cockfights in the West Bottoms. In humane cockfights, the chickens all wear little neckties and stand behind lecterns arguing in chicken-talk, and the winner is determined by a panel of agribusiness trade journalists from The Kansas City Business Journal. Somehow, humane cockfighting is just as illegal as the Ultimate Cock Fighting blood-sport variant — even with the imposition of Lincoln-Douglas rules of debate — so we have to post a watch in case the cops shut us down. Over the years, I've developed a pretty good eye for chicken rhetoric talent, and I make a lot of money betting on promising up-and-comers.
So basically, I just don't have time to spend at the Power & Light District, even if I wanted to. Therefore, if you want to direct your entertainment dollars toward large, corporate interests, I don't really have a cock in that fight. I will point out that the locally owned Studio Restaurant and Bar at 1118 McGee had to stop serving breakfast and lunch because the Power & Light District is absorbing all of the downtown business these days. This is after the shuttering of the Mango Room, Fred P. Ott's and now Tanner's. What's next? The Kentucky Fried Pizza Hut Express on 11th Street? The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception? WAKE UP, SHEEPLE! Or don't. Again, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me, the familiar dispatchers on the police scanner or the brilliant debating cocks in the West Bottoms. I'll take your word for it that McFadden's is awesome.
McC: Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has been catapulted like a puppy from a really cruel puppy-hurling trebuchet into the spotlight by her support of Sen. Barack Obama for president. Why, here is an entire Newsweek article about her rising profile, in which she advocates for Democrats to campaign in little tiny rural towns populated by talking Model-T Fords and folksy, rusted-out old tow trucks with innocent demeanors, which generally go unacknowledged during national elections. All that notwithstanding, I'll be really pissed off if she votes for cloture on the pending FISA bill in the senate today — not a joke, by the way. Here's a joke, so you can tell the difference:
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Sen. Claire McCaskill would happily vote for cloture on any of your cocks in any of your fights; voting for cloture to protect stiff, up and coming telecoms will be a no brainer for her.
In more ways than one.
p.s. Taos for a month = more turquoise jewelry than airport scanners can stand.
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