And the spanking jokes just keep coming…

OK, the time has come to revive Dan Savage’s 2003 meme because The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex know as Richard John Santorum is back and he’s still’s a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Stephen A. Crockett Jr., writing in An Incomplete List of the Dumbest Ways to Stop a School Shooting for The Root, explains:

On Sunday, dumbass [Frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex] boasted that instead of high school-age children leading one of the biggest marches in all the land to call for an end to gun violence, they should be doing more proactive work like learning CPR.

“How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that,” [The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex] said on CNN’s State of the Union.

In addition to this statement being profoundly stupid and completely inconsiderate, it’s just fucked up. First, the kids were fighting to petition Congress to stand up to the NRA, which we all know certain members of Congress won’t do because doing so would mean a tremendous dip in their campaign donations. Secondly, as several folks pointed out on Twitter, learning CPR to help bullet wounds is like … learning CPR to help bullet wounds. It’s so idiotic there isn’t even an apt analogy!

Yes, Santorum is still The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Jordan Klepper has a few words on the subject as well…

Dang, the frothy mix has gotten more attention this week than he has in 10 years. Keep telling yourself Frothy, no press is bad press…

I watched probably 90 percent of the March For Our Lives and I was flat out impressed. These kids know exactly what they’re doing. They are better organized and disciplined than either Republican or Democratic parties. They know what their message is and what their demands are.

Adults used to ignoring young voters—those people Pope Francis called out in his Palm Sunday speech—be afraid, be very afraid, because these young people are calling bull shit.

Jason Johnson, writing in Yes, the March for Our Lives Was About Black People, Too —and It’s About Time for The Root, delivers a cogent and focused debriefing that goes far beyond the implications of the headline:

I attended the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., after a day of intense preparation. I was expecting it to be incredibly cold, and I was prepared for huge throngs of people who didn’t know where they were going.

I was also prepared for the speeches to last all day and a conveyer belt of speakers who looked like a CW casting call. I had even steeped myself in some of the black conservative critiques of the March for Our Lives like those of Shermichael Singleton, who complained the march marginalized black kids.

I also familiarized myself with the arguments of Colion Noir, fresh off his interview with rapper/activist Killer Mike who agreed with the right of students to protest but disagreed with them being “weaponized” to attack the Second Amendment.

I had all of these thoughts swirling in my mind as I made my way through crowds of kids from D.C., New York and as far away as Florida and Ohio. I remembered those critiques as I watched speech after speech in the bright D.C. afternoon sun, and by the end of the day, I could come to only one conclusion: Every single concern and critique I had heading into the March for Our Lives was wrong. The March for Our Lives was one of the most organized, intersectional, disciplined and integrated protest marches I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to a lot of marches.

Your typical protest march goes on way too long, has too many speakers going off-script, and by the end of the evening, the crowd is getting antsy, coming up with their own chants and bouncing around beach balls to pass the time.

Not at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. These kids had amazing message discipline; every single speaker got onstage, talked about gun violence in schools or neighborhoods, the need to enact policy to solve the problem, and encouraged everyone to vote.

There were black kids from Chicago, Latino kids from Los Angeles and minorities from big cities, suburbs and inner cities all sharing their stories. Naomi Wadler, that amazing 11-year-old from suburban D.C., gave probably the most-watched speech of the day. The Parkland kids didn’t bring out their “black friends” as window dressing, they didn’t “share the stage” with children of color, the stage was open to everyone.

There was no mugging for the camera or virtue-signaling about having different kids from different backgrounds onstage: Everyone played a role, everyone got their say, and everyone made an impact. “Say her name” was just as resonant as “Enough is enough” and “No more.”

This event was unlike any we have ever seen before.

Only 12 hours after one of the largest marches on our nation’s capital ever—and one four times that of President Donald John Trump’s pathetic inaugural—students took to the airwaves on Face The Nation to follow up on their message from yesterday.

Ed Pilkington, reporting in ‘The NRA are fear-mongers’: students excoriate gun group and politicians’ lack of action for the Guardian, writes:

Hours after hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets of cities and towns across the US, as well as in several locations around the world, to call for action to curb gun violence, student survivors of the 14 February mass shooting in Parkland appeared on talk shows to press home their point.

The students were scathing about the NRA’s influence on the national debate, and expressed profound disappointment about what they perceive as the lack of a meaningful action from Washington.

“The NRA are fear-mongers,” said Cameron Kasky, a Parkland survivor and one of the organizers of Saturday’s historic March for Our Lives. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, and wearing a #MSDStrong T-shirt to underline the resilience of the new movement his school has spawned, he charged the NRA with wanting “to sell weapons by exploiting people’s fears. The second we try to put common-sense regulations on these assault weapons the NRA will say they are trying to steal your guns – fortunately people see past this.”

Stoneman Douglas students were equally excoriating about the record of state and federal politicians in tackling the issue of gun violence since the shooting. Jaclyn Corin, the school’s class president, told CBS’s Face the Nation that she was unimpressed by the Stop School Violence Act that was included in the $1.3tn omnibus spending bill passed on Friday.

What these students accomplished in a little more than five weeks, when many would be rendered despondent with grief and trauma, is heroic. What they face in the coming seven months leading up to the November elections will require a superhuman effort. Pilkington continues:

Now that the dust has settled over the March for Our Lives, the newly-emboldened youth activists from Parkland, Florida, and across the nation are faced with the arguably more difficult challenge of sustaining their nascent #NeverAgain movement and translating it into concrete change. Student leaders have begun to articulate their demands, focusing on a nationwide ban on assault weapons with high-capacity magazines of the sort used to commit the Stoneman Douglas massacre, raising the age at which rifles can be bought to 21 and introducing universal background checks on all gun sales.

A limited version of some of these demands has already been enacted in Florida, though the NRA immediately filed a lawsuit attempting to black the reforms.

The second major task for the activists following Saturday’s marches is to mobilize young voters for the November mid-term elections. Though they do not plan to endorse specific candidates, they do intend to encourage young Americans to register to vote and to consider gun controls as a priority issue when they cast their ballots.

Emma Gonzalez, who made one of the most powerful presentations at the Washington march, in which she remained largely silent through 6 minutes and 20 seconds—the duration of in the Parkland shooting—said that they were now “revving up for the election”. The Stoneman Douglas pupil told Face the Nation that “this is not the end, this was just the beginning.”

So, I’m no big fan of the Catholic (or any) Church, but for those of you who don’t think Catholicism is all that weird, consider the powerful words of Pope Francis in his Palm Sunday address this morning:

The temptation to silence young people has always existed. There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive.

Dear young people, you have it in you to shout. It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: Will you cry out?

The times they are a changin’…

*A vote of no confidence…

Across our nation, hundreds of thousands more marched in support….

Margaret Talbot, reporting in The Extraordinary Inclusiveness of the March for Our Lives for The New Yorker, writes:

Maybe what was most extraordinary about the March for Our Lives, in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, was not its size, though that was impressive—likely hundreds of thousands of people in a long, dense ribbon winding down Pennsylvania Avenue. It wasn’t the consistent demand for a ban on assault-style weapons, or the focus on defeating politicians who take money from the National Rifle Association. (Time and again, the crowd broke into spontaneous chants of “Vote them out!”) What was most remarkable was the event’s inclusiveness. In the six weeks since the young survivors of Parkland, Florida, jump-started a vibrant new movement for gun control, its leadership has managed to broaden the locus of concern beyond mass shootings at comfortable suburban schools like Marjory Stoneman Douglas, to gun violence in urban neighborhoods as well.

This is a key point, as Marjory Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg, made clear when he responded to the question “What the media’s biggest mistake was during the shooting at his school:”

Not giving black students a voice. My school is about 25 percent black, but the way we’re covered doesn’t reflect that.

No one, like myself, who has relied on secondary sources, would think that the African Americans representation at MSD was approximately double the national average.

Meanwhile from the White House and the National Rifle Association…

If you missed the live feed, or want to catch parts again, you can click on the video at the top of the column on the right.

There were a number of very powerful videos associated with all the speakers and the music including this one from my fellow veterans who know all too well what a .223 semi-automatic does to human flesh.

Fred Rogers would approve of this message…

March for our Lives protests planned for 800 places across the world…

Of course the NRAbots showed up to senselessly mouth talking points.

Jordan Klepper devoted his Wednesday and Thursday shows to the march…

Previously…

First, no one outside of Austin, Texas was paying attention to the package bombs killing people because the people dying weren’t white.

Second, when white people were threatened, all hell broke loose, because, well, White lives matter more than other lives. Right?

Wrong!

Daniel José Camacho, reporting in Why Mark Anthony Conditt—a white Christian—isn’t called a terrorist for the Guardian, writes:

If a Muslim man planted bombs in predominately white neighborhoods before blowing himself up, you could bet that the White House and various media outlets would label him a terrorist and draw some connection between his religion and his violent acts. But the case of the Austin bomber reveals an enduring double standard: white Christian terrorists continue to get a free pass.

Including from the pulpit in the White House Press Office from where Sarah Sanders Tweeted:

@POTUS mourns for victims of the recent bombings in Austin. We are monitoring the situation, federal authorities are coordinating w/ local officials. We are committed to bringing perpetrators of these heinous acts to justice. There is no apparent nexus to terrorism at this time.

And at this time?

They really are coming for our guns and I am very happy about that.

The student journalists from the Parkland, Florida’s high school newspaper the Eagle Eye, standing #MSDStrong in Our manifesto to fix America’s gun laws for The Guardian, write:

As a student publication, the Eagle Eye works to tell the stories of those who do not have a voice. Today, we are the ones who feel our voice must be elevated.

In the wake of the tragedy that occurred at our school on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, our lives have changed beyond what we ever imagined. We, along with our publication, have been transformed. We will remain so for the rest of our lives.

We have a unique platform not only as student journalists, but also as survivors of a mass shooting. We are firsthand witnesses to the kind of devastation that gross incompetence and political inaction can produce. We cannot stand idly by as the country continues to be infected by a plague of gun violence that seeps into community after community, and does irreparable damage to the hearts and minds of the American people.

That’s why the Eagle Eye has come together and proposed these following changes to gun policy. We believe federal and state governments must put these in place to ensure that mass shootings and gun violence cease to be a staple of American culture.

We will be marching this Saturday, 24 March, for those that we loved and lost, and we write this in the hope that no other community or publication will ever have to do the same.

The changes we propose:

1. Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds,

2. Ban accessories that simulate automatic weapons,

3. Establish a database of gun sales and universal background checks,

4. Change privacy laws to allow mental healthcare providers to contact police,

5. Close gun show and secondhand sales loopholes,

6. Allow the CDC to make recommendations for gun reform,

7. Raise the firearm purchase age to 21,

8. Dedicate more funds to mental health research and professionals, and

9. Increase funding for school security.

You know, there are a couple of points here that I don’t agree with–nos. 7 and 9 in particular (and No. 4 will be problematic)–but I’m not going to question this list. These students are showing mad skills and they are changing the face of the nation.

Good on them.

There is much wrong with our Healthcare System in America. For me, however, one, huge aspect overshadows every other factor: profit. Anytime you interject profit into a service or product then you introduce greed and greed has no place in anyone’s healthcare. The rest of the industrialized world figured this out decades ago, but bought-and-paid for politicians in the United States are greedy. They want their campaign contributions and they want them now. This is why our whole system is fucked.

Ralph Nader, writing in Ten Million Americans Could Bring H.R. 676 into Reality Land—Relief for Anxiety, Dread and Fear, explains:

Polls show that over 125 million adults in our country already favor full Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital without stifling networks. I say ‘already’ because, as of yet, there is no major national campaign underway showing that an ‘everybody in, nobody out’ system of health insurance costs less, with better outcomes, is simpler, without maddeningly inscrutable or fraudulent bills, co-pays, deductibles and additional trap doors set by a bunch of greedy corporations. The campaigns that exist today are receiving too little on-the-ground assistance for such a widely-supported issue.

A super-majority of only 535 members of Congress—Senators and Representatives—can make that decision. The bill—H.R. 676, the ‘Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act’—is now supported by 121 House Democrats—two thirds of all the Democrats in the House of Representatives. So that’s a good start.

H.R. 676 has been referred to several, regular, Committees of the Continue Reading »

Sunday, 1 April, is an odd—and more than a little sardonic—double because April Fool’s Day falls on the Christian holiday of Easter.

One of our local churches erects a mock tomb and sets parishioners dressed as Roman soldiers in front of the temporary construction as guards prepared to roll away the stone and declare he is risen come Sunday morning. For years I have thought that some enterprising comic should sneak into the back dressed as a crucified Essene and leap out crying Surprise! at the opportune moment. The confluence of holidays this year would make a particularly hilarious moment if the prankster were to leap out and shout April Fool!

If I were a teenager again—especially if I were a member of the congregation—I would seriously think the punishment worth the resulting YouTube video.

Ralph Nader has more mature ideas.

Nader, writing in Ahoy America, Give Trump a Taste of His Own Medicine Starting on Trump Imitation Day, makes some suggestions.

Trump Imitation Day will take place online on April 1, this April Fools’ Day, 2018—a day driven by the vast and varied online networks of America with all of their imagination and organizational capability.

Here is the rationale behind this special style of giving Trump a reverse dose of Trumpism. Trump has proven repeatedly that he is a serial prevaricator, bully, cheater, boaster, malicious myth-maker, racist, abuser of women, slanderer, violator of laws and the Constitution and emerging war-monger.

Openly, through his appointees, he is destroying crucial, long-held health, safety and economic protections for consumers, workers and the environment Continue Reading »

I have written before that, just as Vice President Spiro Theodore Agnew had to go before we could rid the nation once and for all of President Richard Milhous Nixon, so too must Vice President Michael Richard Pence be removed to make way for an acceptable candidate toPresident Donald John Trump before we begin impeachment proceedings.

Pence is Trump’s greatest insurance policy and the Alt-Right’s Manchurian candidate.

I ordered my copy of A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss and illustrated by EG Keller from independent bookseller Chronicle Books.

On Amazon you can have a chuckle comparing the ratings for A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo to Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President.

Stephen William Hawking has died.

Ian Sample, science editor for The Guardian, writes:

Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76.

Hawking was driven to Wagner, but not the bottle, when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21. Doctors expected him to live for only two more years. But Hawking had a form of the disease that progressed more slowly than usual. He survived for more than half a century.

Hawking once estimated he worked only 1,000 hours during his three undergraduate years at Oxford. In his finals, he came borderline between a first and second class degree. Convinced that he was seen as a difficult student, he told his viva examiners that if they gave him a first he would move to Cambridge to pursue his PhD. Award a second and he threatened to stay. They opted for a first.

Hawking’s best know peer on this side of the pond, Neil deGrasse Tyson, writes:

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure.

Like Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, like the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, like the other parents of Parkland, Florida, Fred Guttenberg ain’t having it. These three paragraphs, from near the end of Lois Beckett’s Fred Guttenberg will not sit down: Florida father demands gun reform for The Guardian say, for my money, all that needs saying:

Guttenberg carries around a screenshot of the latest ad from National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch, where she warned the NRA’s opponents, some of them by name, “Your time is running out.”

“If this was put out by a terrorist organization, we would be raising the terror threat level in this country. Why are we letting this lobby having anything to do with DC? I don’t understand it,” Guttenberg told Democratic senators at Wednesday’s hearing, his voice breaking with frustration.

Before the hearing, in the hallway outside the conference room, Guttenberg had been even blunter. “All our legislators who stand with the NRA, they’re standing with a terrorist group,” he said.

Where is the U.S. Patriot Act when Americans are in need?

When the reason you exist is to promote and further an individual’s or organization’s financial well being then truth is a mostly worthless tool.

That was the lesson I learned in my journalism ethics class as an undergrad at Ohio University during the first Reagan administration. The first day of the class the professor—a former newspaper journalist—asked students to raise their hands to identify which of the school’s programs they were in. He went down the list, newspaper, magazine, radio, television with out comment. Then he asked the public relations and advertising students to raise their hands. He then said:

This class will be worthless to you because ethics have no place in your chosen professions. You will be hired to lie for your clients so as to either make them look better than they are or to allow them to make more money. If this class wasn’t required for graduation I would tell you to take something else, but you are and I can’t. Sorry.

Nearly 40 years later I still remember the looks on the faces of those five or so students. No, they weren’t shocked or disillusioned. They smirked. They knew what they were getting into and, I suspect, we’re thinking: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I’ll be making way more money than any of you ethical losers.” Which is a long-winded introduction to yet another takedown of the lies propagated by the National Rifle Association—an orgainzation that in its present form, exists solely to facilitate the sales of its clients products: guns—in this case, the lie that the only person who can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Michael Harriot, writing in How My Playcousin Stopped a Mass Shooting and Disproved the Myth about Good Guys With Guns for The Root, ledes:

I believe one of the stupidest narratives in existence is the National Rifle Association’s assertion that: “the only person who can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I also believe that turning mass shooters into celebrities creates more mass shooters. But I no longer believe these things are true…

I know they are.

Harriot tells the story in detail, but here’s the core message:

The FBI reports that, of the 104 active shooter events between 2000 and 2012, 17 were stopped by potential victims. In 14 of those situations, the shooting was stopped by someone who was unarmed who managed to talk to the person or subdue the shooter with no weapon.

Only 3 active shooters were stopped by a good guy with a gun. [Emphasis mine, JH]

The NRA longs ago ceased to be an organization for hunters and a watchdog protecting the Second Amendment. The NRA is a dedicated cadre of a flak catchers, looking to make the big bucks by selling their clients’ lies, nothing more.

I did not expect this result. Seriously. At the end of the day, I found the responses from William Michael O’Neill better than any of his three opponents. O’Neill is the only one of the four that I have ever met and had an actual conversation with (we spoke back in 2007 O’Neill was running against incumbent Republican Steve LaTourette in Ohio’s 14th congressional district). Before the debate I wasn’t even thinking about him. I can’t say why precisely, but I wasn’t.

As I began watching the debate, I was looking hard at Ohio State Senator Joseph L. Schiavoni, hoping to like him as someone I could get behind. I just didn’t see it. Richard Cordray and Dennis Kucinich (see below) were already off my radar, so I give the debate, on points, to O’Neill.

I would be crazy to say that I’m done and dusted based on this one debate, but I am saying that Schiavoni—even if he is a fellow Bobcat—is going to have to work much, much harder to get my vote.

Please listen closely to Dennis Kucinich at timemark 33:46 and then read what Cleveland’s institutional memory, Roldo Bartimole, had to say on Kucinich’s inner-city experience in my three-part series: DOES DENNIS NEED A REDCAP FOR HIS BAGGAGE…?; CLEVELAND MAYOR KUCINICH, MORE THAN MUNY… and SCHOOL BUSING AND MAYOR KUCINICH’S END….

Sighting James Bupkis* Renacci at a public event is about as rare as seeing Bigfoot, but when you’re running for statewide office, you can’t hide behind screened conference calls and and invitation-only town hall meetings in undisclosed locations. I only got the notice at 3:23 yesterday about an appearance tomorrow and opened the email a few minutes ago, so Renacci clearly is doing his best to minimize his disclosure here.

Sadly, I’m working on Monday, but if you’re schedule is flexible enough, you definitely should do your best to head down to Strongsville.

Congressman Jim Renacci is hosting an Insightful Women who Advance Northeast Ohio event on March 12th, at 11 A.M., at the Holiday Inn, 15471 Royalton Road, Strongsville, Ohio 44136.

This interactive forum event, moderated by Barbara Daniel, Publisher/Editor of the Cleveland Women’s Journal, features a panel of leading women from Northeast Ohio to discuss professional development, challenges, and opportunities to excel in today’s economic climate.

I’m not on Twitter, so I didn’t see this before I did a quick Google…

Has Renacci evolved?

*After extensive searches, I have been unable to determine what Renacci’s middle initial stands for. Until I can find a reliable reference to Renacci full name, Bupkis will do.

Previously…

Mano Singham alerted me to Oscar-nominated documentary—available in its entirety at Frontline–about an actual banker who was actually jailed. But…

Abacus chronicles the story of the Sungs, a Chinese-American family whose Abacus Federal Savings Bank was the only U.S. bank indicted for mortgage fraud related to the 2008 financial crisis.

“I’m always surprised at the way people handle conflict in their lives,” says [filmmaker Steve] James. “A lot of the films that I’ve made over the years have just happened to take place at pivotal junctures in the lives of people, and I’m fascinated by how people navigate that.”

In addition to chronicling the New York district attorney’s case against the bank and the Sungs’ efforts to clear their name, Abacus also tells a bigger story about what James calls “the unequal application of justice in America.”

Drawing on interviews with prosecutors, jurors, defense lawyers and the Sung family themselves, the film asks tough questions about why Abacus—the 2,651st largest bank in the country at the time of its trial, serving an immigrant population—was brought to trial while the biggest banks on Wall Street avoided charges altogether.

Silly filmmaker, because Abacus hadn’t made loans to the likes of Donald John Trump and his minions.

Any value greater than zero is, by definition, better than nothing. Still, better than nothing—or the more popular, the least I could do—is nothing to get all puffy chested about. So, when Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn declared that the intrepid journalist had uncovered a gun problem in Cleveland, Sam Allard was not all that impressed.

Allard, reporting in A Greater Impact: On Cleveland.com and Noble Failure for Scene, writes:

Seldom have we witnessed Cleveland.com Editor Chris Quinn reach the rhetorical peaks to which he free-soloed Sunday, in a pugnacious column announcing the addition of gun violence to the digital news outlet’s Impact Agenda.

“Today, we say that for every person shot to death in Cleveland these last 8 years, those legislators and justices have blood on their hands,” Quinn wrote, calling out the Ohio General Assembly and the Ohio Supreme Court. “They may as well have pulled the triggers themselves.”

Quinn said Cleveland.com’s upcoming coverage on this topic will take aim at restoring the right of Ohio cities to govern themselves (“when it comes to firearms”) and will “take careful aim” at reducing the number of guns on Cleveland’s streets, guns that, Quinn noted, killed 836 people from 2011 to 2017.

Guns, gun control, the National Rifle Association and home rule—brought to the fore by gubernatorial candidates Richard Cordray and Dennis Kucinich—have been all over national media after yet another mass murder last month facilitated by the assault-weapon fetishists at the NRA. Allard Continues:

Reporting on the victims of social problems and structural inequality is critically important, but that reporting is amplified and contextualized by reporting on the creators of those problems and the architects of that inequality. Quinn clearly gets this principle. “We will demonstrate the death and suffering the Legislature has wrought,” he wrote. He understands that death and suffering do not simply occur for no reason, and that investigating the reasons they do—“evil” excluded—and interpreting those reasons for the benefit of the public, is one of journalism’s higher callings.

Allard, however, misses the meta-culprits, not the legislators in Columbus, but rather their puppeteers right here in Cuyahoga County. In a comment to Allard’s piece, Roldo Bartimole wrote:

Sam:

You have to first understand that this is a PROMOTION—like send a donation for Xmas toys for kids. It’s a substitution for going after those who are the TAKERS—the developers, subsidized sports team owners, the interests that want a new Corridor to University Circle (damned the cost), the agenda deciders that enact EVERY tax increase to be borne by those least able to pay.

It’s a diversion. All the income-sucking measures get full cheer-leading from the PD, as all attempts of the public (20,000 signatures) to even the score earn scorn from the newspaper. It has become so for so long that it isn’t even recognized by the PD bosses.

Allard pulls the promotion into sharper focus with a reference to New Yorker writer Katherine Boo:

“As effective as [narrative nonfiction] can be at activating empathy in readers,” Boo said, “it’s also really, really good at being meretricious, at converting genuine hardship into passing diversion for luckier people — sensationalized vacation reading for the minimally concerned.

“If I’m only writing about the so-called victims,” she continued, “I’m trafficking in poverty porn [Emphasis mine, JH]. And I don’t want to traffic in poverty porn. So I decided early on that to be ethical, my work could not just focus on those victims. It also had to investigate the perps. It had to lay out their wrongdoing, and it had to name their names.”

Quinn, Sunday, presented a plan to do precisely that: to report on the tragedies of gun violence and to draw a line from legislative action or inaction directly to those tragedies. To lay out wrongdoing. To name names. (We’re looking forward to it.)

In light of Roldo’s comment, however, I must wonder if the names that Quinn might name will be on the level of Thomas Sung, Marsha Fudge, Thomas Patton, Richard Cordray or, and don’t bet the rent on this, the likes of Dan Gilbert and Gordon Gund?

Since I haven’t read the Plain Dealer since 1992, I’ll have to rely on Allard, and others, to let me know the answer.