Quickies

No time just now for my usual extended soliloquy, those gracefully constructed cathedrals of wisdom and scalding insight which I sweat and bleed over for the delectation of my readers. Instead, you get what I have time for this morning. Them's the breaks, at least till I've fixed up this little corner of virutal real estate and installed a contribution box (coming soon)...

The Most Interesting Stuff Never Hits the Paper. If you're downtown today and you observe a gaggle of impossibly sharply dressed, perfectly coiffed businesspeople emerging from the finest feats of automotive engineering, calmly barking in staccato fashion into their near-microscopic cell phones, they're probably McKinseyites. That's because the world's most elite consulting firm, the mallard-colored-suspendered Marines to the Fortune 500, are throwing themselves a party today on the North Coast. It's the 40th anniversary of the Cleveland office, recently moved (along with the local Marines, p.r. firm Dix & Eaton) to the BP Building, and current and former McKinseyites are gathering for an observation (just weeks before another 40th anniversary of nearly equal import, that of JFK's assassination). Even the firm's international managing partner is expected to be on hand, not unlike the Pope coming to bless a tiny outpost in the Third World. We haven't time here to delve into the giant subject of how the firm has influenced the shape and tone of this region's government, business community and even community conversation (in ways both positive and not so positive), but we'll try to at least take a stab in due course. Suffice to say for now that the most prominent figure of all will be physically absent but nevertheless hovering over the proceedings. Richard Shatten, maybe the most brilliant of a brilliant cohort, died not long ago of a brain tumor, but his ideas for his hometown live on, and the void of his caring and community building are like a giant hole that can never be closed. For some of the best of his insights, click here, for the proceedings of a conference he organized, and which he addresses beginning on pg. 34. In any event, check back for a report on how the soiree went, because although we couldn't wangle an invite ourselves, Working With Words has giant tentacles, and our mole who is there will help us piece it all together...

Action Figures Make Bad Guvs. Does this sound like a man who should be governor of the most-populous, most-important state in the union? If Californians are stupid enough to elect Arnold the Action Figure to their highest office, then they'll get what they deserve. But this haymaker of an article (which has the right howling at a too-late low blow) at least leaves me fully confident that the state's media, led by their revived flagship the L.A. Times, will continue to document his stupidity in much the same fashion that their Minnesota brethren doggedly covered Jesse Ventura's foolishness. Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz, merely the most influential media columnist in the country, has finally convinced me with his column today that he is indeed a closet right-winger, as his chief critic Eric Alterman (of the Nation and MSNBC) has long charged. Alterman drew blood several weeks ago by noting that Howie's wife is a conservative political consultant, and while that of course wasn't in itself persuasive about his own leanings, it certainly made some folks (me among them) sit up and take notice. But today I think he's finally out of the closet, seeming to ever-so-slyly suggest that the multiple outrages from Arnold and Rush and Rove & Co. are the result of a left-wing media tilt rather than what they really are: obvious news about outrageous public developments. Having said that, let me also say that the left's reflexive urge to censor language it doesn't like is pretty repulsive, and it never ceases to amaze me for its brazen hypocrisy. A New York Times sports columnist, Richard Sandomir, is outraged this morning that no one else among the ESPN game crew spoke up to repudiate Rush Limbaugh's mildly un-PC comment about a black quarterback, as if he had just called for mass infanticide. Even if they didn't think to do so themselves, he couldn't fathom why their producer didn't "instruct them to respond" to his raising an "inflammatory issue." The gall of the guy, raising inflammatory issues! And on TV yet.

That's pathetic. Whether they're bumping up against America's third rail (you touch it, you die) or talking about something we're all seemingly less unbalanced about, let the yahoos of the hard right talk and talk and talk. Let people hear their ideas. The more they're heard, the less attractive they'll seem, in my humble estimation. Which has the additional attraction of being the model on which this republic was built, and for which it's admired (or at least was until a couple of years ago) throughout the world...

There are Gems Among Us. The PD's Julie Washington probably thinks that she broke some news with yesterday's story in the Arts & Life section about the closing of the Centrum Theatre in Coventry. But readers of the increasingly sharp and insightful Bruce Blog, one of the very best of NEOhio's blogs, knew that more than a week ago. Keep up the splendid reporting, Marc, and readers will keep flocking to you. In similar fashion, our favorite Convention Center avenger, The Sardonic One, shows his subject range with this dazzlingly brief but well-said take on why Tim Couch has to go. I found myself instantly agreeing with it. Look for the PD sportswriters to follow weeks behind our blogging colleague.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. But credit where credit is due: before there was even the beginnings of a cohort of bloggers in this community, before there was a Cool Cleveland e-letter or a series of Meet-Ups, there was an earlier progressive network of web-enabled community-builders laboring tirelessly to knit powerful ideas, organizations and people into a cohesive whole. Namely, the founders of the What's Up In Northeast Ohio listserv, which I mentioned yesterday. We tried to at least begin recognizing that debt at the Blogfest in May. But just to continue that momentum, I'd like to propose an idea. Yesterday, Jim Miller sent his annual plea for support, and I really liked how he framed the collaborative nature of what has developed. "There have been some wonderful developments in the past year or two, particularly the development and flourishing of other lists and websites in Northeast Ohio, which have made the movement for social justice around here far more responsive..." So how about a quick and informal benefit for What's Up. I don't know whether that should be virtual, with us all bundling our small (or large) contributions together and sending it along as a group gift--or a physical get-together to do what we do best: schmooze and gab and eat. But let's at least do one of those. Send your ideas and suggestions (or even contributions, if you want to jump the gun), care of Working With Words, at jettorre@voyager.net. And we'll see that your ideas, voice, and money get bundled together into something larger...