Archive for August, 2010
More "Nationality Expertism" on display in Chicago
We’ve actually decided to make “Nationality Expertism” a chapter in the HillBuzz book, cohesively collecting everything we’ve learned about this subject since moving to Chicago in 2005 or so.
For the uninitiated, a “Nationality Expert” is an ass here in Chicago who comes up to one of us in a bar or other social situation and asks some combination of:
* What are you?
* What nationality are you?
* What ethnicity are you?
* Where is your family from?
* Etc.
This only happens to K., Sebastian, and sometimes Joaquin, because they have dark hair (and Joaquin’s mother was a Mexican, so he’s sort of George P. Bush in appearance). It’s never, ever asked of Robby, who is blond and as apple-pie and checkered tablecloths as leftovers from a Tommy Hilfiger photo shoot. Panda’s gaysian, and people just leave it at that, and instead as him “Who are you wearing? Where did you get that hat? How do you do that dance move? How can you get away with saying things like that?”.
“Nationality Expertism” only happens in Chicago, though there was a freak instance of this once back in 2007 when K. did a fundraiser for a little art gallery in Palm Beach, Florida and the ass working the registration table asked him this. Turns out, she grew up in Schaumburg, which is a suburb of, you guessed it, Chicago.
Back in Cleveland, people ask you “Where did you go to high school?” because they want to find out how much money your parents had when you were growing up. If you answered one of the private schools, then they could be friends with you, because you would have come from some money. If you said a public school, they’d make a face and then move on to someone “better” to talk to at the cocktail party.
In New York, Philly, Atlanta, and San Antonio, we’ve found people ask “Where did you go to college?” for the above result. If it’s not a top 50 school, you can forget the friendship. This seems to be a way that jackasses weed out “undesirables”.
In Chicago, it’s all about race for these tools…even when someone is clearly white. There appears to be the “good white”, which is someone who is “from” Great Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere in the British Isles. There’s also “fancy white”, which is someone “from” France, Switzerland, Benilux, the Scandinavian socialist paradises, or scrappy and exotic Iceland (Ooooh! Do you know Bjork?). This means there is “bad white”, or at least, “swarthy white”, and that’s a white person who is “from” anywhere Mediterranian that’s not Italy, or any where that has an -ia at the end of it (like Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Transylvania, but not Austria, which is more or less a “fancy white”).
As we’ve stated repeatedly, we think this “Nationality Expert” garbage is racist dreck.
We’re all “from” America. Scratch that. We’re FROM America, no quotation marks, because this is where we are from. If you want more specifics, Mr. Census, K. and Bast are from Cleveland. Robby’s from Mineral City. Joaquin’s from San Antonio. Panda’s from a little bit of everywhere, because his parents moved him around every two years or so because of his dad Tico’s work.
If you want to hit on any of us in a bar, without being an ass, why not ask us something about ourselves?
Like these questions:
* What was your Halloween costume last year?
* What’s the last movie you saw in an actual theater?
* Screw movies, what’s the last live theater you saw in an actual theater?
* Are you afraid of puppets?
* Have you ever been to any of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Chicago?
* Have you ever been to Christopher Lloyd’s house?
* Did he know you were there at the time?
* How long does it take a restraining order to expire anyway?
* Did you know your name and phone number are written all over the walls in the bathroom, like hundreds of times?
Those are all great first-meet questions.
None of them are racist, unless you have a thing against puppets (if so, sit next to us).
Every so often, someone we have known for a while asks K., Bast, or Joaquin the “Nationality Question” and the rest of us just sit back and watch the fun. This is a different outcome than a first-meet person asking it, because if you are already our friend we’re not going to stop being friends with you over something like this — but you will get admonished for being assy, depending on how far you push this garbage.
Last night, our friend Spence and his manager/photographer was out at Sidetracks, and K. and Panda stopped to say hey. Spence is Chicago’s #1 Laura Branigan impersonator. He’s also America’s ONLY Laura Branigan impersonator, that any of us know of. He does other characters too, like Bonnie Tyler and Jayne Child, and pretty much every other female singer from the 80s we like that most everyone under 25 has never heard of (sacrilage!). “I’m sort of a niche market,” Spence explains, “but I work all the time, even if sometimes I get paid in leftovers from the buffet”. Thank God Fran Eaton from Illinois Review isn’t attending these events, or poor Spence wouldn’t be paid at all.
We’ve known Spence for four years now, and K. and Panda have booked him for various events they’ve produced around town, so he’s a casual friend, but no one who’s ever been to Buzzquarters (Spence, alas, is an Obama cultist, which keeps him at the periphery of our little universe). K. actually went up to Spence to ask him to send us his new press kit, because a friend of K.’s is going to be having an event and K.’s talking her into an 80s theme, which would be perfect for some Gloria, Solitaire, and Self-Control action.
Out of the blue, Spence said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you this, but what nationality are you?”.
“American,” K. replied. “The best damn country that ever was or will be”.
“No, lookit your hair, eyes, and eyebrows, you have such dark features, you look Jewish. Or maybe Muslim. You look like you are from the Middle East”.
“And you’re way too old to be dressing up like Laura Branigan. Those aren’t crows’ feet anymore, baby, they’re full on emu at this point, and there isn’t enough botulism in the whole world that’s going to fix that”.
“Wow, kitty’s got claws tonight,” Spence jabbed back, “I just said that I thought you were Jewish this whole time or from somewhere in the Middle East because your hair is so dark. What’s wrong with that?”
Clearly, we love Israel almost as much as we love America, so there’s nothing wrong with being Jewish. But, when you are an American, and you were raised Roman Catholic, being called Jewish by some idiot in a bar is frustrating — because it’s not who you are, and some fool is trying to force this alternate racial identity on you.
For years, Robby’s sister Ann-Louise never understood why K. was bothered by people doing things like this. Ann-Louise has blonde hair, which she pays for at the salon. No one left alive knows what her real hair color is, but it’s cartoon yellow most days, so she never gets asked the “Nationality Question” garbage.
Well, a few years back Ann-Louise got a small part in one of those schlocky horror movies she does and the role required her to be raven-haired, so she walked around in Miami for four months of shooting with very dark hair. It’s the only thing that changed about her, except for the tan she got working in Florida.
So, almost on day one, the Miami locals started talking to her in Spanish exclusively. They just assumed she was some sort of Latina. Mexian men, in particular, got very aggressive with her, and there was one instance where a group of them wouldn’t leave her alone as she tried to get into her car, saying all sorts of clearly suggestive things to her (that she did not understand), and taking her silence in return as tacit encouragement to proceed their “courting”.
About midway through shooting her part, she told K. she finally understood why he hated this “Nationality Expert” garbage and why he didn’t like it when random strangers came up to him and asked if he was Jewish or Middle Eastern.
“These morons see dark hair and dark eyes, and maybe it’s because public schools are so bad, but they just think that’s license to come up to you and accuse you of being things that you are not. I have no idea why any of this matters to these clowns, but it’s so 1936 Stuttgart to walk up to someone and ask him if he’s Jewish, or to just point and say that he is. It’s so weird”.
It’s actually one of the things, besides being gay, that’s a wedge between K. and his family — all of whom are light-brown or blond-haired, and none of whom have particularly enjoyed having a dark-haired, dark-eyed, “f*ckng faggot” (to borrow IL GOP Chair Pat Brady’s term) in the family. “Must have been switched at birth” was the classic Cleveland comedy styling on this issue.
Spence is a nice person, and he’s a great Laura Branigan, but he’s an idiot.
He just kept at the “Nationality Expert” stuff until K. finally had to tell him that he was being offensive. Spence never graduated any college, from what we know, but he started on this litany of how the color of K.’s eyes meant he was part this, but the shape of his ears meant he was part that (Romulan, evidently), and the way his eyebrows raise wholly under their own power when he talks means he must be related to Groucho Marx somehow.
It was beyond absurd: like going to Granny Clampitt and having her doktor your illness away, using tricks and tips she learned from possums.
Chicago is a city chock-full of these self-edumacated, “learned”, armchair “Nationality Experts”.
About a week ago, Sebastian went out on another of those dates his friend the matchmaker sets him up on, because the lot of us are convinced it’s time he stops dating actor/model/barntenders/musicians and start meeting professional guys who are closer to all of us on the political spectrum too. So, the matchmaker sends him out with investment bankers, suite and tie somethings or another, or pharmaceutical reps…and while disaster doesn’t necessarily ensue, Bast will typically end up with whomever the new barback is on Halsted (insisting all the while he had nothing to do with it, and that “it just happened” because they asked him out, and he was powerless to say no).
The last guy the matchmaker sent him out with was nice enough, until he showed his “Nationality Expert” credentials and proved himself to be even more aggressive and in your face than Spence was with K.
What’s baffling to us is that these asses never realize they’re making their “Nationality Subject” uncomfortable with the interrogation. When this guy asked Bast the whole “Where’s your family from? No, before that. Where were they from before that too. What about before that, and then before that next batch, and before that too?” and Bast just kept saying he’s American, and his family is from America, and that if someone asked an Australian or a Canadian or a Mexican where they are from, and they said Australia, Canada, and Mexico respectively (and that would be an acceptable answer), this would be the end of it, the clown didn’t see he should back down with this crap already.
Instead, he took his hand out and clicked off all the things he “was”: Hungarian, British, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, whatever. Never once mentioning “American”.
“So, you don’t live here then?,” Bast asked.
“No, I live in Chicago.”
“But, you weren’t born here?”
“Nope, born and raised in Chicago.”
“But, you’re not a Chicagoan, or an American. You are all those random things you needed your fingers to count. And you have pasta sauce all over your fingers, FYI. And you seem to have more ingredients in you than the sauce, yet here you are, oblivous to living in the greatest country in the world”.
Bast then went in for the kill and asked the clown if he knew the leaders of the countries he listed off, the ones he is “from”. He didn’t know any of them.
“Well, if you are a quarter Irish, you should at least be able to come up with some of the letters in the Irish prime minister’s name. Care to buy a vowel, or even tell me if it’s a man or a woman? Someone who needs to take his right paw out to click off all the things he “is” should know who’s running part of where he’s “from”, right?”.
To save the evening and end on a good note, Bast kept trying to use whatever opportunities the nationality questioning presented to segue into something about food, art, or music…but Nationality Expert wasn’t having any of it.
Our friend Althea once said we should answer this garbage by saying: “What nationality am I? I’m black. That makes me a big ole’ n*gger. Got a problem with that, honky?”. Because Althea thinks hitting these Liberals back with that is hilarious, and they’ll never ask someone this again. “Oh, then call them a racist because that will keep them up at night, and if you really want to get them, shout to other tables that there’s a racist in the room, but just make sure they paid the check first”.
It’s clear that the public school system is behind this here in Chicago, because that’s a common thread with all these clowns: they are all products of CPS, where evidently it is taught that being “American” is bad, and that everyone needs to be a mutt of some kind, comprised of all these quarters, fifths, sixths, and eleventy-eths of various European and exotic things.
It reminds us a lot of the story we were all taught in Catholic school about Peter being pressed to deny Christ three times before the cock crowed. Here K. and Bast (and Joaquin, to a much, much lesser extent) are, forever being pressed to deny their country…like Peter denied Christ.
“What are you?”
“American”.
BAM!
“What are you?”
“American”.
BAM! Unacceptable! You must be something foreign!
“What are you?”
“American”.
BAM! Not possible. For Liberalism’s cult to thrive we must divide people into as many separate compartments and boxes as possible. We must dilute the concept of an American identity and instead harken to nonsensical allegiances to failed European states, of which the Cult of Liberalism so greatly admires. You are not American. You are what we want you to be. You are what we say you are. You are Toby, not Kunta Kintae.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Oh, we so totally went there. We invoked some Alex Haley up in here. Take that “Nationality Experts”.
Must be the soul in all of us that Althea keeps wanting us to bring to the table.
Every Democrat in America must be tied to the Ground Zero Victory Mosque
Last night something happened we were deeply hoping for, but never thought — not in a million years — the current “president” would be stupid enough to do. We knew he could never resist supporting the Ground Zero Victory Mosque when asked about it directly, but we assumed reporters would be smart enough to never ask him a question that would open a window for him to let more of his anti-American, West-hating true nature shine through.
So, the fact that the current “president”, and leader of the Democrat Party, has come out in favor of building a symbol of Muslim conquest and Islamization on the soil where so many thousands of Americans were murdered by Muslims nine years ago is a great benefit to all of us who spend our days and nights resisting the Left.
This is the sort of thing that will shock a great many Americans out of whatever transe they remain in, and force them to see that Democrats do not belong in office, and that Democrats largely hate this country and apparently want to destroy it.
The other night at Sidetracks, during Market Days, we ran into our friend Phillip (a theater critic in New York). Market Days is a sort of Homecoming here in Boystown, and people we see rarely during the year make guest appearances for the largest street festival in the Midwest. Phillip is a New Yorker, an ultra-liberal, a dyed-in-the-wool-Democrat, and a man who enjoys saying terrible things about Sarah Palin and just about any other conservative woman you can think of. Phillip lived about ten blocks from the World Trade Center, however. He knew people who were murdered by Muslims on 9/11. Saying he knew people “who died on 9/11″ is ridiculous, though that’s the way the Lamestream Media usually couches this. Many people around the world died on 9/11/01 of natural causes: heart attacks, strokes, old age, you name it.
Over 3,000 Americans were murdered by Muslims in a certain part of New York City almost nine years ago. MURDERED. BY MUSLIMS. Not “killed”. They didn’t “die”. They didn’t become “living impaired”. They were MURDERED BY MUSLIMS.
That’s an irrefutable fact.
And Phillip, of all people, is even LOUDER and more vocal about this than US. If you can even possibly believe this.
He RAILED against Democrats for backing the Ground Zero Victory Mosque. He was so enraged, so red-faced, and was spitting so much when he talked, gesticulating so wildly, that at one point one of the security guys in the bar walked by and asked if everything was okay. He thought a fight was breaking out.
Now, Phillip is an Obama cultist, and we doubt he’s ever going to change in that regard, because Obama is a part-black man, and Phillip will never say a word of criticism about any black person. His Broadway reviews are largely jokes as a result of this, because anyone with above-normal levels of melanin in their skin gets a standing ovation from Phillip for managing to put their shoes on the right feet and not vomit all over themselves upon hitting the stage. He was taught to do this in “journalism school”, where any critique of blacks was seen as contributing to holding black people down, “when there are too few black leads on Broadway”. So Phillip freely admits to always praising anyone black in a cast because he wants to see more black peformers “get a chance”, and giving a negative review to anyone black would “discourage producers from hiring black actors”.
Welcome to the cult of Liberalism.
This partly explains why Phillip is forever gung-ho for Obama, no matter what the “president” does. He just can’t, because of his Liberal religion, ever criticize someone with that skin color, no matter what happens. OJ was innocent. Michael Jackson was just misunderstood. Oprah’s not really all that fat or crazy.
The other part of it was revealed in something Phillip said about his father, in a jab he was trying to take at us for coming out as conservatives and embracing so many conservative candidates.
Phillip was talking about how ignorant he thinks his father is, and how in the 70s his dad would watch “All In the Family” (which Phillip called, “The Archie Bunker Show”, which is kind of like us calling “Wicked” “That Musical With the Green Lady” instead, but whatever)and would sit there shouting “Yah! You tell ‘em, Arch. You tell ‘em. That’s right”, to everything Bunker said. Phillip scolded his father and told him that Bunker was a caricature, meant to be ridiculed, and that actor Carol O’Connor was portraying a prototypical bigot.
“But he’s right about everything,” Phillip’s dad would say.
“No, you are wrong about everything and you’re a bigot, too, dad,” Phillip would hector.
“You’re crazy. Go get me a beer so I can finish watching my show”.
Phillip was trying to portray how ignorant conservatives are, and how people like his dad don’t even know when they’ve become a laughingstock — but all we could think of was how much Phillip was describing the Democrat Party as it currently exists.
The reason Democrats have no problem with Islam building a Victory Mosque at Ground Zero is because Democrats hate America as much as Muslims do. They’ll hide behind statements like, “this is their religious freedom to build wherever they want”, but what they really feel is much darker and anti-American. The reason they have no problem with Muslims building a monument of conquest on ground that’s stained with the blood of people we personally know — people who were murdered by Muslims — is because Democrats enjoy seeing Americans humbled, prostrate, broken, and made dhimmi before Islam.
Democrats hate women and gays as much as Muslims do.
Just look at Phillip — a gay man — who thinks nothing on Earth is funnier than misogynistic jokes about conservative women. One of the videos Sidetracks showed during Market Days was during a round of comedy sketches where they played an America’s Funniest Home Video-esque clip that showed an elderly woman being raped by a very large golden retriever. The person holding the camera was heard giggling, and the video clip went on for about a minute, during which the dog managed to knock the woman to the ground, mount her, as she screamed for someone to help her. It was beyond sick. But, Phillip and the majority of gay men in the bar HOWLED with laughter. “Take that, Grandma!” their laughter said. Just sick.
Somewhere else in another solidly Democrat enclave, we’re sure there’s a video playing of a gay man being humiliated in some way, and black Democrats are howling with laughter. In another corner of the Demverse, Jews are being ridiculed while the college-educated, professorial elite clap loudly.
This is part of the extreme sickness of the cult of Liberalism. We see it every day. Democrats are beyond help.
It’s why the embrace Islam so readily — because a lot of the evil things Muslims think and do Liberals do as well…with the caveat that whatever protected group they personally belong to should never be on the receiving end of the hatred and venom that Liberalism fosters and spews.
The only reason Phillip has a problem with the Victory Mosque is because he lost friends in that attack, and because he personally spent a lot of time in those buildings, so he realized he, too, could have been murdered by Muslims nine years ago.
And that scares him.
He’s no fool, and has studied history enough to know that “Cordoba” is code for conquest, like the monument of Islamic victory Muslims erected in Spain at Cordoba to symbolize their conquest of Europe…with a monstrous mosque built upon dirt stained with the blood of those who resisted the caliphate.
While Phillip doesn’t go so far as to speak out against Islam, or Democrats’ support of the Islamization of this country, he does take the stand and ask “Why do they have to build a mosque THERE? I’ve been living in New York for 15 years, and there are plenty of places to build this ELSEWHERE. There are plenty of mosques in New York already. They do not need to build this THERE”.
If someone like Phillip is impacted by this, and has this sort of reaction, then Democrats are in really deep trouble now.
Every last one of them, coast to coast, must be confronted in every election with this Victory Mosque. They must go on record either supporting it, as the current “president” does, or being against it. If against it, they must be presssed on what they will do to stop this monstrosity from being built.
More importantly, every Democrat DONOR out there needs to be hectored with this. They need to be asked point blank why they are giving money to the party that is backing the construction of an Islamic Victory Mosque at Ground Zero in the spirit of the Cordoba conquest monument in Spain.
Every last one of them must be tied to this project — because if the DNC and the White House are backing this Victory Mosque, and these rich people are funding the DNC, then they should bear responsibility as well.
Watch Democrats put a stop to this madness lickety-split the moment they realize how horrified their donors will be if they are accused of supporting this horror.
That is the way to stop this project, people.
Get to the Donors. Make the Donors sweat. Have the Donors put pressure on the elected Democrats. Watch all sorts of bureaucratic magic happen to keep the Victory Mosque from ever being built.
Liberals like Phillip are canaries in the Leftist coal mine: if even committed cultists like him are riled up about something, then it’s the perfect opportunity to turn the rest of the country against a political party that has proven itself to be anti-American, anti-Western, anti-United States exceptionalism, and pro-Islam.
QUESTION: Would Hillary Clinton save Obama's sorry bacon by becoming Vice President in 2012? Short answer: we hope not
This is something we really hope Secretary Clinton doesn’t do…and something we know for a fact that her daughter Chelsea doesn’t want her to do.
We can’t speak for everyone in Hillaryland, but we can speak for the Team Hillary people we know, and none of us want Secretary Clinton to save Obama’s sorry, sour bacon.
Clinton is a Democrat, and would never buck the party the way that many of her supporters (if not, in fact, most of her supporters) have. We don’t want our Hillary to come save the man who so viciously attacked her, and whose supporters on the Left so viciously attack all those who support her.
Let Obama sink, or let the magical powers he supposedly has save him.
Hillary Diana Rodham Clinton should have an Obama-free future, doing whatever she wants to do.
But, if that future includes her wanting to be Obama’s VP and take Joe Biden’s place, a job she could have had back in 2008, we’d wish her the very best as we will do our entire lives, but we won’t help her get that VP job.
Barack Obama is a terrible, inept, and socialist president. We will never help him win an election. We’re going to be working for whomever runs against him in 2012, and we hope that person is Governor Sarah Palin.
We love Hillary Clinton, and always will. We are never more delighted in this world than on the cherished occasions when we’ve been in a room with her, in a personal setting, and have heard her marvelous laugh, have listened to her tell jokes, and have seen her talk to our friends (and us) one on one.
Love the woman.
We’re honored we got to spend any time at all with a person in American history we care so much about. It’s magical to us, and always will be.
But we just won’t help Obama with anything, ever.
Donna Brazile said so famously that the new Obama Democrat Party did not need all of those Hillary voters, and Hillary supporters, and all the rest of those bitter clinging Midwesterners. Democrats would do just fine with blacks, first time voters, newly-minted immigrant citizens, and people collecting checks from the government. Everyone else who works for a living, loves this country, and is opposed to socialism and wealth redistribution need not apply.
So, if Donna Brazile is so smart, and she was right about the Democrat Party’s fortunes without the moderate, conservative, centrist Hillary supporters, then Obama can do just fine without our champ in 2012.
If Obama is so wonderful, and he didn’t have a use for Hillary Clinton as his VP pick in 2012, then it should not even be an option for him to float these stories in the news regarding how much he needs her help the next time around.
CREEPY AND SUSPICIOUS: Oil expert Matthew Simmons dies in Maine hot tub "accident"
This is truly bizarre, and makes us think of the movie 2012, where the White House had people killed in weird accidents whenever they seemed like they were going to spill the secret that the world was ending.
Matthew Simmons has been found dead in a hot tub in Maine.
He’s the man who’s been saying for the last few years that Saudi Arabia is lying about how much oil it has in its reserves, and that “the twilight in the desert” is coming (which is the name of his book on the subject).
What’s really interesting to us is that this downward curve of how much oil Simmons claims the Mideast holds seems to coincide perfectly with the inverse upsurge in Islam’s efforts to conquer the West (including the Victory Mosque the Saudis are pushing for Ground Zero in New York, as a Cordoba-style monument to their forced dhimmihood of America).
Simply put: if Simmons is right, and the Saudi oil is running out, and Saudis know their profligate spending will deplete their savings as soon as those wells run dry, then while they still have money they seem hellbent on birthing the Global Caliphate while they still have the resources to do that.
Someone like Simmons sure would be at the top of the list of those Islam would want to silence…so that any plans in the works would not have attention drawn to them. Since the current White House is a clear hand of Islam, whatever shenannigans Islam would be up to in something like this would be surely ignored by direct order of the sitting “president”.
Creepy, suspicious, stomach-wrenching stuff.
Not everything in the world is a conspiracy, of course.
But men dressed in long flowing robes, hiding behind thick beards and sunglasses, followed everywhere by women wrapped up in black sheets…forever in the company of those who openly advocate the destruction of our way of life…sure lend themselves to easy conspiracy conjecture.
Bad news for Cleveland, as heard at Market Days 2010
This past week we’ve been busy working on projects for Chicago’s Market Days — the largest street festival in the midwest, held right here in Boystown (aka, the day gays throw a big party and the rest of you are all invited).
It’s hard work, and a lot of it was volunteer on our part to help the North Halsted Merchant’s Association put on a successful festival (which raises money for neighborhood improvements and pumps the most money into the local bars and restaurants of any weekend of the year).
We literally have a dozen little notebooks full of all the interesting things that happened, but one of the things that most disturbed us we picked up last night at Sidetracks where we ran into some guys visiting from Cleveland and Cincinnati who gave us some scoop on what’s been happening back in Ohio.
Cleveland is in a lot of serious trouble, and it breaks our hearts.
For those of you who don’t know, Cleveland has suffered some devastating corporate losses in recent years, with the shuttering of LTV Steel, and all the ramifications of that, the departure of BP from Cleveland as its corporate headquarters, and the demise of National City Bank (acquired by PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, at a loss of 16,000 Cleveland jobs).
Now, we’ve learned that Key Bank, Cleveland’s top employer, will be gone within three years. The Eaton Corporation is also leaving, taking with it thousands of jobs. Several other large businesses and law firms have also announced their plans to leave Cleveland in 2011.
Meanwhile, the City is claiming its “Medical Mart” and perpetually-proposed “new Convention Center” will save the city…just like Springfield’s monorail, as we’ve talked about many times before. All the money that went into ripping up Euclid Avenue to rebuild the street actually killed most of the businesses that had been there for years — because customers didn’t want to endure the inconvenience of continuing to shop there during the construction. So, by the time the ripping up of the street was finally finished, there were no shops open for customers to walk to.
We wish we could say this was a surprise, but anyone who follows what happens in Cleveland knew this would happen. It’s been happening for 30 years in a town we love that just can’t get its act together, and always believes some pie-in-the-sky hundred-million-dollar project is the missing piece that’s going to “save the city”.
We’re left today wondering if some cities just can’t be saved, and if we have to face the reality that Cleveland might be one of them.
There is just not the population to support any of the grande schemes the city wants to engage in. Soon, the tallest skyscraper will be empty, and it will majestically lord over a Public Square that many are now afraid to traverse in broad daylight, because of how desperate many Clevelanders have become in the Obama Economy.
Whenever we encounter visitors from Ohio, they talk more and more of people ignoring the downtown city center itself, and focusing on Lyndhurst, Rocky River, Beechwood, Chagrin Falls, and the nicer suburbs afield of Cleveland proper…where it’s safer, there are jobs, and energy’s spent building up communities…not “Medical Marts” or Convention Centers, whatever the hell Medical Marts are.
Listening to the never-ending bad news coming out of Cleveland — where the city government just won’t learn — is like watching the regular drunks at the bar in Sidetracks that we’ve seen for the last five years, making the same mistakes, coming to the same bar day after day, never progressing in their lives, drinking themselves stupid, and always leaving forlorn and looking all the world like they want to kill themselves.
They keep making the same mistakes, but expecting different results. A lot of them are gray-haired old men, grandpas, who belly up to the bar, knock back drink after drink, and keep hoping some young twink is going to appear who’ll be magically attracted to them…and then the two will live happily ever after (for the five years or so remaining before the drunk ends up in a nursing home). The looks of pure desperation and unrealistic hope in these guys’ eyes would be stunning, if we weren’t so familiar with seeing that same look on the face of people in Cleveland who forever buy into the snake oil the mayor and City Council are always selling.
Monorail, monorail, monorail!
Hope! Change!
Large public construction projects to create massive new buildings do not revive depressed urban economies…anymore than going back to the bar every day over the age of 60 in Boystown is going to increase your chances of landing someone who just fell out of an Aberzombie catalog. It’s just not going to happen.
It might be harsh to hear this, or read it, as the case may be, but it’s true.
And it’s just so sad to us that instead of doing whatever it took to keep Key Bank, Eaton, and the other companies in Cleveland, the city’s off on more of its reckless spending and poorly-thought out adventures.
Is madness like this infecting your home towns too?
************************
PS – Another part of this involves the Gay Games 2014, which were awarded to Cleveland earlier this year, but which we think will be stripped from the city before 2010 is up.
Here’s the problem:
When Cleveland was announced as the 2014 Gay Games host city, we remember the local Chicago gay papers running the nastiest articles about the choice. One bit had a reporter (whom we know, and whom we couldn’t think of a nice thing to say about if we tried) claim she interviewed 85 people and could not find a single one who was excited about Cleveland winning the Gay Games. Truth be told, if she had interviewed us, we would have supported Cleveland because we want that money pumped into one of our home towns, but we never thought Cleveland was a good fit as the host city for something like this.
In Cleveland, if you are gay, you will be called a “faggot”, or worse, on a regular daily basis. Grew up there, can attest to that. Even in 2010, we think it would be easier to be gay in Birmingham, Alabama than it would be in Cleveland, if only for the fact that Southerners are far more polite. They’d call you “faggot” behind your back, definitely, but probably not right to your face, Cleveland-style.
How Cleveland believed it could edumacate Clevelanders to resist temptations like this and behave themselves for two weeks when not just American gays, but gays from all around the world would be in town, in a city with no gay bar in all of its downtown, and few gay-friendly anythings, is just beyond us. That is dangerous, desperate, wishful, unrealistic thinking.
And people in Chicago saw this. Others internationally saw this too. The Gay Games should be held in Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Honolulu, or San Diego. Demonstrate a community’s longstanding embrace of gays, and their ability to throw one hell of a party for two weeks straight, then give them the Gay Games.
As much as we love Cleveland, this is not a good fit for the city. Never was.
But, what we’ve heard is that financial mismanagement of the entity that’s prepping for the games is what’s going to be used as the excuse to move this to Boston or New York in 2014.
Something like $50,000 has been embezzled from Gay Games accounts (which gave us just a flash of what sort of chicanery would be going on if Chicago had won the 2016 Olympics), and fingers are being pointed in Cleveland’s gay community. Since some of us used to DJ and event plan back in Cleveland in the 90s and 2000s, we know a lot of the players involved, and most of them are crooks. Not Chicago-level, of course, but since Cleveland’s a “little Chicago” in a sense, and it’s Democrat-controlled like Chicago is, it’s just natural that the movers and shakers back home would be as crooked as the ones here.
The whole thing’s a ripe, nasty pimple that’s going to be popped soon…leading to more chagrin and disappointment falling on Cleveland. America’s punching bag, through all fault of its own.
We desperately want to swoop in and find some way to save Cleveland, but it’s a bigger problem than all of us, including all of you, put together.
The city really may be beyond saving.
As horrible a thought as that is.
IL GOP State Chair will be on the "Political Shootout Show" at 8pm CST tonight — please call in and question him
Tonight, IL GOP State Chair Pat Brady will be on the local radio show “Political Shootout”, at 8pm CST on 8/8/10.
Here is the call-in number: 312-591-8900
You can listen to it live here: www.wlsam.com
Brady needs to answer the following questions, so please call in to ask him about this:
(1) Why did he call us “fucking faggots” (direct quote, so pardon the expletive, but those are Brady’s words not ours) to a large, conservative Republican donor last week when the donor asked him what on Earth was going on with the Lee Roupas scandal in Chicago. Brady said it was “just those fucking faggots making trouble” (again, expletive apology, but those were Brady’s words…and they were revolting enough to not deserve the courtesy of expletive-omission).
(2) Why did Brady allow the GOP to pay Lee Roupas and Jeremy Rose large salaries in the Cook County GOP office when neither of them did any work?
(3) Is Brady aware of three independent investigations (one paid for by Democrats) launched in the last month into the financial, professional, and sexual conduct of the Cook County GOP staff — with all investigations turning up serious malfeasance?
(4) Is Brady aware of an investigation being launched by Illinois state’s attorney Anita Alvarez’s office into the conduct of Lee Roupas and the Cook County GOP?
(5) Can Brady explain why one multimillionaire cougar, Beth Chrisite, can essentially purchase the Illinois GOP and run it as her private doll house — for just $200,000 or so?
(6) Will Brady explain his role in the plot to oust Chicago GOP Chair Eloise Gerson for demanding an investigation into the misconduct of Lee Roupas as Cook County GOP Chair? We’ve been told that Brady was in on the plan to oust Gerson from the beginning, and it was a plan hatched by Roupas and Rose to unseat Gerson and allow the Chicago Young Republicans social club to effectively become the de facto Cook County GOP organization…a violation of the charters of both organizations/
(7) Does Brady have a statement to make regarding why Jeremy Rose was paid a large salary by the Cook County GOP to serve as “Executive Director”, while not performing any job duties in that position, and instead devoted himself to being president of the Chicago Young Republicans (which was supposed to be a volunteer, unpaid position). The scam Rose and Roupas concocted was for the GOP to find a way to pay Rose to be president of the CYRS…and organization that Rose has been accused of using as a meat market to find women (and men) to do with as he pleased. That means the Illinois GOP paid a man who has been accused of being a sexual predator to devote himself to the organization in which he found his prey.
(8) Pursuant to the above, does Brady think it is good policy for the GOP to pay a man to remain in a position in which he has been accused of abusing women…and should GOP donors pony up the cash to see this happen?
What other questions can you think of to ask Pat Brady?
Be respectful to him, because he’s someone we used to respect immensely — but the way he has handled the whole Lee Roupas scandal has been very disappointing. Especially since the financial side of all of this is now coming out and it appears the GOP’s funds were used to maintain an environment where one sexual predator was allowed to continuously abuse women, all with Pat Brady’s direct knowledge.
Brady has a lot to answer for…and we hope you call in tonight to ask some of these questions.
CALL IN NUMBER: 312-591-8900
SECOND UPDATE: GOP IL Chairman Pat Brady calls us "a bunch of fucking faggots"
This is incredibly disturbing news — but we have it confirmed from three separate sources.
This weekend, GOP Illinois Chairman Pat Brady – a man we have long admired, and whom we worked side by side with during the 2008 McCain campaign — has called us “a bunch of fucking faggots”.
We apologize for the use of expletives, but we have it confirmed from unimpeachable sources these are Brady’s exact words. If Brady used them in public against us, then we’re not going to give him the respect of censoring them here. If Brady has this sort of potty mouth, and hatred inside him, then we are not going to do him any favors by blunting his words now.
Just like the Obama White House does with anything bad that it does, Brady is attempting to blame the growing scandal Lee Roupas, GOP Cook County Chair, is involved in on us…and Democrats in Chicago.
Pat Brady needs to be removed from his post as IL GOP Chair. We hope you will help us in the coming week to make sure this happens. Lee Roupas should have been fired on July 16th, 2010 for lying to committeemen in an email regarding his involvement in this coverup, but Brady chose to protect Roupas, because Roupas is favored highly by multimillionare cougar Beth Christie, the woman who REALLY controls the Illinois GOP.
Language like this from a GOP Chair in any state is unacceptable. He would certainly be fired if he referred to anyone as “fucking niggers”, so calling us “fucking faggots” at an event this weekend should not be allowed either. It is beyond ridiculous to blame us for this scandal when it was Lee Roupas’ attack on truthteller Eloise Gerson that brought Brady’s house of cards tumbling down.
It’s amusing to us that Pat Brady feels this way, since we “fucking faggots”, to use his terminology, were certainly useful and good enough to be deployed for McCain campaign activities back in 2008. When we were of use to him, he lavished praise…but when we join the ever growing chorus for a detailed investigation into the conduct of Lee Roupas, Brady’s protege and protectee, we’re called “fucking faggots”.
This is not the Pat Brady we knew in 2008. This is not the Pat Brady we admired. This is a despicable man who has thrown everything he has into protecting other vile, despicable men like Lee Roupas and “The Prophet”. Illinois deserves better than this.
Ever since Eloise Gerson called for an investigation into the coverup Lee Roupas was engaged in regarding the attempted date rape allegations leveled against the Cook County GOP employee known to us as “The Prophet”, we’ve learned that Pat Brady has been industriously trying to squash this story instead of getting into the truth.
Mitt Romney’s nascent 2012 campaign, the Bill Brady for Governor, and the Mark Kirk for Senate campaigns are all involved in this…as the men who are striving to protect Lee Roupas overlap with the Romney, Brady, and Kirk teams perfectly. They are protecting their own in Roupas, and doing everything they can to destroy the people who are demanding an investigation into the truth.
They might as well be Obama Democrats, the way they are behaving.
Lee Roupas tried to force Eloise Gerson out of her position for asking for an investigation. Lee Roupas lied about when he received the information contained in the complaint against “The Prophet”, and in a July 16th, 2010 memo to GOP committeemen Roupas deliberately obfuscated and misrepresented the truth, claiming with great deceit that he did not “receive” this information until Gerson presented it.
We secured affidavits, which The Huffington Post published, that prove Roupas lied in that July 16th email. That alone should be grounds for his firing.
Ever since Gerson blew the whistle on all of this, Pat Brady has been working to save Lee Roupas – and to arrange a deal where “The Prophet” loses his Cook County GOP job, but then assumes a highly paid position as a GOP consultant here in Chicago…while maintaining his control of the Chicago Young Republicans social networking organization — which saves the Illinois GOP a fortune since “The Prophet” uses these young Republicans as non-paid campaign and office staff to support Lee Roupas.
It is the very definition of an incestuous relationship.
Behind the scenes, Pat Brady is being controlled by Beth Christie, a multimillionaire cougar who is the Illinois GOP’s #1 donor. Christie has told Brady to protect “The Prophet” and Lee Roupas at all costs, as these two young men are favorites of hers. The Illinois GOP is essentially bankrupt. Christie has been writing checks JUST large enough to keep it afloat, and to make payroll. She is VERY careful with the amounts of money she gives…always enough to keep the lights on, but never enough for the GOP to tell her to go to Hell (where she belongs), and end her control over them.
Beth Christie is the largest donor the GOP has ever had in Illinois. She knows it, and also knows she owns the party here the way she owns her many beautiful cars, her ridiculously posh residences, and all of her other toys.
This is a cougar with a vagina as insatiable as a Tatooine Sarlacc. Nothing escapes its gaping maw, and no man in the Illinois GOP, apparently, is able to stand up to whatever it desires. Take such a cougar, give it unlimited financial resources, and set it loose in the Illinois GOP and welcome to the mess we’re in now.
We are incredibly disappointed in Pat Brady today. No matter how much Beth Christie’s money and/or vagina means to the GOP in Illinois, it’s despicable that he chose to call us “fucking faggots”.
We know that politics is a bloodsport, and that it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
But, Brady has taken zero ownership for the scandal rocking the GOP in Illinois…a scandal completely of his own making. To try to claim that “a bunch of fucking faggots is behind all of this”, and point to us, is just ridiculous.
Maybe we should have published that complaint against “The Prophet” detailing an attempted date rape upon a CYR member back in June of 2009 when we received it on July 1st, 2009. We didn’t because we thought the GOP would take care of this internally…and not promote “The Prophet” to a ridiculously high-paying position, without even bringing up the complaint in his interview, all because one lonely, sad, ridiculously wealthy cougar wanted her “Cuddles” to have a big-boy job.
Brady allowed one woman — Beth Christie — to essentially buy the Republican Party in Illinois and turn it into her personal play thing.
When Eloise Gerson, on June 11th, 2010, demanded an investigation into the dangerous frat party Lee Roupas was running in Cook County, Pat Brady worked with Lee Roupas, under the Sarlacc’s orders, to attack the truthtellers.
Lee Roupas declared open war against Eloise Gerson for bringing all of this to light. We have learned that Pat Brady approved that plan to attack Gerson, and to do anything possible to make sure the truth in all of this never came to light.
We would have never reported on any of this, if not for Lee Roupas trying to remove Gerson from her position.
So, if Brady wants to pull an Obama and blame this on anyone, he needs to look at Lee Roupas, not us.
And, while he is at it, if he wants to call anyone a “fucking faggot”, then Pat Brady needs to speak those words to Mark Kirk.
He is the absolute gayest man in any room he enters. He is the Republican Party’s Liberace. If anyone is a “fucking faggot”, to use Pat Brady’s own words, it is the closeted liar the GOP is running for the Senate in Illinois. A man who won’t come out because he’s using his reservist experience in the military as a crutch to get him elected, and admitting what a “fucking faggot” he is, to use Brady’s words, would mean he’d be discharged under DADT. This is all further complicated by the fact that hypocrite Kirk is AGAINST a repeal of DADT, when he is a gay man in uniform in the US military, actively speaking against allowing his fellow gay men and women to serve openly.
The GOP in Illinois is an absolute train wreck.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Today we begin a call for the immediate removal of Pat Brady as the Illinois GOP Chair.
We demand the removal of Lee Roupas as the Cook County GOP Chair, and the removal of “The Prophet” as the president of the Chicago Young Republicans organization.
We demand an investigation into the influence Beth Christie, and the Elizabeth K. Christie Foundation, has exerted over the GOP in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other states in which Beth Christie has decided to cultivate, groom, and protect her dangerous boytoys.
We want the GOP to clean house…and to make Illinois an example of just how far the party will go to make sure voters have a clear, ethical, distinction between corrupt Democrats, Obama, and what the Republican Party CLAIMS it is all about.
We “fucking faggots”, as Pat Brady has called us, are never going to let this go.
We have an interview booked today with one of the Big Three networks. We are going to be talking ALL ABOUT Beth Christie and what she has done to the party in this state, as well as how it feels to be called “fucking “faggots” by someone we admired greatly.
If you do not approve of the way the Obama Administration blames all of its colossal failings on Bush, then you should not accept Pat Brady’s attempts to blame his mistakes, and the coverup Lee Roupas engineered, on Democrats…or on us here at HillBuzz.
Many of you read us in states far away from Illinois, or in foreign countries, and you might wonder what this expanding soap opera has to do with you.
It matters because cleaning up the GOP in Illinois, the most corrupt of American states, is the first step in taking back this county. Voters WANT to boot Democrats from office, but believe there is no alternative.
Pat Brady, Lee Roupas, “The Prophet”, and Beth Christie discourage Americans from supporting the GOP…because they are just as bad, if not worse, than Democrats most days.
We all deserve better.
And, on a personal note, if you object to use being called “fucking faggots” by anyone, then we ask of you — we IMPLORE YOU — as our friends to stand up for us this week and let Pat Brady and the RNC know that you are not going to sit for a GOP State Chair using this sort of discriminatory and vile language against ANYONE.
We will always respect Pat Brady for the work he did in 2008…but our opinionof him has changed irrevocably as we’ve watched him desperately cover (in ludicrous and poor fashion) for Lee Roupas in this scandal.
Roupas was supposed to be a future Congressman or Senator, and it was supposed to be “his turn” some day soon…so the Illinois GOP has been protecting him as a member of that “it’s his turn” farm team…the one Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and the rest of that cucumber-and-mayonnaoise Soggy Sandwich Society belongs to.
But, Roupas has ended his career by lying…and getting caught…and attacking a woman who demanded an investigation into the young ladies being abused in the Chicago Young Republicans organization.
For all intents and purposes, Pat Brady has now ended his political career as well.
That breaks our “fucking faggot” hearts, but the reality is that Pat Brady was in on this coverup from the very beginning…and he must be held accountable for that if the GOP is to have any credibility at all in this state.
A little soap for his own “fucking” mouth sure wouldn’t hurt, either.
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UPDATE 8/1/10 1616hrs:
Some of you have been asking how we know Pat Brady called us “those fucking faggots”. Two days ago, Brady was trying to explain to a very wealthy conservative here in Illinois why the party was imploding because of things Lee Roupas has been doing in Cook County. That conversation was relayed to us because Brady’s performance was not only so unconvincing, but was deplorable.
Brady lied repeatedly to this big donor, and said that Roupas has done nothing wrong, despite:
(1) Lying about when he received the complaint against “The Prophet” (he says it wasn’t until June of 2010, but the affidavits and emails HuffPo has posted show he knew back in July of 2009, before he hired “The Prophet”). This lie includes sending the July 16th, 2010 email to the GOP committeemen under his Chair that told them he did not receive this complaint until after June 11th, 2010 — when he knew that to be false, and did that to coverup the fact that he never launched an investigation into what “The Prophet” was doing to women…but hired him anyway, because multimillionaire cougar Beth Christie told him to.
(2) Launching a scheme to oust Eloise Gerson from her post as Chicago GOP Chair when she demanded an investigation into why “The Prophet” was never investigated for what’s written in the complaint, and why the complaint never came up in his job interview
Both of the above are reasons Lee Roupas should be fired. Yesterday.
Instead of dealing with this, Brady decided to attack the people who have brought this story forward, and that includes us (as well as Eloise Gerson…whom Brady said would be “destroyed”, and that after the November elections she would be removed from her position).
Brady told this wealthy conservative that “this is all because of those fucking faggots. They are behind all this”. Meaning us, we presume.
But, who knows, he could have meant Mark Kirk being up to something.
Or Aaron Schock.
If someone in the GOP shouts “fucking faggot” in a room, about five dozen heads would turn around. It’s like shouting the same thing at Sidetracks. Only, you’d probably get at least a cosmo tossed in your face, and more likely than not have your face pounded.
Since Brady launched his nukes, we’re going to invoke Godwin’s Law here and say that today we feel like the Jews who get blamed for all the mistakes of others and the bad decisions of people in power. Brady had a meltdown, saw his lies failing him, and finds it increasingly harder every day to justify everything he is doing to save Lee Roupas.
So, backed against the wall, with this big conservative (and rumored homophobe) demanding an explanation (and with no Jews handy), Brady decided to blame “the fucking faggots”.
We’ll note again here that we could have made trouble with this complaint back in July of 2009 if we wanted. We don’t like “The Prophet” and have dozens of reasons for wanting to see him get his just desserts. But we never reported on any of this…not until Lee Roupas tried to orchestrate the removal of Eloise Gerson for speaking out about what was going on…and then later when Roupas sent that email directly lying to his committeemen about what was happening.
So, “fucking faggots” are not to blame for any of this.
Lee Roupas is to blame for this mess.
Pat Brady is to blame for this mess, for aiding and abetting Roupas.
Beth Christie is to blame for this mess, for demanding all the quid pro quos for her mammoth donations that caused all of these problems.
Don’t shoot the messengers…especially not just because they were gay…and especially not because they are the same gays you found so useful in the past when you wanted to seem inclusive and dynamic.
Please watch FOX & Friends this morning: Bettina, Gloria Alred, and others will be discussing We Will Not Be Silenced and the 2008 Democrat Primary Fraud committed by Obama
FOX & Friends will be featuring our friend Bettina, producer of the film We Will Not Be Silenced 2008. Gloria Alred will also be on to talk about the fraud she witnessed, and what the Clinton supporters did, in vain, to try to get the Media to pay attention to what Obama was doing to steal the nomination.
FOX has actually booked us, TWICE, to be on this show to talk about what we witnessed, too, but we’ve been bumped both times. We’ve gotten bumped from Neil Cavuto, Hannity, and Greta in the past too — so that’s just how the business works. We almost hate to mention when we are booked on these shows, because then you tune in and they’ve changed their minds. Again.
But, as far as we know, tomorrow at 8am sometime there will be another round of coverage on We Will Not Be Silenced.
Please record it if you can, and put into into video format on YouTube for us so that we can see it. Without access to cable, we’d appreciate your help in catching Bettina and Gloria talking about all the undemocratic things the Democrat party did in 2008.
Sunday Open Thread: August 1st, 2010
What’s on your minds this Sunday?
What is happening in your part of the country?
What are you doing this weekend to drive the Left crazy?
