20/20 Vision Kicks Off

CinWeekly has a nice artcle on the start of 20/20. For the full story on the 20/20 arts festival, check out www.20days20nights.com for more.

What Are They Thinking?

[UPDATE: 9/25/2008]: The post to which the following refers has been deleted from the Hamilton County GOP Blog without comment. Since Triantafilou is relatively new to the blogosphere, perhaps people will overlook this serious breach of blogger etiquette (generally, it is understood that one does not delete posts--updating or editing for typos is fine--in this manner). I've no idea whether our post here has anything to do with the deletion.

Via Alex Triantafilou's blog, we learn that the HamCo Republican Party is recommending a "no" vote on Issue 8, which would amend the City Charter to force voting by proportional representation in City Council elections. The official statement from the local GOP:

The Hamilton County Republican Party has historically stood against proportional representation as a method of electing members of city council. The most important factors identified by the Republican Party in opposing this measure is the confusion in how the system operates and the cost associated with implementation. After vigorous debate and discussion, our Party is urging a vote of "NO" on Issue 8.

(Emphasis mine.) Why on earth would the GOP highlight its "historical" position on PR? Whoever drafted this statement for the GOP should either resign his or her post or be asked to step aside. It's one of two things: it's either historically unaware at best, or extraordinarily insensitive at worst.

Before I explain why, let me make sure I'm not misunderstood. In November, people of various political stripes will take various positions on PR. That's why you see rather odd bedfellows like the NAACP, COAST, and the Cincinnati Business Journal supporting the measure. Some people will decide it's a great idea. Others will decide it's not. Neither decision makes a person or group inherently bad or good, inherently racist or not, or inherently democratic or undemocratic. People of good conscience can surely disagree over Issue 8. In fact, while I'm currently leaning towards believing PR is a good idea, I may vote against Issue 8 for an entirely different reason.

Having said that, the history of opposition to PR in this city is not pretty. According to the most complete account I've seen of the 1957 repeal, the motives for the repeal effort were downright racist. Here's how a paper posted on Mt. Holyoke's website describes the situtation:

In Cincinnati, race was the dominant theme in the successful 1957 repeal effort. The single transferable vote had allowed African Americans to be elected for the first time, with two blacks being elected to the city council in the 1950s. The nation was also seeing the first stirrings of the Civil Rights movement and racial tensions were running high. PR opponents shrewdly decided to make race an explicit factor in their repeal campaign. They warned whites that PR was helping to increase black power in the city and asked them whether they wanted a "Negro mayor." Their appeal to white anxieties succeeded, with whites supporting repeal by a two to one margin.

Let me be perfectly clear: I do not believe that today's HamCo GOP is motivated by racism in encouraging a rejection of PR. But why would the GOP embrace a history of which it should not be proud?

Neither of the two major parties in this nation has a terrific record regarding racism. While the Democratic Party now trumpets civil rights, this hasn't always been the case. Take the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Dems typically will be willing to talk about the shameful acts that occurred outside the convention that year. What we don't talk about, however, is the shame visited upon our party inside the convention. Just forty years ago, Democratic delegates from Georgia left the convention in protest because the DNC seated a racially integrated delegation from Mississippi. That happened within the lifespan of the majority of Americans. Have we--as a party and a nation--come a long way since then? Absolutely. But need we always be mindful of this terrible part of our history? Absolutely.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should vote against Republicans or Republican positions on the basis of things that happened 50 years ago. I am concerned, though, when party leaders--be they Republican, Democratic, or of any other stripe--make statements that demonstrate a lack of awareness of our roots, both as parties and as a nation. The historical opposition to PR is not something for anyone in this City of be proud of or to embrace, and I hope the local GOP will amend its position to make its current motives for rejecting PR clear.

MPMF Tomorrow!!!!

I realize there's a big banner at the top of this blog advertising Midpoint Music Festival (but for those of you who, like me, ignore banners) Midpoint is Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Complete schedule can be found here. I hadn't realized it was this week until I saw Griff's post about Javier's joining the fray, and went to check the full schedule.

At the very least I'll go to Javier's Friday or Saturday, and hopefully will do much more than that. This should be a great weekend downtown and across the river, so please support the bands involved and come on down.

Right Here in OTR

Jason at Somewhere Over-the-Rhine knocks it out of the park with his take on the ill perceptions of OTR perpetuated by the media and the ignorant suburbanites who haven't been near OTR or Downtown ever in their lives, outside of a Red's or Bengal's game. Jason hits on a topic that I've been seeing for a while and have had in the back of my mind for a long time as a topic to blog about. It deasl with where the perception problem of Cincinnati comes from. It comes from the Native Cincinnatians that never left Cincinnati and are now living outside of the urban core. They don't travel a lot, they spend time in their closed off social networks, socializing only with high school or maybe college friends. They are ignorant and allow themselves to be sucked in by what ever the media says. Hell, if we trusted the media, we would think no crime ever happens in West Chester. When crime does happen there, or in Milford, or in Morrow, we don't hear those areas labeled at all. I wonder why.

[Hat Tip to Just Past Central]

Rocking for Obama on Fountain Square

A huge event will hit the square next on Octber 16th, when The National and The Breeders will do a free show from 5 to 9 PM. This is a rally in support of Barak Obama, so look for other political speakers to appear. Also, since this is going to likely be open to the public, look out for the brownshirts trying to disrupt it or try to make it look like the Dems are being disruptive.

Driehaus--Chabot, Neck and Neck

The Blogging Pros at Talking Points Memo have the link to polling for the 1st and 2nd Districts in Ohio:

"A new set of SurveyUSA polls in Ohio show Dems poised to pick up two out of four contested GOP-held district. In the First District, incumbent Rep. Steve Chabot (R) is holding a small lead over challenger Steve Driehaus (D) 46%-44%. In the Second District, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) is holding an 8-point lead over challenger Victoria Wulsin (D) 48%-40%."

It has been months since a poll came out and this is great news for Driehaus. Look for money to be dropped into this race right now and for a big blitz to unseat Chabot by the Dems.

It looks like a much tougher hill for Wulsin to climb. The poll there doesn't mention the impact of the Independent conservative (Krikorian) in the race, however, which should be an impact to Schmidt, who has a very high negative with some conservatives.

Local TV Thread

Kate of KRM blogs on her favorite television shows. I have to admit, I kind of had a blog crush on her (there's a good definition of "blog crush" here) until I learned of her passion for Dancing with the Stars and Desperate Housewives. She may have won me back with her fondness for Amazing Race. And like her, I enjoy watching Christina Applegate in Samantha Who?, though I suspect for entirely different reasons (hey....I'm a 34 year-old American male....I grew up watching Married With Children! And having grown up in Buffalo, I have to love a woman who agreed to star in a sitcom set in that ill-fated city.).

All that is my long-winded way of introducing a discussion topic: what's your favorite local show or TV personality? And who's your least favorite? There is, of course, precious little local programming any more, but there's some. For that matter, who are your favorite all-time Cincinnati television personalities, including folks who aren't on TV anymore?

My own favorites? I like Newsmakers. I think Dan Hurley does a pretty good job. And even though I disagreed with him (and many of you) about the Bodies exhibit (he thought it was excellent), I thought he provided a great forum for both sides to be heard. Frankly, I wish WKRC would give him a full hour. Sometimes he jumps the shark on me (for instance, when he did a couple of shows on naturalism and showed pictures of birds the whole time...yawn). But overall, he's an asset to local television journalism. I also dig Bob Herzog, but that may just be my bias in favor of lawyers.

Least favorites? One name immediately springs to mind: Dave Lapham. Maybe I'd like him more if I'd grown up in Cincinnati and was a Bengals fan when he played. But seeing him on TV and listening to him on the radio fuels one reaction: change the channel!

Finally: I guess I shouldn't make fun of others' TV viewing habits too much. The other night, I found myself switching back and forth between two television shows: Live from Lincoln Center (the NY Philharmonic with James Galway) and The Ultimate Fighter, watching each with equal rapture. Yes, something's seriously wrong with me.

So please, weigh in with your local TV favorites, as well as you diagnoses of my psychological profile based on my confessed viewing patterns.