Lighting up the BS detector
BY PHILLIPE & JORGE
Think politicians and connected former pols don't agree with former
Channel 12 program director Bob Finke's assessment that you're dumb as shit?
P&J point, of course, to two of the more preposterous events of the past
week: the lying like a rug by Bob Carl, the Missing Linc's director of
administration, about his role in the Johnny Hardwood-Wendy Collins scandal,
and the Rhode Island Convention Authority subsidizing a hotel project proposed
by the odious Vinny "Family Man" Mesolella. As a state rep from Nawt Prov, the
latter punk was a professional toady for House Speaker Hardwood, and he's
renowned for attempting to extort the state to buy his property by draining the
pond.
The colleagues of "Doctor" Carl -- who, we would suspect, has his Ph.D. in
prevarication --- have disputed virtually everything he has said about helping
Pucky avoid Collins's sexual harassment charges. Even the normally reserved
Urinal suggested he was doing it to get a job or cushy pension deal through the
speaker. Now not very likely, eh, Bob? How soon before your crony legal eagles
Eric Sweet and Sam DiSano desert your sinking ship to preserve their own sorry
asses? And to think this is the man who Bigfoot tried to sneak in the back door
to become president of URI.
Meanwhile, as far as Mesolella goes, one might want to check out the bid specs
that Vinny got from the Convention Center Authority for the hotel deal. As
anyone with even a cursory knowledge of state bidding processes knows, it's a
piece of cake to write specifications to fit someone's proposal to a T -- all
they have to do is know what the chosen bidder will propose in writing.
Meanwhile, authority chairman Dominic Ragosta told the BeloJo that
hotel-financing entities want developers to invest at least 50 percent of the
cost. In this case, none of the bidders did. So this means that we're all
subsidizing some Federal Hillbilly's windfall through the Convention Center's
backing of Family Man. Why not simply cancel the bid, and keep putting it out
until the state finds a developer to agree to the acceptable risk?
Wonder which suite Ragosta will be able to get as a comp, anytime he wants, to
spend the night with a friend?
A little traveling music
Walking down the road wit' a ratchet in your waist, Johnny you're
too bad.
This lyric from the song, "Johnny Too Bad" on The Harder They Come movie
soundtrack has been running through P&J's collective consciousness since
Madelyne Toogood got caught whaling the bejesus out of her four-year-old
daughter in a Kmart parking lot and became the poster Mom for child abuse.
Madelyne, you're too bad.
Although her last name is an absurd fabrication of the band of Irish
Travellers she supposedly belongs to with her husband, this angle did call up a
long-ago tale of Phillipe's. As most now know, "Travellers," be they the Irish
or Scottish equivalent of Romanian Gypsies, are notorious scam artists, often
offering to "seal" your roof or driveway with tar, which just happens to be
black paint or cheap oil that washes away in the next rainstorm. Phillipe first
encountered Travellers 25 years ago in the bar of a Holiday Inn in Columbus,
Ohio. (Well, Christ, what did you expect, the King Cole Room at the St. Regis
Hotel in Manhattan?) The two "cousins" regaled your superior correspondent with
tales of flummoxing Midwestern hicks while en route to their "family reunion"
in Kentucky, quite pleased with their ability to run a line of shit past
unsuspecting citizens.
As it turned out, Phillipe was reconnoitering the next day with one of his
best buddies, Jim McGlynn, then working as a TV producer en route from the
Kentucky Derby. Jim was set to produce the American Soccer League's
championship game in Columbus that weekend on ESPN, with Phillipe working as
the color commentator. Intrigued by the tale, and since Mr. McJim is much
smarter and sharper than his pal, he turned the secondhand story, abetted by a
ton of background research and scriptwriting angst, into the excellent movie,
Traveller, starring Bill Paxton, Julianna Margulies, and Mark "Marky
Mark" Wahlberg, which has one of the best soundtracks you'll ever hear.
Thus do chance encounters lead to your cinematic and musical entertainment.
Although the movie incorporates the violence that characterizes the Travellers'
life on the edge, it didn't quite include the pathos of Ms. Toogood's child
beating (to be true for fictional purposes). As they say, you couldn't make it
up.
Moratorium, please
After a quick gander at the BeloJo's front page on Tuesday, October 1, your
superior correspondents have finally had enough and are calling on all
candidates for public office to observe a moratorium on the use of the word
"change" until Election Day. If you haven't already lined the birdcage with
that A section, check out the brief quotes under the photos of those state reps
oppose Johnny Deadwood's reelection as speaker. Although responses were limited
to one or two sentences each, five of the respondents managed to work "change"
into their statements. At least Paul Crowley (D-Newport) got a little creative,
referring to it being "time to chart a new course."
As amateur statisticians, P&J, fully expecting that most candidates will
reject our moratorium call, hope to count how many times a candidate uses the
word change. We're just speculating, but we'll bet in House races in particular
there will be a very strong correlation between years of service and mentions
of "change." In other words, Paul Moura, (D-Providence), who has been in the
legislature since 1984, will be using "change" about twice as often as Peter
Palumbo, (D-Cranston), who's been there only since 1994.
Of course, all the incumbents clamoring for "change" want you to know that
replacing them is not really change because, because, because . . . well, just
because.
Gene Booth has left the building (but not the struggle)
P&J find it difficult to digest the retirement of Gene Booth, executive
director of the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights for the past 18 years.
A true titan in the civil rights community and a mentor to countless other
human rights workers, community activists, and advocates for justice and
dignity, Gene is also one of the warmest, most gregarious men about town that
La Prov has ever known. It seems that everyone knows and loves Gene.
Last Friday, October 27, a huge crowd descended on the Johnson & Wales Inn
in Seekonk to send the man off in style. We bumped into Democratic mayoral
primary victor David Cicilline in the corridor. He had a half-dozen other
engagements to attend, but was overheard saying, "Now this is a party I'd like
to be staying at."
And indeed, in attendance was a group of some of P&J's favorite Vo
Dilunduhs: Casby Harrison, Julie Smith, Walter Stone, Christine Roundtree, Luis
Aponte and Gwen Andrade, Michael Evora, Julie Pell, Bill Clifton, George Nee,
and many, many more. There was funk and jazz courtesy of Roy Ayers and his
group, gushing speeches, and even some salty tales from Dr. Richard Fairley,
one of Gene's longtime buddies and Dartmouth basketball teammates. After a
number of heartfelt salutes, Fairley opened with, "I've been listening to all
this and wondering . . . are we talking about Gene Booth here?"
While he's retiring from this particular job, you can bet that Gene will
continue to serve the causes of truth, justice, and human dignity. Don't be a
stranger, Gene. The next round is on us.
GOP rumble
We were taken aback to see a story on the front page of the University of Rhode
Island's The Good 5 Cent Cigar, describing a September 27 "altercation"
on the steps of the URI library involving students, South County Republican
candidates, and URI campus police. Add this to last week's smack-down involving
East Greenwich and North Kingstown high school co-eds. Can the headline,
"Catfight: Nuala Pell vs. Eileen Slocum", be far behind?
It seems that the confrontation involved a sophomore, Omar Awad, who was
apparently heckling state Senate candidate Anna Prager and calling her an
"asshole." Nice form, Omar. Awad claimed that Jan Prager, Anna's husband,
started loudly demanding that he leave the press conference. Prager then
allegedly approached Awad and gave him a shove.
Aides to some of the candidates reportedly restrained Prager while someone
else "got in Awad's face," according to the Cigar reporter Chris Keegan.
When a Cigar photographer attempted to take pictures at the scene, Larry
Ehrhardt, a candidate running for the District 32 House seat now held by Eileen
Naughton, allegedly covered the photographer's lens with his hand and followed
her, obstructing the view, so that she wouldn't be able to photograph the
incident. Nice work, Larry. Joe Goebbels would have been proud.
More confusion: Matt Ulricksen, executive director of the state Republican
Party, said a complaint had been filed against Awad, but URI police said no
complaints had been filed. The alleged big bad aggressor, Jan Prager, is more
Don Knotts than Hulk Hogan. The mild-mannered, slight, and bespectacled Mr.
Prager (head ramrod of the Cornish Horrors, a local chapter of an international
Sherlock Holmes study group) seems one of the unlikeliest provocateurs of all
time. But who knows? Once one has doffed his hound's tooth cloak and changed to
macho Republican togs, anything can happen.
Kudos and congrats . . .
. . . to acting Mayor John J. Lombardi and his team over at Providence
City Hall. They are slowly, but surely, taking the hard steps that need to be
made, reinstating accountability, restoring confidence, and making (as Lombardi
told P&J when we recently bumped into him) "the common sense decisions."
Providence is fortunate to have someone with the ability and temperament of
John Lombardi at this time.
. . . to US Senators Linc Chafee and Jack Reed. As with Senators Pell and the
late John Chafee, Vo Dilun defies the odds, once again, with two of the most
thoughtful and enlightened members of the United States Senate. Linc, for
courageously standing firm against the Bush Administration and demanding a
better explanation before committing himself to the Iraq war plan, and Jack,
who has been named by The Library Journal as its "2002 Politician of the
Year" for his longtime championing of libraries, schools, and museums
throughout the country (but particularly here in the Biggest Little).
Send whiskey and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com.
Issue Date: October 4 - 10, 2002
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