Who’s paying? The PPL has the bucks to hire an anti-union consultant

As Phillipe & Jorge’s friends at the Providence Public Library (the workers, not the administration) inform us, there will be a mass rally at the library on Wednesday, August 31, to support the good folks’ union drive. The National Labor Relations Board-supervised election is scheduled for Wednesday, September 8.

According to the workers, "The administration at PPL has made clear its adamant opposition to a union through meetings with staff, a barrage of memos and e-mails, and an aligning of manager and supervisory staff to the anti-union party line. As if the anti-union rhetoric wasn’t bad enough coming from the administration, we are also forced to deal with a heightened level of propaganda and textbook techniques from a hired anti-union consultant, Mark Devin of Boston (president of the Devin Group)."

As the Phoenix reported in June, the Devin Group’s home page warns: "Non-union employers should always be concerned about union organizing. Take the necessary steps to insure you can maintain a non-union environment."

Well, isn’t that special? Can you say union-basher, boys and girls? The library workers hit the nail on the head, asking, if the PPL is so cash-strapped, how can it afford to hire this kind of consultant? Jeez, PPL administrators, anti-union folks would simply hire head crackers (Sonny Liston, for one, comes to mind as a hired anti-union hand in the 1960s) to get the point across in the old days. Why the corporate road now?

Please get out and support our friends of literacy on August 31. Check out www.provlibdefense.org for more info.

BUBBLE TROUBLE

The Boy in the Bubble (". . . and the baby with the baboon’s heart"), as used by Maureen Dowd and then picked up on by Frank Rich in the pages of the New York Times, is becoming the vogue way to describe Dubya Bush. (Speaking of Rich, why was his usual syndicated article in the Urinal spiked this past Sunday? Was it because of his steady abuse of Boy George’s troop of chicken hawks, with the latest critique headlined, "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan"? Nice to know how these decisions now appear to come from Dubya’s hired hands in Dallas at BeloJo headquarters.)

Sheehan points to the president’s public disgrace of his office, spending five weeks on vacation while our most courageous men and women die in Iraq, and he is off cycling with Lance Armstrong on the "Tour de Crawford." Meanwhile, the big news out of the vacant White House is that female impersonator Karen Hughes is finally ready — after being appointed in January — to begin her role as "under secretary of diplomacy." P&J assume "under" means she crawled out from "under" a rock, as have most of Dubya’s appointees.

Hughes is going to set up "rapid response" teams to try to rebut bad news and defend Dubya’s twisted policies worldwide. Let’s let our old friend, Secretary of State Queen Lotsateetha Rice, explain it better: Hughes’s units will "work to deal with misinformation and misinterpretation" of Bushie policies and actions, and rebut "all kinds of lies about what we were doing."

Misinformation and lies? May we suggest Mr. Karen start with her employer and save money from going abroad? We’ll see how rapid that response will be, n’est-ce pas?

BACK IN THE DAY

As noted by avid comic readers like P&J, the legendary strip Blondie, featuring Blondie (nee Boopadoop) and Dagwood Bumstead will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Created by Chic Young, and now limned by his son Dean, along with Dennis Lebrun, recent strips have shown an array of other famed comics characters arriving at Chez Bumstead for the celebration, in a nice little tribute. This reminds P&J of how one of the best friends of our youth, Chris Swan, got into a major car accident. He was the son of Curt Swan, who drew the Superman comics. About a week after the accident, while Chris was still laid up in bed, a giant card the size of a poster arrived at the house, with characters from all of the top strips of the day — including Sarge from Beetle Bailey, Dagwood, and DC and Marvel comic superheroes — all saying, "Get well, soon, Chris." Talk about a collectors’ item! (And a tip of the reminiscing beret and sombrero to our editor, Ian Donnis, whose mother last year married Hy Eisman, who draws Popeye and The Katzenjammer Kids, the oldest comic strip still in production.)

And speaking of old times, as longtime fans of the aged Rolling Stones, we must admit remorse at having to miss their gigs at Fenway Park for their "2005 Rolling Stones Depends Tour." You’ve still got it, guys — just wear baggier pants. And that Botox is doing wonders, Ron and Charlie. (No wonder that woman crawled to the top of the rafters. She was probably trying to catch up to her skin, which had a head start.)

FRINGE FESTIVAL

Could our state be having its own "fringe festival" next year? It could happen if there is any truth to the continuing rumors (no doubt coming directly from Cranston City Hall) that would-be URI president Steve "Laugh at Me" Laffey is going to challenge Linc Chafee in a US Senate primary. The fight over a half-mil in GOP national funds, detailed in a front-page story in Tuesday’s Urinal, is just the latest chapter.

Sure, national trends have shown how the GOP has generally become more and more of an extremist party, but Vo Dilun Republicans have always seemed to be more pragmatic and less rabid. Non-team player Laffey, though, is right on that extremist wavelength.

Charlie Bakst had it right in his Tuesday column when he asked how far to the right one has to be to view someone like Senator John McCain as a "moderate." We always thought that Laffey was pragmatic enough to stay out of a race that he will ultimately lose and that would create a schism in the already tiny RI GOP. But we guess that intelligent design theory, Ayn Rand-style economics, destruction of reproductive rights laws, antagonism to the separation of church, and the rest of the extremist agenda is way too important to the Laffey Ego Express.

If we see him headed down to Bob Jones University to do some fund-raising, we’ll know for sure.

VO DILUN ON FILM

Your superior correspondents, in mentioning the always-fabulous Rhode Island International Film Festival, last week noted that busy scene outside the Columbus Theatre during the premiere of Cherry Arnold’s Buddy. We suggested that the RIIFF might benefit from a bit of outside help. George Marshall, RIFF’s founder and executive director, sent us this info, via e-mail:

Thanks for the plug in the column. Must tell you that the box office and ticketing were controlled by a NYC firm this year called Nuance Entertainment. They did Nantucket and Newport Beach. They are doing the Hamptons in October.

The lines and control of those entering were done by them and frankly was impacted by a number of VIP passes that had been given out; and individuals passing them along to others in line who did not have them.

With that said, I was not overwhelmed at all, and stood back and let those under contract do their job. Was I happy with it? Not really, since we handled a sell-out for Bonhoeffer two years ago without major incident or delay; and last year’s Garden State. I think the delay for each was about 10 minutes.

We took your advice before you gave it about getting outside help and the results were less than laudatory. By the way, the other screenings of the film went like clockwork.

Thanks for the update. George. Sounds like, once again, this year’s festival was a resounding success. The genius of the festival is its commitment to independent film. One gets a much greater sense of what will be happening in five years by viewing the films presented at the RIIFF.

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