New Albany DVD: It may well depend on the pocket being picked

Cash strapped New Albany’s bungling attempts to prevent New Albany DVD from opening were laughed out of court, and now the adult store’s lawyer offers settlement options for the city to consider as the store readies for opening.

The Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg writes that the City Council remains divided over its response to the settlement options, which range from allowing the store to go about its business to buying it out with cash the city doesn’t possess.

Self-styled majority whip Dan Coffey, the Wizard of Westside, predictably seizes center stage in the article by Hershberg:

“His own view, Coffey said, is that decisions about New Albany DVD shouldn't be only based on dollars and cents but should include the consideration of much broader issues, such as moral values and future economic development.”

Hershberg fails to identify any intelligible strand in Coffey’s relentless demagoguery on the issue of New Albany DVD that might pertain to economic development, other than the potential precedent of the city buying out any business that doesn’t fit Coffey’s narrow definition of “moral.”

At last evening’s City Council meeting, ostensible Coffey ally of convenience David Huckleberry devoted his public speaking time to a vision of economic redevelopment that promotes the passive incorporation of the city’s river port heritage into a Native American interpretive center.

This would take precedence over current proposals to build a youth soccer complex, which both Huckleberry and Coffey evidently fear will be the taxpayer-supported bastion of eggheaded, upper-income privilege, whereas an interpretive center (funded how?) would siphon large numbers of revelers headed for Caesar’s casino, allowing New Albany to “pick their pockets.”

The “morality” of picking pockets? How remarkably quaint.

Well, we’ve got news for both Huckleberry and Coffey: New Albany’s heritage as a port city has far more to do with brothels, bars and New Albany DVD than it does with the crazily futile notion of diverting gambling-obsessed, Caesar’s-bound drivers to a celebration of Native Americana.

But how silly of us to forget that it's not about morality and economic development at all. It's about "no progress at any price" on the one hand, and "self-aggrandizement at any price" on the other.

Adult video store offers to settle; New Albany given four options to suit, by Ben Zion Hershberg