Steve Price pontificates on “rape” as New Albany’s women ask: Just how in the hell would you know anything about it?

Tuesday update: Further council meeting coverage.

New Albany Today blog: City Council Meeting or Monday Night Fights Round One.
Courier-Journal: Sewer-rate increase advances.

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There isn’t enough time at present to do last night’s marathon council meeting justice, but I’ll note that that the first readings of ordinances designed to juggle various monies that for the most part haven’t even entered the city’s cigar box, and for the express purpose of lessening the amount of a sewer rate increase that remains inevitable, passed on successive a 5-4 votes, appeasing the “no progress at any price” bloc on the council at the potential expense of making mincemeat of future projects.

There’ll be more on this topic later today, and as this is a developing story, I’ll turn instead to the saga of the 3rd District’s scentless apprentice, Steve Price, and a council performance that proved beyond any remaining doubt that CM Price is entirely overmatched in office.

Many are the times when literate, thinking people have cringed, clenched their teeth and wanted to scream at the sheer, ceaseless inanity and the countless malapropisms that flow from Price just like the craven lies springing from the America’s highest ranking Republican traitor, Karl Rove – and last night, I gave in to the temptation.

And I hadn’t even been drinking.

It came when CM Price – in a bit of calculated grandstanding as choreographed and shameless as any that has yet emanated from the proximity of his scheming mentor, CM Dan Coffey (“that’s my student,” nodded the Wizard in obvious approval) – was indulging in his usual hillbilly inflected yammering about nickels, dimes, conspiracies and the injustice of any proposed rate increase, anything, anywhere or anytime, suddenly spun to face a surprisingly scant crowd, looked for the red light on Ms. Bolovschak’s iconic video camera, and yelled, “people are being raped.”

Well, I’ll admit it. Nothing gripes my cookies more than listening to clueless males who’ve not experienced violent, invasive and humiliating criminal acts blithely trivializing them in a way as pathetically patronizing as the councilman’s, and so I yelled back, twice referring to CM Price as a moron, and adding that the use of the term “rape” in such a context is an outrage.

That’s because it is an outrage.

For CM Price to compare a sewer rate increase to "rape" is sufficiently insensitive and patently idiotic to stand on its own merits, but I do regret calling him a moron, because to do so was to insult the otherwise good intentions of non-office-holding nitwits who don't have an excuse but are harmless.

The council’s President, Jeff Gahan, gaveled me down -- exactly as he should have done, but what was especially ridiculous was hearing women like Erika and her thisclose patrician handler actually applauding CM Price’s asinine utterance – something that you'd expect any woman would think long and hard about before doing.

Maybe not Ann Coulter, though.

The undisputed reign of error that has been CM Price’s tenure on the council may be the source of much pleasure at his conjoined councilman Coffey’s barbecued bologna and Tupperware snackfests, and it’s undeniable that the Dim Bulb of Dewey Heights delights the plotters over at Coup d’ Geriatrique headquarters, where one of their own oddly failed to read newspaper coverage of his own demolition ordinance, and thus missed a crucial reminder of his legislation’s meaninglessness.

Needless to say, when CM Price mumbled an unconvincing “apology” for using the word “rape,” and substituted “getting screwed” as though the latter were acceptable, he served notice that a return to the full-time drudgery of rental property management should be foremost in the minds of all decent 3rd District residents come next year’s election cycle.

Stay tuned. Bluegill will be here later on Tuesday with more.