After the loving: Long live the once and future King, and pity those bar owners who know so very little.

To fully and accurately document the reason why Jeff Gahan officiously ordained the removal of my considerable bulk from last evening’s shambolic city council proceedings, one would be compelled to chronicle at length Gahan’s recent inexplicable descent into legislative incoherence and his growing, almost medieval personal animus toward anyone with the temerity to note publicly that this particular successor to King Larry seems to be wearing ever fewer articles of clothing when appearing on the street.

Or, as I observed even as I was being removed, precisely how and why Gahan has traversed the territory between onetime relevance (now been there, done that, and swapped the t-shirt with Dr. Harris) and the vicinity of the dark side – where his political mail is now delivered and presumably going unread.

At any rate, it is a task that would require far more than a minute, which after a grand spanking total of one (1) public hearing on the matter of smoking within the New Albany was all the time accorded to the numerous sincere and cooperative residents crowding into a meeting room impossibly tiny in the best of times, and utterly unsuited to the three ring circus that Gahan knowingly permitted to devolve (and deprecate) on Thursday night.

If Gahan genuinely cared about the public, which convened to oppose the city's chihuahuan smoking ban (later approved by identical 5-4 votes) to the tune of around 40 speakers to 13 (by the council’s own past standards of selectivity, far more than the minimum needed to defeat the most rock solid of rezoning proposals), the meeting would have been held in a larger room on another continent, but then it would have been necessary to actually listen.

How unspeakably tedious that would have proven, hence proceedings as usual.

What struck me was that those in attendance opposed to the smoking ban for the most part graciously accepted Gahan’s one minute solution, when they really should have asked why an issue second only in vitriol to abortion and the sad history of Southern slaveholding deserved such short shrift, but nonetheless, good natured compliance was the norm.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the professional lobbyists in the room, those for-pay consultants that the flip-flopping ban proponent Dan Coffey formerly accused of being unreliable when comapred to his own vast reserve of knowledge on matters ranging from tobacco to kitchen utensils. Perhaps for this very reason, Coffey sat stoically and mostly silently last night, gently nuzzling his Bazooka Joe divinity degree and playing championship notepad dots while the paid pros droned far past Gahan’s purely random time length meter to the council president’s purely calculated obliviousness.

Yes, but wait. Who am I -- who are we -- to question any of Jeff Gahan’s strategies and tactics? Didn’t we get the council mantra memo, which decrees that freedom of speech in New Albany is dependent on running for office and being elected? Perhaps NAC’s loyal readers should share the frequent joy experienced by this blog’s editorial team, wherein elected officials berate us and dismiss criticism both from ourselves and the electorate in the same terms that most people denigrate houseflies or maggots, under the curious dictum that we’re mere annoyances and couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to actually perform before the public for pay … or, as one of them recently put it, if a citizen has not run for office, said citizen should know enough to stay quiet, and barring that, ask for de facto permission before speaking aloud to the world.

Strange, isn’t it, how writing skill and the inability to respond in kind unnerves elected officials ... but, as always, I digress.

Meanwhile, understand that the straw finally breaking this camel’s/voter’s back was a five minute (at least) display of condescension from one of the paid lobbyists, who refrained from using science to illustrate the threat to workers posed by second hand smoke (award yourself a Gahan for Mayor '11 button if you dimly recall the time when SHS was the ostensible purpose of the ordinance, if entirely obscured by last evening’s theatrics), but instead aggressively attacked the pub owners present for knowing far less about the nature of their businesses than he and his statistics do.

Still wondering why I don’t blush when using terms like “health fascist”? Wonder no more.

I concede that this angered me. It still does. Had Gahan the simple courage to enforce his own rules (or, for that matter, the city’s), the lobbyist would have spoken far fewer words in a minute than in the five he was accorded, although to be honest, the words were tantamount to inadmissible, but then again, this is an illegally elected council that can’t or won’t redistrict itself in a city that can’t or won’t enforce its own laws, so what the hell: Consistency? That’s something they do over in them socialist countries after using the toilet, right?

There has been no eagerness to discuss the reality that those bar owners who stand to be hurt the most by the smoking ban are those who cater to a lower personal income strata, which itself is populated by more smokers than higher income levels. In short, the same people in need of protection from carnivorous slumlords are being told by Gahan and Co. that it’s more important to save them from themselves (save them from smoking in a bar) first and foremost, and then the rest of the public health issues will be addressed later – hey, trust us; we can’t pave the streets or resolve centuries-old sewer disputes, but we can publicly scoff at your vice even if it requires in excess of a minute … and, by the way, bar owners who have remained in business by knowing what their customers want mustn’t forget that an out-of-town dude in a bad suit always knows far more about the needs of their clienteles than they do.

One of our readers (I believe it was Ruthanne, but I may be mistaken) previously supplied the answer to the final piece of this bizarre puzzle in a blog comment. Bar owners, did you know that after this particular rug has been pulled from beneath your feet by the Ga-hanannies in local government, and should the unthinkable occur and your business actually close as a result of your no longer being able to cater to your customers, that when all is said and done, it was your own fault?

That’s right, guys and gals. According to the stats lovingly compiled by the suits from Indy, Atlanta and Tirana, you failed for one of two reasons. Either you were incompetent to begin with, or you were ready to retire, anyway. Get it? Before last evening, how many bar owners understood how very little they’ve ever comprehended about their own business matters? It’s a wonder you ever remained open in the first place, seeing how little you know. Must have been the conspiratorial nicotine in those butts, eh?

Don’t you feel better about yourselves now?

Sorry, but it’s all bullshit, plain and simple, and probably even Jeff Gahan and John Gonder – for that matter, even the saintly Jamey Aebersold -- know it, but in the end, science played next to no part in the smoking spectacle, which was about little more than creative sociological condescension and Gahan’s pathological eagerness to hang his political hat on it.

So, I snapped my fingers, King Jeff glared, and the animus was on. Rest assured, it will remain. I’ll let All4Word tell the rest of the story. His account is trustworthy. I was too busy trying to fathom the irony of the council president's empty seat to document the ejaculation.

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For the early a.m. record: I suspect that Mr. Baylor knew he would be "ejaculated" from the meeting, but proceeded with his protest nonetheless.

A gentleman who is paid to advocate for public health (prohibitions of smoking in enclosed public spaces) attempted to squeeze in an encyclopedia-full presentation into the mandated ONE MINUTE limit imposed.

While almost no one complied, and while President Gahan wasn't particularly vigorous in enforcing his limit, this lobbyist not only presented much information quickly, but read aloud a letter from Lexington, Ky.'s vice-mayor - a man who owns 86 non-smoking franchise restaurants.

At long last, Mr. Baylor objected vocally to the filibuster. (I wanted to hear what he had to say, but I'll admit he went very long past the time limit.)

RAB, at first, politely inquired as to why this particular gentleman was being allowed to go on and on. Once Mr. Gahan identified the source of the outburst, the die was cast.

Roger escalated his complaint with each of Gahan's shoutdowns, accusing the council president of bias and favoritism and ultimately demanding of the speaker an answer to "Did you PAY for this (preferential treatment)?"

Perhaps the tipping point was when the speaker said, in effect, that the restaurateurs and tavernkeepers were gullible doofuses who were not just expressing their fears and honest opinions, but were rather the dupes of a cabal of their industrial lobbies and the tobacco companies, parroting cooked data sets as facts.

In fact, many were citing cooked or nonexistent data and expressing earnest fears and opinions.

IMHO, the speaker's accusations were permissible argumentative rhetoric - rhetoric similar to that often employed even here and more often at the trog blogs.

But to even imply that Roger was the dupe of a corporatist conspiracy (and though he was not named like other publicans, the implication/accusation was pointedly aimed a business owners opposed to the ban) was undoubtedly the last straw.

In effect, NAC's senior editor changed his game plan when the opportunity was presented. A more important point needed to be made, and he made it.

Roger dared Gahan to "ejaculate" him, and while it was unfortunate that it happened in the presence of Mrs. NAC, and more unfortunate that it meant the Publican would miss the official debate, it was Roger's choice.

Rest assured, our hero extracted every second of possible drama from the moment. The expulsion held the pomp and circumstance of a royal procession, with appropriate barbs disseminated throughout the recessional.

Roger was even accorded the honor of expulsion through the NORTH doorway, the hallowed ground of the privileged class.

I've always maintained that there is no shame in civil disobedience if you are willing to pay the price for it - arrest.

Fortunately, the disobedience was civil, so detention was not required, although I fingered my wallet for bail money, just in case.