Progressives provide the audience, but the performer would rather sing to an empty house.

We went to the library book sale this morning, followed by a visit to the Farmers Market, where we enjoyed a bountiful selection of vegetables and herbs. Tickets were purchased for the forthcoming historic home tour, which again this year includes entry into upstairs apartments in downtown that for decades simply did not exist -- until very recently.

The market was crowded, which is a clear testament to the hard work of so many people during the past few years. Interestingly, the more one gets to know them, the more one realizes that they're are not in lockstep agreement on every facet of life, and yet they work together and are succeeding in pushing back against the forces of inertia and oppositionist sentiment that have characterized New Albany for so long. They share an interest in restoring a notion of community to an undervalued part of the city, something that benefits the entire city by using it to its best effect.

They're saying "yes," and many people are starting to listen.

Some still say "no," which brings us to today's Farmers market musical attraction. It was karaoke, with councilman/musician/nay sayer Steve Price performing classic rock, pop and soul vocals to lush backing tracks.

There's no doubt that he's a good singer. No one should question his credentials as a musician, even if we frequently disagree with his customarily incoherent but numbly repetitive political philosophy of "no," repeated as often as possible whenever conscious, and accompanied by the sound of a stringless guitar when it comes to offering alternatives to the progressive agenda.

To look back through five and half years of CM Price's council votes and positions pertaining to downtown revitalization is to see an overwhelming majority of actions (or more commonly, inactions) that taken together, as a whole, define Price's consistent, mind-numbing opposition to the very conceptual basis of all that has been done by the people mentioned above to bring downtown back to some semblance of life.

The majority of the council's deliberations on revitalization have punctuated by Price's denigration of such efforts. He has lacked any discernable grasp of the concepts involved, and when flustered, can be relied upon to express contempt for the decisions that have resulted from "yes" votes, these being the "yes" votes that have led to there being a crowd of locals to listen to his karaoke this morning. This morning, without the efforts of "them people," he would have channeling Steve Perry and John Fogerty to crickets and tumbling tumbleweeds.

I know my councilman does not possess the ironic gene. He's not alone in that. I know that never in a thousand years would he fathom the pure hypocrisy involved, understand how his positions and votes have been against the interests of his own council district, or see that this morning's Farmers Market was thriving in spite of his political career, not because of it.

I know why he is invited to sing, and I don't deny that as a musician, he's talented.

But why do we work so hard to provide an audience for a performer who advocates the abolition of the audience?