Kingpin of the week: There's only one, isn't there?

JAY-sus, are these people EVER going to hire someone?

It sure would be nice to direct the cannonade toward a specific target rather than the scattershot practice adopted during the past eleven weeks, but as watchdogs, we have little choice in the matter.

Consequently, while not exactly running its course -- there's always time to casually eviscerate One Southern Indiana for its pandering imperiousness -- our "kingpin of the week" thread has reached its sell-by date.

It is striking, the extent to which 1Si as a marketing-driven design feature perfectly mirrors the mundane conformity of the exurb: Chain-centered, chock-a-block, whitewashed and identically-costumed Ken doll wannabe, seeking to "drain the hills and the sea of color." 1Si offers the safety of the herd, of business lingo buzz-speak, and the necessary assurance to peddle insurance. All around One Southern Indiana, there are potential grassroots movements aimed at the ways to come, and yet there persists our locally endowed (why?) chamber of (past) commerce, dedicated to foisting tolls on the populace merely to suit the prerequisites of River Ridge.

Can there ever be such things as glasnost and perestroika in such an organization? It is unlikely. But 1Si is adept at staging frequent and self-reverential Nurnberg rallies, as with one forthcoming on May 22, to which a friend refers in this Twitter post:

Yes, I'm proud to be a solid pain in Kerry "Oligarch" Stemler's ass, and not just because someone needs to do it.

It isn't what he does "for" the community, it's what he and his acolytes are doing "to" it: Shackling the community with policies, mind-sets, beer preferences and personal wardrobes that reflect an economic development mindset of corporatist, top-down exploitation and extraction, all of it having to do with the enrichment of the ownership and managerial elites forever enshrined in 1Si's country club ethos, and always at the expense of ancillaries (i.e., the rest of us) so eager to please these faux exemplars of propriety that we squeal like little kids playing grown-up games -- while the grown-ups ... while people like Kerry Stemler ... laugh at us for being so stupid.

If that's your idea of "economic development," feel free to bake some mud pies. Perhaps the idea can be franchised at a networking function. Meanwhile, One Southern Indiana is no more than a personal fiefdom, and the only tinhorn kingpin who ever really mattered is Kerry Stemler himself. He's the twelfth winner of the trophy, and I have a suggestion for where the trophy case should be located.

Previous weekly winners of Kingpin of the Week ...

Pinocchio
CDM (formerly Wilbur) Smith
Thunder Over Louisville
Margaret Thatcher
Angry Easter Bunny
Sancho Panza
Sean Payton
Jethro Bodine
Rush Limbaugh
Vaughan Scott
Benny Breeze