Hanson's Folly, updated: There's still no diversity among regular News and Tribune opinion columnists.

I took a gander in February, checked again in June, and updated again circa late August (and posted at Twitter).

Hanson's Folly: There remains a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists. 

Here's a fresh update. Obviously elections bring out the letters to the editor, and so the sample size is slightly smaller than usual for periods of the same length. 

• Letters 20
• White Male Columnists 18
• White Female Columnists 3
• Black Male Columnist 1
• Editorial Board 1

Allow me to calculate (because readers would notice, anyway) that of the 22 opinion columns, whether authored by whites, blacks, males or females, all writers probably are over the age of 50 (with the exception of staffer Daniel Suddeath), and all but one of them are white (95% of column slots).

Back in June, publisher Bill Hanson lamented racial injustice in America and bemoaned his own white "privilege," asking in essence what's to be done? Since then, 80-odd percent or more of his newspapers have continued to be old white people. I'd sugar-coat it if possible, but it isn't possible.

Publisher, heal thyself.  

Here are the screen shots at the News and Tribune's website ("Opinion"), beginning October 8, ending October 30. 

Hanson's Folly: There remains a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists.

Different mix from May 23 - June 16
but no substantive change.

Bill Hanson is the publisher of the Jeffersonville News and Tribune. Recently he lamented injustice and his own "privilege," asking in essence what's to be done?

Let's look at his newspaper's opinion column scorecard since May 23: Of opinion pieces identified as columns, 25 were authored by white males, 4 by women.

Of the 25 columns authored by white males, 22 came from "older" writers (my guess, above the age of 50), the exception being three written by the newspaper's reporter Daniel Suddeath. Four columns were authored by women, one of them a black woman (another came from Susan Duncan, the newspaper's editor).

The black woman is from Georgia and edits a sister CNHI paper there. Probably it was a one-off.

Actually Suddeath's most recent column takes an oblong glance at the problem, focusing on local elected leaders, but also with this precise comment:

Let’s not pass the buck. We also need more people of color in our newsrooms. In 15 years of full-time journalism, I’ve worked with very few black people. This has an effect on what news is published, regardless of our intentions.

Let's review. Using opinion columns as a gauge, the News and Tribune scores 86% from white male writers, most of them "older" in age; 14% female writers; and 3% black. There's the whole range of societal perspectives gifted to us by Bill Hanson.

It's noteworthy that these percentages haven't varied an iota since the last time I counted five months ago -- except for the black woman from Georgia. There had been no columns by black writers the last time I looked.

ON THE AVENUES: There is a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists.

To answer Hanson's agonized question -- what's to be done? -- perhaps first the publisher needs to spend some time in front of a mirror.

Maybe HIS newspaper would like to provide topical newspaper opinion column debate beyond that of his old white male buddies: a non-Christian religious perspective, a gay (not) straight point of view, and yes, a regularly recurring outlook from a person of color.

The likelihood is that Hanson is terrified of the backlash from his ... that's right, predominantly older, conservative readership.

The answer is staring you in the face, Bill. If you don't have any intention of embracing it, then at least spare us the crocodile tears, okay?

Diversity isn't the newspaper's only problem ...

Stick a fork in Fischer. He's done.

I tried to watch Greg Fischer's live comments this morning. No, really. I tried mightily to maintain composure as one mealy-mouthed evasion followed another on the heels of each previous abdication of responsibility.

A self-satisfied imperial mayor, grand poobah of "bourbonism" (the word's OTHER meaning is political conservatism), now reduced to listlessly (rubber) bullet-pointing all the reasons why he is pathetic and powerless.

Apparently the police and national guard sent themselves to assault the citizenry, and if so -- if the mayor isn't responsible and can't do anything about it -- then what's the reason for him being in this office in the first place?

Exactly what is the reason for having such an office, if it isn't to be used? After all, we can eat ham and drink bourbon and wear Derby hats on our own, without Fischer's involvement.

It's tempting to say that when the good times roll, it's easy to make a big show of pretending to lead, but the fact eluding Fischer and his supporters is the illusory nature of those "good times."

They weren't, at least not for everyone; Fischer and Louisville's vapid "leadership" caste couldn't be bothered to address a multitude of societal problems before the explosion, and now have no way to address any of it apart from empty platitudes testifying primarily to their fundamental absence of principle and character.

If Fischer had any such self-knowledge, he'd resign in sheer embarrassment. That's how badly he's botched this. It won't happen, but it damn well should.

(The photo depicts Fischer -- to the right -- at a Floyd County DemoDisneyDixiecratic function a few years back, gladhanding with CM Greg Phipps. In the context of my thoughts here, it's worth remembering that Fischer is Mayor Jeff Gahan's political idol.)

Bourbonism can't help us. Neoliberal frauds be gone. Greg Fischer is clothesless, and he should resign, now.

ON THE AVENUES: There is a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists.

It is recorded that the American president Lyndon Baines Johnson, presumably the most powerful single person in the world at the time, was asked why he didn’t terminate the loathsome FBI director and public policy liability J. Edgar Hoover.

Johnson replied with a back country Texas aphorism.

“I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

LBJ omitted a little-known but perfectly plausible third possibility: outside the tent pissing, but pissing in the opposite direction from the tent, which describes my own coordinates during the Great Sabbatical of 2020.

If you’re a slobbering, monetizing Gahanite, a view of my back is about the best variety of neutrality you can expect of me, although I’ve never come anywhere close to harboring the malice (or ugly raw power) of J. Edgar.

Now 59 years into this great experiment called “my life,” I placidly accept the unlikelihood of ever feeling truly comfortable inside any of society’s tents. This isn’t to imply a general refusal to cooperate or to be constructive on a case by case basis. If it makes sense, I’ll pitch in and help.

I merely care not to belong to any club that would have me as a member, and given the tendency of tent dwellers to insist on a certain level of Kool Aid consumption to promote sheep-like conformity, it’s just best that I wheel my beer cooler into the fresh evening air and find other flowers to water.

We're all happier that way.

---

As for my sabbatical, it’s moving along quite smoothly, thank you. I reckon a success rate of 85% in removing myself from local political commentary; with the exception of this column, if something takes more than a half hour to research and compose, it’s not allowed.

Consequently I’m breaking down complicated ideas into smaller, easier digested chunks and trying to be more efficient in organizing my time and taking notes, which also comes in handy with my daily Food & Dining Magazine web site posts and a steadily escalating commitment to blogging about beer at the Pints&union homepage.

One challenge I made to myself this year was to renew ON THE AVENUES. By reducing the volume of my overall publishing regimen, hopefully there’d be more time to write original weekly columns rather than give in to the temptation of plagiarizing myself or relying on reruns. So far in 2020, I’ve managed nine consecutive “fresh” columns. It's a victory.

Today’s column will be a bit shorter than usual. So much for the wind-up; here’s the pitch.

---

Late in the evening of Tuesday, February 25, I squeezed into a full body condom and pointed my browser at the News and Tribune web site.

Somewhere during the course of reading elsewhere, I’d seen a reference to diversity on newspaper opinion pages, and it prompted the recollection that favored News and Tribune columnist Tom May has two different photographs to delineate between his “always about one variety among dozens of religions” column and his other, “general interest with marginally less religion although it’s often still there” column.

(Why does one writer get two placements? They're never answered this question.)

I clicked on the local chain newspaper’s “opinion” tab and scrolled to the bottom, until I could scroll no more. The “diversity” on display at this portal was precisely as I’d imagined it would be, which is to say none at all, and so I took another step and recorded what was revealed.

The sample range was February 7th through the 26th, which represents the “opinion” tab’s available range of dates. News and Tribune guest columns identified as such were omitted, like George Shultz’s recent contribution about the NAFC referendum. News and Tribune staff contributions from editors Duncan and Morris were included.

Here are the results, running chronologically (backward) as the columns appeared; the number following their names is the total number of columns by the writer during the time period referenced.

Mike Matthews 2

Morton Marcus 3

Scott Underwood (1)

Susan Duncan (editor) 1

Leo Morris (2)

Ronnie Ellis 1

Terry Cummins 3

Chris Morris (editor) 1

Lindon Dodd 3

Tom May (religion column) 2

Mark Bennett 1

Lee Hamilton 1

Tom May (general interest column) 1

Terry Stawar 2

Mike Lunsford 1

Barb Anderson 1

John Krull 2

Deb Kelly 1

That's 26 columns by 15 white male columnists, and three by three white female columnists.

Furthermore, of the 15 white males shown here, it’s likely that only one (Underwood) or perhaps even none are younger than 40 years of age; my guess would be an average age in the late 50s. Basically, there are no young faces at all, and apparently millennials need not apply.

Obviously there are no black faces, male or female, nor Latino/Latina faces. It’s possible that LGBTQ faces are represented, though not to my knowledge (and not from a perusal of column content).

Tom May’s dual presence alone guarantees a consistent Christian bias in terms of religion, although he’s not the only columnist from the sampling to reference religion. Needless to say, there are no Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, or Druid faces.

The News and Tribune recently touted its success at winning journalism awards generated by its own parent organization. These invariably strike me as self-serving and honestly laughable, but admittedly I’m in no position to judge their relative merits. All power to the regular news and production staff members who win these awards.

At the same time, any one of us can take a glance around the community and see the human diversity on display here -- perhaps not to the extent of some locales on the planet, but vastly more evident than it ever was when an old white guy like me was growing up here.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at these “opinionated” faces.

Is this really the best the award-winning News and Tribune can do?

---

Recent columns:

February 20: ON THE AVENUES: For downtown New Albany, escaping reality might soon be a bridge too far.

February 13: ON THE AVENUES: War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

February 6: ON THE AVENUES Alas, New Albany is less of a place without a bookstore.

January 30: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Holocaust deniers: If you don't like this post, unfriend me now.

Enough Absurdity: "Neoliberal globalization and Third Way politics are plainly not up to the task, and the historical Left has, for the most part, gone missing."

"After almost three years of Trumpian rule, it has come to this. The worst American president ever, along with a bunch of embarrassingly servile flunkies, are calling the shots; while the opposition party’s establishment is working overtime to stifle changes that would undo the conditions that made Trumpism all but inevitable."
-- Andrew Levine

And yet still I'm told by "left" centrists (is that contortion possible?) that if I don't publicly support one of their Democratic presidential candidates -- any candidate, whether his or her platform jibes with my own world view or not -- then I'm guilty of abject failure to properly resist Trump.

Pfui. Why is it that I'm always the one who must alter my dictates of conscience/consciousness to suit the Lighter Shade of Republicans? Why must my principles be the ones forever mutable?

I'm no longer sure it matters. This circling of the drain began long ago, and the cycle probably will be compelled to play out. Circa the year 1987, writer Gore Vidal spoke briefly and eloquently about the reality of the day.

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.

Pretty much, dog. Pretty much right now.

Enough Absurdity: Time To Get Smart, by Andrew Levine (CounterPunch)

... We got into this fix because our political and economic elites never quite figured out how to execute a soft landing in a world in which “the American century” was becoming undone by demographic changes, geopolitical exigencies, and the increasingly evident dysfunctionality of our overripe capitalist system.

Neoliberal globalization and Third Way politics are plainly not up to the task, and the historical Left has, for the most part, gone missing. Thus, a large segment of the general population is left without constructive means for addressing a host of justifiable grievances.

A reconstructed Left is the solution, but its first intimations are still in their infancy. This could change quickly, for better or worse, but for the time being, there is just not enough there there.

And so, all over the world, “populists,” rightwing nationalists essentially, have rushed in to fill the void, just as their counterparts did nearly a century ago, after the revolutionary upsurge that followed the Bolshevik revolution sputtered out, only to be swamped before long by forces of darkness even more odious than the ones now on the rise.

This process has been in the works at least since the dark days of the Reagan administration; it has taken its toll in both the Republican and Democratic parties, causing them to drift, or, in the Republican case, to gallop to the right.

The idea that, in America, there is only a middleclass has been another casualty of these on-going transformations. Thus, it has become harder than it used to be to deny the existence of a ruling class, or to deny that, at least in some quarters, working-class politics has revived.

As they say, “what goes around comes around.” There are two reasons, though, why the stakes are a little different this time around, and a lot more urgent ...

More than three weeks ago I put the fallen leaves exactly where the city asked, and they're still there, untouched. There oughta be an ordinance.

Good thing I have a councilman living two doors down.

On September 27, NA Confidential performed an invaluable public service by reminding you of the proper way of dealing with fallen leaves: Don't say I didn't remind you of the leaf sucking protocol for 2019.

Short version: If you want your leaves sucked, keep them out of the curbs, gutters and streets, or else ... absolutely nothing will happen to you.

Now, can I get the leaves sucked in front of my house, or did we sacrifice availability to street department services by pointing out that the mayor is a loser no matter how often he wins?

"Deval Patrick Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party."

"Maybe five or ten years ago, Deval Patrick might have been the best Democrat that our dismal system could have produced. But that’s no longer the case. The time for guys like this has passed."

And by extension, this is why it's so very difficult to find a reason to vote for Democrats. The two party system is a reeking cesspool.

Deval Patrick Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party, by Liza Featherstone (Jacobin)

Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s resume reads like a dystopian novel about the nihilism and brutality of contemporary capitalism. He should leave public life forever.

The donor classes do not want Bernie Sanders to be president. Most of them don’t want Elizabeth Warren, either. They’d prefer someone who doesn’t have much to say about wealth distribution, whether in the form of taxing the rich, or big programs like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Their most electable option in this vein — at least as measured by primary and general election polling, as well as occasional, if fleeting, resemblance to a sympathetic human being — is obviously Joe Biden. Unhappily for them, Biden is also a chucklehead. Terrified that the Left might win, the titans of industry have a plan: Deval Patrick.

Like Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, is the extremely disappointing progeny of a radical father. (Pat Patrick, a jazz musician, played with Sun Ra’s band, The Arkestra.) That’s probably the coolest thing about him.

The enthusiasm for Sanders and Warren at the grassroots — as well as for progressive and socialist local and Congressional candidates nationwide — might suggest a sea change, a popular desire to grapple seriously with the problems caused by capitalism. Deval Patrick, until recently an executive at Bain Capital, is a flagrant insult to that popular uprising. He is a cherished asset of the fossil fuel, private equity, and subprime mortgage industries, which are some of the worst phenomena that contemporary capitalism has produced. What’s next, a member of the Sackler family?

Though news coverage insists on characterizing his entry into the primary as “sudden,” it seems that a few members of the ruling class have been working on his campaign for a while. Since 2018, OpenSecrets News reports, big donors, especially in private equity, have been pouring money into Deval Patrick’s PAC, putting his campaign in an advantageous position. Even in October 2018, more than a year ago, the PAC, called Reason to Believe, was far outperforming PACs of other candidates considering a 2020 run. Most of the money came from one private equity mogul: Dan Fireman, a billionaire golf enthusiast ...

In truth, Team Gahan's politically-motivated ineptitude produced its Colonial Manor fiasco -- but neighborhood activists continue "moving forward."

We've established that Team Gahan is prone to being scandalously "butthurt" (as the kids like to say) whenever it is challenged with facts, as when city council finally asserted itself to the exclusion of secretive backroom redevelopment fixes like the one proposed at Colonial Manor.

Council rejects Gahan's, Redevelopment's Colonial Manor tax increment financing lollapalooza by a 5-4 vote. Alterations to come?

One major reversal in eight years, and they're emptying the lockers of rubber truncheons and doing that Goebbels jig.

As usual, the truth lies elsewhere.

Let's focus on Jeff Gahan's breathtakingly brazen string of fake facts and outright lies about Colonial Manor.

If one takes the time to unravel Team Gahan's ongoing Colonial Manor narrative, it is filled with imprecise cutting, sloppy pasting and inept choreography. In short, City Hall whiffed on three pitches. Yesterday councilman and mayoral aspirant (Independent) Dan Coffey brought us up to date.

I learned Wednesday that the offer from the Redevelopment Commission to purchase the Colonial Shopping Center is no longer an option. I was told there was a short time for the city to comply with the offer and could not do so with the conditions set forth by the council. Too many questions about this project went unanswered and the public's need to know didn't seem to be considered. Congratulations to the people who stood firm and wouldn't allow this project to happen without your input. Democracy still works if given the chance!

Josh Turner, the GOP's candidate for New Albany's 5th district council and a grassroots organizer seeking a future for Colonial Manor, agreed and replied to Coffey with an excellent point.

Just think, if this wasn’t over appraisal it would already be purchased and five people at Redevelopment would have complete control over the property.

Because the forever smug Team Gahan's "process" at Colonial Manor was strictly reactive, with election year political imperatives hastily brought to fruition in order to check the mortal threat of citizen participation, Redevelopment's proposed purchase price for the Colonial Manor property was higher then the appraisals, legally necessitating the council vote.

As Turner points out, had City Hall taken the time to finesse the price, Redevelopment already would be planning the mixed use development with its chosen no-bid, professionally contracted architects, engineers and consultants, all of whom are eager to tithe to the closed circle of pay-to-play patronage.

Gahan's first quarter CFA-4 has been filed, and it's another massive, quivering edifice of pay-to-play cash.

The most interesting thing about this Gahanesque fiasco has been the least documented. Redevelopment director Staten conceded that the city had sought the assistance of private sector developer Chad Sprigler, whose family owns apartments nearby on Slate Run Road, in order to "negotiate" with Colonial Manor's owners -- to speak their language.

This is weird even by David Duggins' tortuous standards of illogic. I asked an insider to comment.

Why use an apartment builder to negotiate a commercial lot for the city? They are under-qualified to do this because it is not their core strength. Sprigler must have been paid a fee for doing so. Moreover, how does this connect the dots to the Spriglers' deal at Cross Creek apartments on Green Valley? The Spriglers couldn't handle the expense of necessary repairs, and so the city bailed them out (at a loss to the Spriglers) via the New Albany Housing Authority. Now NAHA will spend $4 million to make them into voucher housing. Of course Sprigler took a tax deduction for the loss, and now they're doing the city's job at Colonial Manor. I've yet to see Gahan botch one as badly as Colonial Manor, but that's political desperation for you.

With Team Gahan pouting and churlish, we look to community organizer Kathy Copas for a nugget of genuine interest amid Redevelopment's smoldering wreckage. Take careful note of the significance. Without any "help" from the city, ground level networking has independent small businesses talking to Kathy and each other, providing a glimpse of what can happen at the grassroots prior to top-down, politically-motivated TIF solutions.

When politicians like Gahan seek mistakenly to take credit for things like the concentration of food and drink establishments downtown, the best route to dismiss the chugging of Kool-Aid is to think about the way entrepreneurs and investors actually make decisions: on the ground, talking to others like them, applying shoe leather to walking and networking -- precisely the way Kathy recounts her discussions with business owners.

This is the way sustainable critical mass comes about. Team Gahan can't grasp it because not one of the mayor's closest associates ever owned a small indie business. In truth, they haven't got a clue about the way small indie businesses really work.

Take it away, Kathy.

Hundreds more have now watched the video of last week's Colonial Manor Listening Session and many have joined with the rest of us in continuing to think, dream, and strategize around how we can all do more to give Colonial Manor a real future and a hope.

As we contemplate further actions by our city officials, one especially interesting and exciting thing has been consistently bubbling up, this time from a number of our community's existing small business owners. Several of them have emerged and said something along the lines of---"Well, my little business already offers that in another part of town. If people want that for Colonial Manor, and we had some help and support, we would love to expand to Colonial Manor, too!"

Wow. Does anyone else find that as full of incredible possibilities as we do? What else have you seen, heard, or been thinking about since we gathered? Let's keep the listening and conversation going! #colonialmanorrising

#FreeDistrict3: Is a two-party political duopoly "fit for the purpose of representing and reconciling the diversity of opinions in a modern and complex country?"

This article is about the Conservative and Labour parties in Great Britain, but the parallels with Republicans and Democrats in America are obvious. Particularly at the grassroots level, why are parties even necessary?

#FreeDistrict3 

Why the sickly ugly sisters of our politics deserve to suffer the splits, by Andrew Rawnsley (The Guardian)

Once broad churches, both the Tory and Labour parties have become increasingly sectarian. Breakaways will be the result

If they did not exist, would we invent them? Given the chance to start from scratch, would Britain regard the Conservative and Labour parties, the two old and ugly sisters of our politics, as the best we can do? Are they fit for the purpose of representing and reconciling the diversity of opinions in a modern and complex country? And for offering it a choice of decent governments? A growing number of us have been saying not and for a long time.

Even before Brexit split both parties and scrambled voter allegiances, much of the electorate was expressing its dissatisfaction with the big two. The Tories have not won a solid parliamentary majority since 1987. The last Labour leader who was not called Tony Blair to secure a healthy Commons majority was Harold Wilson in 1966.

The number of voters who enthusiastically identify as red or blue has been in long-term decline. Party membership has also been shrivelling. The Tories, who once boasted that they were a million strong, bump along at around 100,000. Labour enjoyed a trend-defying surge in its membership during the Ohhh Jeremy Corbyn phase of his leadership, but that is going downhill as the magical uncle turns out not to be so wondrous after all.

It is true that the big two can still gather up a lot of votes. After decades of decline in their combined vote share, it blipped up at the last election. But I don’t think that truly indicated renewed enthusiasm for either of them. It was a false positive induced by an electoral system that compels many voters to make a forced choice between the unappetising and the inedible. It doesn’t mean that these nose-holding voters like what’s put before them. The current choice on offer is so disdained that, when pollsters ask who would make best prime minister, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are regularly beaten into second and third place by Neither. More than half of the electorate say their views are not properly represented by the existing political parties.

Many politicians can’t stand the parties they represent. Some actively and publicly rage about what has become of them. I cannot recall a period in my lifetime when so many MPs have expressed so much disgust and despair with the state of their own parties. For every Tory who expresses agony about what Brexit has done to the party they used to love, there is a Labour MP voicing anguish about what Corbynism has done to the party that they have spent a lifetime serving ...

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last night I wrote the equivalent of two columns (you're rubbing your eyes already), but neither seems appropriate just yet. Instead, let's take an instructive journey by means of the rewind button, back to January 25, 2017.

You'll notice that nothing's changed. Matt Lorch subsequently was removed as council attorney, and the Democrats suffered another catastrophic election defeat in 2018. Adam Dickey kept his job, and now it's 2019.

#FireGahan2019 #FreeDistrictThree #FlushTheClique 

---

You can’t blame Dan Coffey for understanding simple math.

Coffey might well be one of the nastiest politicians to mar this or any other underachieving settlement, at least since records were first scrawled on the wall at the Caves of Altamira, but say this for the man: He doesn’t need an abacus to smell raw fear – and take advantage of it.

When Coffey bolted from the Democratic Party in January of 2016 in preparation for becoming the most obvious Donald Trump supporter in New Albany, you can be sure he’d already run the power poll numbers.

After city elections in 2015, there were two more Republicans on the city council than before, totaling three. Scott Blair already had declared himself an Independent, and Coffey correctly surmised that Blair would eventually tire of desperate efforts to please Mayor Jeff Gahan when Gahan had no intention of responding to Blair’s overtures.

Coffey saw Blair joining the GOP bloc more often than not, leaving four Democrats – and one pivotal seat for the Dan Coffey Party.

That pesky math again: Three Republicans plus one independent equals four Democrats in need of a fifth vote, placing Coffey in the catbird’s seat.

All Coffey needed to do was wait until his swing vote passed from possibility to reality, and this magic moment arrived in spades on November 9, 2016, as the full extent of the Democratic Party’s latest precipitous collapse in Floyd County elections became evident, and Team Gahan began mainlining Bud Light Lime.

With party chairman Adam Dickey fundamentally lacking the cojones to resign, which is what should occur immediately after catastrophes, and with Dickey’s “leadership” quotient at rock bottom, what remained of the ramshackle political entity was inherited by Papa Gahan, by default the highest ranked Democratic official left wobbling, and bunker-bound inheritor of Dickey’s vast nothingness.

In a delightful reprise from the 1960s sitcom Green Acres, this turn of events freed Coffey to play the wheeler-dealer Mr. Haney to Gahan’s hapless Oliver Douglas.

In January, it came time to select city council “leaders,” and Gahan went into his customarily paranoid, reactive Alamo mode. The four remaining council Democrats were handed defective slingshots and instructed to fight to the death, but first, it was necessary to obtain a ringing affirmation of Pat McLaughlin (president) and Greg Phipps (vice-president) as pliable, unquestioning council rubber stamps.

Blair and Coffey were one step ahead of Gahan’s small-pond theatrics, and both duly visited the mayor to collect their available winnings in return for supporting McLaughlin and Phipps against Republican trial balloon candidacies. Order was restored, and the council’s ruling twosome remained tenuously toothsome, as yet in place to field 3:00 a.m. phone calls from the city’s reigning agoraphobic.

Blair’s favors aren’t known, but Coffey’s became manifest at January’s second meeting, when it was made perfectly clear that the price of Coffey’s loving cooperation would be council attorney Matt Lorch’s head.

Council Republicans quickly objected to the impromptu lynch mob, and Bob “I So Desperately Want to Be Mayor” Caesar was conveniently absent, so L’affaire Lorch was tabled. It isn’t clear what will happen next.

However, quite enough already has happened to provide final, damning proof that the Floyd County Democratic Party is utterly without a moral compass.

The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans. In 2010 the United States Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping measured the depth of the Challenger Deep at 10,994 meters (36,070 feet) below sea level with an estimated vertical accuracy of ± 40 meters.

That’s right; the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.

---

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
-- Leon Trotsky

Younger readers may not be familiar with the workings of the organization known as the Comintern.

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization that advocated world communism.

At the risk of oversimplifying, once the Soviet Union came into existence following World War I, the international Communist movement finally possessed real-world dirt acreage to serve as refuge and fulcrum.

Moscow was to Communism what the Vatican was (and is) to Catholicism. The Kremlin coordinated and directed the planet’s Communist parties, and generally did not take “no” for an answer when work orders were disseminated.

For almost 30 years after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin served as the anointed Communist equivalent of the Pope. Stalin’s decrees required utter loyalty; after all, he was the infallible mastermind, and the goal was the revolution’s ultimate triumph everywhere, not just Russia,

If Stalin zigged, so did a diehard Communist in Argentina. As he zagged, another dyed-in-the-wool Communist in Scotland followed suit. There was almost no room for discussion or dissent, but at least for a while, Communists outside the USSR were able to blithely ignore the brutality of Stalin’s paranoid totalitarianism.

That’s because the doctrinal faith and the propagandistic Kool-Aid were strong, and the utopian Commie chic alluring, seemingly promising a peaceful, prosperous future. After all, it wasn’t about the USSR’s needs, it was about the proletariat as a whole – except it really was about Stalin, and not a lathe operator in Italy, and there came a time when theory and practice were poles apart.

And yet the Comintern still demanded obedience, even after Stalin’s death, and many Communists outside the USSR chose to deny facts rather than face cognitive dissonance. Few seemed able to do what the famous writer George Orwell did: Abandon the Soviet Union, but retain his socialist beliefs.

For Stalin, Marxism was of the Groucho variety: Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes? The overarching point for those obedient Stalinists in the West is that once Stalinism was discredited and tossed into the “dustbin of history” (Trotsky’s words again), so were they, those who hadn’t believed their own two eyes. The damage to their credibility was irreparable.

Stalin certainly didn’t invent the rigorous suppression of individual conscience. He wasn’t the first to deny the necessity of justifying the end, or to proclaim the imperative of absolute obedience on the part of expendable foot soldiers, whose only job – whether from a sense of duty or inchoate terror – is to move to their assigned places on the chessboard when directed, come what may.

Just the same, Stalin may have perfected these conditions. They’re not the sort of behaviors we should emulate, are they?

I repeat: Are they?

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If you’ve spent any amount of time in New Gahania, it’s plainly evident that Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t.

Lorch is jovial, reliable and ethical.

Lorch is trustworthy and doesn’t play games of the sort that can hurt people.

Lorch’s position as the latest in a long, successful family line of lawyers has not come without personal challenges, as with his hearing impairment, which if anything impels him to work harder and more efficiently.

What’s more, unlike Coffey, Lorch has been an absolutely dependable member of the Democratic Party, resolutely toiling for the greater good of the organization.

I can’t help thinking back to Coffey’s ill-fated race for county commissioner, which he lost in a landslide. Lorch attended Coffey’s biggest fundraiser, and offered Coffey his full support as a fellow Democrat. He probably donated, too.

Ultimately, this points to the unkindest and most disgusting cut of all – and it has nothing whatever to do with Coffey, a man incapable of trustworthiness. While Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t, and cannot ever be, for Coffey to spit in Lorch’s face comes as no surprise, precisely because as a loathsome, grandstanding, bullying, homophobic sociopath, it’s what Coffey does.

It’s like your dog licking his balls, just because he can.

Yes, but it’s Gahan and Dickey who leeringly are throwing Matt Lorch under the bus, and it’s the steadily shrinking handful of elected Democrats, like Pat McLaughlin and Greg Phipps, who are being asked by Gahan and Dickey to lend their stamp of approval to the shameful sacrifice of Lorch for no other reason than the way it encourages Coffey’s variable tumescence, and rather than objecting as a dignified human being to the sheer insanity of this, they’re the ones who are shrugging and asking timidly, “Yes, dear leaders -- which axle?”

Perhaps the Floyd County Democratic Party recent electoral disintegration has rendered its adherents confused and stunned, like Abe Lincoln’s duck hit on the head, and I’ll try mightily to phrase these questions in simple language, so even the Democratic central committee might understand them.

How are Gahan and Dickey to extinguish the smoldering dumpster fire of a Floyd County Democratic Party if they’re so eager to toss solid, loyal Democrats to the self-centered whims of an anti-democratic Copperhead?

How can Gahan and Dickey even pretend to “lead” the political opposition to the GOP’s escalating hegemony – here, there and everywhere – when they’ve failed to reveal a single coherent resistance tactic since November 9, but found ample time to plunge a rusty dagger in Matt Lorch’s back?

How can these people be trusted, ever again?

If you’re a Democratic Party voter, it matters far less whether Gahan and Dickey can sleep at night; after all, they’re proving themselves to be just as dangerously sociopathic as Coffey himself.

Rather, how can YOU as a Democrat sleep at night if you allow them to get away with it?

Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are asking Democrats precisely the same question as Stalin did Communists: Who are you going to believe, us or your own two eyes?

The fact is that your own two eyes are revealing sordid and uncomfortable truths, and I believe you should honor your conscience and refuse to countenance their madness. Gahan’s and Dickey’s ends do not justify their means, and this isn’t the time to mimic the lemming’s logic and follow them into the abyss.

They’re conniving and ethically destitute. They’re utterly lacking a moral compass. If you support Gahan and Dickey in this metaphorical beheading to curry favor with Coffey, then your own moral compass has gone missing, too.

It isn’t too late to rediscover it, and to do the right thing.

Isn't it time to take back your party?

Isn't it time for a change?

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Recent columns:

January 8: ON THE AVENUES: In the 3rd district, that "stepping aside" time finally has arrived.

January 1: ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.

December 29: ON THE AVENUES: Another year older and deeper in debt, so let's doo-doo it all over again.

December 20: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2018 Remix).