The national media discovers SoIn: "3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them Wounded."

Social media debates on this topic began shortly after the incident in May, then subsided, only to explode into the stratosphere when the story finally went national.

Opinion seems divided into two distinct strands of thought. The first, advocated by those who know the three judges personally, is that everyone deserves another chance. The other, expressed by the Indiana Supreme Court, upholds the existence of a higher bar (pun unintended) for those donning judicial robes.

The cynical way to look at it would be to shrug; all other institutions have become degraded in the last quarter-century, and nowadays nationwide there are more barely qualified judges than flavors of hard seltzer.

Who cares if they drink and carouse? Haven't we all?

Perhaps a less hopeless take is to assert that without a rediscovery of useful core ethics to guide the judiciary, their verdicts are rendered into nonsense.

I'm reminded of the late father of a close friend, who was a banker at a time when banking was local and not a by-product of neoliberal self-immolation. In short, my friend's dad was a banker 24 hours a day, not merely eight. He dressed, thought and lived the job, because if a banker behaved like a rock star out in public, it reduced confidence in the institution guarding one's savings.

I realize the relationship between a banker and his community was more complicated than this, even then. It doesn't change the fact that my friend's father recognized a responsibility, and knew his personal honor was at stake.

Southern Indiana currently is a laughingstock owing to the tale of the strip-club-seeking drunken judges and their ill-advised journey to White Castle. Fortunately for everyone involved, no one died and the ignominy will be short-lived in a nation with the collective attention span of a moth.

Is a suspension and some form of penance enough punishment for these judges? I've no idea.

If their own case came before them, how would they decide it?   

3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them Wounded, by Laurel Wamsley (NPR)

Back in May, three Indiana judges got into a fight. It was the crescendo of an incident brimming with colorful details: a gaggle of judges drinking the night before a judicial conference, a failed attempt to visit a strip club called the Red Garter, a brawl in the parking lot of an Indianapolis White Castle ...

"The unraveling of Rudy Giuliani."

Or, as another writer sought to explain, "How Rudy Giuliani went from a respected federal prosecutor and beloved NYC mayor to Trump's bag man."

Whenever they say it isn't about the money ...

The unravelling of Rudy Giuliani, by Lexington (The Economist)

No one member of Donald Trump’s coterie has fallen further than “America’s mayor”

Had Lexington’s 2007 incarnation been informed that the next Republican president would be a pro-gay, pro-choice, thrice-wed New Yorker, the name of Donald Trump would not have leaped to his august mind. Rudy Giuliani led the Republican primary by a big margin throughout that year. There were, to be sure, doubts about whether the former New York mayor was too socially liberal for small-town conservatives. He had once shared a house with two gay people and a Shih Tzu and, what was worse, acted in a comic skit alongside Mr Trump, that symbol of louche metropolitanism. Moreover America was not given to electing “abrasive” New Yorkers, Lexington cautioned then. But, like many others, he suspected Mr Giuliani’s dynamism and the broad support he enjoyed for his calm leadership after 9/11 and record of crime-fighting could compensate for such handicaps.

It has been pretty much downhill ever since for Mr Giuliani—culminating this week in what appears to be the worst crisis of his increasingly scandal-plagued career ...

(snip)

In truth it is hard to find any altogether convincing explanation for Mr Giuliani’s behaviour. He was once a serious politician prone to indiscipline; now he is wild. Yet a former colleague of his, who knows both men, suggests resentful envy of his old co-star Mr Trump—whom he must secretly disdain—may be eating him alive. If so, Mr Giuliani is going to really hate it when the president and his entire party flatly disown him. That looks like the inevitable next stage in his disgrace.

At ESPN: "Perhaps more than any other place in America, Louisville came to embody the contradictions of college athletics -- a multibillion-dollar industry built on amateur athletes."

Rich Pitino's house for sale in Miami, now
discounted to move at only $24 million.

The long read is at ESPN: The Magazine.

How a midlevel school became The University of Adidas at Louisville, by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada

It's about the delightful implosion of Tom Jurich's non-academic sporting money machine at the University of Louisville, and it's highly recommended even if you're not a jaded cynic like me.

(Tom) Jurich was so successful generating money that "I wished I could turn them upside down and shake out their pocket change for the academic side," says Thomas B. Byers, a professor emeritus in the English department. Perhaps more than any other place in America, Louisville came to embody the contradictions of college athletics -- a multibillion-dollar industry built on amateur athletes.

Whenever the hypocrisy and corruption of big-time college sports becomes too blatantly obvious to ignore, and bloviates like me start chortling, back comes the well-rehearsed rejoinder: Well, just look at how the bountiful cash generated by the athletic departments helps the entire university community.

Then someone like the deposed (if not disgraced in the eyes of the fanboys and girls) Jurich decides to speak honestly.

Told about the frustrations expressed by several professors, Jurich wonders why some academic departments can't rebuild themselves in the same way he built up the athletic department. "They couldn't have gone out and raised money?" he says. "Why is it I'm accountable for everything and all we've done is been successful? But these other people get a free pass? If I was a humanities professor, do you think I'd sit there and say, 'Man, I can't get it done, poor me'? I'd never say that. I'd go find a way to get it done. You know what? Those schools have alumni too. Those schools have very rich graduates too. Nobody handed me anything when I walked into this place. Nobody. It was quite the contrary."

So much for spreading the wealth. In other words, lazy-ass academics, go out there and fill an arena with folks willing to pay to watch you conduct scientific experiments or make philosophical arguments, and you can have a piece of the pie, too.

Of course, when even a trained physician confuses sports funding with the mission of education, such a result is almost inevitable.

Jurich built $280 million in arenas, playing fields and athletic offices by convincing rich people of the facilities' vital importance. "I can give $5 million to stem cell research and it's gonna help stem cell research," says Dr. Mark Lynn, an optometry-chain owner whose name adorns the soccer complex. "I give $5 million to a soccer stadium and it's gonna help everything." Lynn says sports bring the school visibility.

Ultimately, it's like this ...

"I don't think Tom Jurich gets this, and I don't think Jim Ramsey got it," says state Rep. Jim Wayne, whose district includes parts of Louisville. "The University of Louisville is a state facility ... and it is not their kingdom. They are not the kings, and the princes, and the nobility in the kingdom. They're temporary stewards of these programs. And instead of seeing this as something that they should be responsible for and hold high ethical standards as they execute their jobs, they're doing just the opposite."

... and this.

F. Chris Gorman, a former Kentucky attorney general, says: "I think that the tragedy here is this is probably the only community that uses public money to fund a Division I athletic program. That's what led to all this corruption: They had all this money -- money from the foundation, money from the arena, money from the students. You add all that up, and then they have a budget to compete with the Ohio States of the world. But they haven't done it in an honest way. They've done it by fleecing the taxpayers and by taking money from the foundation, men and women that worked all their lives and thought they were giving money to education."

Bread and circuses. Somewhere behind the curtain, there's an institution of higher learning. Has that occurred to any of you?

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Yesterday we learned there will be a sophomore edition of the Boomtown Ball & Festival, to be held on Sunday, May 24. As reported by the News and Tribune, City Hall's press release leaves a few details unreported, but the broad overview is complete.

BAND BUZZ: Houndmouth to present encore Boomtown Ball & Festival in New Albany

NEW ALBANY — A band with New Albany roots making waves on the national music scene is presenting the second annual Boomtown Ball & Festival, and is curating the event’s music lineup.

Houndmouth, along with New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan and WFPK, are staging the Sunday, May 24 event, which serves as the kickoff for New Albany’s Bicentennial Park Summer Concert Series, according to a news release from Production Simple.

The release does not state whether Houndmouth will perform at the event.

As for the band, Houndmouth's tour schedule shows the group with the weekend off, and it is as yet unclear whether the newspaper's reporter Daniel Suddeath will await their arrival with subpoena in hand.

As for NABC's beer of the same name, of which somewhere between 15 and 20 kegs were vended to eager fest goers in 2014, readers from Timbuktu know exactly as much as I do. Really.

The same consideration applies to speculation about the fest's difficult and intricate layout, which (I'm guessing) will change owing to construction under way at the farmers market. Without a trace of irony, permit me to wish the best to whomever works out the "drinks enclosure" details this year.

It won't be me. After all, I'm on leave of absence. Following is last year's Boomtown preview.

---

Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

(original 2014 text)

Friday is a very important day. That’s because I’m getting a haircut. Personally, it is slated to be a timely and symbolic act, considering that my year to date has constituted a journey from complexity to simplicity – and for me, taking care of foot-long hair has become far too complicated.

This hirsute situation, which has taken several years to create, will be rectified in short order with the generous assistance of Strandz & Threadz, which will be staging its annual Cuts for a Cure. My original aim was to solicit donors for the occasion, but unfortunately the daily grind has been a bit too … well, complicated, so instead, I’ll make a donation on behalf of those friends who would have been subjected to the hard sell. It’s simpler that way.

---

By all rights, Tuesday should have been a day for New Albanians to triumphantly remind the world that while Jeffersonville’s connecting ramp to the Big Four Bridge finally was open, those many months of barred, inaccessible ineptitude could not possibly be forgotten – and, by comparison, New Albany still had its act together as the Brooklyn/Hoboken/Boomtown/Not Jeffersonville of the Falls Cities.

In fact, one can conceive of only a handful of ways for us to flush such a commanding lead in the waning seconds, among them photos of a Democratic grandee in bed with a sheep, a Padgett truck wedged into two Spring Street buildings while trying to make a turn, or 387 Little Leaguers forming a human chain across the Plan Commission.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and somewhere in the world an elderly Franco Harris donned a Red Devils uniform, grinning broadly in approval as we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, yielding the usual media spin:

Reporting from Jeffersonville: Look at these delighted folks crowding the Big Four in their spandex with Bibles, ice cream cones and homespun drooling.

Reporting from New Albany: POLICE SCANDAL! NEWS AT 11!

Two days later, it has gotten even more Byzantine. Sifting through the usual stenography from the same Jimmy Olsens:

First, a police officer registered a complaint over alleged incidents some years back, and threatened a lawsuit.

Next, the chief of police suddenly quit for “family” reasons, followed by her second in command, albeit of a different family.

Then, a grand jury made a report on a recent alleged episode involving a police officer, but declined to issue an indictment.

An agoraphobic City Hall seemingly shaken to its core by the grudging necessity of appearing in public to address any issue other than “quality of life” in EDIT-funded parks gradually rushed forward to reassure the citizenry that each of these policing occurrences took place in a hermetically sealed vacuum similar to that surrounding municipal parks construction decision-making.

Now our choices are to ignore these protests of non-linkage and retreat to our favorite watering holes to formulate conspiracy theories, a habit sometimes referred to by cultural anthropologists as the “old lady Internet troll with dangling cigarette” theorem, or to go even deeper by pondering which is worse, multiple acts of weirdness taken together or separately?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s Rosenbarger’s fault, and nothing a few bump-outs wouldn’t cure.

But seriously: At this precise moment, the only thing crystal clear about any of it is that we’ll have a new police chief. Beyond that, it’s all innuendo and murk. I’m not jumping to conclusions.

When we’re finished gossiping, might someone – City Hall, police department, Democratic central committee, Kim Jung-un – take an interest in the escalating speeds on our almost entirely unenforced one-way arterial streets?

---

This brings me to Sunday, when there’ll be a new event downtown called the Boomtown Ball and Festival. Boomtown is the brainchild of Houndmouth, a Southern Indiana musical group with strong ties to New Albany. The city has played a leading role in this celebration, as with the Bicentennial Park Concert Series, which begins on Friday, May 30.

On Sunday evening, the band will play a sold-out indoor show at The Grand. During the afternoon preceding Houndmouth’s performance, other bands will play on an outdoor stage at Market and Third, as selected and booked by Houndmouth and Production Simple, while in the farmers market space and on Bank Street, there will be vendors of all varieties as organized and arranged in the loose aggregation known as the Flea Off Market. It’s an all-ages, all-interests event.

A consortium of downtown food and drink businesses will operate the Boomtown Tavern, located within the confines of the farmers market pavilion. Owing to Indiana state law, the entire Boomtown festival will be located within a fence and enclosures, but of course, the full range of downtown’s independent businesses are a short walk away. Many of them will observe special Sunday opening hours for the occasion.

In a conceptual sense, if the Boomtown festival were to declare its relationship status, the likely choice would be “It’s Complicated.” Nothing about it has been simple, and yet the day slowly is coming together. By Sunday, we’ll be ready to muddle through it, and I’m sure everything will work out acceptably.

It’s worth remembering that when it comes to serving the cause of simplicity, communication goes a very long way toward reducing complexity to manageable levels, if not eliminating it outright. During the course of my involvement with Boomtown, I’ve tried to make decisions and urge solutions on the basis of more communication, not less, and in the simple recognition that downtown stakeholders already have issues with unanswered questions pertaining to pre-existing impositions (read: Harvest Homecoming) without needing any more of them.

I’m hoping that in spite of the many rough spots experienced while planning and executing this complicated first-time event, all those working so hard to make it happen will learn from the input offered by those doing business downtown, every day of the year. I can’t speak for everyone, but it has been revealing for me.

Downtown has changed, and we just can’t persist in top-down planning without seeking some measure of consensus first, from those who stand to be affected by the actions being considered.

Granted, the Boomtown Ball will bring commerce downtown on a Sunday, and of course, that’s a good thing, but it must be grasped by those in positions of authority that starting the Ball rolling by emphasizing the importance of a Louisville-based flea market – a fine and reputable institution in its own right – sent an immediate and frankly insulting signal to local merchants, which sounded like this: “We’re not good enough here, so we’ll bring in someone else’s panache.”

No, this was not the city’s intent. However, it was ill-considered just the same, and it has complicated every step of the process since.

Simplicity? Please, and here’s an example.

“Do you mind if we use your space?”

Zirin: "Gentrification Is the Real Scandal Surrounding Jackie Robinson West."

In wintertime, daily life in the Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness often revolves around sports. Last week, it was a debate about the politics of Little League.

... Little League Baseball confirmed the news on Wednesday, forcing Illinois' All-Stars (Jackie Robinson West) to vacate its U.S. Championship over Nevada and Great Lakes Valley Regional victory over Indiana. The announcement also declared New Albany a Great Lakes Valley champion, the town's first such honor.

Fulfilling my duty as resident civic contrarian, let's pole-vault past the cacophonous blather about scandalous adult cheating, childhood heartache, overdue victory parades and selective exurban zoning. Rather, let's look at a different side of the story.

Gentrification Is the Real Scandal Surrounding Jackie Robinson West, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

 ... As for the decision itself, ironies abound. Jackie Robinson West was the first entirely black team to represent the United States in the Little League World Series. And yes, waiting until Black History Month to strip JRW of their title is at best tin-eared. But that insult shouldn’t blind us to the greater injury. Recall their damnable offense: Jackie Robinson West didn’t use 16-year-old ringers or cork their bats. They had players suit up who lived “beyond their geographical boundary.” The fact that the adults in charge of JRW felt the need to breach this rule perhaps has something to do with the fact that today’s urban landscape supports baseball about as well as concrete makes proper soil for orchids. A plurality of Major Leaguers is made up of people from either the US suburbs or the baseball factories of the Dominican Republic. Many of the few African-American players on Major League rosters actually come from the suburbs. This is because twenty-first-century neoliberal cities have gentrified urban black baseball to death. Boys and Girls Clubs have become bistros. Baseball fields are condos and in many cities, Little League is non-existent. The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate. That’s what made JRW such a profound anomaly. In Chicago particularly, which under Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen school closures and brutal cuts to physical education programs, their success made people believe that—with apologies to Tupac—flowers could in fact grow in concrete.

ON THE AVENUES: Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

ON THE AVENUES: Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Friday is a very important day. That’s because I’m getting a haircut. Personally, it is slated to be a timely and symbolic act, considering that my year to date has constituted a journey from complexity to simplicity – and for me, taking care of foot-long hair has become far too complicated.

This hirsute situation, which has taken several years to create, will be rectified in short order with the generous assistance of Strandz & Threadz, which will be staging its annual Cuts for a Cure. My original aim was to solicit donors for the occasion, but unfortunately the daily grind has been a bit too … well, complicated, so instead, I’ll make a donation on behalf of those friends who would have been subjected to the hard sell. It’s simpler that way.

---

By all rights, Tuesday should have been a day for New Albanians to triumphantly remind the world that while Jeffersonville’s connecting ramp to the Big Four Bridge finally was open, those many months of barred, inaccessible ineptitude could not possibly be forgotten – and, by comparison, New Albany still had its act together as the Brooklyn/Hoboken/Boomtown/Not Jeffersonville of the Falls Cities.

In fact, one can conceive of only a handful of ways for us to flush such a commanding lead in the waning seconds, among them photos of a Democratic grandee in bed with a sheep, a Padgett truck wedged into two Spring Street buildings while trying to make a turn, or 387 Little Leaguers forming a human chain across the Plan Commission.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and somewhere in the world an elderly Franco Harris donned a Red Devils uniform, grinning broadly in approval as we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, yielding the usual media spin:

Reporting from Jeffersonville:
Look at these delighted folks crowding the Big Four in their spandex with Bibles, ice cream cones and homespun drooling.

Reporting from New Albany:
POLICE SCANDAL! NEWS AT 11!

Two days later, it has gotten even more Byzantine. Sifting through the usual stenography from the same Jimmy Olsens:

First, a police officer registered a complaint over alleged incidents some years back, and threatened a lawsuit.

Next, the chief of police suddenly quit for “family” reasons, followed by her second in command, albeit of a different family.

Then, a grand jury made a report on a recent alleged episode involving a police officer, but declined to issue an indictment.

An agoraphobic City Hall seemingly shaken to its core by the grudging necessity of appearing in public to address any issue other than “quality of life” in EDIT-funded parks gradually rushed forward to reassure the citizenry that each of these policing occurrences took place in a hermetically sealed vacuum similar to that surrounding municipal parks construction decision-making.

Now our choices are to ignore these protests of non-linkage and retreat to our favorite watering holes to formulate conspiracy theories, a habit sometimes referred to by cultural anthropologists as the “old lady Internet troll with dangling cigarette” theorem, or to go even deeper by pondering which is worse, multiple acts of weirdness taken together or separately?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s Rosenbarger’s fault, and nothing a few bump-outs wouldn’t cure.

But seriously: At this precise moment, the only thing crystal clear about any of it is that we’ll have a new police chief. Beyond that, it’s all innuendo and murk. I’m not jumping to conclusions.

When we’re finished gossiping, might someone – City Hall, police department, Democratic central committee, Kim Jung-un – take an interest in the escalating speeds on our almost entirely unenforced one-way arterial streets?

---

This brings me to Sunday, when there’ll be a new event downtown called the Boomtown Ball and Festival. Boomtown is the brainchild of Houndmouth, a Southern Indiana musical group with strong ties to New Albany. The city has played a leading role in this celebration, as with the Bicentennial Park Concert Series, which begins on Friday, May 30.

On Sunday evening, the band will play a sold-out indoor show at The Grand. During the afternoon preceding Houndmouth’s performance, other bands will play on an outdoor stage at Market and Third, as selected and booked by Houndmouth and Production Simple, while in the farmers market space and on Bank Street, there will be vendors of all varieties as organized and arranged in the loose aggregation known as the Flea Off Market. It’s an all-ages, all-interests event.

A consortium of downtown food and drink businesses will operate the Boomtown Tavern, located within the confines of the farmers market pavilion. Owing to Indiana state law, the entire Boomtown festival will be located within a fence and enclosures, but of course, the full range of downtown’s independent businesses are a short walk away. Many of them will observe special Sunday opening hours for the occasion.

In a conceptual sense, if the Boomtown festival were to declare its relationship status, the likely choice would be “It’s Complicated.” Nothing about it has been simple, and yet the day slowly is coming together. By Sunday, we’ll be ready to muddle through it, and I’m sure everything will work out acceptably.

It’s worth remembering that when it comes to serving the cause of simplicity, communication goes a very long way toward reducing complexity to manageable levels, if not eliminating it outright. During the course of my involvement with Boomtown, I’ve tried to make decisions and urge solutions on the basis of more communication, not less, and in the simple recognition that downtown stakeholders already have issues with unanswered questions pertaining to pre-existing impositions (read: Harvest Homecoming) without needing any more of them.

I’m hoping that in spite of the many rough spots experienced while planning and executing this complicated first-time event, all those working so hard to make it happen will learn from the input offered by those doing business downtown, every day of the year. I can’t speak for everyone, but it has been revealing for me.

Downtown has changed, and we just can’t persist in top-down planning without seeking some measure of consensus first, from those who stand to be affected by the actions being considered. Granted, the Boomtown Ball will bring commerce downtown on a Sunday, and of course, that’s a good thing, but it must be grasped by those in positions of authority that starting the Ball rolling by emphasizing the importance of a Louisville-based flea market – a fine and reputable institution in its own right – sent an immediate and frankly insulting signal to local merchants, which sounded like this: “We’re not good enough here, so we’ll bring in someone else’s panache.”

No, this was not the city’s intent. However, it was ill-considered just the same, and it has complicated every step of the process since.

Simplicity? Please, and here’s an example.

“Do you mind if we use your space?”

Rob Ford, huffing rock, and "do it yourself" urbanism.

Obviously, there is no crack cocaine scandal in New Albany, at least in political terms. But setting aside the druggie aspect of this story from Toronto, there is a major nugget of wisdom therein.

Why You May Want a Crack-Smoking Mayor, by Stephen Marche (guest post at the Esquire politics blog)

... The lesson of Rob Ford may not be one that urbanists particularly want to hear: Having an utterly paralyzed and embarrassing government may not be that bad a thing. Nobody expects City Hall to do anything: Since Ford came to power, if you wanted the little park in your neighborhood to look good, you and your friends were going to have to organize it. If you wanted more green space, you were going to have to figure out a way to make that happen. Toronto is the one city I know of where the hipster kids in the parks and the billionaires in penthouses share mostly the same values and goals, at least in regards to the city they want to live in; since Ford, both groups have had to think of themselves as city builders. And they are proceeding to build the city. They know they have to build it themselves because the mayor is, uh, otherwise engaged.

Not nearly as many when we speak of TIF zones.

Thanks for the traffic on Tuesday and Wednesday. NAC's site counter was off the charts.

Nothing like one of Casey Jones' train wrecks (or a statement of atheistic intent) to entice readers.

As for the week's surreal train wreck: I persist in believing that it will morph into a full-blown Jerry Springer episode -- verily, the second coming of Camm trial -- before it's finished.

Stay tuned.