Anyway, the planes will be a-flyin' in Dayton this summer, so feel free to amble southward to get your fix of mouth-breathing and aircraft-watching in. But thanks to widespread criticism, there won't be a massive atomic bomb dropped on the city.
A reenactment of the uber-cheerful Aug. 6, 1945, bombing of Hiroshima was originally on the bill. Family fun and atomic warfare do tend to go hand in hand, right, Debra Barone? But the outcry, combined with some handy petition-signing, brought the show to its knees.
So rather than have a B-29 just drop trou over the city of Dayton, the organizers will maintain the fanfare as much as they can and convert the bomby stuff into an educational "Great Wall of Fire" pyrotecnic show. The whole thing sounds more like Jerry Lee Lewis staging a Wish You Were Here gig. (B.Y.O.M., of course. There will be no mushroom clouds at this thing now, so, duh, bring your own mushrooms.)
And while Scene DOES NOT CONDONE revisionist history (just like how we allow Dennis Kucinich to garner his annual "Best Politician" tags in our Best of Cleveland issues), we applaud the Dayton crowd for resisting the hegemonic display of U.S. atomic might this summer.
