GRUMPY OLD MEN

George Forbes, a cook of some measure, comes in three flavors: sweet, sour and saucy, the latter so biting it can gag. Sauce was boss these recent days as Forbes managed to offend most sensible souls in town when he allowed The Call & Post to attack state senator Nina Turner with an Aunt Jemima caricature and a berating editorial.

All Turner did to deserve this treatment was be the only elected
black official to support Issue 6, the reorganization of county
government. Think about it — a vote against 6 would have been an
endorsement of corruption, incompetence and hopelessness. What is
morally complicated about that choice?

Forbes is the legal advisor for the black newspaper. The last time
he offended such a large audience was in the 1970s when he had a radio
show on WERE and insisted white people turn off their radios. Then he
wondered in 1989 why he was not elected mayor.

There is not enough time or space to record the life and times of
George Forbes, let alone do an analysis of him that would explain his
outrage. He is a complex man of many parts — hubris among them,
as well as theater — and a profoundly visceral nature. I have
known him for nearly 40 years, some as a friend and a good many as an
adversary. He once introduced me to the president of American Express
as a man who has been trying to put him in jail for 30 years. I liked
that.

Then there was the time Forbes called John Lanigan’s radio show
while Lanigan and I were discussing the usual follies at city hall and
threatened to come to the studio and kick my ass. I left before he
could get there.

Clearly, George Forbes is about race, not surprising given that he
grew up in a segregated South, endured the civil-rights turmoil during
the 1960s and served longer as city council president than any person
in the town’s history. He played a key role in rejuvenating the city in
the 1980s.

At 78, a man of some accomplish-ment, Forbes insists on playing out
his life as a dominant figure in the black community. It could be that
this is the last hurrah not only for him but an era as well. The
passage of Issue 6, which was supported by Turner and some blacks from
a younger generation, may be a signal that politics as Forbes, Lou
Stokes and Arnold Pinckney have known since the 1960s is over.

To me, there is sadness to the Turner incident. Cleveland politics
and government have been going from bad to worse for almost two decades
now. The inertia here is so stifling that it almost sucks one’s breath
away. You do not have to be an urban expert to look at the region and
see that we are losing jobs, population, confidence and, equally
important, our youth. Time is running out, folks, but those who lead
insist on marginalizing us into contentious camps and communities
incapable of creating a dynamic whole

The city is calcified in a kind of racial mentality that prohibits
the two communities from successfully uniting in a common cause called
Cleveland. It is a sinking ship, but the town’s leadership will not
acknowledge that we are all going down, regardless of the community in
which we claim citizenship.

For those of us who covered the bloodshed of the civil-rights
struggles of the 1960s, this racism seems even worse today because no
one speaks out on the sad realities. It is a silent and sullen specter
of impending doom that hangs over the city. In its own way, it is like
the Israeli-Palestinian dispute without the violence. Both sides have
their points but no common ground to resolve differences. It is also
similar because politics can be employed to perpetuate the agony.

Several years ago, when the Cleveland Bar Association resurrected
the idea of a regional government, there was little effort on the part
of black political leadership to engage. It was clear among those on
the bar association committee that unless minorities bought into the
idea, any chance of government reform was lost. The effort dissipated
like so many similar attempts in the past decades. The shortsightedness
of political gridlock paralyzed and bankrupted the community.

This was followed by the establishment of a commission by the
governor to study government reform. Former Congressman Lou Stokes
unilaterally declared for the black community there was no real need
for reform.

Finally, earlier this year, another group sponsored what would
become Issue 6, without the support of the established black political
leadership. Traditional race-card politics, along with an effort by the
Democratic Party to subvert the measure, were unsuccessful.

In all these cases, the established black leadership, with campaign
ribbons reaching back to a time when Cleveland streets were mean with
racial violence, did not see the need to seize the moment in a changing
world and add to their legacy the wisdom and vision that would bond a
divided city. Truth is they hung back as if they were masters of the
universe, a universe that had passed them by.

A few days before The Call & Post published its
editorial and demeaning cartoon, The Plain Dealer published a
page-one profile of Nina Turner. No doubt, this laudatory piece
provoked the Call & Post’s response, which Forbes
sanctioned. The attacks on Nina Turner were unwarranted. Her presence
as a supporter of Issue 6 hardly swayed the vote, but her rise to
prominence clearly unleashed jealousy among some black leaders.

If the situation warranted humor, you could call this Grumpy Old
Men III.

The attack on Turner was an embarrassment to all. One executive
interviewing a job candidate from Chicago when the story broke was
asked what kind of city would engage in this kind of racial
vendetta.

If there was anything good to come from the entire matter, it was
the almost universal rebuke of the incident in one of those rare
instances when the town responded as a city and not a village. The
other result is that Turner has become a celebrity thanks to The Call & Post. For her, it turned out to be a public-relations
coup of the first order. Why would she want an apology from the
newspaper now?

Issue 6 passed because voters finally grew sick of corruption, a
political party that trafficked in greed and patronage, incompetence
that roamed the chambers of government like mice on the loose, and
leadership so inept that a city and county stagger like a drunk in the
night.

The real value of The Call & Post is a reminder that we
really are a hurting place.

news@clevescene.com

This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2009.