As if Ohio’s new smoking ban wasn’t bad enough, Summit County is now launching yet another attack on nicotine lovers by forcing them to pay for a professional soccer stadium.
If the County Council approves the measure — which it surely will — a pack of smokes would be 30 cents more, generating an estimated $7 million a year for 30 years to help build the 20,000-seat stadium — a stadium that no one will use, because no one gives two shits about soccer.
The move would follow on the heels of Cuyahoga County’s 30-cent tax on cigs for the arts. The question is: Why do smokers always have to pay for gay shit, while simultaneously being ostracized for smoking?
Yet, County Executive James McCarthy — a longtime Winston man — maintains that it isn’t just a sin tax to fund soccer. “The soccer stadium creates a destination location,” McCarthy says. “The whole point of this thing is to create a lifestyle village around it. Without that retail component, I wouldn’t do it.”
McCarthy also says that $1 million of the $7 million annual revenue will go to fund arts and culture. “Yeah, plus I get some money for my arts and culture folks,” he says. “It’s sort of a backdoor way of doing it, but I’ll take it however I can get it.” — Denise Grollmus
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
Denise Grollmus,
Did you intend to state your question in the following manner: “Why do smokers always have to pay for happy shit?”
From the tone of the rest of your diatribe, I assume not.
Therefore I am left with the conclusion that you used the word “gay” in a derogatory fashion. This is something that I find quite reprehensible. In fact, it’s extremely saddening that more people don’t find this blatant disregard to be offensive.
Just for a moment, let’s consider the following alteration to your sentence: “Why do smokers always have to pay for straight shit?”
Does this even come close to making sense? NO. Your sentence is along the same lines as saying: “Why do smokers always have to pay for Jew, nigger, spic (insert any other offensive slur here) shit?
Even typing the preceding example hurt me, because I know it hurts others. Maybe next time you find yourself at a lack of words, you’ll consider how your actions affect other people and chose to increase your vocabulary over deciding to insult a group of people.