“Comedy,” Sid Caesar once said, “has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.”
Or you can put a bland suit and dorky glasses on it, and shave its head into an old-school gym teacher’s buzz cut. That was Drew Carey’s shtick, and it was brilliant. In that thrift-store costume, he both mimicked and refuted the most successful comedian of his generation, Jerry Seinfeld. Both men crafted real-life caricatures out of their own personalities and backgrounds. But where Seinfeld mined New Yorkers’ reputed neuroses and self-absorption for Seinfeld, Carey went another direction entirely with The Drew Carey Show, fashioning himself into a portly poster boy for his fellow Clevelanders, earnest but hapless, loveable but hopelessly unhip.
Both shows lasted nine years. In comedy, stereotypes work.
Today, in addition to hosting The Price Is Right, Carey offers us a different stereotype: the celebrity who feels that we all really need to hear about his politics. And just as he took risks with his sitcom — attempting live shows, musical numbers, even a cartoon-character cameo — Carey one-ups openly liberal actors like Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen by deigning to share with us, his fellow Clevelanders, a step-by-step plan for saving this famously struggling town.
Carey and the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based libertarian think tank, have teamed up to produce “Reason Saves Cleveland,” a series of short videos tackling, and ostensibly solving, our city’s most pressing problems. From Los Angeles, where both Carey and Reason are based.
If it’s all an elaborate hoax meant to satirize the breathtaking arrogance of celebrities, then Carey is a far greater actor than I ever imagined.
“I know that Cleveland is broke,” said Carey in a phone interview with The Plain Dealer, whose fawning, Sunday front-page promotion of the video series made no effort to analyze its messages. “It’s like one of the poorest cities in the nation right now. And I was like, ‘What the hell, man?'”
Judging from the three episodes I was able to watch before press time, “What the hell, man?” is indicative of the level of insight. Libertarians aren’t stupid — and they deserve credit for ignoring their conservative cousins’ obsession with the so-called culture wars — but they have a bad habit of peddling simple, quick-fix solutions to complex, longstanding problems. And their solutions almost always involve the supposed wisdom of market forces — the “invisible hand,” as it’s sometimes called, a term Carey uses in an interview.
The introductory video opens with a jaunty theme song and shots from around the city, everything from PlayhouseSquare marquees to boarded-up homes. This leads into a quicky history lesson, beginning post-World War II, when Cleveland was the sixth largest city in America and its “economic strength was mirrored on the playing fields of the NFL and Major League Baseball.” As if the two have anything to do with each other. But the narration — by Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of reason.com — continues in that vein, like a slapdash movie adaptation of a richly detailed novel. The montage of the supposedly idyllic ’50s even includes a clip from a cheesy film reel of the period, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such footage used without irony. The obsequious, chipper narrator lilts, “Almost two million people live and work here, and recognize this area as ‘The Best Location in the Nation.'”
Staggering pollution? Blatant segregation? Ingrained corruption? Sorry, no time for that, there’s a point to be made! Cleveland was a capitalist’s and worker’s paradise, and now it’s a ghost town. Gillespie gets from Point A to Point Jeez by sprinting through decades, stitching together disparate incidents — the Hough riots, the Cuyahoga River fire, school busing protests, “Boy” Mayor Kucinich’s default, even The Fumble (again with the strained sports metaphors) — into the ugliest patchwork quilt you’ve ever seen.
But the doom and gloom is just the opening act. “Is a Cleveland renaissance possible?” asks Gillespie. “Of course it is.” And that’s where the real fun begins.
The PD gave Carey a pass on the political agenda at work here, but make no mistake, these are not mini-documentaries so much as elaborate campaign commercials, selling an ideology instead of a candidate.
The installment on schools, for example, cherrypicks facts with aplomb. “Only 12 percent of Cleveland’s district and charter schools merit a state rating of excellent, or even effective,” says Gillespie. “Any plan to revitalize the city must radically improve K-12 education.”
So far, so good. But the report offers just one solution (market-based, of course): charter schools. Gillespie examines two successful charters, one in Oakland and one right here, Citizens Academy, and touts them as models for public education. But he never mentions that in Ohio, for every inspiring success story like Citizens Academy, there’s been at least one crushing disappointment, like the International Preparatory School, the subject of a 2005 Scene investigation, or White Hat Management’s many for-profit schools, which The Plain Dealer examined in 2006. And as Cleveland Free Times reported in 2007, when White Hat found itself at odds with some of its own schools’ boards over dismal test scores, it got its friends in the state legislature to change the law and diminish the boards’ power.
Decentralize control, and let smart, motivated principals, teachers and parents decide what their students really need — on its face, it makes a lot of sense, and sometimes it works brilliantly. Sometimes. The Reason video blithely ignores the obvious, market-based question — if charters are so great, why aren’t they rapidly replacing traditional public schools everywhere? — and even implies that teachers’ unions are to blame for keeping this revolution in check, without ever presenting their point of view.
The next installment presents another libertarian hobbyhorse, privatization, and pretty much dispenses with even the pretense of balance. Gillespie makes the case for selling two regional gems, the West Side Market (because some vendors complain about the facilities) and the Metroparks’ public golf courses (because the owner of a private course says his is better, and a couple guys in a bar agree). Seriously, the case is that thin. But that doesn’t stop Gillespie from lobbing this softball to Carey in an “interview” (probably conducted in L.A.): “Is it surprising to you that the publicly owned and operated markets and golf courses are inferior to the privately owned ones?”
“Does it surprise you?” responds Carey with a smirk. Thought-provoking, no?
From there, we are treated to several more minutes of unbridled cheerleading for privatization. Every interviewee lauds the private sector’s unquestioned ability to deliver services better and at less cost than any government. There’s a quick, positive review of Chicago’s privatization of parking meters — they’re solar-powered! They accept credit cards! — and for balance, we get a three-second shot of a newspaper headline (“Meter Meltdown: Chaotic changes — and higher rates to boot”). Again, no time for details that might slow down the narrative. “Critics” are marginalized as selfish, paranoid union members. West Side Market manager George Bradac is made to look like a fool.
It all sounds great, right up until the point you remember the last time you reviewed your options in the midst of a problem with — or just had a question for — your bank, or your credit card company, or your insurer, or your cell-phone provider, or your cable company, or a private utility company. Or just the last time you stood in line for 20 minutes in Wal-Mart or Marc’s because there was one cashier on duty on a Saturday afternoon. Or paid $20 to park downtown and had to walk three blocks because when you made your dinner reservations, you forgot that the Browns or Cavs were at home that night.
And let’s not even get started on Enron or oil price spikes or the financial meltdown that triggered the Great Recession. Your private-sector dollars at work.
Reason is doling out new videos each day this week. And I admit that I’m curious to hear what they have to say about using public money to build sports arenas and convention centers (and, presumably, “medical marts”). On that topic, we might find some common ground. But that won’t blunt the stunning arrogance of Reason and Carey’s stunt. The whole thing drips with condescension. It’s one thing to promote your ideas; it’s quite another to wrap them in your own press releases and present them as a gift of value beyond measure.
A Cleveland boy — even a Cleveland boy made good like Drew Carey — should know better.
Mayor Frank Jackson, predictably, has played it safe. “The people of the city of Cleveland will save Cleveland,” he told the PD. “And we welcome all suggestions as to how we can move in that direction and all assistance that can come along with it.”
But Jackson’s right about being our own heroes. No think tank or celebrity will save Cleveland. The city’s best hope lies in each resident breaking off a piece of one of the massive problems, as much as he or she can handle, and trying to fix it. One child, one abandoned building, one teetering community, one council ward at a time. Cleveland is what we make it.
So here’s my suggestion for Drew: If you care about Cleveland as much as you say you do, if you really want to make a difference, then don’t just preach from the safety and luxury of sunny California. Get off your trademark fat ass and do something. Give up the panache of L.A. and the easy money of The Price is Right and move back to Cleveland. Start a production company, open a comedy club — hell, run for office, the race for the new county executive position is wide open. Do something. Or shut the hell up.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.
The Official Publication of the Dennis Kucinich Fan Club accusing Drew Carey of offering simple-minded, self-aggrandizing political platitudes devoid of any substance? Now that’s rich!
“But that won’t blunt the stunning arrogance of Reason and Carey’s stunt. The whole thing drips with condescension. It’s one thing to promote your ideas; it’s quite another to wrap them in your own press releases and present them as a gift of value beyond measure…get off your fat ass and do something.” Who does Drew think he is? Michael Moore?
Frank Lewis comes off as every bit arrogant and condescending as he accuses Drew Carey of being. He smugly pooh-poohs free-market economics and those who espouse them without offering any solutions himself, just blind faith in the public sector. Quick-fix solutions? As opposed to raging against free trade and corporations, as if that would somehow magically restore our industrial base of half a century ago?
Puh-LEEZ!
“Do something. Or shut the hell up.”
So… education isn’t doing something? The libertarian movement is entirely education based. The whole idea that one needs to provide explicit positive (rather than negative) answers to these problems is statist and counter to what libertarian philosophy. If you could just provide positive answers to these issues that would be an argument *for* the state. That it is possible of one person to know how others should live better than themselves. Providing the education in economics and liberty *is* doing something. It’s providing people the perspective they need to fix the problems that the state creates themselves rather than expecting it to be fixed for them by those who created it.
You should not be driving to dinner, dont be a feckless suburbanite; you should walk, take the rapid or a cab if needed. No wonder this city is dead – people who work for the progressive city paper complain about parking! Move to dallas you chump.
Drew Carey is espousing an approach to problem solving that is almost impossible to try anywhere. It’s not impossible because it does not work. It is impossible because the places that need to try it are locked up in trying another approach. It seem appropriate in such circumstance to give only the one side: Freedom, Liberty, Justice. Why should he have to sell Control, Tyranny, and Bureaucracy? We are surrounded by it already.
The problem isn’t whether freedom works for libertarians like Drew Carey. It’s whether freedom is even allowed.
This is the counter-point to a market-based approach? A condescending headline to grab attention and then a snarky sum-up of the videos followed by the intellectual equivalent of ‘are you serious?”
And stellar, absolutely stellar reporting on how the free market doesn’t work when you try to solve a problem by going through customer service. Since Mr. Lewis obviously doesn’t care about genuine reporting, facts, statistics, or any kind of investigation at all, I may as well refute his knee-jerk anecdotal ‘evidence’ with my own.
-I had a problem with my cell phone bill 3 days ago. Spent 35 minutes getting it solved. 35 minutes better spent on doing anything else I could in that time. Like running for city congressman, opening a comedy club, or starting a production company for example.
-Went to build a deck on the back of my house. Took 3 weeks. 2 weeks was work. 1 week was waiting on the city government to bother to bring out an inspector to make sure the gaping holes in my yard was up to code. Granted, I can’t imagine what I could have done in that week that I couldn’t use my back yard. Probably nothing.
But hey, when solutions are offered that exist in other places like Houston and Chicago, who needs to investigate? Who needs to pick up a phone and give a call? Find out if what they say is true? And how silly of this ‘free market’ if all they do is take parking meters and make them easier for customers to use – I mean, how stupid is that?
You know, normally I just breeze by the little Scene stands you see everywhere downtown. Normally this little paper doesn’t appeal to me in the least (partly due to reporting like this). But when this is the cover story, this is the thing they use to as an opportunity to offer a counter-point to what could be an honest and forthright discussion about solutions for this city, instead we get this.
No wonder they only way this paper circulates is by giving it away for free.
Someone finally has a refreshing idea on how to save Cleveland and this douchebag Green Party assfuck has to rain on his parade because he doesn’t have any better solutions other than voting Dennis Kucinich into power so the government can make Cleveland “a better place.”
Hey, Frank would you be bitching about Jeanene Garafolo or Sean Penn if they had similar suggestions about how to save Cleveland? I doubt it because you’re a typical hypocrital Amy Goodman-listening douche who can’t think for himself. Go fuck yourself!!
how about a local guy putting in his 2 cents to a situation that’s frustrating for us all….and YES i believe a good, no a GREAT education is monumental in our new “global” world, so YES we need to do something drastic to fix it now. i don’t see anyone else coming up with anything POSITIVE. so instead attacking a guy who’s trying to help, maybe we should redirect that energy to create something that works, instead breeding all this resentment and negativity…for our kids and city’s sake??!!!
It appears, that FLewis, LIKES the current economy and excuses of Cleveland, and by offending celebs that are trying to help, I doubt the city can get more positive attention. Remove this writer, and other like-minded negative thinkers……..that would be a great start for our city.
I think this was probably the worst thing I have ever read in Scene, or possibly any publication; or any stringing together of words that my eyes have ever come across.
What really struck me were the petty pokes at Mr. Carey’s physique (doughface/well-fed/fat-ass), fat jokes are really the realm of 6th graders, and dolts.
Poor Mr.Lewis’s estimation of himself far exceeds any notoriety or success he will ever recieve when all he can offer is ad hominem claptrap. Shame on Scene for lambasting someone, whom many rightly consider a local hero, with a horrific cover, just to get people to read 2 pages of the basest reporting known to the field.
Take a million monkeys, shitting on a million laptops, and you would have a million articles better than this.
Sincerely,
Craig Thomas
Cleveland, OH
Over and over and over, this “entertainment mag” confirms something for me. Cry about Cleveland, and bitch when someone wants to make it better. I loathe the majority of Scene writers. Jaded stories pretty much on every topic, music, art, politics, etc.
Ever wonder why most, now famous, people leave Cleveland to get any recognition? No local media support, unless it’s trendy or anti-trendy just to be argumentative.
I’d like to know some other opinions, but from my point of view Cleveland-ites are bitchy, opinionated, whoa-is-me, snobbish pricks. I have been known to show these traits as well.
I’ve never cared for Drew’s comedy, but at least appreciate that he got out of Cleveland and made a name/career for himself.
Cleveland needs all the help it can get. Who cares where it comes from. In a town of “oh so many creative people,” very rarely is a plan ever followed through with.
I can’t wait for the next “Flats” proposal to get everyone huffy/excited then cry when the plans fall in the shredder. How’s that ghost town, down there? Whaaaaa Cleveland… whaaaaaaaa.
Yeah, Frank Lewis, this Drew Carey fella is a douchebag royale.
New ideas? Market-driven solutions? Personal responsibility?
Forget that crap. Democrats, Democrats, Democrats.
It’s the forward thinking of Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora and Peter Jones and every other hack Democrat failure elected to county offices that will make this county and city great again. Just as soon as they’re finished burning it to the freakin’ ground, that is.
Pity your intelligence was stunted in grade school. Otherwise the concept of LIMITED GOVERNMENT might have trumped your allegiance to the Nanny State.
So Drew Carey is a jackhole for suggesting Libertarian solutions to the utter failure of Big Government and Trickle-Down Bureaucracy in Cuyahoga County.
But the Socialist Dennis! Kucinich is a hero because he espouses statism.
And had Sean Penn had espoused Bolshevism in the name of Obama and for saving Cleveland he’d be a lauded genius, too, right?
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are damned to implode upon the profound stupidity and intellectual dishonesty of Dennis! Kucinich and his followers like Frank Lewis. Please sweep up a little after you’ve finally ground this region into dust, okay?
Cleveland’s solutions don’t easily fit into a single framework. There needs to be a merger of city and county such that Cuyahoga county becomes Cleveland. There needs to be an emphasis on high-skilled, high value-added manufacturing.
In any case, Cleveland will never be as important relative to other cities as it was in the early-mid 20th century.
If I were a developer the first place I would want to build would be on the hills of the Heights. There would be an enormous amount of people who would want to live in a “walkable urbanist” area from Shaker Square, up Larchmere and Coventry to Cornell/Overlook/Mayfield/Univ Circle. All very close to CWRU and the Clinic.
Libertarians – are you willing to say to the rich people in that area – get rid of the historic districts and zoning which protect the not particularly interesting mansions of that area? Or is this just a bunch of ideology? Do you have a clue what I am talking about?
We have met big government and he is us.
At the risk of repeating the other comments… This whole article isn’t remotely a review of the ideas or arguments made, but is instead one giant bitch fest about the supposed condescension of people who are actually offering solutions to the town that is repeatedly described as America’s *worst* city.
Maybe it’s time that the socialists of the world recognize that their ideas *don’t work*. The idea that you can control economies & centrally plan the lives and behaviors of millions of people is not good in theory… It’s ridiculously stupid in theory, and downright catastrophic in practice.
And to Joe: Speaking as a libertarian, if the historic districts are valued then they can be kept alive via trusts, non-profits, historical societies and local residents. There is no direct reason some developer would tear all that down, especially if they don’t actually own the property! Duh… Zoning or not, that doesn’t give non-owners of property the right to come in and bulldoze everyone’s houses. This is why, you’ll note, that the only way companies & developers get to do stuff like that is through eminent domain abuse – which is something that we evil libertarians have fought against for decades (see the Institute for Justice’s supreme court case against New London, CT, for instance).
As for Frank… Drew Carey quiting a high paying job in Los Angeles to go lose money in Cleveland is the dumbest “solution” or even suggestion I’ve ever heard. Hosting the price is right is giving Drew the power to actively work on behalf of causes he feels strongly about – and he’s using that power to hopefully support a change in ideas that can make the town better. What *YOU’RE* doing by whining about it without offering a single substantive critique or alternative solution – and by supporting consistently failed ideas – is what’s useless and bad for the city you live in.
Fail.
From the article:
“Or paid $20 to park downtown and had to walk three blocks because when you made your dinner reservations, you forgot that the Browns or Cavs were at home that night.”
Three blocks, oh, the horror! And if you watch the entire series, you’ll notice that Reason is very down on corporate-welfare sports stadiums.
From commenter Joe:
“Libertarians – are you willing to say to the rich people in that area – get rid of the historic districts and zoning which protect the not particularly interesting mansions of that area? Or is this just a bunch of ideology? Do you have a clue what I am talking about?”
Yes, we have a clue what you’re talking about. My guess is that 99-99.5% of libertarians would, in fact, be in favor of getting rid of historic districts. The Reason video has an entire segment criticizing zoning!
And since the article didn’t provide a link to the videos, I will do so:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/19/watch-re…
Wake up!
What he’s saying makes sense!
Taking pot shots at him, and telling him to get off his fat ass and do something is not doing any good.
He HAS done something. He’s done research, and is offering solutions.
What are you doing? If you have better ideas, I’d love to hear them!
Why not look to other Cities like Houston and Chicago?
Chicago is a great model of a Great Lakes City that rose up during the industrial revolution.
They are thriving, and Cleveland and Detroit are not.
We have something that no other city in the world has..The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
And yet City Hall puts a lot of obstacles in the way of clubs having live music.
One example of the endless red tape Carey talks about.
Cities like Austin, Nashville, and New Orleans promote music and try to help it thrive.
I look forward to seeing the rest of the series, and hearing what they have to say.
As for you and the idiotic tea baggers, I would say:
“IF YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM.”
Sorry but calling Drew a ”Fat Ass” don’t make you right … even when you repeat it 50 times
Sure He can’t pack a 50 minutes videos with lots of figures … you see the idea is : People watch the video, get interested and then go to the Reason website and have a look
You dismiss Drew under the ground that ”a celebrity or think thank can’t save a city” will the purpose of the video was to present ideas that can save the city SO people can put them in practice
after reading this, I understand why Denis Kucinich is from Cleveland lol
This was a really rotten article. Why so much venom toward Drew Carey? He’s trying to suggest ideas on helping the city. Even I don’t think they are all good ideas, but he loves Cleveland and wanted to try to help it. Critiquing the ideas is fine, but the personal attacks are not. Cleveland is in bad shape and saying Screw You to someone on the front cover of your newspaper to someone who is trying to help makes Frank Lewis and the Scene part of the problem.
As Alexander Winton told Mr.Packard.
“If you know so much about automobiles, build your own automobile.”
So, if Drew Carey knows so much about running Cleveland he should run for mayor.
Or he could build his own Westside Market, golf course and charter school.
And see if he really can do any better.
That’s the freemarket.
The Libertarians and Tea Baggers all sound to me like the hippies of the 60s.
Absolutely certain that the establishment must be destroyed.
But offering only anarchy as it’s replacement.
No civilization ever evolves into anarchy, they degenerate into anarchy.
So, if Drew Carey thinks he could do better he is welcome to run for mayor of Cleveland.
As for myself, I wouldn’t take Frank Jackson’s problems if they were wrapped in 24 carat gold.
Yeah, fuck Drew. You had me at fat, dorky and bland. Just like Seinfeld, or — uhh, well — you still had me bra.
What’s GaGa doing today?
Whenever I hear the Libertarians I think about Leftists. Its never about Cleveland, or the war, or the economy or health care.
Its about libertarianism or socialism.
The libertarians can fight the socialists as long as they want – perhaps at the Unitarian Church just off Coventry. We need to fix the Cleveland area day to day.
It occurred to me as soon as I heard Drew Carey was taking time to try and educate Clevelanders about the superiority of free markets. Oh crap, I told friends, just wait until the leftist mouthpieces of the Cleveland media get a hold of this one! But wait: would they really do a hatchet job on one of the few beloved, famous Clevelanders left alive? One who escaped this backward, quasi-socialist hellhole to build a succesful career for himself, just as he’s trying to help the people still stuck there? Are the propagandists at Scene and Plain Dealer really that bloodthirsty? That blinded by ideology?
Of course you are. I should never have doubted you. So SCENE, stick with your bigger government, bigger unions, anti-school choice, anti-business agenda. It’s obviously worked so well for the poor people of Cleveland over the past 40 years.
It’s forced private enterprise to flee our ruthless taxation and despicable Democratic corruption. And as the businesses and entrepreneurs have left for locales more hospitable to profits and success, they’ve taken all the jobs with them. But you don’t understand that, do you?
Drew apparently does, but when he tries to make his case to the people, you shit all over him.
So, just keep your feet pressed down on the throats of Cleveland’s urban poor, who, thanks to you, will never have a chance at a decent education or a high-paying professional career. As long as you sustain Cleveland’s national reputation as a left-wing cesspool that’s hostile to capitalism, the decades-old cycle of decline and deterioration will keep grinding on. And you’ll sit there at your keyboards, pounding out missives against corporate greed. Hysterical, yet profoundly sad. You deserve to wallow in the rotting city you’ve created. Fuck you, SCENE.
I would think most Clevelanders are for better government not the absence of government (yes, yes I know – the absence of government except for police and a few other functions).
On this note what is your position on regionalism? Are you for or against? By formal position you should be in favor? A lot of Scene readers are – I’m certain – in favor. A lot of older people who might support the Tea Party on tax issues would be horrified at the prospect. They have spent their lives building their suburbs in one way or another.
Are you afraid to mention this issue?
It occurred to me as soon as I heard Drew Carey was taking time to try and educate Clevelanders about the superiority of free markets. Oh crap, I told friends, just wait until the leftist mouthpieces of the Cleveland media get a hold of this one! But wait: would they really do a hatchet job on one of the few beloved, famous Clevelanders left alive? One who escaped this backward, quasi-socialist hellhole to build a succesful career for himself, just as he’s trying to help the people still stuck there? Are the propagandists at Scene and Plain Dealer really that bloodthirsty? That blinded by ideology?
Of course you are. I should never have doubted you. So SCENE, stick with your bigger government, bigger unions, anti-school choice, anti-business agenda. It’s obviously worked so well for the poor people of Cleveland over the past 40 years.
It’s forced private enterprise to flee our ruthless taxation and despicable Democratic corruption. And as the businesses and entrepreneurs have left for locales more hospitable to profits and success, they’ve taken all the jobs with them. But you don’t understand that, do you?
Drew apparently does, but when he tries to make his case to the people, you crap all over him.
Just keep your feet pressed down on the throats of Cleveland’s urban poor, who, thanks to you, will never have a chance at a decent education or a high-paying professional career. As long as you sustain Cleveland’s national reputation as a left-wing cesspool that’s hostile to capitalism, the decades-old cycle of decline and deterioration will keep grinding on. And you’ll sit there at your keyboards, pounding out missives against corporate greed. Hysterical, yet profoundly sad. You deserve to wallow in the rotting city you’ve created.
Although articles in Scene have always been poorly written and often inaccurate, this is absolutely the worst piece of garbage I’ve ever read. It is so overwhelmingly immature that I thought maybe a high school kid wrote it. Almost half the article is making fun of Drew Carey’s appearence. That is just pathetic.
Regardless of whether or not anyone agrees with his ideas, it’s nice that anyone at all takes the time to attempt to do anything or come up with any ideas at all. There’s no denying that Cleveland is in bad shape. Apparently you’ve only lived here about 6 years or so. It’s probably safe to assume that in moving to Cleveland, you really moved to a suburb. This is my hometown and I sincerely hope things start to improve here and I don’t think any of us need your crap articles and negativity. I think that that the first thing Cleveland can do to get back on the right track is for you to get the hell out and move back to your hometown. Why don’t you put your picture on the front page next issue and give Cleveland a chance to hurl junior high insults at you, jerk. I won’t ever pick a scene up again even though it’s free.
THIS article proves what is actually wrong with Cleveland, and I was able to boil it down into ONE WORD. I created a quick 2 minute podcast about it. Listen to it at http://matthaze.com/2010/03/29/yourdailyha…
Matt
wow, scene magazine, are you okay? you seem very angry at drew, but not because he wants to help cleveland. you keep hammering him for being A CELEBRITY who wants to help cleveland. you even take an odd swipe at him for maybe shooting part of an interview in los angeles! god forbid!! and you think his coming home to open a comedy club would somehow help the city? somewhere in your piece you may actually make cogent arguments about helping cleveland, but they’re lost in your childish slamming of drew for being famous. next time focus on the message and not the messenger.
You have two choices. (1) Free trade between willing traders, often with uneven results. (2) Central planning, attempts to control and reach consensus, forced one size fits all solutions. #(2) can work at the level of a family, small church, or sports team; but never will for 1 1/4 million people with differing dreams and objectives. When free trade is denied, central planning fails, crime and destruction quickly follow as people attempt to survive at an animal instead of human level.
In his diatribe, Mr. Lewis conveniently ignores the strongest argument in favor of privatization: Not that it always produces more efficient or cheaper results (it doesn’t), but, rather, that no one other than investors who made a VOLUNTARY choice are forced to subsidize the inefficiencies or expenses. A privatized West Side Market could turn out to be a poorly run, high cost disaster. But not a disaster that a Clevelander’s tax dollars would have to subsidize as they currently do with a public West Side Market or municipal golf course. I’ve got some shocking news for Mr. Lewis: If you don’t find the service provided by your bank or cell phone provider or Wal Mart to be efficient or valuable, you don’t have to spend your money with them. Amazing but true. You can find alternatives. It’s called CHOICE. And it’s brought about by COMPETITION among private companies, which, unlike Government, have no capacity to force you to spend your money subsidizing goods and services that don’t meet your approval.
You know Frank, jealousy is an ugly, ugly emotion. Drew does more good for his fellow man every time a rerun of his sitcom hits the airwaves, than you will do in your entire obnoxious, sniveling life.