Editorial

There was not a dry eye in the house. “Stop the cameras,” muttered Dr. Heather Carone, as she reached for a Kleenex to dry her eyes. “Please give me a moment …,” a telling plea from an ER physician, who has probably seen everything. As if tears were contagious, others at the video shoot could be heard quietly choking back emotions that cut to the core of every parent. But Paige Frate didn’t notice, as she played with her mother’s blond hair. Three-year old Paige has her blond locks lightly tied into a pert ponytail. She wiggles as if to say she wants down and then waddles toward a puzzle, giggling as she greets the dog. But what appears on the surface to be normal is far from it. Paige has been diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome, a rare genetic form of epilepsy that begins in infancy and afflicts an estimated 5,400 American children. A neurological disorder, epilepsy is characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures. Current treatments are comprised of pharmaceutical drugs, many of which have debilitating side effects.

The main attraction distraction, got you number than numb. Empty your pockets son, got you thinkin' that what you need is what they're selling. Make you think that buying is spreading the Gospel. Ain't nobody explain yet the exact role of the Willie beard Chia Pet plays in the message of God's love. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter Heaven. There's a Bible quote that ain't making it into the interview. Life in America is fake life, and the moral outrage directed at A&E is little more than a simulacrum of the real thing. Woe be upon white evangelical conservatives. I mean, I understand that key to the rhetorical legitimacy of any group is some configuration of persecution, but I would think that at some point, if they really want to be God's Truth, they would feel the need to upgrade, per Phil Jackson, from a stage 4 tribal culture to a stage 5, i.e. “a rare stage characterized by a sense of innocent wonder and the strong belief that 'life is great.'” (See Bulls, Chicago, 1995–98.) I mean, is this a religion y'all or is it a schematic of co-dependency?

The Holidays are a time when one either blesses their own foresight or curses themselves for their lack of it. Overcoming setbacks in my year-end Kerouac-esq peregrination to the east made me do both. I should have planed this trip better, but at least I stole Peeves’ login so I can give Free Press readers a properly scathing product review of my travels. It all began with a quick jaunt to New York on a Chinatown bus. Younger friends had been suggesting this for years, older friends swore I would die in some flaming wreck. The bus from Downtown Columbus to Canal Street in New York was advertised at twelve hours and sixty bucks. The bus left a little late and lost a tire on the way. It was still only two hours late and the blowout barely woke me up. Discount Christmas shopping in Chinatown was followed by a quick and cheap gypsy cab ride to my final destination. Christmas party, old friends, mulled cider, good times. Greyhound wanted more than twice as much and professed to take twice as long. No thanks dirty dog. After the party it was time to drift southward. Sadly, every Chinatown bus service going anywhere relevant was sold out for the holidays.

Granny gather up your girlfriends, and head to Hollywood. Casino that is. This appears to be the best – and perhaps the only -- way that Columbus and Franklin County residents can avoid an unexpected potential $97 million increase in the cost of the publicly financed Nationwide Arena, according to a Press Release by, and exclusive interviews with key members of, the Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government. In a Press Release provided to The Columbus Free Press by Coalition spokesperson Jonathan Beard (Beard also serves as Chair of the Editorial Board of the Free Press), the Coalition reports that Ohio’s four casinos are not generating enough tax revenue to the state of Ohio to fully cover bond payments due from the Franklin County Facilities Convention Authority for that agency’s purchase of Nationwide Arena. Ohio Department of Taxation reports show that actual statewide casino revenues have landed far from the rosy amounts originally projected. During the 2009 campaign for Ohio casinos, backers projected $1.9 Billion in casino gambling revenue in Ohio. By 2011, the state of Ohio revised its budget forecast for the casinos downward to just $1.1 Billion.

During this holiday season nearly 134,000 Ohioans face the prospect of ringing in the new year hungry. Governor John Kasich has decided, despite Ohio’s stagnant job growth and high unemployment, that work requirements will be mandated in 72 counties for childless adults aged 18-50 in order to qualify for food assistance. Ohio is still down 221,000 jobs from where it was in November 2007. Where these 134,000 people will work is a puzzling proposition. What is known is that they will no longer qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – what used to be called food stamps. Kasich could have accepted a federal waiver that would have extended the federal food aid for all the counties in Ohio for at least one year without the work requirements.

Leave it to Sarah Palin, of all people, to play unwitting court jester, and speak aloud that which we all would rather have left unsaid. On November 11, in an interview on NBC, she said “I love the commercialization of Christmas because it spreads the Christmas cheer.” This statement of course, is rather gauche for us concerned liberals, who like to concern-troll about about the “true meaning of Christmas” and then turn around and snark on Christianity itself. But part of the reason her statement is so horrifying is that it's not wrong. The commercialization of Christmas helps spread the Christmas cheer because they are one in the same. Indeed, the commercialization of Christmas is seen to be a universal bad, the only time it is socially acceptable to rail against capitalism. Inasmuch as we expect Christmas to be about some actual values, commercials that tell parents to give up on any gift that involves personal effort, or some form of unquantifiable love, and instead just buy the the new phone from Verizon churns our stomachs, and rightly so. They seem in violation of something, some ineffable spirit of this time of year. But what is the true meaning of Christmas?

Greetings from Liz Lessner President Obama (brilliantly) assembled a Business Council back in 2010 that engages the small business community nationwide. We were invited to a day long briefing by senior advisers and staffers as well as given the opportunity to voice our small biz concerns to White House staff. Hopefully, Mayor Coleman will one day assemble a Citywide version of this council, as small business concerns are often overlooked in Columbus. The Truman Bowling Alley was not included in this meeting but I was able to sneak in there for a quick peek. Harold and I had our rehearsal dinner in the bowling alley in the basement of Columbus Athletic Club, I got a thing for old timey basement bowling alleys. Thanks! Liz

With the utterance of one word on a voicemail, everything changed, even though he only “half” meant it. Up until the time Jonathan Martin released that recording, the going reaction to his allegations of harassment and abuse by Richie Incognito was that was just the way things were in the NFL, that the process of breaking a person down, of stripping away any semblance of dignity from a person except for the kind prescribed to him by the higher-ups was a natural, downright moral process. And yet, when it came out that this process took on a racist tone, suddenly it was unacceptable. But what did that word really change?

This past Thursday December 5, Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s greatest fighters for freedom, passed away after a life of struggle a the age of 95. Politicians from Raul Castro to Ted Cruz were quick to release statements offering their condolence and talking about how Mandela inspired them. President Barack Obama was no different saying that “his journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings and countries can change for the better” and he could not imagine his life without Mandela’s example. Yet today the United States continue to hold political prisoners, one of those prisoners is Oscar López Rivera. Oscar López Rivera is a Puerto Rican nationalist who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1981 for the crime of wanting to see a Puerto Rico free from United States colonialism. 32 years later he still remains imprisoned in Terre Haute, Indiana and has become one of the world’s longest serving political prisoners, serving 5 more years than Mandela did under apartheid.

The universe has a uncanny knack for adding perspective whenever popularity gets confused with significance. The actor Paul Walker was popular. Nelson Mandela was significant. Fox News should not be counted in the ranks of admirers of the revolutionary lion turned honored statesman. Cynics say there’s little difference in cable news, but sometimes the differences are obvious and stark. While CNN and MSNBC honored Mandela by turning over their evening programming to covering his life and times, Fox News stayed on message by largely relegating Mandela’s passage to the news crawl and pounding away with their anti-Obamacare propaganda. The media gossip site, Mediaite went deep into CNN, MSNBC and Fox’s coverage (or lack of) of Mandela’s passage and the clear loser lagging behind the field was the “news” network led by hardcore right-wingers Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Hardly a surprise considering everything Mandela stood for are the very things Fox News is against. I flipped the television from Rachel Maddow interviewing Ron Dellums to Megan Kelly chatting amiably with a medal-winning soldier.