Fountain Square News
The civic centerpiece of urban Cincinnati, Fountain Square, re-opened on Saturday in a sparsely-attended ceremony. News coverage in the past few days has been about Nikki Giovanni, the poet asked to read a work in honor of the event. Her poem was a rambling, unfocused rant about the city, which included a line about Ken Blackwell, an African American Republican from Cincinnati who is currently running for governor. She called Blackwell a "son of a bitch".
Some people have claimed this is offensive, inappropriate, and also just bad poetry. Giovanni, predictably, is making noises about "not being silenced" - the cheapest, most pathetic play in the ultraleft book. If you get criticized for delivering poor art, try desperately to insinuate they are trampling on your right to free speech. She believes her right to deliver unimaginative profanity comes hand-in-hand with our obligation to be forced to suffer this talent-free drivel. (She probably has strong opinion about the Bush policy on torture, but don't expect her to see the irony.)
On a more positive angle, the Lily Pad free wireless is up and running on the Square. Frankly I'd be happy to spend my lunch hour taking advantage of this service, but there aren't very many places to sit right now, and I'm not keen on always buying lunch at 'Rock Bottom'. Hopefully merchants can recognize the need for more casual outdoor seating or a coffee shop of some kind where citizens can pass the time without racking up a hefty bill.
Fountain Square is still a work in progress - both the physical reality of the place and the notion of what our common civic spaces should entail.
Related: Andrew Warner disagrees about Giovanni, and thinks she's a genius.
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posted by Superfly @ 8:30 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
I'm not a lawyer - and I do know the 14th amendment has been much abused, to the point where it's become a generalized notion of fairness that has been applied to ridiculous extremes.
Nevertheless I'm comfortable with some kind of line, in the law, between 'No shirt, no shoes, no service.' and 'Whites only.' Yes, it’s a big messy area of the law, and it has to do with how we define civil rights, but I think we have some obligation to try and come up with a consistent interpretation. If I deny a pregnant woman a glass of wine in my bar, am I breaking the law?
It seems like the federal government is a better place for regulations on trade and commerce (as opposed to states) – more negotiating power on treaties for better effect, and less regionalized impediments to capital and markets. I don’t want a lot of regulations – only the most basic ones – and one might reasonably be an administrative process for filing a complaint in the event of potential civil-rights abuse. I think ‘civil rights’ has a very specific meaning in America, and it does have to do with history and race. Should it be easy to prove? No. Will opportunists abuse it? Probably. But there should be a venue for these potential problems.
(Also, speaking of the fairness clause, and since I know I will receive nasty-grams about this – I usually enable comments deliberately, and don’t respond to one post in another. My generalized philosophy on comments is here. But tyrants make exceptions, and your thoughts are well stated.)
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