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Commentaries for the Week of April 8, 2002 |
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Week of 08/05/2002
Week of 05/20/2002
Week of 05/13/2002
Week of 04/22/2002
Week of 04/08/2002
Week of 04/01/2002
Week of 03/25/2002
Week of 03/18/2002
Week of 03/04/2002
Let Doyle be Doyle
Week of 02/25/2002
Put Rhinos in Rochester
More
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America’s unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent. Jobs increase. The national recession is going, going, gone. New York’s, on the other hand, is growing. State unemployment rises. The number of people filing initial unemployment insurance claims is 17 percent higher than a year ago. Author Lewis Carroll wrote about “curiouser and curiouser.” Why does the Nation’s economy wax while New York’s wanes? It’s not curiouser at all.
New York still rocks after September 11. Small businesses closed. Securities firms plunged. Tourism fell off the cliff. Our state’s woes, however, are larger than Black Tuesday. Union costs eclipse other regions’. Special interests demand social largesse. New York lacks the guts to say no.
How depressing is this: Under George Pataki, spending has risen annually by 15 percent -- twice the Nation’s norm. Taxes dwarf the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts’. How can business thrive, or plan? It can’t -- not under a Republican Governor who outliberals any Democrat.
Pataki and his opponent will tell it matters this year who wins. Forget it. New York’s two-party politics has become a contradiction in term.
To me, the first civil right of any American is for his government to enforce the law. Any President must agree. He takes office by swearing to uphold it. Perhaps President Bush should reread his oath-taking. It might keep him from supporting measures that reward people who break the law.
Bush has announced he backs a Senate bill to grant amnesty to 200,000 illegal Mexican immigrants as part of an “incremental approach” that would, ultimately, give amnesty to 12 million people. That’s the number from all countries the Immigration and Naturalization Service believes have broken our immigration laws.
Think of that. People break our law. Bush gives them amnesty. Some lesson. Actually, some mistake -- an error we’ve made since a 1986 amnesty first made 2.7 million illegal immigrants legal citizens, enlarging our legion of the poor.
A report shows that the indirect costs for such ex-illegal aliens tops $78 billion. Bush doesn’t care -- for he’s obsessed with the Hispanic vote. To get it he will give amnesty, bend the law, and mock our borders. A President like that is unworthy of his office. Not to mention his oath.
Let me describe a phenomenon I have yet to grasp. It’s called cooking. No, by me. By men and women who parlay food into celebrity. Call them chefs-in-chief. Their audience is the world.
Several decades ago the Galloping Gourmet first rode into our consciousness. Before and after Julia Childs used and, yes, hit the sauce. She was indomitable, incorrigible, and if you liked food, unavoidable. Julia was also a rarity: a cook on TV.
Today entire networks fix on food. Cable has changed television’s landscape. Among its offshoots: A who’s who of chefs. Emeril Lagasse has become a one-man industry. Other cooks vie to grace the Food Network schedule. Across the pond Nigella Lawson links Beef Wellington and tasty pudding. This is the miracle: Millions breathlessly pant to see these maestros prepare food.
I hasten to add this is Nothing personal. I admire great chefs. It’s just that watching them rivals cricket: Wake me when they’re done. Speaking of which, dinner is ready. I’m off to eat. Or as Emeril himself says, “Bam.”
Any huckster knows business’ cardinal rule. Find your niche, then sell at warpspeed. Rochester’s greatest niche is music: the Eastman School, or RPO. To many, music means the stage. Therefore, flaunt the Broadway musical.
Arnie Rothschild agrees. His catalyst: a proposed Performing Arts Center Broadway roadhouse at Midtown Plaza. “This area,” says the Rochester Broadway Theatre president, “loves musicals.” Is he right? Is he ever.
”Everyone has a favorite musical,” says Rothschild. Debate sires interest, which spawns demand. The Arts Center would cost $65 million. Recall The Sound of Music: It would become among “my [Rochester’s] favorite things.”
A business should play to its strength. Play it, sing it, prize Broadway’s alchemy of look, sound, and feel. Ethel Merman sang, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” The musical is bright and bromidic, forever young, and free. Outside of New York, Rochester is poised to do it as well as any city has.
In the last several weeks I’ve interviewed two men who regard each other like the cobra and the mongoose -- Jack Doyle and William Johnson. The Mayor and County Executive are both prideful, stubborn, bright. Perhaps that’s the problem. These Bickersons are too much alike.
Doyle and Johnson have clashed over development, regional planning, the zoo, and sales tax relief. “The Mayor and I,” Doyle once said, “are sometimes not on the same page.” Concedes Johnson: “Jack and I don’t always get along.” Who loses? Us. Disharmony is a side dish most citizens decline to order.
Sheer will has helped Doyle cut property taxes, and Johnson improve services. Alas, dueling wills threaten a Performing Arts Center, soccer stadium, transportation center, and fast ferry to Toronto. Whomever is deemed obstructionist can forget history’s acclaim. “It’s up to them,” State Senator Rick Dollinger says.
”Will we remember them for what they’ve done -- or what together they now fail to do?” That question only the cobra and mongoose can decide.
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