Who are all these swinger voters everybody is talking about?
And how did socially conservative Ohio turn into such a big swinger state?
When I first rolled into town back in 1984, Akron certainly didn’t seem very loose.
One of the first big controversies I encountered involved a convention for swingers at the Cascade Holiday Inn on Mill Street, now known as the Akron City Centre Hotel.
When a reporter asked Summit County Prosecutor Lynn Slaby what he thought about the upcoming bash, he said he wasn’t thrilled about it but it wouldn’t violate any laws as long as the participants kept their merriment behind closed doors.
The next day — perhaps having taken some time to consider the political ramifications — he changed his mind and asked a court to block the convention.
Slaby said he didn’t want Akron to become known as “the Sex Capital of the World.”
Seriously. He said that.
Akron City Council jumped on the bandwagon, voting 11-1 to condemn the bash as “morally unacceptable.”
The hotel caved and canceled the festivities, much to the dismay of potential swinger voters everywhere.
That gap in the hotel’s schedule was filled by a revival meeting at which the Rev. J. Wayman Butts, of Antioch Baptist Church, triumphantly proclaimed, “Our foe was sin and Satan.”
The churchgoers and fellow ministers who gathered with him in the hotel ballroom no doubt responded, “Yes! Yes!”
So, given our local history, I am taken aback by Ohio’s newfound reputation as a swinger state.
You’d think a place like California would be much more of a swinger state than Ohio, but you hardly hear a word about California voters these days.
What?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Lose the ‘N’
I should have known better than to mess with the Mayans.
Er, the Mayas.
Retired Spanish teacher Jacquie Dress — known as Senora Dress to students at Highland High School — included the study of Maya culture in her curriculum for 28 years. So she knows a bit about the topic.
And she says 99 percent of us are messing up.
“The word ‘Mayan’ is used properly only when referring to the language,” Dress reports. “All other uses should be simply ‘Maya’ — Maya culture, Maya people, the Mayas.”
She agrees the whole “End of the World on Dec. 22” commotion is silly, and points out that even the descendants of the Maya living in Central America aren’t making any plans to sign off.
“That might reassure some worriers, but media hype about an apocalypse will get to a feverish pitch by Thanksgiving, I would guess, and it will be difficult to remain unemotional about the ... disasters awaiting us.”
If the Maya calendar does take us down, we can save some room in our luggage by leaving the “N” behind.
Music to steal by
You’ve heard about folks who go through life with a song in their hearts. Well, this guy had a song in his pants.
Multiple songs, in fact.
The police report from Copley read: “A Cleveland man was charged with theft after he allegedly tried to steal five CDs, total value $44.95, by hiding them in the front of his pants at Best Buy. He was told to never return to the store.”
Is that a stack of megabytes in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Teflon prez
Ohio State President Gordon Gee had his head handed to him in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a must-read publication among college administrators and faculty members.
A long profile of the man began like this:
“It has been said that the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches and Cher. At this point, it might seem reasonable to add E. Gordon Gee to that list.
“At a time when college leaders are being tossed out at the very first whiff of a scandal, the Ohio State University president appears impervious to controversy.”
The magazine navigates through all the hot water Gee has found himself in, from atrocious verbal gaffes to the football scandal to his outrageous spending spree at Vanderbilt, and then adds the latest: an investigation by the Dayton Daily News (reported in the Beacon Journal) that found Gee had rung up $7.7 million in discretionary spending in just five years.
That does not include Gee’s $2 million annual salary, tops in the country. It only involves the cost of wining and dining students, faculty and potential donors on campus and around the globe.
For events at the president’s house alone, he turned in $895,000 in expenses.
“For any other college president, those headlines would probably stir up talk of resignation or dismissal,” the story said. “For Mr. Gee, it’s just another day at the office.”
Go, bucks.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.
