PUBLIC EYE STAFF PICKS

Best Radio Station with Balls:
It’s hard to believe that Cincinnati, the land of “Landslide” George Bush, has now gotten its own affiliate of Air America, the liberal talk radio that hosts programs like The Al Franken Show and The Jerry Springer Radio Show. But turn on WCKY (1530 AM) and hear for yourself a leftist version of the political blabber that only AM talk radio can provide. It’s perhaps even harder to believe that Clear Channel Radio, the media giant that owns WCKY, would push the transition, but it happened in January and so far shows no signs of stopping. Let’s hear it for courage in the face of a Republican majority!

photo: sean hughes/photopresse.com Best sign that cincinnati is ready for the 20th century now that it’s over: Repeal of Article 12 Photo: Mandy Janes

Best sign that cincinnati is ready for the 20th century now that it’s over:
Repeal of Article 12
Local progressives didn’t win much of anything in last fall’s election save the scandalized Hamilton County Coroner’s seat and Todd Portune’s re-election. But we could still get out of bed Nov. 5 knowing that the grassroots campaign mounted by Citizens to Restore Fairness trumped all the opposition’s secretive money and succeeded in repealing Article 12 of the city charter, which had discriminated against people of non-heterosexual persuasions — and this in a year when 11 states including Ohio and Kentucky passed amendments preventing this same bullied population from marrying or enjoying domestic partner benefits. For prevailing in spite of being outspent by half a million dollars, CRF recently won a “Ballie Award” for Most Underrated Campaign from the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center for “proving that in politics you can’t always win by throwing money at a problem.” (Stephanie Dunlap)

Best Way to Blow a Chance at Free Publicity:
When the TV show Cops wanted to follow Cincinnati Police officers on the job, several members of city council objected, and Chief Tom Streicher un-invited the producers. After a majority of council complained, Streicher re-invited Cops and the police got their turn in the spotlight.

Best Way to Liven Up the Broadcast:
When Dateline NBC did a story about racial profiling by Cincinnati Police, its staff followed an African-American man trying to file a complaint against the Cincinnati Police Department. With cameras rolling, the police officer on duty warned the man he could be arrested if the complaint wasn’t proven.

Best Anti-Peter Bronson:
Brian Griffin’s blog — winner of the first-ever Best Blog readers pick — is a non-stop battering ram of contrary opinion on all things Bronson. Which, given the Enquirer columnist’s far right-leaning rhetoric, isn’t surprising for an unabashed liberal like Griffin. Choice quote: “Sorry Peter, I for one will not now or will I ever worship at the alter of Bush where you perform your best journalistic fellatio.” While Griffin’s own rhetoric can get tedious at times — he throws labels around as easily as his fellow blogger Nate Livingston — his outsider view is sorely lacking in our conservative environs. (cincinnati.
blogspot.com)

Best Voice of the People, Especially When It Comes to Music:
It’s a tie between cincymusic.com and nuessubjex.net’s online message boards. Yeah, like any Internet discussion spot, they have their fair share of useless, esoteric nonsense. But that’s part of the charm. Everyone has a voice. And where else can we watch the lastest dust-up instigated by a certain Sundresses drummer/singer? Hilarious, rabble-rousing stuff.

Best Way to Stick It to the Man:
Annoyed at being told he couldn’t carry an anti-war sign mounted on a stick to Fountain Square, Jim Albers decided to challenge the law. After all, nobody confiscated all those American flags on sticks that people waved at a pro-war rally on the square. Albers and attorney Robert Newman won an injunction in federal court, barring the city from enforcing the no-stick ordinance.

Best Reward for Persistence:
A nationwide boycott of the Mount Olive Pickle Co. paid off when the company and a farm association agreed to a union contract with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. The farms are in North Carolina, but much of the boycott effort focused on Cincinnati, home of the Kroger Co., a major distributor of the brand’s products.

Best Way to Infiltrate a Corporate Operation:
Thousands of Procter & Gamble employees arrived at work one day with a celebrity voice mail awaiting them. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) managed to hijack P&G’s voice mail system, implanting a message from Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. The Rock star urged workers to tell P&G to stop using animals in product testing.

Best Hope for Taking Back the Country:
Grassroots election campaigns blossomed in 2004, with musicians and other artists helping to make political activism cool once more. Groups such as MoveOn.org and America Coming Together registered tens of thousands of new voters, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream toured the country with the “Pants on Fire” mobile and the shadowy Wednesday Group decorated local highway overpasses with anti-war posters.

Best Subversive Presidential Ad:
George W. at Great American Ball Park. Local networks bumped regular programming to air W’s stump speech in its entirety just days before the big election, in the part of the country that helped decide it. Cost to Bush for the huge chunk of network television time: Nada.

Best Part of a Mostly Awful Election Day:
Northside Celebrates Voting was the brainchild of neighborhood activist Heather Sturgill, and the event featured music, food and the kind of community spirit that voting is supposed to epitomize.

photo: matt borgerding Best Place To Work Out Teenage Angst: Museum Center At Union Terminal Rohs Street Cafe Photo: Mandy Janes

Best Place To Work Out Teenage Angst:
Museum Center At Union Terminal
Program administrators Don Wittrock and Kristen Nay (pictured in middle with Alex Slocum, far left, and Kim Fletcher, far right) are proud of the 100-plus high school kids who make up the Cincinnati Museum Center’s student volunteers — although they’re quick to point out that the “Lab Rats” tag has been discontinued. Chosen from schools all over the area with an emphasis on racial and economic diversity, the students spend time as volunteers at demonstration stations in all three museums and also offer directions and supervision at high traffic areas like the Children’s Museum. In exchange, they get help with college applications and travel out of town to places like Washington, D.C., and Florida. 1301 Western Ave., West End, 513-287-7000. (Steve Ramos)

Best Use of Creativity for Social Progress:
Give artists a public space and a good cause and they’ll dazzle you with visual, musical and dramatic works that make you question everything. Cincinnati Experimental Arts’ “Artists for Change” turned Fountain Square into a combination gallery and theater last fall, all in support of progressive action.

Best Way to Use a Pencil:
When Mike Allen, the Republican incumbent, dropped out of the race for county prosecutor, local Democrats were left shamefaced without a candidate on the ballot. Attorney Fanon Rucker mounted a vigorous write-in campaign that, while unsuccessful, garnered 95,000 votes — and gave the Democrats hope of rebuilding a presence in county politics.

Best Way to Discourage Young People from Political Activism:
After widespread promotion of an MTV Rock the Vote celebration at the main branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, the library board waited until less than a week before the event to cancel it. Rock the Vote is a national, nonpartisan effort to engage young people in the political process, but a conservative member of the board — a delegate to the Republican National Convention — asserted that it was somehow a shill for Democrats. Saying they wanted to avoid partisan politics, the library board agreed to nakedly partisan political maneuvering. We bet the League of Women Voters wouldn’t have gotten such shabby treatment.

Best Local Media Cop Out:
Make the viewers and readers do your work. “Lazy journalism” is a term often tossed around, but the movement toward viewer- and reader-driven content is getting ridiculous. Jumping on the “looking out for you” bandwagon, News 5’s “Taking Action” segment asks viewers to call in with “problems” that reporters try to solve, creating instant news stories that actually aren’t “news stories” at all. For months The Enquirer’s Sunday “A&E” section dumped professionally written concert previews and instead got five local music people to do their “critic’s picks” for them. Journalism? What journalism?

Best Radio Show/Commercial Division:
Call it a radio oasis, that last refuge of old-school broadcasting that isn’t commercialized and homogenized to freakin’ death. It’s The Jelly Pudding Show on Sunday nights on The Fox (92.5 FM). And none of that “every third song is a Steve Miller greatest hit” Classic Crap either. This is the real deal. Tune in and rock on. (wofx.com/ jellyPudding.html)

Best New Talk Radio Voice:
Youthful, biting social commentary with a Hip Hop attitude (the socially-conscious side, not the guns-and-bling posturing) and smooth, no-bullshit “flow,” Nathan Ive is a rebel without a pause in a talk-radio market loaded with illogical shout-downs. His ability to bob and weave between crucial social issues and less crucial cultural ones with equal passion and insight is wildly engaging. Check out The Nathan Ive Show Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. on WDBZ (1230 AM).

Best Fake Local News:
Not to be confused with The Cincinnati Herald, the newsworthy non-news Cincinnati
harold.com proves to be entertaining on any given day. A recent jab at mayoral candidate David Pepper’s previous city council election slogans (“Just Add Pepper” and “Add More Pepper”) guesses at possible upcoming mayoral campaign slogans: “Peter Piper to Pick Pepper — ‘Peter Piper, also known as the Pied Piper, was known for leading by example,’ said Pepper.” For reasons unknown, they’re also changing their name: Watch out for CityBeet. (cincinnatiharold.com)Best Self-Appointed Public “Official”: The Dean of Cincinnati. Funny but also inciting and insightful, this rogue Web personality (who simply showed up one day in a cape and declared himself “Dean”) offers interesting views on a variety of local issues, from media goings-on to local political maneuvers. Providing a clever twist on the blog concept, The Dean is an engaging pundit and his efforts to provoke intelligent discourse is laudable. (deanofcincinnati.com)

Best Internet Sacrilege:
Familiar with the huge statue of Jesus with arms extended that sits in front of the Solid Rock Church off of I-75 near Monroe? Ever almost get side-swiped by a driver in the next lane who freaks out and thinks a 50-foot Jesus is trying to nab him as he speeds by? Take out your frustration at fark.com, where they’re having a contest to see who can Photoshop the statue into the funniest scenes. We like the Platoon and Shawshank movie posters, the Beatles’ Help album cover and the various fish jokes. Join everyone else in hell at http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1370511

Best Hope for Sick Kids:
After helping her infant daughter fight and beat cancer, Ellen Flannery quit her job and founded Cancer Free Kids, a local nonprofit organization that funds pediatric cancer research through donations and fund-raising events. Last year CFK awarded $20,000 in grants to two researchers working on promising projects. As part of National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September, CFK hosted “Chow Down for Charity,” which allowed area restaurants to donate a portion of proceeds collected during a specific day to CFK. (cancerfreekids.org)

Coolest Charity in Town:
Kicks for Kids is just an awesome program, giving less fortunate children the opportunity to participate in sports. Not enough is written about ex-Bengal and Kicks for Kids proprietor Doug Pelfrey and what he still does for this community. (kicksforkids.org)

illustration: Jerry Dowling Best Public Downfall: Mike Allen Rohs Street Cafe Photo: Mandy Janes

Best Public Downfall: Mike Allen
As local chair of the Bush campaign, running unopposed for re-election and enjoying speculation that he’d soon run for governor or other state office, the Hamilton County prosecutor was easily the area’s most powerful politician. But the champion of conservative family values was revealed to be a poser when Rebecca Collins, an assistant prosecutor, went public with details of their sexual affair. Among the juicy revelations was an allegation that Allen stained the Great Seal of the State of Ohio on his office floor … and that’s not a metaphor. After insisting the affair was consensual — not a case of sexual harassment, as Collins claims — Allen paid her $45,000 and lawyers’ fees to end his role in the lawsuit. That leaves the county itself as a defendant. Although it was deeply satisfying to see the self-righteous Allen publicly disgraced, the ultimate result was the return of Joe Deters as prosecutor — and that’s a scandal in itself. (Gregory Flannery)

Best Fighter for the Homeless:
Georgine Getty, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, fights for the least of society in a city that’s often dismissive if not hostile to the poor. Her most recent battle being for permanent supportive housing, a result of the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) abruptly pulling support for funding.
Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, 117 E. 12th St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-421-7803.

Best Person with No Extra Time on Her Hands:
Kathy Helmbock, a true equal rights activist, works for women’s rights, gay/lesbian rights and civil rights by volunteering with the National Organization for Women, the Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati and Walnut Hills Christian Church. When does she sleep? We don’t know. We’re just glad she fights the good fight.

Best Open Door:
Ahoo Tabatabai’s mouthful of a title — the University of Cincinnati’s Diversity Education Program Coordinator for Student Activities and Leadership Development — is code for Badass. Academia is known for its self-congratulatory but rarely effective work in “diversity,” a term now so dated it sounds jokey. Too often it can also comprise the exclusionary absolutism of black and white. But Tabatabai, an Iranian Muslim, has opened wide the collegiate conversation on diversity by bringing, among others, Amodou Dialo’s mother, Tibetan monks and political films to campus, as if to tell students, “If you don’t know, now you know.”

Best Troublemaker:
Freshman City Councilman Christopher Smitherman immediately earned the wrath of Elder grads everywhere by daring to challenge untouchable Cincinnati Police Chief Thomas Streicher after learning from CityBeat of police timesheet abuses. He’s stayed on CPD’s case ever since, demanding that the police department open its books and take some responsibility for deaths in custody such as Nathaniel Jones. He’s also turned to the feds to request justice for the family of Roger Owensby Jr., another black man who died in custody. Smitherman is unafraid to point out differences in the city’s treatment of its various ethnic groups. He knows he’s making enemies but points out that a certain civil rights agitator who now has a day named in his honor wasn’t too popular when he first started making noise.

Best ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ Move:
When three teens accosted City Councilman Jim Tarbell in an alley close to City Hall last November, they didn’t know that instead of dealing with an easily-intimidated grandfatherly type they were dealing with one of the city’s most bullheaded activists for urban reclamation. After declining their offer to take his wallet, Tarbell led police on a chase that ended up with all three kids in custody.

Best Way to Make Your Critics Look Good:
It was bad enough that Councilman Christopher Smitherman seemed to think the police department should answer to elected officials. But when he questioned the domination of local law enforcement by Elder alumni, County Prosecutor Mike Allen went apoplectic, calling the councilman “a smart-mouthed little punk.” That’s the kind of talk you’d expect from an arrogant, white, Catholic West-sider who used to be a Cincinnati cop, proving Smitherman’s point rather nicely.

Best In-House Political Pissing Match:
County Commissioner John Dowlin used to be like Sara Lee — nobody didn’t like him. But when City Councilman Pat DeWine challenged Dowlin in the Republican primary election, the commissioner tried to make hay of DeWine’s reputed extramarital affair. Fellow Republicans were outraged, and Dowlin lost both his grandfatherly image and the election.

Best Way to Make Yourself Even More Irrelevant:
“Strong Mayor” Charlie Luken announced last summer he was dropping out of the 2005 race for mayor — 16 months before the election.

Best Anti-corporate stand:
Mayor Charlie Luken never met a corporate subsidy he didn’t like. He championed the $52 million giveaway to Convergys and the $12 million parking garage gift to the Kroger Co. But when he got angry with Councilman Jim Tarbell for backing raises for middle managers, Luken vetoed a housing loan guarantee program for Over-the-Rhine. The program had been Tarbell’s darling and a real boost to prospects for improving housing stock in the blighted neighborhood. But what we really liked was Luken’s rationale, denying the veto was a payback to Tarbell: “The banks (whose loans would have been guaranteed) don’t need our help,” Luken said.

Best Mayoral Move:
Though Mayor (and frequent Porkopolis target) Charlie Luken said he was fooled into crashing CityBeat’s 10th anniversary party at The Phoenix — “They told me CityBeat was going out of business,” he told the paper’s staff — he gamely proclaimed Nov. 11, 2004 as “CityBeat Day” in Cincinnati anyway.

Best Move by Mike Brown:
OK, the Bengals owner has actually been making a series of good moves recently, but in the non-Jocks section his best move was backing Bengals Director of Sales and Public Affairs Jeff Berding to run for city council. It might be a little surprising — given Brown’s conservative leanings — that Berding is running as a Democrat, but he has years of service to the party behind him. Given his connections to the Republican-leaning business community and backing by local Democrats, Berding has a good shot to win one of council’s open seats. A winning record by the Bengals in September and October wouldn’t hurt his chances.

Best Indie Publisher:
To establish its fledgling book publishing interest, it appears at first glance that Emmis Communications (owner of Cincinnati and Indianapolis magazines, Texas Monthly and various TV and radio stations nationwide) simply shook the CityBeat tree and published the rants of the first two columnists — Kathy Y. Wilson and Bob Woodiwiss — who fell free. Yet Emmis Books is building a slow, national burn among indie publishers with the likes of Barry Sanders’ New York Times bestseller, with disparate tomes on breast cancer survivors and the Midwest’s best ice cream as well as an upcoming volume of yearlong accomplishments in black history and a cookbook by CityBeat Person of the Year Jean-Robert de Cavel. 1700 Madison Road, Walnut Hills, 513-861-4045.

Best Way to Protect the Public from Art:
The U.S. Postal Service refused to deliver nude figure postcards from Art Design Consultants Inc., saying the black-and-white photos of male and female torsos were unacceptable. The company clothed all of the postcards in envelopes and sent them out again.

Best Way to Protect the Public from Art, MEDIA DIVISION:
Sara Pearce, longtime editor of The Enquirer’s Tempo section, left the paper’s art critic position unfilled for a year after Owen Findsen retired, seeing little need for a full-time art writer. She finally hired Marilyn Bauer in early 2002, only to reassign her two years later as a style reporter covering fashion, grooming, cosmetics and shopping and once again leaving The Enquirer with no art critic — despite the national and international attention Cincinnati had been garnering for the new Contemporary Arts Center, the Art Museum’s new Cincinnati Wing and the renovated Taft Museum of Art. Pearce was removed as Tempo editor in a recent shakeup, and shortly afterward The Enquirer announced its new art critic: Sara Pearce. Gives new meaning to the word “irony.”

Best Way to Piss Off a Federal Judge:
When a monitor team working for U.S. District Court visited police headquarters for a scheduled visit and ride-along with cops, Chief Tom Streicher and Assistant Chief Richard Janke threw them out, insulting them along the way. The monitor team was assigned to evaluate the department’s compliance with the collaborative agreement on police reform. The answer was loud and clear.

Best Sign That Cincinnatians Need to Get a Life:
The recent announcement that Cincinnati is the No. 1 U.S. market for Amazing Race confirms this town's addiction to reality TV shows. Long a top market for Survivor, Cincinnati more than likely also pulls in big ratings for shows like The Apprentice and American Idol. Hey, folks, there’s a really cool reality show happening outside of your house 24/7 — it’s called Real Life. ©