Tuesday, August 11, 2015

From Kasich, to Comunale, to UA

From the Weekly Reader:
Gov. Kasich turned up on the Fox News Hannity show for a reunion  among relatives who are still talking to  each other.  It was so family-ish as Kasich and Hannity engaged in chatty cordiality. .

From Kasich we learned that he was gleefully running for president only because he loves America. Spare me.  Guv,  you've been running for something for decades because your over-active ego won't let you do otherwise.

But Kasich is different this time as a born-again with a road map from God while pretending that he is a moderate.  Really.  A hawkish boots-on-the-ground moderate who spent years working for a Wall Street company that tanked, and for Fox News with a show called "Heartland with John Kasich."

Didn't know that Fox made space for moderates. So much for the new Sunny Kasich with standard photos of outstretched arms and an expression of ecstasy ready at every turn to help the less fortunate.  It is getting tiresome to hear the governor, a millionaire many times over, begin so many  responses to so many questions with the fact that his father was a mailman

But as Oscar Wilde once told us:  No man is rich enough to buy back his past.  

* * * *

When Frank Comunale summarily pulled out of the Akron Mayor's race with a resounding endorsement of Dan Horrigan, his action vibrated among the political class, including his own people who worked on his campaign the day before.    It was an  element of surprise - maybe even to him - with Comunale pleading campaign poverty and physical exhaustion.  Good grief.   The October surprise in August? Whatever.

* * * * *

Speaking of surprise, the aftershock of the incomprehensible misfirings at the University of Akron has driven off a potential new athletics  director.  Brian Wickstrom, the athletics director at the University of Louisiana at Monroe  reportedly declined an invitation  to accept the job, saying uncertainty from the sweeping changes underway at UA discouraged him from coming to the Akron campus. Grapevine news travels fast.

The vacancy is being filled by Nathan Mortimer, the school's top finance man,  following the resignation of  Tim Wistrcill.

Is this any way to rebrand the value of  a university?  

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