President house rebranded into catbird seat

About that house: The University of Akron's obsession to rebrand itself  leads me   to rename the president's home as the Catbird Seat. It is a dream of wish fulfillment accorded more and more to university presidents these days.   With so much money - nearly a million dollars -  spent on  renovating the UA property,   you'd think the president of the United States  was moving in with his family.  UA President Scott Scarborough walked away from his job interview with a colossal deal, from spiffy quarters for his inlaws to a  $556.40 olive jar while the UA leaders were pleading poverty.

Along with other questionable payouts, the school's spending spree exposed the servile Board  of Trustees not only as rubbery stamps but also as a a useless cancelled  postage stamp, serving at the will of a president that it somehow decided to hire, despite a rickety track record .


Some faculty people say it was either Scarborough or Jim  Tressel,  so there really wasn't an option   But it does raise another question as to how a campus that was so free to offer a new president  $450,000 and endless perks failed to draw a standing- room-only  crowd of applicants from academia.  Was it because UA ranked so low  on the collegiate scale that folks simply wanted to enhance  their careers elsewhere?

So Scarborough got what he wanted, even if the generous trustees  with a  top-heavy Republican majority blindly acted as if their school's destiny lay solely in his hands.

You don't hear that very much  from the brain trusts on the Beacon Journal's editorial page  It has become an apologist for the new regime and its latest editorial to that effect appeared under a  pleading headline:  UA has a good plan.  It really does.    The "really does" part weakly suggested that it needed a bracing modifier to support the "good plan".

Although some articles in the paper, along with Bob Dyer's column, have pointed out   the gaps in the regime's armor back at the catbird seat, the ed page  advises the readers that there are good things going to happen now that Team Scarborough is on the scene with a plan  for the "university moving forward in a credible and promising way."

It's unkind and nitpicking, I know, but I keep thinking of that olive vase adorning the House of Scarborough.  Good luck on that, campus.  But first you must behave yourself.

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Must read: Dyer's sizzling series on Angley

Shall we all raise a glass to Beacon Journal reporter Bob Dyer for his  sizzling X-rated series exposing Ernest Angley, the cultist tactile preacher with a fascination for hands-on   (HEAL! for God's sake)  salvation, leeches and the size of...um...penises.?

Angley,  slicked coal-black wig  and all,  has been  the mega-star attraction for 20 years at Grace Cathedral, the huge saucer shaped man-made  hillock  in Cuyahoga Falls with an unfinished  tower that was to serve as the modern version of Jacob's ladder topped with a restaurant.

What is it  about televangelists who claim to render unto God what is God's and to  themselves what is royally theirs?  Several teleministries, as enriched as they were, have seen their leaders dismissed in sex-related scandals.  Jimmy Swaggert comes to mind.  And there was Jim Bakker, whose significant other ended up in full unclothed view of Playboy scanners.  There have been others of more recent vintage.

Bakker is a narrative worthy of a how-to manual.    He recently returned to public scrutiny for his venture in "End of the World Biscuits" - and please don't think I'm kidding.   He is asking TV viewers to prepare  themselves for  the Apocalypse  by laying in survival kits that include  heavy clothing for sunless days.

Maybe he and Angley  can crack a deal that would sell the critical end-of-days foodstuffs at the top of that tower. With this preacher, as Bob Dyer has forcefully reminded us,   anything is possible.






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BJ: Beware of tax exempt profitable non-profit telemarketers

Back in the '90s, I visited  the splashy InfoCision headquarters on  Springside Dr. for a Plain Dealer story on what the huge telemarketer was all about. Passing by the offices and caller modules I was fixed on the posters that had nothing good to say about the Clintons.  No one could ignore the politics in the air.

I was reminded of that experience by Bob Dyer's two-part series in the Beacon Journal that turned up a lot of  negatives about the InfoCision  policies from his interviews with former employes who had engaged in a class-action suit against the company.
There were complaints about working conditions, pay policies and deceptive tales told to prospective donors about fairy-tale matching grants.   As Dyer reported, the suit was "settled quietly" last year before it went to trial.

Although InfoCision has many clients that add up to the second largest telemarketer in the country,   it is also true  that it has raised money tilting toward  conservative religious groups, which, in turn, are head over heels into political mischief.    There is an invisible line between religion and politics these days, and if Pat Robertson's organization enjoys InfoCision's fund-raising talent as a client, it is fair to raise the question of the silliness of tax exemptions  to the giant telemarketer as well as to all other tax exempt enterprises that operate under the guise of charitable social work. From that standpoint, the "scandal"  over the government's targeting of some major non-profits should be a blessing in disguise.

Unfortunately, the controversy will not need a long recuperative period for the offended non-profits.  The reason, as usual, is that we're talking about big money here.  And much of the establishment is perfectly content, with a wink and a nod,   to take what InfoCision raises for the public "good" - as with the Diabetes Assn. - or the naming of the University of Akron's  new football stadium thanks a $10 million gift from the late Gary Taylor, InfoCision's founder.

Good job, Bob Dyer.  But until you are able to raise that kind of money, you can have no hope that anything will change in the definition of an elephantine tax exempt   political and religious handyman in charge of the cash flow.

Robart to Mitt: You electrified me

Beacon Journal Columnist Bob Dyer's paean to Mitt Romney on Sunday cast  the candidate as a guy who pays his bills - and President Obama as a cheapskate. It  also offered Cuyahoga Falls  Republican Mayor Don Robart  an opportunity to crow over his third choice (Romney)  for the GOP ticket, (after Santorum and Gingrich).   Dyer's Romney-Obama contrast was drawn from the candidates'  visits to the Akron area in which Mitt's campaign picked up the costs but the Obama campaign didn't.

For  his $7,050 tab,  Romney was rewarded with this praise from the mayor via Dyer:

"I think it's self-evident.  [It tells you] who is accountable for their deeds  who isn't, who's accountable   for their  actions and who keeps blaming everybody else."  Oh?  As in this historic self-evident  non-sequitur  from Mitt: "The economy is getting better but Obama made it worse."?  The mayor  said Mitt's visit was"just electric."  

But I should not be so harsh on the mayor, whose hometown we once shared for nearly a quarter-century.  We've  watched  a once moderate operative settle comfortably into the farthest reaches of the Republican Right (Tea Party) on his politically fail-safe suburban island.  It's a small field compared to Akron,  but, look, it does provide a living for the mayor and joy for the Summit County GOP brass,  including Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff.

But before I get out of the way, I would mention to Dyer:

"Bob, anybody who reads my stuff would have no problem identifying the candidate I'm voting for.  Would you allow us one guess as to your choice?

Meantime, did I hear the mayor say,  "I am  Don Robart and I approve Dyer's message."?

Miss Tia's f-words don't refer to forte

HERE IS A well- deserved pat on the back to Bob Dyer, the Beacon Journal columnist, whose journalistic curiosity led him to the discovery of Miss Tia, who turns out to be   Miss Akron Garbage  Mouth of 2009.    And who, you might ask, is Miss Tia?  And why does she deserve her 15 minutes of attention  in a family newspaper? Read on.

Dyer ID's her as a "co-chair" of Warner Mendenhall's Change Akron Now recall website.  Inasmuch as I don't pay much attention to mysterious names because there have been some nasty ones sent to me in wrath before I put a filter on my blog,  I would have never thought to look into Miss Tia's internet profile.  Well, Dyer did and, among other tidbits, counted 32 f-words "in all of its glorious permutations" over the past three weeks. ( Note:  "f" doesn't translate into musical "forte".)

Unfortunately, the Guinness Book of Records doesn't track such   unladylike effusions, so we can only guess where Miss Tia would rank on her own developed scale of zero to one.  However, in the matter of neologisms, I think her reliance on "F---tard" as a noun would earn her a few more points in any alley fight.

There are other things that Dyer reports about Miss Tia, but he did all of the work so you should get it directly from today's column.  God knows. the BJ can use the readers.

If there is a postscript to this madness, is this  an example of where we want to go with Mendenhall's preposterous rag-tag scheme to kick out Mayor Don Plusquellic?    Scary, right?