Saturday, December 11, 2004

Promise of Pictures - Mayor Hickenlooper's Faux Pas

Got some great shots, this morning, of another firery sunrise in Denver as Melissa and I headed out for our run. Wanted to post a couple of the pictures but, once again, something is wrong and the uploads keeping erroring out. Oh, well...

Have been wanting to comment on our Mayor of eighteen months, John Hickenlooper, for some time now, but just haven't gotten the chance. Now, today -- a lazy Saturday with the wind blowing pretty hard; overcast sky, but predictions that we may reach seventy degrees. Ugh! -- I thought I'd get down to what's been on my mind about our fine Mayor.

First of all, Denver's City and County Building is decorated each year for the holidays with, among other things, a Nativity scene and, on top of the huge granite edifice, are the words "Merry Christmas" in red lights.

Well, on a whim, apparently without even thinking about it, Hickenlooper told a reporter that next year he wanted to replace the "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays," because he said it would be more inclusive; afterall, not everyone celebrates Christmas.

Peter Boyles, an early-morning talk show host here in Denver, created -- as he usually does -- a tempest out of this teapot and spent probably about eight hours of airtime over two or three days calling Hickenlooper's decision absurd.

Now, as I think I've noted in some previous post, radio talkshow hosts are the most prolific whores on the face of the earth. They'll hump any bullshit issue for all it's worth; 'til the cows come home; 'til the fat lady... Well, you get the point. And, that's what Boyles did.

But, Boyles' point was interesting. He argued that there really isn't any Christ in Christmas anymore anyway; that non-Christians, as well as lapsed Christians, as well as deists as well as pretty much everyone else who lives in America celebrates Christmas as a merry secular experience. And, AND, of course, devout Christians still have a wee bit of an interest in keeping Christ in Christmas. So, replacing the "Merry Christmas" lights with "Happy Holidays" would, in fact, be excluding folks.

So, silly mayor, what on earth motivated you to raise the hackles of a whole lot of folks who kinda' like the "Merry Christmas" lights on the roof of the City and County Building?

Hickenlooper suggested that it was his inexperience as a politician which led him to make the capricious decision.

Now, wait a minute... Hickenlooper (a brewer of beer, a restauanteur and millionaire prior to becoming mayor) won an overwhelming victory against a tried and competent public servant by smiling a lot, brushing his boyish-styled hair out of his face (he's 51) and telling the good people of Denver he was going to give Denver a business administration that would surely derail the bureaucratic detritus that was surely clogging up the flow of government and, by golly, he'd reform Denver's Parking Management and Permitting/Planning Departments immediately.

Sounds like a politician to me.

You know, now that I think about it, our good mayor loves photo ops (like any good politician). Indeed, instead of letting some precious little child with a life-threatening disease push the button to turn on the Christmas lights at the City and County Building (as most other mayors had done) he did it himself (brushing his boyish-styled hair out of his face). And, at the opening of the new Colorado Convention Center, guess who undertook the ribbon cutting. Yup, our self- described politically naive John Hickenlooper. (Got a big picture on the front page for that one.) Could he have, perhaps, let two or three former City Council members do the ribbon cutting? Or the former Mayor? I mean it was in the prior administration where the hard work was performed to build the damned thing. But, no, our anti-politician, business mayor smiled big for those camers (brushing his boyish-styled hair out of his face).

Incidentally, Hick hasn't been able to accomplish the reformation of Parking Management and the Permit/Planning Departments yet. A story in the Denver Post a few days ago reported that his Chief of Staff noted the job was taking a little longer and was proving to be a little bit harder than they had anticipated.

No shit!

Anyway, that's what's been on my mind for a couple weeks. And, today, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Hickenlooper is being touted as a good bet to run for Governor of Colorado in 2006. He'll probably do well if he just keeps smiling and putting that hand through his hair.

What else could we possibly expect from our business mayor?





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