Live Mike

Updated to include email exchange with Stigall and mayor's office *.

For more years than he can remember, Bill Grigsby was the master of ceremonies at the Mayor’s Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at Crown Center.

Good ol’ Grigs. Smiling. Jovial. Kansas City’s biggest booster, and entirely non-controversial.

“I did it for a lot of mayors,” Grigsby said. “That is, until Funkhouser came in.”

Yep, Mark Funkhouser vowed to shake up the tree lighting ceremony the way he’d shake up everything else.

Which brings us to this year’s ceremony, a week from today. Funkhouser has for the second time in three years picked one of the most polarizing figures in town to ring in the holiday season.

At the grade school musical, one kid appeared on stage a few shades darker than normal, which raises a question:

Is blackface ever acceptable in a society as racially charged as ours?

Ponder that as I report that the presentation bore no resemblance whatsoever to a minstrel show.In fact, last week’s performance of “We Haz Jazz” was a salute to African-American culture by the mostly white third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Timber Creek Elementary School in south Overland Park.

(If the title makes you cringe a little, me, too. But it’s been widely performed across the country with few complaints.)

Just an FYI. You can follow me on twitter. I'm kcmikehendricks. And I'm also on Facebook.

I haven't done much tweeting in the past, but what the heck. Why not?

Nine ambulances raced to the Mexican restaurant near 95th and I-35 that last Sunday in August after three dozen diners got sick from eating the poisoned salsa.

   So did Rulber De La Torre’s nightmare begin.

   At the time, authorities didn’t know that a highly toxic bug killer was to blame for the mass illness at Mi Ranchito in Lenexa. Nor would they learn until later that sabotage was at issue.

   But with the facts now established and two former Mi Ranchito employees charged last week with food tampering, one key element of the story still remains in doubt.

   Can De La Torre’s once successful business survive all the horrible publicity?

   "I’ve got to get my business back," he told me this week. "This is just not fair. I want just one more chance from my customers."

Sure, the investment bankers got their bailout money right away with practically no questions asked.

But for stimulus payouts that might benefit the rest of us, the process slogs along like an army in the mud.

Remember U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s plan to steer $200 million in stimulus money toward a 150-block area of the inner city?

Probably it was unrealistic to have expected that the so-called Green Impact Zone would now be abuzz with activity. That blocks and blocks of century-old houses would be getting energy-efficient windows and state-of-the-art furnaces in time for winter.

But who would have thought that, seven months later, there’d be virtually no activity and not even a tiny fraction of that $200 million disbursed?

Little David slew the mighty Goliath and held aloft the Philistine’s severed head.

Rembrandt and Caravaggio painted the bloody scene from 1 Samuel. Now comes Scott Roeder, the man charged with killing George Tiller.

   Roeder recently put up for auction an autographed copy of a cartoon depicting his own version of the story. “Tiller” is written across the forehead of the slain warrior. And for the role of David?

It’s not spelled out, and as there is that presumption of innocence in our legal system, I’ll leave it for you to decide what Roeder had in mind.

But biblical comparisons aside, Roeder’s supporters have yet another notion of who Roeder represents to them, despite his not-guilty plea in the murder of the Wichita abortion provider.

   Yeah, well, I'm not all that successful when it comes to breaking bad habits. It took me years to kick cigarettes.

   Some that I've been trying to break lately include:

 *Listening to all forms of talk radio, especially the shows whose hosts would seemingly enjoy pulling the wings off of live flies, assuming the flies weren't deemed conservative enough.  Say hey, Stigall!

 *Checking in on certain hateful blogs written by irrational and/or disturbed individuals (hey, there's more than a couple of those out there, so don't be thinking I necessarily mean your work of evil genius, Butter Cup).

   *Snacking on M&Ms and crackers before dinner, because, that's bad for my lovely figure.

   *And writing columns or blog posts on anything having to do with a certain mayor of a somewhat major Midwestern city whose wife's strange habits are a political liability and ...

 “Howler monkeys.”

That’s how one guy in an audience full of liberals referred to town-hall conservatives during author Thomas Frank’s presentation this week at the downtown library.

Something similar happened the next day at UMKC, when a speaker on the cross-country American Liberty Tour described the Obama administration as “that corrupt machine of thugs.”

Lots of name calling these days, and I’m among the guilty parties. “Wing nuts” is what I called those who objected to the president’s speech to school kids.

Our mamas taught us better than to name call. Plus, it’s intellectually lazy to slap labels on those with whom we disagree.

Wanted: Someone with passion, vision and at least a hint of charisma to run Johnson County government.

Ok, so the election is a year away, meaning it's way too early even for people who care about JoCo politics (and there aren't many of us) to be handicapping the race for chair of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners.

   But it's starting to get some mention on TV and in print. The Sun had a front page story on the race today.

   Which got me thinking that something needs to be done -- and quickly -- to find a candidate with the above qualifications to throw his or her hat in the ring.

It’s like what Tom Hagen told Sonny after two goons plugged Don Corleone outside the fruit market — it was nothing personal; it was just business.

Some Kansas City officials didn’t see it that way this week, though, when the Wizards and Cerner Corp. bowed out of the Bannister Mall project for a much better deal in Wyandotte County.

Wailing the loudest were the council members whose district includes the site of the now-demolished shopping center that, until now, was to have been home to an 18,000-seat soccer stadium, retail center and office park.

"My neighbors and I kind of feel betrayed," Councilman John Sharp told TV reporters.

I don’t put much stock in studies purporting to tell us how good or how lousy our town is.

For instance, a recent issue of Forbes magazine showed Kansas City to be one of the least stressful big cities in the country.

Which strikes me as bogus, if you place any faith in other studies that claim that a city’s identity and self-worth are wrapped up in the success — or in our case, the failure — of their sports franchises.

According to Forbes, Kansas City is tied with Dallas at 36th in its ranking of the 40 most stressful metro areas. Chicago topped the list as the most on-edge place to live in the United States.

To hear Forbes tell it, the Windy City is a living hell where one could get the shakes just figuring out which El train goes to Skokie.

Again this week we were reminded that a certain segment of the general public is more than half nuts.

That or spends way too much time watching Fox News.

 I refer, of course, to the “controversy” over Barack Obama’s decision to speak directly to America’s youth next Tuesday. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the president’s 15-20 minute speech will offer the following subversive suggestions to school kids:

Study hard.

Stay in school.

Mind your parents.

And ya never know, kid, keep your nose clean and ya just might amount to sumptin’.

Or according to the news release: “the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

What is it, something like two-thirds of us are supposedly happy with our health coverage?

A few years ago, you could have counted Mary Casey in that number. But then she made the mistake of contracting a rare form of cancer.

Her insurance company wouldn’t pay for the drug that her doctor said might save her life. Corporate bureaucrats were the ones rationing health care then – and still are.

And when Casey appealed the decision, she learned of the existence of death panels long before Sarah Palin started mouthing off about the mythical ones in the House proposal.

The company’s denial of her appeal left Casey and her family to count the months she had left, or slowly go bankrupt because, naturally, the drug that her doctor felt gave her the best chance of survival was also expensive.

That new soccer complex in Overland Park is a beaut.

Another recently added OP attraction, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, continues to garner awards and critical raves.

Meanwhile, some of us have our fingers crossed in hopes that a developer gets the tax subsidies needed for a half-billion project that would include a $15 million cultural museum, also in OP.

In other words, I just might owe Overland Park an apology for a column I wrote three years ago.

Though it wasn’t just me who used to say that Johnson County was woefully lacking in areawide attractions.

Especially during some of the bistate tax debate, there was consensus on the Missouri side that residents of the Golden Ghetto were cultural parasites.

East of the state line, you had the stadiums, the zoo, the Nelson and other metrowide amenities.

Word on cycling blogs this week is that Prairie Village cops busted 30 bicyclists last Thursday for running a stop sign.

Not true.

Turns out that only 17 got $95 tickets for allegedly running the four-way at 79th and Belinder.

Not that it makes the story any less satisfying, which might seem like heresy coming from me, an avid cyclist.

But I’m far from the only one in the biking “community” who feels that way.

When someone on a local cycling site complained that there are worse things “going on in ‘Perfect Village’ than some cyclist rolling through a stop sign,” someone else offered this:

“It’s called ‘MAKING EVERY OTHER CYCLIST IN THE CITY LOOK BAD AND POTENTIALLY BECOME A TARGET FOR ROAD RAGE BECAUSE THE TOUR DE BLUE MOOSE RACING TEAM ACTS LIKE JACKASSES AND IGNORES ALL WARNINGS AND TRAFFIC LAWS.’ ”

Washington pencil pushers saddled Kansas with a passel of bloodthirsty thugs who hated us and our way of life.

Yet Kansans of yesteryear didn’t whine when the feds shipped Nazi  prisoners of war their way in the 1940s.

Trainloads of German soldiers and sailors came by the thousands. And while none was likely bent on jihad, many were the products of Hitler youth camps and a philosophy as scary as anything hatched in a militant madrassa.

That’s why it’s embarrassing to watch the state’s political leaders of today stamping their little feet on rumors that the Gitmo detainees might end up in Leavenworth.

“Not in my backyard. Not in Kansas. I will shut down the Senate before I let that happen,” a fearful sounding Sen. Pat Roberts said Monday — and he a former Marine.

Privately, the wife of Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser had bad feelings and unkind words for those she felt had wronged her during a particularly stressful period in her husband’s administration.

 Wow, now, there’s a bombshell: that Gloria Squitiro of all people would express utter contempt for those she saw as contemptible in a diary that became public this week as part of the Ruth Bates discrimination lawsuit.

Among those coming in for harsh criticism:

The councilwoman who led the charge to ban Squitiro from volunteering in the mayor’s office, Jan Marcasson. “I will work to show the woman for what she is — a complete phony,” Squitiro writes.

 Then there’s the turncoat press aide, Joe Miller, who upon resigning starts dishing dirt on his former employer, while shopping a proposal for a tell-all book. “I am shocked, disappointed and hurt that you would throw me away, but I guess to hurt is your intent,” she writes Miller in an e-mail.

Uncle Sam must have it in for us.

First, there was talk that terror detainees might be moved to Fort Leavenworth.

Now we’re hearing that the federal complex on Bannister Road is one of seven facilities in line to become the central depository for much of the nation’s mercury.

Yes, that shiny, viscous element that some of us played with as kids before learning it could cause brain damage.

Not everyone is thrilled at the idea of semitrucks delivering as many as 10,000 metric tons of the nasty stuff to the Bannister facility in coming years.

The Royals front office has made some incredibly stupid moves over the years.

Bad trades. Lousy managerial picks. A tendency, until only recently, to be annoyingly cheap when it came to buying talent.

Took a drive out to Shawnee Mission Park the other night. My wife and I thought we’d say “so long” to the deer.

You know, just in case we don’t make it out one last time before the sharpshooters arrive to cull the herd.

Cull in this case means slaughtering at least half of the 400 whitetails estimated to live in Johnson County’s premiere park.