August Plaza Follies and TKC

An interesting few days have passed. The Plaza is a war zone and the most powerful labor leader in the city appears to fear the comments of a local blogger.

Just when you think the heat has leveled out everything for a while, unruly mobs return to the Plaza and this time-with the Mayor as an observer-three children are wounded by gang-warfare gunfire. Most of a week has passed and the only result of all this is a lukewarm committment to a nine PM curfew.

All this churns up a few questions. Some have been addressed heavily on local radio talk forums; some less so: (1) Where is Plaza security? Owner Highwoods had a shot across the bow last year with a violent flash-mob and should have been aware of the giant bulls-eye on their property from that point forward. Since that was well over a year ago they have enjoyed adequate prep time to hire some private security people rather than lean on the police department to bail them out. Didn't get the message, I guess. Gee, what would J. C. Nichols have done to protect this wonderful jewel? Time to get a Philly-style Curfew Bus in the parking lot behind the Classic Cup. Highwoods, you are going to have to spend some of the high-rent money you've squeezed from your tenants to protect them and their customers. And ultimately, yourself.

(2) What in the world are street gangs doing on the Plaza? I doubt the local gang-bangers are eating at Starker's or the Cheesecake Factory, or doing a lot of high-end shopping at Restoration Hardware. Or maybe they are, I don't know. This one falls on the PD. They need to encourage gangs to conduct their retributions over on the greenway along Cleaver II, far away from homes and businesses.

(3) Where is condemnation (STRONG condemnation) from local minority leaders, calling for an end to unsupervised sons and daughters? The mobs were largely minority ''youtes'' apparently left to wander the area by parents, guardians, older sibs, etc. What the leaders give us is largely silence, broken only by beleagured activist Alvin Brooks who seemed indignant about the characterization of the lawless crowd as a "mob" in a radio interview. The mayor purports to be upset but no one has been body-slammed over this yet. NOTE: a few regular folks have called the talk shows, and demanded that local minorities begin to own this issue of non-parenting. Year after year it has languished, passed off as another product of the ''victim'' mentality with minority leaders (holding their own blameless) milking the governments as the only approved solution--reparations, of a sort.

A nine-o'clock curfew isn't a body-slam. Put their driver's licenses on the block. Give them public service in orange jumpsuits on weekends, perhaps cutting weeds along freeway fences. (Kansas City is dreadfully overgrown and un-manicured.) This is a chance for the mayor to make his mark. If he crafts a forceful, positive solution and butts heads with these entrenched local minority leaders he will be a hero. If not, and the Plaza--along with other venues--falls to the feral mobs, Sly will go the way of Funk.

Then there is Tony's KC, an entertaining blog which--refreshingly--calls it like it is. Citing tipsters which implicate Firefighters' Union president Louis Wright in a kickback scheme, Tony is now named in a defamation lawsuit.

Understandably Wright is interested in clearing his name but it almost seems he doth protest too much. As Tony suggested during a radio interview, why hasn't Wright simply demanded Tony publish a retraction? Well-read as it may be, TKC isn't so pervasive as to destroy Wright's reputation, or cause widespread contempt. People that respected Wright before this broke will continue to do so, and those who think he's a jerk will revel in it but, it seems absurd that Wright would be remotely involved in any such enterprise. A retraction would have reached the same readers who saw the original story. Wright has suffered no job loss or economic deprivation from all this, and by filing the suit has actually widened the spread of his own accusations. Public figures, alas, have to endure a few randow arrows.

And since Tony runs a blog, not an op-ed column, Wright could have offered a rebuttal in the comment section. TKC takes all the rocks people care to throw and Wright's well-crafted reply would have been a most effective move on his own behalf. Now he appears to be the fat-cat political boss sitting on the exercise of free speech, regardless of the folly in the content. At least, that's how it looks to me.