The Last Word™

Issue #485 February 2015

Brossart wastes money on shirts

The Catholic high school in Alexandria, Kentucky, where students kept encouraging each other to fart isback! Unfortunately, it never went away!

We all know the old joke: In America, you make fun of Bishop Brossart High School. In Soviet Russia,you make fun of Bishop Brossart High School! And now we have yet another story about how Brossart is the statechampion in the sport of waste.

Recently, Brossart participated in the 10th Region basketball championship against Augusta High School.Because Brossart is a Fortune 500 company, they had hundreds—perhaps thousands—of t-shirts made before thegame touting their victory. But then Brossart lost the game.

That’s right, they lostaged. And the Brossart thinkpol never did take losing very well. I attended theschool in 1990 when Brossart fans trashed the court because their team lost. Police had to be called. The unrestreportedly culminated in a riot during the basketball homecoming dance. It made Disco Demolition Night looklike a Third Way conference in comparison.

Because Brossart lost this year, all those t-shirts were wastage bastage. The shirts are on the cusp ofuseless.

It figures that a school that harbored such a sore loser attitude would be so overconfident of winning thatthey’d squander an untold amount of money on shirts that were no good. This is about like if a police departmentordered shoulder patches for their patrol uniforms that got the state name wrong.

Now that Brossart isstuck with hundreds ofuseless shirts, what are theygoing to do with them? Oneperson observed that theyshould send the shirts to animpoverished country wherepeople don’t speak Englishand therefore won’tunderstand what the shirtssay. I remember once around2005—when the George W.Bush thugocracy wascollapsing—I saw a youngman walking through thealley next to my buildingwearing a Bush campaign t-shirt. I thought he was a newimmigrant who didn’t speakEnglish, because who in2005 would be seen in a shirtlike that if they knew what itsaid? Hell, who in 2000would be seen in it?

The comparison between Brossart and the totalitarian Bush regime is pertinent. As The Last Word of8/14/09 reported—despite the latest version of Firefox not rendering the headline fonts correctly—bad schoolsand abusive teenage residential “treatment” programs are inextricably woven together. For example, Brossartallowed the now-defunct Kids Helping Kids cult to recruit from the student body, according to a 1987 KentuckyPost article. Brossart also connived with the confirmedly abusive Children’s Psychiatric Hospital of NorthernKentucky—now known as NorthKey. Confinement programs like KHK and CPH appeal to the same overbearingzest that Bush did. They depend on not only fear but outright panic! If your designer children aren’t perfect likeyou thought they were...panic! That’s how abusive programs and the Republican Party manage to still be inbusiness. Of course, I still have absolutely zero sympathy for GOP voters, because it’s their responsibility to be

wise enough not to fall for the party’s lies.Brossart is the dominion of great wasters (as the Bible would say).

Local racist loses his shit in public

Who’s been leaving the bag of idiots open lately? They’re gonna go stale.Robert Ransdell is an avowed white supremacist and neo-Nazi who ran a write-in campaign for Senate in

Kentucky last year. He’s known for dressing from head to toe as a Bigfoot-like primate or Abominable Snowmanwith white fur and carrying anti-Jewish signs at local festivals and such. I saw this assfife at the Reds’ OpeningDay parade once. Of course,he didn’t win his election,since most of his Tea Partybase of support voted forMitch McConnell instead.

Last month,Ransdell was arrested forcausing a scene at a MartinLuther King Day event inFlorence. Then he walkedfrom the jail in Burlingtonall the way back to Florence,waving his right-wingplacards at passingmotorists. He called it his“freedom march.” Ransdellclaimed he was protestingagainst what he called “thisrotten, phony, hypocritical,Jew-corrupted, nonwhite-infested shithole of acountry.”

Well, Robert, youcan always leave the country—or at least the state.Nobody is twisting your armto stay. The world has a lotof countries, so you have alot of choices where to live.At minimum, get away from here.

And take the Republican Right with you. Every new right-wing scandal reinforces the idea that theirpolitical guild is unfit for public office—whether it’s Steve Scalise’s militant racism, or the domestic violencescandal that’s about to devour a leading Kentucky Republican. From now on, even when these criminals winelections despite their shrinking base of support, we can be more sure than ever of what they’re up to—and theywill be exposed.

People repeating the bigoted canards spread by right-wing talking heads is mighty stupid sounding too.It’s one of those things that just pisses me off. The person repeating it usually tries to qualify it by sayingsomething like, “That’s what they said on Fox News.” I believe and hope that I’m pretty resistant to race-baiting.I’ve suffered decades of economic decline, but who is to blame? Am I actually supposed to believe some pundit orpolitician who points their finger at an entire race or ethnic group? Most folks need evidence before believingsomething. So why would I be expected to just accept some bigoted tale that somebody told? By contrast, I seeright-wing policies firsthand. I don’t have to listen to anecdotes to know about the damage caused by right-wingmisrule. Instead of scapegoating a whole ethnic group, I place blame on the policies of right-wing politicians—because there’s, you know, direct proof of the results of these policies. Why should I believe race-baiting publicfigures instead of my own experiences? Demagoguery doesn’t work when the real causes of our misery canalready be clearly identified.

Our fight against right-wing extremism and prejudice will be long. There will be other fronts in thisstruggle even as the Far Right bleeds public support. The lunatic Right is like the dinosaur in the old sci-fimovies: You chop its head off, but it still does a lot of damage as it flails around and breaks things.

Weird Cincinnati

Weird N.J. is the title of a book about strange phenomena in New Jersey that kicked off a series of tomesthat also enveloped other states. Now there’s a Weird Kentucky, Weird Ohio, and Weird Indiana, for instance.

But rest assured, there’s enough offbeat things in northern Kentucky, southwestern Ohio, and southeasternIndiana to create Weird Cincinnati. I probably won’t be the one to write Weird Cincinnati, since I’m not a peopleperson like the world requires me to be. But there’s surely enough material to fill a book.

What are some of the memorable people and things that characterize the region? I’ve mentioned some ofthem on the Intertubes, and here’s some that some other peeps actually remember...

The angry state trooper at Big Bone. Back when I was about 6—circa 1979—there was a dourKentucky state trooper at Big Bone Lick State Park who needlessly became angry at folks. He reminded me ofJackie Gleason’s hilarious sheriff character in Smokey And The Bandit. My brother and I got too close to a pond atthe park, and the lawman thundered, “I’m gonna turn you boys in!” Folks on Facebook also remember thistrooper.

The Kroger house. Gobs of Facebookers remember a house on North Bend Road in Mount Airy that hada huge, elaborate display in the front yard assailing Krogersupermarkets. It featured a giant K kicking a person in theposterior. The display was as big as the biggest Christmasdisplays, and it was up for years in the 1970s and 1980s. Isaw it a couple times in its later years.

Madam Madam. When I was a youth, there was alocal palm reading place that was allegedly a front for abrothel. Folks on the ‘Net say that was just an urban legend—but that some other palm readers actually were prostitutionfronts.

The car repair shop owner who had money toburn. There was an auto repair shop where the owner would—in full view of customers—take stacks of $100 bills out ofhis pocket and use them to light his cigars. It was alsorumored that he smashed customers’ car windows if theytried negotiating a lower price. Because nobody could figureout what local municipality the shop was in, policeconsidered it to be out of their jurisdiction.

Elvis’s comic book shop. Once on a high schoolfield trip, the teachers announced we were stopping at acomic book shop in Latonia for some reason. I’m not surewhy. I think it was to buy bubble gum. Before we got there,one of my classmates stated that he had frequented the shop,and that the owner strongly resembled Elvis Presley. Sureenough, the owner was there that day, and he really did looklike Elvis!

What a cast of characters! Just like Sesame Street! The only difference is that Grover would probablynever light a cigar with $100 bills—except maybe in the waiter skits.

I was interviewed about CPH

When this fanzine of freedom began in 1993, perhaps the biggest local villains in these pages wereBishop Brossart High School and Children’s Psychiatric Hospital of Northern Kentucky. Each deserves everygranule of criticism that’s been lobbed their way.

CPH appeared to be going out of business in the late ‘90s, but this facility in Covington was actuallymerely renamed to NorthKey. CPH was a concentration camp—and I have to assume it still is, even under its newname. How did one end up at CPH? Just scowl at some kid at school who attacks you. That was sufficient. Theydidn’t have to worry about getting locked up and being called crazy to their face. But you did. The very momentyou started fighting back against the attacks at school, you could expect CPH in your near future. According to theReally Serious People, fighting back is a sign that you have a disease.

Long story short: In the mixed-up world of Brossart and CPH, starting shit at school is normal behavior.

Fighting back against it is not. Clear?Considering the system’s lack of caring, you can see why I support a constitutional redress.Recently I was interviewed by phone about CPH. The first part of this interview can be found here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHh84362wk0

The second part is scheduled to be posted in a few days.And that ain’t all! LeftMaps is on the case too! As it always is. As most cool people know, I’m the

founder of LeftMaps—which promulgates politically aware bicycling maps of local neighborhoods. The map forsouthwestern Covington shows CPH-turned-NorthKey in its full fascist glory...

This differs from the way I would have shown it several years ago, which would have been somethinglike this...

Until recently, the stylized Republican elephant symbol was used for Far Right sites in general. You canprobably still find the map where I used it for NKU, thanks to the university’s penchant for expelling students fortheir political views and its unusual dedication to right-wing causes. And the Newt Gingrich-era computer fontwas always useful in many endeavors for symbolizing right-wing despotism. I may start using it again for that.

I plan to someday merge the southwestern Covington map with that of Kenton Vale. But when? When thebubble gum busts. That’s when. In the meantime, you can find the map and brief description of the NorthKeyneighborhood here...

http://www.bunkerblast.info/maps/covingtonsw.html

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