nancynall.com » Eat it.
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Eat it.

I was mean­der­ing through a Kurt Ander­sen piece in New York mag­a­zine — “The Age of Apoplexy,” fyi — when Brian dumped another link in the pre­vi­ous post’s com­ments, about some free-floating apoplexy in Indi­ana, that seemed to under­line Kurt’s point.

When you’re look­ing for a topic that can be dashed off quickly, some­times the Lord pro­vides. Also, “Free-Floating Apoplexy in Indi­ana” would be a great name for a band.

Andersen’s point is, the world has grown too touchy, about prac­ti­cally everything:

For a while now, I’ve fret­ted that we’re turn­ing into a nation of wee­nies and per­ma­nently enraged cen­sors, that too many of us are afraid of let­ting dis­agree­able or uncom­fort­able ideas into the lime­light. If it’s not the p.c. over­reach of cam­pus “speech codes” or the attempts to crim­i­nal­ize “hate speech,” it’s the FCC’s crack­down on cussing in PBS doc­u­men­taries and the Secret Service’s keep­ing pro­test­ers fenced off in “free speech zones.” But dur­ing the last month, this impulse to squelch — indulged by the left and the right and the mil­que­toast mid­dle — seems to have reached some kind of tip­ping point, as if we’ve entered a per­ma­nent state of hys­ter­i­cal overreaction.

…Dur­ing a sin­gle week at the end of Sep­tem­ber, every­one from the Daily News to the Demo­c­ra­tic speaker of the New York City Coun­cil denounced Colum­bia for invit­ing Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad to speak (and Hillary Clin­ton joined the mob in say­ing he should be turned away by police — at gunpoint? — if he tried to go near ground zero); Ver­i­zon refused to broad­cast NARAL’s abortion-rights text mes­sages; Bill O’Reilly’s goofy can’t-we-all-just-get-along attempt to sow racial har­mony was called racist; and Con­gress, after wast­ing its time offi­cially con­demn­ing MoveOn​.org for its stu­pid, over-the-top “Gen­eral Betray Us” ad, was asked to waste its time con­demn­ing Rush Limbaugh’s stu­pid, over-the-top crack that only “phony sol­diers” crit­i­cize the war in Iraq.

Not a bad sum­ma­tion of the case, but Ander­sen lives in New York, and prob­a­bly is unaware of the naked mock­ery rep­re­sented in Fort Wayne may­oral can­di­date Matt Kelty’s birth­day cake. Feel free to exam­ine this excel­lent photo of the offend­ing food­stuff, described in the usual dead-serious news­pa­per prose:

The cake had a Wiz­ard of Oz theme. It depicts an out­house labeled “GOP HQ” sit­ting on top of a base­ball field, believed to be ref­er­ence to the $120 mil­lion Har­ri­son Square project Kelty opposes. Rest­ing atop the dia­mond and under the out­house are legs resem­bling those of the Wicked Witch of the East.

The out­house also refers to Allen County Repub­li­can Chair­man Steve Shine and Allen County Com­mis­sioner Nel­son Peters, whom Kelty defeated in the may­oral primary.

From the out­house is a yel­low road lead­ing to the Emer­ald City. Along the road are signs refer­ring to City Coun­cil­man Sam Talarico, R-at large, who has been an out­spo­ken sup­porter of Kelty’s oppo­nent, Demo­c­rat Tom Henry.

Not that the story lacked humor. Noth­ing like a quote like this to get the gig­gles started:

“I don’t endorse the com­ments made on the cake,” (said Kelty).

You have to have been to a few birth­day par­ties in Fort Wayne to fully appre­ci­ate the humor in this story, espe­cially birth­day par­ties for Repub­li­can Chris­t­ian knobs like Kelty, par­ties where the most excit­ing thing that could hap­pen is some­one get­ting a lit­tle frost­ing in their mus­tache. Always remem­ber, though, a can­di­date should have plau­si­ble deniability:

Kelty said his 43d birth­day party – which served as a fundraiser charg­ing $43 per per­son – was a hec­tic event and he did not know about the cake until it was already cut and served.

Well, there you go.

Friends, I got a front-loaded morn­ing. Might be back this after­noon. In the mean­time, tell any offensive-cake sto­ries you have.

Posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 8:18 am
in Current events.

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11 responses to
“Eat it.”

  1. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2007 at 9:10 am

    I once was at a party which fea­tured a naked lady cake (essen­tially a sheet cake with topography).

    Peo­ple were hes­i­tant to munch upon her breasts, and so I asked if it would be ok (you never know about these things — maybe an event or a pic­ture would be fouled if you pre­ma­turely altered that region of the cake) — and got the green light, tak­ing a mod­est amount from the clos­est breast…whereupon the next per­son after me skipped care­fully select­ing what she would eat, and went face-first for one of the cher­ries at the sum­mits! I thought that was a def­i­nite breach of etiquette…but no one com­plained. (come to think of it, there was prob­a­bly beer involved in this story, somewhere)

  2. nancy said on October 9th, 2007 at 9:20 am

    Fort Wayne may be the only city in Amer­ica where cake and beer go together so often.

  3. Cathy D. said on October 9th, 2007 at 9:33 am

    This story is so deli­cious on so many lev­els it’s hard to know where to dig in first. Go, Matt go! Away.

  4. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:23 am

    That was indeed an inter­est­ing arti­cle on the ‘age of apoplexy’; espe­cially the his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive that Ander­sen injects. Her­bert Marcuse’s idea of “Repres­sive Tol­er­ance” (the idea that “accep­tance of free expres­sion of every sort of idea lulls us into accept­ing a larger oppres­sion”) seems to be the mod­ern — and MUCH TAMER! — equivalent of 18th cen­tury moboc­racy. (Back in those days, if your news­pa­per was unabashedly abo­li­tion­ist for exam­ple, the town­folk might lit­er­ally pitch your print­ing press into the river)

    I’ll take 21st cen­tury apoplec­tic huff­ing and puff­ing, via (as likely as not) a cable tv show being watched by a sprin­kling of peo­ple across the coun­try — and (likely as not) rejected out of hand! [the apoplec­tic Olber­mann ‘spe­cial com­ments’ rank right up there with Rush’s best huff­ing, for example]

    btw — speak­ing of New York mag­a­zine, I read a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in there a few months back about New York City’s AIR laws. An AIR is an artist in res­i­dence, and even if you can afford a few mil­lion dol­lars for a loft in Soho or Noho, if you (or your room-mate) is not an Artist (as offi­cially defined by New York), then you are vio­lat­ing their zon­ing ordi­nance, and you will be evicted!!!

    It was one of those arti­cles that you read, laugh out loud about, and then tell every­one about for the next few days.…or, become apoplec­tic about, if you’re in the mar­ket for a condo in Soho

  5. del said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    I’ve been thinkin’ about why Limbaugh’s huff­ing style of polit­i­cal speech offends but Olbermann’s ‘spe­cial com­ments’ do not (con­tent is quite another mat­ter). I’ve set­tled on the notion that its about rel­a­tive power. I’m sym­pa­thetic to the lit­tle guy. So if apoplec­tic speech endorses a majori­tar­ian view it strikes me as bul­ly­ing and ‘piling-on.’ But when it endorses a clearly minor­ity view it seems brave. (So as Olbermann’s views gain trac­tion and a left-wing echo cham­ber devel­ops his con­tentious style may wear thin.)

    When­ever peo­ple over­re­act by seek­ing to pre­vent speeches by con­tro­ver­sial speak­ers (uncon­sti­tu­tional prior restraints?) my sym­pa­thy goes out to the per­son who wants to talk. That speaker instantly becomes a minor­ity because of the “moboc­racy” and I lis­ten to him more intently than I would oth­er­wise. His views get amplified.

    Yeah, I thought Lee Bollinger’s harsh intro­duc­tion of the Iran­ian Pres­i­dent was self-serving and weiner­ish. And it under­cut the favor­able impres­sion of him I gained when, in 1997, he described U. of M’s foot­ball coach Lloyd Carr as “Lin­col­nesque” after his team won the national cham­pi­onship. (I’m no his­to­rian, but Carr does seem to have jowls like Lincoln … )

  6. Julie Robinson said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    And how many Iran­ian audi­ences laugh when their Pres­i­dent speaks? Bring­ing him here for a dose of real­ity was the best way to show what a ridicu­lous bully he is.

    And print­ing the Kelty bd cake photo was the best way to show what a ridicu­lous can­di­date he is. Can we really believe he isn’t aware of what his team is up to? If he isn’t, what does this say about his level of engagement?

    An online search of the News-Sentinel did not find the photo or story. Any­one else see it?

  7. alex said on October 9th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

    Let them eat cake. On Novem­ber 6 they’ll be eat­ing crow.

    I must say that this year’s may­oral race has really restored my faith in the cit­i­zenry. Peo­ple evi­dently hate par­ti­san­ship as much as I do and it’s heart­en­ing to see lead­ing Repub­li­cans cross­ing over to sup­port the right can­di­date for the office.

    Bless­ings from the fanatic fringe are the kiss of death. Hey, Kelty — those are the kind of lovers you need to keep on the downlow.

  8. Judith said on October 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

    Note the signs on the out­house on the Matt Kelty cake – the top one refers to the Repub­li­can County Chair, Steve Shine, and the bot­tom one taunts Nel­son Peters. Kelty insists he did not see his birth­day cake – it was cut and eaten before he could see it. (Yeh, right.) And accord­ing to Peters, when he called Kelty to dis­cuss the cake, “Kelty responded that he didn’t know what Peters was talk­ing about”. But a sec­ond pic­ture accom­pa­nies the arti­cle that is con­tin­ued on Page 2. In the pic­ture Kelty is hold­ing the afore men­tioned out­house with the top sign towards him. The bot­tom of the out­house is not in the pic­ture. But it is only another of Kelty’s questions:

    Cake, what cake?
    Loan, what loan?
    Law, what law?
    Sign, what sign?
    Poll, what poll?
    Indict­ment, all lies! (“Local Repub­li­can offi­cials con­firmed the witch /on the cake/ was intended to be Allen County Pros­e­cu­tor, Karen Richards”. She, in order to avoid the appear­ance of bias, appointed another pros­e­cu­tor to inves­ti­gate cam­paign law infrac­tions.)
    Radio ad, only the truth! (Kelty said Demo­c­ra­tic Elec­tion Board mem­ber Andy Down has been a chief strate­gist for Kelty’s oppo­nent, Tom Henry.)

    And on and on… CAKE, WHAT CAKE?

  9. basset said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:26 pm

    Any­one here inter­ested in old-time music? Clawham­mer ban­jos, fid­dlin’ with­out vibrato, that kind of thing? If you are, this’ll make sense…

    “Hot corn, cold corn, Mah­moud Ahmadenijad…”

    great mnemonic device for remem­ber­ing his name, anyway.

  10. LA mary said on October 10th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    My son calls him Mah­moud I’m a Din­ner Jacket.

  11. Dave K. said on October 10th, 2007 at 8:40 pm

    I read this Birth­day Cake story yes­ter­day. I chuck­led and shook my head. After a long day today; (Largest cus­tomer, Chrysler, struck by UAW, plan for lay­offs in the midst of first new hir­ing at Ft. Wayne Dana in 10 years, strike set­tled, 200 per­son lay­off averted…), I read NN​.com. “…Repub­li­can Chris­t­ian knobs like Kelty…”, caused a gut-laugh!

    Thank you, Nancy.

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