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. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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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