JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I’m headed to Colorado today to visit my old buddy Hubartos vanDrehl, the Prince of Paonia and self-described  “Zen-DaDa libertarian” and “charismatic underachiever.”

Regrettably, Hubartos has a bad case of the blues, and I plan on doing some listening and hope to cheer him up a bit. We’ve known each other since we were introduced as four-year-olds — each of us cowering behind his mother’s skirt — on Ruth Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky.

…But back to business. Before heading west, I wanted to give you an update on the Committee to Stop a Bad Cure. A dozen people have accepted my invitation to join on as committee members. So, it’s no longer a Committee of One.

Patty told me last week:

“If you’re going to have a committee, you’ve got to have people on it…Get cracking!”

I might have misquoted her on the “get cracking” part, but that’s what she meant. As always, her advice was sound. Some of the better stuff that you’ll hear coming out of my mouth, you’ll be able to attribute to her brain. (The stupid stuff will be all mine.)

Let me introduce our new committee members:

Pat Russell, Kansas City
Don Biggs, Kansas City (a former Kansas state senator, by the way)
Donald Hoffmann (former KC Star architecture critic)
Joe Arthur, Lee’s Summit
Richard Arthur, Lee’s Summit
Jim Gottsch, Kansas City
Jim and Sarah Weitzel, Kansas City
Claudia Freiburghouse, Kansas City
Patty Fitzpatrick (well, you know…)
Tom Minges, Kansas City
Kate Beem, Independence (another former Star staffer)

Welcome aboard, folks, I have a feeling it’s going to be a fun and wildly successful ride.

Down with the Civic Council Sales Tax!

***

People ask me what kind of campaign will we have…Quite simply, we’re going to have a low-budget, strategic campaign that will disembowel the other side’s empty-suit proposal.

We plan to have yard signs, door hangers and some other paid media that I don’t want to disclose right now. (Keep your eyes open, though, around early October.)

We will have a spectacular website — StopaBadCure.org — which should go up next week.

A brilliant young man named Jimmy Koppen is working with me on the logo and website…I’ve  known for a long time that Jimmy was brilliant, but he sealed it when he told me to dump the cigar-and-straw-hat-photo for purposes of the campaign.

Of course, the opposition will probably splash the cigar-smokin’/high-ridin’-dude photo on billboards all over town, saying things like:

“Can you trust a cigar-smoking former reporter to give you the straight story?”

I don’t care, I tell you!!!

I gave up cigars about a month ago, but I’m proud of that photo. (A buddy named Greg Corwin took it in 2010 at the J.C. Nichols Fountain.) In fact, I just enlarged it on the “About Me” page. So, go ahead, Glorioso-Gray-O’Neill-Roe and all you other bought-and-paid-for consultants, play it up big!

And if you want to bring up the only blemish on my journalistic career — a 25-year-old incident recalled by some as Asphaltgate — have at it!

…The gist of it was that Kansas City Public Works crew offered to fill potholes for $30 at some guy’s service station at 59th and Swope Parkway. He told them to come back later. The guy then called The Star and was transferred to me. I went out there and stupidly agreed — as the crew approached the station — to provide the 30 bucks. The asphalt guys ended up getting fired, and then-editor Art Brisbane wrote a column in the paper, admonishing me (without naming me) and apologizing to the public.

It all blew over in a few weeks, but The Star rewrote its Ethics Policy to specifically prohibit paying for news.

The way I look at it, I played a big role in raising the ethics bar at my beloved paper.

Now that I laid that out there, I’m trying to think of what else the opposition might use to try to embarrass me…But I’m drawing a blank.

I did have a long and relatively happy bachelorhood (until I got so lonely I thought I was going to die).

But who could hold it against a guy that he enjoyed himself during The Sexual Revolution?

***

P.S. The committee needs money ($$$$!) to get its message out and defeat the Civic Council Sales Tax on Nov. 5. I have contributed $3,500 of personal funds to the effort. So far, the committee has received just one other contribution — $95 from a CPA who lives in Independence. Thank you!

Please consider contributing. You can send send checks to:

Committee to Stop a Bad Cure
1209 W. 64th Terr
Kansas City, MO 64113

I guarantee you one thing: Your money will be put to good use.

Jim Fitzpatrick, treasurer

See you in a week!