By Antonio D. French
Filed Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 10:47 AM
Labels: Alderman_Races, Crime, U.S._Senate_Race
SHE SAID WHAT? -- Following the our city's dubious distinction once again as the "Most Dangerous City in America", comes an interesting quote from one of St. Louis' paid cheerleaders.
Mary Hendrod, of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, was quoted in Venues Today, an industry trade magazine, in their "Quote of the Week" section.
"It's a bad part of town, but every city has a bad part of town... Frankly the only reason anyone would go there would be to purchase crack cocaine," she said, reportedly referring to "a bad neighborhood of St. Louis."
Hendrod told PUB DEF this morning that the quote was taken out of context and was meant to be off the record.AND THEN THERE WERE THREE -- Looks like Tower Grove Easter Christian Saller is joining Kacie Starr Triplett and Committeeman Patrick Cacchione in the race to succeed 6th Ward Alderman (and Aldermanic Presidential candidate) Lewis Reed. The Arch City Chronicle reports Saller, 43, made the announcement at a southside neighborhood meeting last night. We're also hearing there will be even more candidates joining the race before it's all over. Expect a crowded field.FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS? -- We emailed outgoing Republican State Rep. Sherman Parker this week to ask if we should read anything into his presence at Claire McCaskill's victory party last week. He did not reply.
But two other African-American Republicans called us over the weekend to let us know what they thought about former Congressional candidates Parker and Leslie Farr (who recently said he was re-joining the Democratic Party) partying with the blue team while the reds shed tears into their champagne glasses last Tuesday.
"Traitors" is about the least offensive word used that we can write here.
"After all Jim [Talent] did for Sherman?" one said, referring to Talent's early endorsement in the contentious 2002 primary fight that eventually led to Parker becoming the first African-American elected to the state legislature from St. Charles.
"They should know the lines are too long for them to ever get anything out of the Democrats," said the GOPer.
16 Comments:
Mary should be fired.
That is all.
11/15/2006 11:11 AM
Does Christian have to take a leave of absence from his SLDC gig to run for alderman?
11/15/2006 11:19 AM
Doug--
Was she wrong, at least as far as the problem being a bad part of town?
11/15/2006 11:24 AM
Her job is not do point out the problems. We pay her to sell our City, not to reinforce negatives.
11/15/2006 11:35 AM
As for crack sales, Saint Louisans know the infamous bad sectors of the city grid are not the only places where the sales are quite strong. One could likely score weed, pills, meth, hillbilly heroin, and, egads!, crack in Mary's neck of the woods as well as the bad lands.
I think police brutality has worked against Saint Louis. In the last four or five years, every other news broadcast is about cops abusing their authority, or pressing dangerously close to so doing, too often with impunity.
As last I checked, Saint Louis had many issues that far exceeded drug abuse and sales. Downtown, along with an unrestrained pideon population is homelessness and proverty pretty visible from Mary's office window. Of course, that seems to be of no real issue to anyone but Claire Macaskill and Rev. Larry Rice. Saint Louis is doing everything it can to make its shoddy abandoned downtown an inviting place to spend time and money. A Cardinal World Series Victory certainly helped in that effort. There's the business of attracting business back to Saint Louis. And, then, there's all the work put into the effort to kill racism in a major city in a regressive red state. Missouri is rather regressive where race is concerned, and Saint Louis is stigmatised by that. Solve some of this, and the burden will be lifted.
Now, I know with all those gliches, Mary's job is hard. After all, coming up with selling points for what she sees a coke addicted armpit of real estate waste is nothing if not a challenge. That notwithstanding, she had to know the job was hard when she took it. Instead of joining our detractors in labeling us a danger to America, peril in which our President has steeped himself more often than residents trapped in traffic behind his motorcade wish to remember, she should have pointed out our good points. The Arch went 40 this year. We are a port city. We are the crossroad between East and West in the US. We have Crown Candy, Ted Dewes, and Mike Shannons. Forest Park is larger than Central Park, with less crime. We have one of the best Zoos in the country. We have a Science Center. We're home to SLU, Wash-U, USML, and Harri-Stowe State University. We have one of the best community colleges in the Nation. Housing is still nominally priced. Gas is cheaper. You can still live in a neighborhood in Saint Louis. We have terrific lofts. Tripe is still fried, and pork is not a sin in Saint Louis! The list goes on forever.
I think in the next election, the citizens of this great City need to place a referendum on the ballot for tarring and feathering Mary, before we run her out of town. She was our spokesperson, and she deliberately kicked the ball into the crapper. Bad, Mary! Bad, bad Mary!
11/15/2006 12:40 PM
Question: How does Mary know where to go to buy crack cocaine?
11/15/2006 2:28 PM
Doug, given the perception that the whole city is dangerous, which is how outsiders would undertstand the ranking, if she can make the case that only part of the city is dangerous, and that the other parts are safe for people to come to, don't you think that acheieves the goal of selling the city?
11/15/2006 2:28 PM
Somehow when a paid cheerleader volunteers that the only reason to go to a "bad neighborhood" is to buy crack, I'm thinking it was a serious career blunder.
Which neighborhood was she talking about? FPSE? Downtown? Benton Park? Old North? Maybe someone who lives in that neighborhood would take exception to her characterization.
11/15/2006 2:45 PM
They might take exception, but the statistics speak for themselves.
11/15/2006 2:56 PM
"They might take exception, but the statistics speak for themselves."
Statistics for which neighborhood? I can't find what neighborhood she was talking about. Are you saying all the neighborhoods mentioned are only good for crack sales?
11/15/2006 3:15 PM
I agree with Doug. She should be fired, but not before a mandatory piss drop. She obviously knows where crack is sold, the sure sign of a user. Missouri is a free-hire state, but justification like drug abuse would save the state some money when Mary couldn't get unemployment compensation. Get her piss before you sack her.
11/15/2006 6:00 PM
Antonio, If your unnamed GOPer knew what they were talking about they would know Jim Talent did not endorse Sherman Parker nor did he endorse Barb Copper who also work him and ran for office. I talked to Sherman. He attened Governor Holden's, Stem Cell's, Jim Talent's, Charlie Dooley's, Kurt Odenwald's parties. Seem to me Sherman not seeing red or blue just purple. Live by the sword die the sword. It should be fun when you run for committeeman.
11/15/2006 10:28 PM
She could have easily said:
"As with all Cities, St. Louis has some areas which are better than others, however, the citizens of those neighborhoods, along with community leaders and members of the Administration, are working to remedy the problems. St. Louis has had its first population increase along with billions of private investment. We have had to cope with massive population loss and a detracting tax base. This puts a fiscal strain on our City, yet if you visited St. Louis 10 or 20 years ago, its clear there has been a big improvement."
That's how you handle the situation.
The downtrodden areas of our City contain many hard working community activists and the average law abiding citizen. To say that one neighborhood is only a drug zone is an insult to those people who live there! Not the way someone should be talking about the City, especially when they are a paid Representative!
11/15/2006 11:02 PM
I think the Mayor's official response--i.e., that the statistics are skewed because our city is so smaller in square mileage than most other cities and therefore our numbers are not diluted with safer areas--is much worse than what she said. It's like admitting the entire city is unsafe, but that the metropolitan area as a whole is as safe as any other city.
11/15/2006 11:24 PM
Daaaaaag.
I have heard so much of that shit since the safety stats came out (one-to-two sentence accusatory "explanations" about the crime stats, lobbed from the other side of Delmar to my side of Delmar), but nothing from anyone so high up.
Geez. Gotta love it.... "I am totally ignorant of entire parts of the City I'm paid to promote, but instead of actually going to and experiencing and learning about those areas, I'm going to make vaguely bigoted blanket statements about them to important people!"
Cos, you know, it's not like our "bad neighborhoods" have homes, gardens, churches, shops, schools, restaurants (no famous restaurants near my house in Old North, nope nope), social institutions, parks.... no, none of that....
11/16/2006 9:01 AM
Has everybody forgotten her title is Public Relations?
I'm not a public relations history buff but from what my feeble mind can comprehend about the position is that this person basically represents the best interests of the company/organization.
Doug is right. She should be fired.
Who is her boss anyway? Who has the authority to fire her? Anybody know?
11/18/2006 11:07 AM
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