With time they wear us down

Two items of interest caught your superior correspondents’ eyes earlier this week. One was something that no one could have missed, since it was on the top of the front page of Tuesday’s Other Paper — "Mesolella revives hotel." One can only wonder why they didn’t headline it, "He’s baaaack." At any rate, it appears that Cousin Vinny is hooking up with James Procaccianti to build his mighty and long-envisioned downtown hotel.

The other item seemed initially designed to avoid public scrutiny, although the OP, to its credit, also had a story about it. This was the information about a meeting Tuesday, March 15, of the Providence Plan Commission at the Public Safety Complex. Feldco, owners of a bunch of property in Eagle Square, seemed to be trying to weasel out of one of the conditions for final approval of its project there — specifically the requirement that one floor in the Uncas and the Crawford Seed buildings be dedicated to below-market studio space for artists. For some reason, this item was not listed on the planning sub-section of the City of Providence Web site until fairly late in the process.

As you will undoubtedly recall, artists, historical preservationists, community activists, and others jumped into the fray when the Feldco people proposed knocking down the mill buildings in Eagle Square for "development" about five years ago. A compromise was eventually worked out, preserving some, but not all of the old structures, after much tortured back and forth.

This latest attempt at trying to change the deal leads P&J to suspect that Feldco may never have had any intention of following through with this element. We believe this is how big business frequently works. When called out by a community to temper its grasping a bit, to work in the best long-range interests of that community, it reluctantly agrees. In the meantime, big businesses wait it out, for years and years if necessary, and then try to legally change the deal to their benefit.

Pardon our skepticism if we don’t believe the "all privately funded" Vinny Mesolella/James Procaccianti project to be any different. Somehow, somewhere down the line, will the public notice another hand in its pocket?

LITTLE WOMEN

As if it wasn’t bad enough having the prevaricating, asexual, buck-toothed, process-coiffed Conda-liar Rice as secretary of state, Dubya has appointed female impersonator Karen Hughes as her trusty sidekick. The purported point of naming Hughes, who looks like she shaves more than Richard Nixon had to, as Condi’s keeper is improving the international view of the United States. Too bad Lynndie England is tied up at the moment, since she probably would have been Georgie Boy’s first choice due to her wonderful buffing of America’s image at Abu Ghraib.

Yep, Dubya really has the touch when it comes to courting our friends overseas. Naming John Bolton, a preposterous posturing schnook, as the US ambassador to the United Nations was a deft stroke that should manage to alienate everyone from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Now he throws his pit bull Texas adviser into the international arena, accompanying a woman who blatantly lied to our entire country (and who, in a memorable Freudian slip, reportedly once referred to our chicken hawk president as her husband). This has contributed to the death of more than 1500 of our country’s bravest men and women in the desert, because of a premise she knew to be false. Boy George is becoming quite adept at taking pliable women with no conscience and using them to hideous ends, as seen in the likes of anti-environment Interior Secretary Gale Norton and anti-intellectual Education Secretary Margaret Spellings (another member of his Texas Gestapo), as well as the hideous pair of Rice and Hughes.

You’ve come a long way, babies. Now please go back under the rock you came from.

PROUD TO BE A VO DILUNDAH

While we are on the subject of consciences, everyone in the Biggest Little should be quite proud of our two US senators, Jack Reed and Lincoln Chafee. Little Big Man Reed is rapidly becoming the conscience of the Senate when it comes to the war in Iraq. Jack’s work on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in pressing for real answers about the ridiculous amount of abuses and grievous errors committed on Rummy Rumsfeld’s watch — all without any demand for accountability by Dubya’s White House — has been exemplary. It is a tribute to his West Point background and Army service, as well as his irrefutable integrity, that when Reed talks, people listen. Keep the hammer pounding, Jack. We are right with you, as are most of the citizens who don’t swallow the smorgasbord of lies coming from the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, while Little Big Man digs for the truth in Iraq, Linc Chafee is putting up the good fight on the home front. In addition to blowing Dubya’s case for privatized Social Security out of the water on Meet the Press on Sunday, March 13, he also cast a critical swing vote against Boy George’s bogusly named "Clear Skies" initiative, keeping it from coming out of committee to the Senate floor. Clear Skies is such a farce it is amazing that it got the votes it did. Chafee’s vote with the Democrats so pissed off the committee chair, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, as absurd a solon as has ever graced the halls of Congress (he thinks that global warming is "a hoax") that he went so far as to call our Linc, and his pals with IQs greater than two digits, "environmental extremists." Standing up to Dubya’s flunkies is no easy task, but Linc Chafee manages to do the right thing on a fairly regular basis, which is more than can be said for anyone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or the Pentagon.

THE BIG LIE

After reading Sunday’s front-page article in the New York Times chronicling the extent to which the Bush propaganda machine has infiltrated print and broadcast news operations, P&J stand in awe of this guy’s ability in the Big Lie department. Sure, everyone — FDR, Clinton, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton — all worked this street, but no one has done it with such single-minded thoroughness.

The number and variety of fake news stories designed to prop up the Bush Administration is truly breathtaking. Public relations firms are pumping these out under contract. We love how administration flacks claim with straight faces that their giant propaganda effort is just another way to get "information" to the American public.

While we are highly amused by all of this, we must acknowledge a major downside (which, perhaps, in the long run, will become an upside). This is that pretty soon, anyone with half a brain (attention: Red States) will never believe anything that the federal government says. It’s that old little boy who cried weapons of mass destruction syndrome. Most of the rest of the world has picked up on the big lies coming out of the White House. When will the American people do so?

DRAMAS IN PAJAMAS

From March 24 to April 17 (coincidentally, Phillipe’s 30th birthday), the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket will present David Mamet’s Oleanna, directed by your superior correspondents’ favorite hyperactive Ritalin child, Judith Swift. (Well, actually, Ms. Swift, Phillipe & Jorge pre-dated the Ritalin era, but you can bet we would have been shoveling them down our little throats like M&Ms had we the opportunity to treat our racing juvenile minds.) A person not a million miles away from the production offers this overview of the play, which we urge all of you to attend:

"A female student goes to a prof’s office to get help because she is failing his course. He is arrogant and she is not so bright — seemingly. He decides to play Henry Higgins and basically makes her an offer she does refuse (come to my office and you get an A). He is not out to nail her sexually, but to own her intellectually and emotionally. Major power trip. The play is all about power. He is so full of himself. He is blind to the stupidity of his actions. He is also approved for tenure, but the institution has not yet signed. He trashes his colleagues in the fine tradition of the academy’s sport. She then gets dumped when his wife comes along at the end of the meeting. She is raw and distraught. He is myopic and disinterested. A recipe for disaster, [it] takes the form of charges of sexual harassment

"The beauty of the play is its absolute ambiguity in the face of some very glaring specifics. He does treat her inappropriately. She does take offense. Most importantly, in a politically correct world, no one takes the time to sit with them and mediate the ‘offense.’ He is never told of his offense prior to the charges. He is guilty of bad judgment and might intend more appropriate behavior in the future, but I doubt it because he is too narcissistic. The play is something of Pygmalion meets the Salem Witch Trials in the world of Albee’s Virginia Woolf. Very rattlesnake eats the rabbit. You don’t want to watch. but who can look away? Ugly, cruel, taunting, and a fun night out."

While this sounds a bit like the Michael Jackson Neverland trial (is that J.M. Barrie’s pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?), we are sure it is far more complex and doesn’t involve anyone wearing pajamas or faux Royal Navy outfits ("All I know about the Royal Navy is rum, sodomy and the lash" — Winston Churchill) into court. But who knows? Details at: www.gammtheatre.org

Be there or be square.

KUDOS AND CONGRATS...

. . . to BeloJo scribe Rick Massimo, for Sunday’s front page profile of Randy Hien. For a story about someone badly injured in an automobile accident and his continuing struggle to recover, it was remarkably inspiring and upbeat. This is because Randy is incredibly inspiring and upbeat. Not just the musicians that worked at the Living Room, and the Little Leaguers who played on teams coached by Randy, but virtually anyone who has had the good fortune to know the man is aware that he is a special person. Keep going, Randy.

Send Opening Day tickets and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com