(Begin satire.)

Jed, my third cousin twice removed, has a small rural home 60 miles north of Columbus. He is a typical news consumer in that he does not read a reputable daily newspaper or daily news website but consumes fragments of information from local television and local radio and bits and pieces from social media. Mostly, he listens to right-wing talk shows on AM radio and watches Fox News conspiracy mongers on satellite TV at night. Here is what Jed thinks is going on. Sometimes he gets it wrong.

Are Chippewas Building a Casino Near New Albany?

Jed is thrilled to learn that a Native American tribe is reclaiming some of the land that our forefathers took from them, especially because he heard that his two acres and prefab home that were originally on Indian land will not be reclaimed.

Better for folks over New Albany way in Licking County to fork over 3,000 acres to the Chippewa Tribe.

He didn't think Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was such good buddies with the Native Americans that he would smoke the figurative peace pipe at some hastily called press conference and exchange gifts and receive a plaque from a Tribal executive.

$20 billion to build the biggest casino between the Atlantic coast and Las Vegas sounds like just what rural Ohio needs to jump start what is left of its economy.

Jed's $12 an hour fast food job in Mansfield has been getting stale and he can barely make the payments and pay the taxes (those god-damned schools) on his rural hovel.

He's only an hour away from the new casino. He could afford to drive an hour to make $15-20 an hour and some decent benefits as a security guard or some such.

He hopes he can still play the slots and some Black Jack in his spare time and maybe make some new female friends as the pickings are pretty slim in the Richland-Morrow county border.

Those two Columbus casinos are too urban for his tastes. The one is in a bad neighborhood, the new Sheetz nearby notwithstanding, and the other one is too far away and too southern Ohio, too OH-HI-YA.

So thank you, Governor DeWine. You finally did something right after three years of trying to get me shot up with dangerous vaccine and wearing a f---ing mask that leaves me gasping for air and looking like a dork.

I was going to vote for that country boy Joe Blystone for governor. I guess I will have to give DeWine a second look.

Would I vote for those pot-loving Democrat hippies John Cranley and Nan Whaley, who want to be governor? Not a chance in Hell.

Move To Change County Borders Makes Jed Doubt DeWine

Jed lives on the border of Richland and Morrow counties. He is not sure on which side and can't remember if he went to Mansfield or Mount Gilead for the license plates for his aging pickup.

He is infuriated to read about the big fight in the state capitol over changing the boundaries of the counties in Ohio.

He knows Ohio has 88 counties and cannot figure for the life of him why Governor DeWine and the other stuffed shirts in Columbus have gotten themselves in this boundary war.

Now Jed reads that the Ohio Legislature got involved. Some no doubt addled Democrats took them to the court and the Ohio Supreme Court threw out the changes. Of course, the court scotched new boundaries for the counties, but now, he hears, more changes were made by DeWine and company and the matter is headed back to the court.

Jed cannot for the life of him understand why the grand pooh-bahs in Columbus want to make it harder for him to figure out whether to drive to Mansfield or Mount Gilead to buy his license tags.

What are the bozos going to do next?  Move the county seats to Lexington and Fredericktown, Joe wonders.

DeWine might not get his vote after all.       

Controversy Over Race Theory Threatens His Favorite Speedway

Speaking of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, where Jed likes to go to check out the races and the scantily-clad female spectators, Jed keeps hearing about the opposition to race theory.

DeWine said he was critical of it though he could not explain what it was. Shawn Hannity keeps haunting Jed's AM car radio with taunts about how race theory will bring the country down.

Jed already bought a season ticket to Mid-Ohio for next season. If DeWine and Hannity get their way, will he get his money back? He's already lost hundreds on country and western concert tickets that were cancelled by that god-damned pandemic.

He heard Josh Mandel, who he thinks is running for the Senate, expound that schoolchildren's minds were being polluted by this race theory and that some women auto racers were actually men.

That's not fair, Jed thinks, but why should his fun be cancelled by some race theory. Races are not some bullshit theories, they are run by life-risking, fast-driving men (and a few women).

No way DeWine is getting his vote for governor now.

Football-Loving Senate Candidate Mike Gibbons Steals Jed's Heart

Jed loves high school football on Friday nights, OSU on Saturdays and the Browns on Sundays, even when they suck. NFL playoffs are his favorite time of year. His 60-inch TV covers an entire wall of his little house in the country.

It did not take long for Jed to decide on whom he wants for the next U.S. Senator. He looks down on retiring Sen. Rob Portman and 3-termer Sen. Sherrod Brown as softies, not the kind of manly men to represent Jed in Washington.

Thank God for Mike Gibbons, Jed thinks. Gibbons is the white-haired grandfatherly figure who is running those TV commercials linking his Republican candidacy for the Senate to America's favorite pastime, football.

Gibbons paid an Ohio college for the privilege of using its football stadium and facilities in his TV commercials. He has been flooding the airwaves for six months with his Gridiron Mike motif. It appears to be working because Gibbons has moved from unknown to the top 3 among the 6 candidates for the GOP nomination.

There are thousands of football-loving Jeds and Judys who think that Gibbons played for OSU and coached in the NFL.

(End satire.)

Quickies

-- The wrangling over the district boundaries for the Ohio Legislature continues as the Republican-dominated Redistricting Committee sent an improved, but still not reflecting the 54-46% split, proposal to the Ohio Supreme Court. If Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor is not persuaded and again joins the three Democratic justices in turning it down, all hell will break loose within the GOP because many of them will lose their sinecures in the capitol if the intent of the constitutional amendment is fulfilled.

-- Meanwhile, the Ohio Dumb-ocratic Party is showing weakness by not holding debates between U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and his progressive challenger, Columbus lawyer Morgan Harper. So Harper made a deal with GOP creeper Josh Mandel to hold their own debate Jan. 27. This will give both Harper and Mandel a golden opportunity to play to their parties' bases because right-wingers are more likely to vote in the Republican primary and left-wingers are more likely to vote in the Democratic primary.

-- At the same time the ODP state central committee is flirting with endorsing former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley for governor over former Cincinnati Mayor John Whaley.

What a dumb idea. Let them fight it out and then unite behind the primary winner. Democrats are so weak in Ohio now that they cannot afford any bad blood.

-- We all remember when then ODP chair Chris Redfern forced through the endorsement of Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald for governor in 2014. Team Kasich dropped a load of negative stuff about FitzGerald on the last day for FitzGerald to withdraw and be replaced. Gov. John Kasich and the GOP went on to sweep all state administrative offices and control of the Ohio Legislature. Ohio Dems have been in the toilet since then. Do you suppose Redfern is readying for a comeback? Watch his Twitter feed.  Prepare to weep.

-- Question: How does what is left of the Dispatch get a big scoop? Answer: Whore out to Gov. DeWine on the proposed new Intel computer chip plant near New Albany. It appears that Dispatch editors and reporters were given inside access to the process of luring Intel to build its plant in Ohio in return for keeping a lid on the story until DeWine was ready to release it. When it came out it enabled DeWine to grab lots of public relations gusto at a time when he was being hammered over his role in the legislative redistricting mess. Even cleveland.com capitol impresario Andrew Tobias congratulated the Dispatch for the scoop, that Tobias did not get. After all the days of fawning coverage the Dispatch provided of the $20 billion deal -- without telling readers/taxpayers how much it would cost them -- the Dispatch finally got around to running a short article about DeWine being tight-lipped about the price tag on the corporate welfare Intel will receive. Too little. Too late. The footprint of the Dispatch gets smaller very day. Next thing you are going to tell me is that the Dispatch is permanently canning its Saturday edition on March 26.

(Please send your comments and suggestions for future columns to John K. Hartman, ColumbusMediaInsider@gmail.com)  

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