The Unspeakable in Full Pursuit of – a Football Stadium
Oscar Wilde described fox-hunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” We can make the same point about Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, Saint Louis Rams Football Owner Stan Kroenke, and the Great Riverfront Stadium Hunt.
Nixon and Kroenke are two squires cut from the same cloth – a trophy-hunting governor who thinks he can pick winners and losers and a super-rich developer with a long history of currying favor from government entities.
In this situation, we may debate the question of whether it is worse (i.e., more “unspeakable”) to give or to receive. Here we are talking about the award of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ assistance to a hugely profitable sports business that does nothing to advance the public good.
It is at least appropriate that the object of the hunt is made largely of concrete. Along with the unwarranted subsidies, that makes it doubly indigestible – both from a gastronomic and an economic viewpoint.