Bleak Ohio

For people who live outside of Columbus, the salient feature of central Ohio is the Ohio State University. I suspect even a healthy amount of folks who reside in Franklin County know nothing of High Street beyond what occurs within a mile of the Lane Ave intersection.  As much as I'd like for there to be a popular association with Columbus that goes beyond the enormous scarlet-and-grey blob near our city center, there's just no getting away from how Ohio State shapes the local culture and economy.  This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing-- it brings luminaries like Rick Steves to my neighborhood, after all.  But Ohio State as it's understood by both Columbus residents and the broader world is mainly understood for one thing: Buckeye football. The NCAA is a massive business that would not exist but for the academic institutions that give legitimacy to its insanely lucrative, insanely exploitative teenage-athletics-as-entertainment scheme.  So you'd think that a...

Rick Steves, of swinging his arms and strolling through Edinburgh thoroughfares on PBS fame, might not strike the average public television viewer as a particularly political person.  I mean, just look at him! But when me and my wife went to see Rick give a talk on Ohio State's campus in February, us two ardent Steves-heads had some idea of what was coming.  We've known for years about Rick's advocacy for legal marijuana, his specials on global poverty and fascism, and his book "Travel as a Political Act."  In truth, you don't have to examine any of his guides or shows too closely to see, in this man who spends his life traveling OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES, somebody who's obviously a bit of a lib.   But anybody who didn't know that became aware of it over the course of Rick's stay at the Mershon auditorium.  There to promote his new memoir "On the Hippie Trail," about the revelations the young traveller had while on the route from Istan...