Speaking of Marines…

My old mates of Alpha Company 1/24 were denied use of downtown Toledo this weekend at the very last minute by Toledo’s controversial (and improbably named) Carty Finkbeiner. Kind of surprising, given how often 1/24 has trained in Toledo, and even managed to do so once during Finkbeiner’s (man I love typing that) administration, in May 2006 a few months before they deployed to Iraq. Though I’m further surprised that Alpha couldn’t find something closer to home, in GR itself. I know there’s some vacant buildings around. Though maybe they thought they had a good relationship with Toledo, and it might be marginally warmer there, who knows.

What really blew my mind, though, was this line from the Wikipedia article on Finkbeiner under the heading “Controversy,” amid a bunch of other issues with his administration: “FinkBeiner has also suggested a cafe be built on the Martin Luther King bridge so city employees could eat there while the bridge was undergoing construction.”

Love the random capitalization, and love the utterly random “controversy.” I guess it requires a lot more context than I’m willing to go look up just now.

Anyway, I find it amusing that there’s a “civic leaders hate Marines” trifecta now in play, Fark-style. Now all we need is some City Manager somewhere denying a disabled Marine vet a building permit as he tries to open a Little Ceasar’s franchise or something, and we’ll be all set; the Marines will have enough to fuel our institutional persecution complex for another 232 years.

Crossposted with klech.net