NO ANCHOVIES OR A SENSE OF HUMOR
Some days I go out and get political stories, other days they get me. This is one story that got me. A couple weeks ago a local downtown pizza delivery guy, we’ll call him “Neil” got an order to deliver pizza to Marion County Democratic Party. Neil goes to school at IUPUI and pays attention to local politics. Neil is also a bit of a smart aleck. He’s not a bad guy, but he likes to stir things up a bit. So when the order comes in, Neil takes it.
Once the pizza is ready Neil takes it and heads over to 600 E. Washington. While en route, Neil’s smart aleck streak gets the better of him and he takes a marker and on the inside of the pizza box writes, “Vote for Ballard.” The pizza gets delivered. A little later Neil’s boss gets a phone call with someone yelling through the roof and doing some big time complaining about “Vote for Ballard.”
At first the pizza manager has no idea what the party official is complaining about. In fact he’s trying to think if there is a Ballard who works there. However after the yelling and screaming continues Neil is suspended for 10 days.
Now this is where it gets ironic. Neil works with a bunch of 20-year olds who don’t pay attention to politics, but are so upset over what happened that they’ve all decided to vote for Greg Ballard. Secondly, I think it’s more ironic that the same people who won’t raise a peep about Council President Monroe Gray’s antics that are on a collision course with a grand jury one of these days, will complain about a pizza deliveryman. A pizza deliveryman who ends up getting suspended from his job. I thought Neil was the kind of person that Marion County Democrats were supposed to be fighting for, a young working class guy who’s working his way through school and trying to get by. Now he’s lost more than a week’s wages and the city has lost tax money.
Had it been me I would have just let the whole thing go and shrugged it off. But because someone over at Marion County Democratic headquarters has no sense of humor a working class was put out of a job. And even though it was temporary, there was nothing funny about that.
