A Tucson radio talk show host has proposed offering the City Council to Hollywood to solve the community’s budget woes. “Since Tucson pops up in the national stage time and time again for its stupidity, why not make a buck off it and convert the pothole pools back to streets?” James T. Harris asked his listening audience.
Tucson, which continues to come to the attention of the national press since the shooting of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011, is the sixth poorest metropolitan area in the country and is facing debilitating budget issues. Its colorful cast of council members is, ‘the stuff reality t.v is made of,” say Harris.
Harris says he was inspired by a recent move by the City Council to cut away from coverage of the Call to the Audience portion of the public council meeting, and a suggestion by Tucson businessman Roger Score. Score had suggested creating a reality television program featuring the Tucson Council as a way to fund the nearly bankrupt city.
Harris called it “brilliant” and a “stroke of genius” and asked his audience to “think of the possibilities.” Harris said that Score, who is a regular listener of 104.1FM, had “called into Jon Justice’s morning show and may have made the suggestion in jest, but he is onto something.
Citing a recent arrest by Tucson Police of Tucson city councilman Paul Cunningham’s chief of staff, Katie Bolger, and a damaging video of that arrest, Harris said, “The weekly perp walk alone, would blow the ratings through the roof.”
Harris, a frequent commentator on the BBC, is a newcomer to Tucson having moved from Wisconsin this year where he had hosted a popular radio show regularly featuring Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Reince Priebus, the head of the RNC.
On Thursday, Cunningham posted on Facebook that the cut away from the Council meeting was due to technical difficulties; however a City insider reports that the claim is false. Another viewer said that he “was sure that the Council had moved an agenda item up in order to move the Call to the Audience to the end. The credits began to roll almost immediately after they made the Call to the Audience.”
Tucson had been home to many television westerns and the location for many movies, but nearly all tourism and entertainment activities stopped when progressive congressman Raul Grijalva called for a boycott of the state due to his disapproval of an immigration law passed by the state Legislature.
“The democratic leadership has created a rich history of scandal and quirky oddball buffoonery, from a former mayor biting a woman’s behind, to a congressman calling for a boycott against his own people,” said Harris. “There is no way republicans could ever be this entertaining.”
Harris says that for years the “democrats have worked to portray conservatives as kooks, but once the public sees what really goes on, they can see who the kooks really are,” remarked Harris. “Besides that, as a fiscal conservative, it would be great if the city council members stepped up to raise money and didn’t look to the feds to bail us out. All they would have to do is let a camera follow them around! The good people of this area deserve a council that does something useful. All of the politician’s stupidity provides the perfect plotline, and the scenery is a spectacular backdrop for America’s next big hit.”
To read the James T. Harris proposal Jersey Shore? Buck Wild? Hey MTV! Have ya considered Tucson? Click here.