A Heart of America dynasty is blamed for everything that goes wrong in the region - what a great idea!
Kemper Arena
March 3, 2004
Kansas City, Missouri
My country 'tis of thee,
Once Land of Liberty,
Of Thee I sing.
Land of the millionaire;
Farmers with pockets bare,
Caused by the cursed snare -
The Money Ring.
Blaming Kemper
I am just a greenhorn in Kansas City. If I am to believe everything I hear from the steers around here, someone named Kemper is to blame for everything that is wrong with Kansas City - never mind the mayors, city managers, police chiefs, prosecutors and judges, for they do as they are told.
Of course there are a number of Kempers in the Kemper Dynasty, but urban lore reduces them to a single, representative Kemper, the one who is to blame. Never mind the Hall Dynasty, for what's not to like about a Hallmark Moment? or the Crayon Center? No kidding, Crown Center is a beautifully designed, heart-warming, all-of-a-piece mini-city, with cars neatly tucked away out of sight; but Kemper's downtown Kansas City is a chaotic mess of towers and historic gaps, all because cautious Kemper held up progress downtown - that is what Unnamed Sources say. Kemper could always make a killing elsewhere while also making a tidy gain downtown, they say, by personally buying up blocks here and there and selling them off piecemeal, hence that gutted-out, downtown look - alas, the architects went from Classicism to Modernism, skipping the Gothic. Rumor also has it that Kemper's banks would not loan money to the buyers of his real estate, for that would be a conflict of interest, and that Kemper did not believe in the projects anyway, so why take the risk?
At least that is the dirt on the street. I verified it at the downtown library. For instance, I found a confirming photocopy of the April 1967 issue of Fortune in the Missouri Valley Room. Jeremy Main wrote that, "With some justification, several of the city's other businessmen accuse the Kempers of failing to use their wealth and influence to stimulated the growth of Kansas City. Says a local real-estate developer, 'Banking in this town has sat on its rump.' "
The author mistakenly states that the Kempers "rarely attract attention even in Kansas City." He says, "The Kansas City Star seldom mentions them."
That is not quite true . Everybody talks about Kemper on the street. He was a Pendergast police commissioner; he was the National Democratic Committeeman for thirty to forty years; he ran for several offices; he created quite a fuss with his peers from time to time - that is all on the public record. Of course when critics are quoted by the Star, they turn out to be Unnamed Sources whether they praise or blame Kemper. "A friend" dares not be identified lest he be blamed for something; and that is as it should be, for Kemper must be blamed for everything.
"If it weren't for Kemper, we would have had an arena downtown years ago. The plans were already drawn, but he wanted it in the Bottoms," said one of my own unnamed sources. "Kemper killed the trolley," quoth another unnamed source. "Kemper won't let us have a grocery store or a clothing store downtown," said another. And, "Kemper doesn't like bars so we don't have much entertainment downtown."
So Kemper is to blame for everything gone wrong with downtown Kansas City. And he doesn't really care what we think because he knows he is right. He has solved everything himself: he does not have to ask or listen, he can dismiss us and walk away. Thus sayeth certain unnamed allegation alligators.
So what? What every local beefhead knows is hardly newsworthy, although the herd would buy more papers from Baron Nelson aka Colonel Nelson (founder of the Star) if he bothered to hire a competent gossip columnist to talk dirt and use a few fighting words.
Twinkle, twinkle, little Star,
Bright and gossipy you are;
We candidly hear you speak,
For a paltry dime a week." (1)
But try wait! While the steers were butting heads and kicking up dirt, maybe the Star missed the really big, international story under foot, that Kemper may be a major cause of the War on Iraq! The facts are there - all one has to do is to remember the conservative law of thermodynamics and follow the watering holes and the Kaw to Kawsmouth.
Think about it. Why did Kemper marry a Crosby and move from Kansas, popularly known as the Great American Desert, to Kansas City in Missouri, the Great Blue Country? Go figure. The Kempers made cannon balls for General Washington, and the Crosbys established sound banking, meaning conservative banking. War and Money: a good match.
"Come Kansas City, make your story brief;
Here stands a city built o' bread and beef."(2)
Now consider the Legal Conservation of Energy. Seed plants that stand together in patches like wheat and corn convert energy into seed. If it were not for catastrophes such as floods and high winds to spread the seed, that would be a bad strategy for survival - other plants stand together and diversify their energy investments according to a division of labor that stabilizes the vegetation. Cultivation of seed crops amounts to a controlled catastrophe or regular revolution by means of plowing and irrigation. The human population explosion resulting from the supply of the concentrated energy source created a much greater demand than the good old cultivation methods supplied; wherefore the so-called "green" revolution. Outside energy had to be brought in to grow the crops; namely fertilizer - also good for making bombs. A lot of the seed crop is used to feed livestock. Of course a great deal more energy is needed to manufacture and employ the machinery used in cultivation, processing, and distribution.
To make a long story short, it takes at least one calorie of oil, and more like ten calories, to produce one calorie of processed food. If everyone on Earth ate like Kansas Citians, who weigh on the average ten pounds more than other urban dwellers because they drive more and exercise less, known oil reserves would be depleted in about ten years. That is why various plans to seize the oil fields in the Middle East have been in place for many years. Kemper could very well be in on that conspiracy. Think about it.
Advocates of such nefarious plans speak in Social Darwinian, Machiavellian and Hobbesian terms, in terms of world-power-state politik, real politics, neoconservative or pseudo-conservative, anti-liberal politics, and so on. They deliberately advocate deception as policy: hypocrisy, prevarification, outright lying. Their hackneyed phrases are legion: survival of the fittest, might makes right, Invisible Hand, and other anglo-american-saxon barbarisms - they abuse the pagan term for the deity. Of course sentimental humanism is despised. Patriotism is preached while the Constitution is subverted. Social programs taxing the wealthy must be gotten rid of. The poor are poor because they are weak, the wealthy are strong because they are wealthy. Greed is good. The business of government should be business unrestricted by democratic and even representative government, that deregulation may prevail until there is no competition left. Most of the strength is inherited nowadays, in the form of wealth, not moral or physical worth, thus we find a race of highly educated morons in high places.
Now, then, the Great American Desert is the Bread Basket of America. One does not need a neoconservative brain-washing to link the Heart of America and its bankers with Iraq and the Bush War on Iraq. Did not Kemper move from Kansas to Kansas City with a banker's daughter a century or so ago to get into the grain-mill business and to establish sound banking? And would not regional economics eventually require him to be a neoconservative; to wrap himself in the flag, to join the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies; to write a book about how fascism influenced him; to be a member of a vast right-wing conspiracy; to support a right-wing authoritarian government (OED: 'fascist'); to otherwise support the survival of his fortune by any means possible, including the Bush War on Iraq? And if all that were not his destiny, why did he not stay in Kansas and become a bank-hating radical?
Oh, Kansas fools! Poor Kansas Fools!
The banker makes of you a fool...." (3)
Excuse me, I got carried away. No insult to Kemper intended. Kemper cause the Iraq War? How absurd! Or, rather, what a great man if he did! We need to eat, so secure that oil and let the crumbs trickle down! Vast right-wing conspiracy? According to the Star, Kemper scoffed at the notion of a "nefarious right-wing conspiracy." So what if members of his group took pivotal positions in the Bush administration?The positions were well deserved. The economy is recovering and adultery and sodomy, the conservative's worst nightmares, are declining, or we hope so.
Of this we can be certain: wherever evil is found some good will also be found. Of course this is not the place to mention all the wonderful things Kemper has done for Kansas City. Maybe next time. Instead of blaming Kemper for everything, we should ask Baron Nelson to have one of his journalists provide us with a fair and balanced book on Kemper's major deals since he and Charlotte arrived in Kansas City with their son in 1893. After considering the circumstances of them all, maybe Kemper would get more praise than blame.
1) by Eugene Field
2) by C.L. Edson
3) popular song during the Populist movement c.1890
|
http://authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?id=30011