Silly Beyond Belief

“You had adults fighting adults, juvies fighting juvies, and so forth. You just had a melee here.”

—Cmdr. Wayne Drummond

It’s the sort of lede that, really, we don’t expect. That is, angry parents on the sports field are an unfortunately common phenomenon, but come on, this is beyond stupid:

A brawl that started over spilled punch at a kindergarten graduation ceremony Friday resulted in the arrest of eight people, authorities said. Police were called when one participant pulled out a pipe and another a hammer.

Two teenage girls apparently started hitting each other at Michael R. White Elementary School, and their families joined in, Cleveland police Cmdr. Wayne Drummond said. The fight involved adults and minors, he said.

“You had adults fighting adults, juvies fighting juvies, and so forth,” he said as parents streamed into the building to pick up their children. “You just had a melee here.”

No one was hurt, Drummond said. It wasn’t clear whether the hammer and pipe were brought to the school or were grabbed during the fight from a janitor’s supplies or elsewhere, police spokeswoman Detective Jennifer Ciaccia said.

I mean, come on. Hockey fights? Sure. Heck, I remember once when a guy named Jim Denton, my elementary school principal, manhandled one of his students during a Little League baseball game; the kid’s father rushed the field, then, and we nearly had a brawl on the diamond. These sorts of things are stupid beyond belief.

But a kindergarten graduation ceremony? Seriously?

The Reuters “Advertising” Division

“If somebody wants to come into Kentucky and build a Harry Potter park and teach all the fun things about witchcraft, nobody would say a word about it—they’d just think it was so cool. But if we want to come in and build a Biblical theme park, everybody goes crazy.”

—Michael Zovath

Everyone, it seems, has their complaints about news media, but Mary Wisniewski’s promotional piece for a creationist theme park—lovingly edited for Reuters by Arlene Getz and Prudence Crowther—does not make any effort to hide its purpose.

In an office park in Hebron, Kentucky, the designers of the proposed “Ark Encounter” theme park are trying to answer questions like these in order to build faith in the Bible’s literal accuracy. The project has run into delays because of lack of financing, which could cost it millions in potential tax breaks. Despite the uncertainty, a recent Reuters preview of the project showed that plans for the ark are continuing.

“We’re basically presenting what the Bible has to say and showing how plausible it was,” said Patrick Marsh, design director for the park, which will feature a 500-foot-long wooden ark and other Old Testament attractions, including a Tower of Babel and a “Ten Plagues” ride. “This was a real piece of history – not just a story, not just a legend.”

The project is currently in the design phase. Not enough private donations have come in to start construction, and building permits will not be ready until November, according to Ark Encounter co-founder and Senior Vice President Michael Zovath.

The project has $12.3 million in hand and $12.7 million more in committed donations; it needs $23 million more to start building the ark alone. Zovath does not know when that will happen.

Like Noah before the Flood, the builders are in a bit of a time crunch, since Kentucky tourism tax incentives for the project are set to expire in May 2014.

The longer it takes to start building the $150 million park, originally planned to open in spring 2014, the less the project stands to gain from the rebates, which allow it to receive up to 25 percent of project costs over 10 years from sales taxes generated by the business.

Zovath said the project may refile for the incentives, which critics argue are a violation of the constitutional divide between church and state. If the rebates applied to the full project cost, they could amount to $37.5 million.

This seems to be the thrust of Wisniewski’s appeal, which is in turn bracketed by quaint inquiries and appeals intended to charm:

What is “gopher wood”? How did Noah fit all those animals on the boat? And how did he stand the smell? ….

…. Zovath argues that the tax breaks do not violate the Constitution, since the state is not giving the park money up-front, but is only returning some of the tourism money the park will bring to the state.

“If somebody wants to come into Kentucky and build a Harry Potter park and teach all the fun things about witchcraft, nobody would say a word about it – they’d just think it was so cool,” Zovath said. “But if we want to come in … and build a Biblical theme park, everybody goes crazy.”