Nonetheless, John Hieftje and McWilliams say he the best candidate to represent Ann Arbor’s downtown. I’m sure McWilliams (and Hieftje) do, in many ways, represent the views of Ann Arbor’s downtown merchants with respect to women. Honestly, right? Playboy circulates 1.5M mags every month. Internet porn is huge, pardon the pun.

When Al McWilliams got caught with his pants down around his ankles holding an ice cream cone, he decided to “clean up” his website. He hid his mistake instead of taking responsibility. He hid his mistake instead of engaging the viewpoints of others, standing up for himself, or even defending his right to demean women and call Council member Kunselman at kunt. Albert McWilliams demonstrated clearly he prefers to cover up and hide the truth and then dissemble (as he did in AnnArbor.com).

It’s perfectly clear to me why John Hieftje nominated him. However, we’ve had quite enough of that kind of behavior in local government.

If you watch the McWilliams discussion (final 15 minutes, last council meeting), you see the council members who ended up voting in favor of the appointment referring to notes as they gave their (weak) reasons for support. This strongly suggests pre-planning on the part of those who voted with the mayor. One definition of conspiracy – 2 or more people who decide to do something.

But, rather than mince words, let’s pick apart words in McWilliam’s tweets:
“Reading industry mags reminds me how little I value the opinions of others.”
“Today don’t forget to shove an ice cream cone up your ass.”
“Everytime you cough the word Kuntsleman we’ll all do shots.”
This is only the beginning… I wonder how downtown merchants feel about being represented by this
immature, arrogant, misogynist?

Does anyone have the text of his comments demeaning women or must we just accept characterization in general terms? I’m not particularly interested in Mr. McWilliams in any aspect and have never met him but there is a bit of a witch hunt tone that is beginning to bother me.

I certainly do support the efforts by some members of Council to review mayoral appointments more critically. I’ve seen some bad ones.

Photos of women as sexual objects were removed from the blog after Mr. McWilliams’ public postings became controversial. The available archives do not contain the offensive material.

If Mr. McWilliams had posted similar material demeaning people because of their race or religion, there would be little question of his suitability to participate in our government.

Several of our council members have made it clear that Mr. McWilliams’ postings are unacceptable. This is not a partisan effort on their part. Rather, it is an attempt to uphold community values.

There might be other reasons to object to McWilliams, including his business connections. I did note that he obviously supports the Mayor’s faction (shock) but in urging people to vote in the August primary so that only “crazy people” don’t decide, he doesn’t even mention names or why he opposes particular candidates. Other posts are about various social media and deploring racism.

While I don’t know what decision I might have made, based on the full picture, I think naming those who did vote to approve the appointment a “cabal” is overreaching. That implies some sort of conspiracy. In this case, it appears merely to be a difference of opinion.

Is there a way to view that blog pre clean-up?
Can this alleged appointment be overturned?

There is another important difference between this and regular football games that wasn’t mentioned, people pay to park on private lawns and driveways during Michigan football games. Many season ticket holders even have regular spaces reserved on someone’s lawn or driveway.

I have noticed that lawn parking is usually not an option for other stadium events. Even with its lower attendance, Michigan’s spring game poses a major challenge for parking because the options are so limited. The same thing was true during the “Big Chill” hockey game in 2010.

What about encouraging the near-stadium neighborhood parking entrepreneurs to step up to this opportunity? Otherwise the lower number of available spaces, combined with the much higher number of first-time visitors seems like a prescription for a traffic/parking nightmare. Supposedly we want people to feel good about their visit to Ann Arbor instead of going away frustrated because they couldn’t find a parking space and missed some of the game.