Please tell me this was taken out of context!  Are you kidding me, the media in Cincinnati is unf*cking real.

 

 

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A minute with Mike McConnell

Iraq trip insightful for talk radio host, but don't mention Pete or O.J.

 

Twenty years ago, rock 'n' roll DJ Mike McConnell took over the "Midday" show on WLW-AM (700) - and he hasn't stopped talking. The suburban Philadelphia native studied broadcasting at the University of Dayton. He joined WLW in 1984 as the commercial production director. He took over "Midday" from Alan Gardner in fall 1985. In 2005, he broadcast from Iraq, as part of a Defense Department tour for talk radio hosts, and from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. McConnell, 50, of Blue Ash, also does a three-hour national call-in show, "The Weekend," on WLW and 110 other Clear Channel stations.

 

For more info, click the link

 

John Kiesewetter

 

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060126/ENT/601260352/1086/LIFE

WOW what a joke. I would go through OTR in the middle of the night, before i walk down a street in Baghdad. He's lost all sense of reality. There they kill you because you're american. In Cincinnati a person is killed because of drugs and they usually know that person..

"In many ways..."

 

I challenge him to list these ways.  Fewer chili-related deaths?  No Carew Tower to jump off?  No stampedes at The Who concerts?

I generally like McConnell, but he's WAYYYYYYY off on that one.

Fewer chili-related deaths? 

 

Hah!  I've had a few nasty run-ins with Skyline Chili!  Eventually it WILL kill me.  Seductive murdress it is!

Wow, what an idiotic quote. Wow.

Wow, I just found this thread and was shocked to see it was from 2006!

 

In the 2009 mayoral campaign, Candidate Brad Wenstrup (who's now a U.S. Rep for Ohio) said "I felt safer in Iraq" than in Cincinnati.

 

It really just goes to show how much the public perception of Cincinnati has changed for the better more than anything else.

OTR was pretty bad. Yeah, you probably wouldn't get shot walking down the street but if you drove through there at night, there would be drug dealers and prostitutes on literally almost every corner and so much dilapidated, abandoned housing. Although it looked worse than it was, it definitely had to be one of the top 10 most crime-ridden neighborhoods in America. I'm almost certain it would have been the worst neighborhood in Ohio in the early 2000s. 2006 is around the time when it really started transitioning.

 

I remember in 2003 when I first got my license, driving through there a couple times, up Vine St. and it was a pretty creepy experience. All these drug dealers and prostitutes walking up to my car at every red light. Most people, especially white people, avoided driving through OTR to get from Downtown to Uptown so if you were one of the few who did, it was pretty much assumed by all of these drug dealers and prostitutes walking down the street, that you were there to buy drugs so you'd constantly get screamed at or approached if you went through there. It seemed like police were too intimidated by that neighborhood to patrol it well and judging by how openly drugs and sex were sold, there must not have been many undercover operations going on either.

 

OTR today is pretty much unrecognizable to me. I'm blown away by the changes. It's truly remarkable and it's because Cincinnati has such loyal, politically active citizens and small investors who are willing to take risks to achieve what many people would think is impossible. I'll always love Cincinnati for it's architecture and the people who are so admirable in their passion for the community.