A couple weeks ago, I told you about local lawyer and political gadfly Jimmy Roscetti sneaking around trying to buy up some Niagara Falls Reporter stock so he could, uh, I dunno, fire me and Bruce and Staba? It was a typical sleazy play typically bungled by the typically bungling Roscetti, who is getting up there in years, don't you think?
Roscetti's angry at the paper because we pick on his wee partner Damon DeCastro all the time and Staba wrote a piece a couple of weeks back saying that Jimmy himself -- who has his fingers stuck in the hospital, the school district, City Hall, the airport and just about every other gooey political pie in town -- ought to have stayed out of the recent judicial election here.
In that race, former Niagara Falls Reporter chief counsel Robert P. Merino trounced the daughter of Angelo Massaro, who is another local lawyer with a reputation based largely on the strength of his political connections and the income he derives from them. He's kind of a father figure and hero to Roscetti, which makes him about 300 years old or something, but somehow he still manages to get around.
Roscetti, being a loyal friend, came out and publicly endorsed Massaro's effort to get his poor daughter a job, which was of great help to the Merino campaign. Still, when she lost, both Angelo and Jimmy kind of blamed it on us.
So they hooked up with another paltry political poobah who blames us for his offspring's inability to find regular government work, Johnny Cheff.
Cheff used to brag that he got Vincenzo V. Anello elected mayor here, though I don't suppose he brags much about it anymore, but four years ago, Anello created a do-nothing job for Cheff's son that the City Council did away with at first opportunity.
Anyway, instead of buying the Reporter, these guys decided they could simply create their own media empire. Sure, it must be easy if Battaglia, Staba and Hudson could do it, they reasoned.
Always on the cutting edge of progressive technology, this brain trust could see that print was dead as a medium and predicted that the next big thing in communicating information and ideas to the masses would involve some sort of modern electronic device. Yes, that was it -- radio!
And being compassionate souls, they went and pitched their idea to a disabled man, Mark Zito, the former Laborers Local 91 official and perennial target of investigation whose kajillion-dollar lawsuit against the power coalition here is so spectacularly awesome he called me four times a day for six months telling me I should write a book about it, and finally I had to get my number changed.
If ever a face could be said to be made for radio, it is Zito's. And if ever there was a radio station that could handle an ostensible personality and ersatz charm such as his, it is WJJL.
Yes, the West Seneca powerhouse that is already home to such broadcasting behemoths as Sal Paonessa and John "Tom Darro" Catalano would simply have to make room for another aging and angry white man in its lineup.
While Catalano regularly regales his listeners with tales of being tangentially associated with the Miss America Pageant in 1963, and Paonessa's unique brand of political insight has helped us all celebrate the stunning achievements of the Anello administration over the past four years, Zito's untapped reservoir of fascinating anecdotes gleaned from more than a decade spent shining the late philanthropist Butch Quarcini's shoes should prove irresistible to an audience that nervously scans each day's obituaries for confirmation that it is indeed still alive.
And now, instead of having two hosts who spend much of their time running down the Reporter, WJJL will have three! A veritable troika of terror striking fear into the very heart of our fashionable Buffalo Avenue newsroom. Only one thing remained, it seemed. Finance. It costs about eight dollars an hour for airtime on WJJL, and that was a little rich even for Massaro, Cheff and Zito's blood. Now who would be gullible, uh, shrewd enough to realize that sponsoring a start-up radio show with a charismatically challenged host on a station nobody listens to anyway might be a wise way to spend somebody else's money?
Hey, who's that I see? Why, it's Laborers Local 91 kingpin Rob Connolly!
Rob has, on occasion, found himself driving out to, say, Wegmans on Military Road, just wishing for something to listen to on the radio to take his mind off the mundane chore at hand. And now, flush with his members' cash, he could finally make his wish come true!
So pretty soon, we here in Niagara Falls will have a new show completely dedicated to the antediluvian philosophies of Johnny Cheff, Angelo Massaro, Mark Zito and all the others whose leadership over the past 30 years or so has made Niagara Falls such a wonderful place to live and do business.
And Rob Connolly can stop even pretending that he reads.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 28 2007 |