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Hey it's Alvin Reid from the St.

Louis American sitting in for Charlie Brennan once again and I don't think I have ever enjoyed an overcast gray day as much as I enjoyed today.

I think we're actually going to have a fall.

Welcome to Donnybrook and joining me of course is Wendy Weise media veteran, Bill McClellan one of our founders from the St.

Louis Post -Dispatch, Joe Holleman also a columnist from the St.

Louis Post-Dispatch and Jason Rosenbaum from St.

Louis Public Radio and Jason what happened earlier this afternoon?

Well because I prayed to my small doll of Ron Karkovice today, the White Sox are in the playoffs.

That's an old school reference.

On a day in St.

Louis where a future saint was beatified, is that how you say it?

Yes, yes.

I think this Pope influence had something to do with it.

Even though I am Jewish, I have a White Sox themed Chicago Pope shirt.

Because he went to game one of the World Series in 2005.

He's my second favorite Pope besides John Paul II.

But we'll see if there can be a Subway World Series this year.

Yeah, because the Cubs are in.

Yeah, I'm not really that rough on that.

Well, I'd like to see him.

I mean the White Sox, sure.

You gotta love them.

Before we get started, I want to mention the loss of longtime Donnybrook and Nine PBS family member Sharon Haskins.

For decades, Sharon was the first smiling face you would see when you arrived at Nine PBS.

And if you were lucky enough to get your call through on the line on Donnybrook, Your Turn.

It was Sharon who made clear to you that you better be on topic.

She was the beloved matriarch of her family.

Our deepest condolences to her sons and grandchildren and entire family.

And I gotta tell you, back in the day when we got our checks by mail when we filled in, if you didn't get one for a long time, you knew it was out there, I would call and Sharon would answer and say, like, Alvin, I'll check on it.

Don't worry about it.

Before I could even get the words out of my mouth.

She was a sweetheart and she looked out for all of us, especially screening those calls.

Well, and when you mention her grandchildren, she was so proud of her grandson who played at the University of Michigan.

At University of Michigan.

She was so proud.

Yes, I went to Eureka.

She was just she was just she was just like a firestarter.

She was just she was a spark to everybody.

She did have a smiling face.

Always.

Best smile ever.

Oh, my God.

It was really one of the classic smiles when you'd walk in the door, regardless of what day you were having.

She'd smile.

You'd automatically have to.

You just had no doubt about it.

No doubt about it.

Well, we miss you, Sharon.

And we really do.

You're part of the family.

OK.

Well, last week at the end of the week, a party was held at the You Can Dance, I guess, hall or studio.

And apparently about 60 kids were supposed to be there and up to 300 were there.

Gunfire erupted.

There is one person that I guess still remains in critical condition.

And the municipality has condemned the building, not for the violence, but for some other code violations.

The attorney for You Can Dance said, like, they are a victim here, too.

I don't necessarily agree with that.

I think they bear some responsibility.

Joe, your thoughts?

I think the saying the choice that we're the victim here was, again, just a poor choice of words.

The victim was obviously the people who were shot.

However, I am not yet ready to blame the owners of these establishments, these venues, like Playzone or whatever they're called, who were used to years or even decades of kids coming together and getting a little rowdy, but, you know, not just opening fire.

I mean, so were they a bit naive maybe?

Possibly.

But I'm not ready to vilify the owners of this place because it seems to be that what it's become is an epidemic, if you will, of where these gatherings go from 50 to 300.

And I remember parties like that that I attended when I was a teenager.

Party would get out of hand.

It was just that nobody decided to open fire into that party with guns.

So do these people now, I mean, should they know their lesson now if they ever rent it out again?

Absolutely.

You have to hire security.

It can't just be the one college kid who you trust not to, you know, to count the money right.

You've got to hire security or there could be a fight, even though it's 15, 16, 17-year-old kids.

This happened in our neighborhood one night, and it was one of the most stunning things.

We've been there for 30 years, and they go viral.

And that's when you can have hundreds and hundreds of people showing up in a matter of like 15, 20 minutes.

And so I feel for them.

I really do.

I would imagine some kind of contract was signed.

And, I mean, you can't have these types of businesses and not realize that you have to cover yourself.

Well, apparently they had had other parties at this event because the neighbors said that, you know, there had been times when there were a few kids, too many hanging around, but nothing like this.

I just feel as though you've got to have some sense of when it's getting out of control.

It's one thing in a house party where the parents probably aren't home, and this was not your party.

No, no, no, no.

But in the meantime, I think somebody's got to bear some responsibility.

Jason, I'll put it this way.

Can you pass a law that says, like, you've got to be more responsible than this?

I'm kind of with Joe on this one because, like, unless they signed a contract saying we're going to bring 300 people to this birthday party, which I don't think they did.

I think they thought it was going to be 60.

I don't know if that's really the venue's fault.

I guess I kind of see where you're going with maybe they should have called the police or maybe they should have been more proactive.

But I'm just trying to think of, like, a scenario where, like, you book, like, a roller rink and say there's going to be 30 people, and then you suddenly bring 300 people there.

It's not really the roller rink's fault that you were deceived.

So I think I'm with Joe on this one.

Okay.

All right.

Well, for the second time, us Missourians are going to get a chance to vote on the reproductive rights and whether that should be banned in the state of Missouri.

I'm trying not to take sides on this.

I'm not.

Maybe if I pronounce that wrong.

But in the meantime, if there's an advertisement running that really doesn't mention reproductive rights, it's about transgender drag queens and the threat that they possess to society.

And, Bill, you've seen the commercial.

Is it too much or all's fair in politics, love, and war?

Oh, I thought it was way too much and crazy since it didn't mention anything about abortion or a ban.

But the really odd thing to me was, you know, I don't think that it's that one-sided on pro-life and pro-choice, especially in Missouri.

I think that the pro-life people could have a reasonable, thoughtful commercial about pro-life, and they don't have to do this thing that this is about transgender drag queens and this is about children getting surgery, which has nothing to do with this.

So I looked at it and I thought, I don't even know why they're doing this.

Well, it does have something to do with it because the proposal includes a constitutional ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which is already illegal under state statute.

It's already illegal.

And gender affirmation surgery is permanently banned under statute.

I think it probably shows a lack of confidence that they think that the actual abortion ban is going to find favor with people.

You're correct, Bill.

Like, Amendment 3 in 2024 only passed by about three percentage points, which means there are a lot of people in Missouri who feel that abortion is morally wrong.

And I feel like if you ran an ad that said, you know, let's ban abortion with the exceptions of medical emergencies, fetal abnormalities and rape and incest up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

I don't know.

Do you use that with your full chest?

As a matter of fact, Denny Hoskins, when he originally wrote what was going to be on the ballot, that the judge said, you can't do this, made it sound like they were giving women more rights instead of taking rights away.

Didn't you say it was 52 to 48 the last time?

I think so, a little bit.

52 to 40 percent.

Yeah, and maybe things have changed.

I think there are people who get paid a lot of money to research these things.

And I think the transgender issue right now is the, you know, for a lot of voters, it's something that, you know, is really scary for them.

And so this is going to move more people, even though they're voting on something that has nothing to do with this ban on abortion.

Yeah, and I wonder why people think they're scary.

Like, if you talk to a trans person, like, they are just like you and me.

They just happen to feel a different gender than they were assigned at birth.

And I do wonder, when we look back at this time, we're going to look back at this time the same and see that this was a misfire the same way we look back 20 years, and all the activity about same-sex marriage was just seen as kind of, like, why were people using this so much as a political crudgel?

Maybe it was good back then, but now nobody really is saying that same-sex marriage is going to bring down the fabric of America.

I wonder in 20 years whether the same thing is going to be with trans people.

I think you say that about a lot of issues.

I'll make the confession that I don't, even though I'm a political reporter, unless I'm covering the race, I don't watch the ads.

Because I found out many, many years ago there is no obligation on their part to be factual or honest in those reports.

So, first of all, my advice would be don't believe the ads, regardless of who they are.

And I will watch the ones I have to if I'm covering that race.

But the idea that either side, any side, any candidate, any issue would play hard and loose with the facts to get people to vote their way, that's kind of the name of the game.

You expect a little bit of substance to it.

I mean, this ad about surgery on children and transgender drag queens has nothing to do with the issue.

I think both sides try to scare the other side.

And I think the difference with transgender is that, you know, it's been such a conversation in college sports, you know, bathrooms.

I mean, all of this stuff that to a lot of people might seem very silly, to others it isn't.

And so it's in the eye of the beholder.

But I do think Claudia Kehoe's name, you know, being associated with this, that's kind of a little unsettling.

It is.

That it's that factual.

That would be the governor's wife.

You know, like, okay.

The first lady.

The first lady.

With all that's going on in Missouri right now, as far as the redistricting, going back to Supreme Court and back and forth and all that.

It seems like people are a little tired right now.

So I don't know that this would be a benefit.

But we will see.

Because like you said, Jason, if it was within three percentage points, that's the 3.1 percentage points you're trying to find.

Polls are polls are polls.

But right now it's looking like a Democratic wave election.

And 2024 was not a Democratic wave election.

It was absolutely the opposite.

So I think we've got to also understand there might be a more Democratic electorate coming up.

But we'll have to see.

That's why we don't look at polls.

We look at the election results.

There you go.

And that's on November 3rd.

So get out there and vote.

Well, the mayor's office kind of took a vote and said Elliott Davis is not welcome at the press conferences anymore.

The former Fox 2 You Paid For It reporter, who we know and love, has been, I guess, technically banned from press conferences.

But he can go to the press conferences at City Hall.

He's, you know, like I said, he's a force to be reckoned with when he's there.

Jason, we've all been to press conferences where he has been at.

Is the mayor's office a little bit out of line?

So what I think has specifically happened here is he was taken off the mayor's media advisory list.

I get that all the time.

A lot of other reporters for various outlets get it all the time.

And from what I read, I think that the rationale was that since Elliott Davis is not working for KTVI anymore, he's basically on Facebook.

Social media.

Social media.

I think that the thought process is if you're not going to send it to him, if you're going to send it to him, why not send it to all the other Facebook social media influencers or whatever?

The fact that he could still go to press conferences, he's not banned from it, I think kind of takes the oomph out of it a little bit.

I know it's caught a lot of people's attention.

I'm often at press conferences with Elliott Davis, and he asks quite a few questions, and so do I. Joe probably asks a bunch of questions, too.

Some of them are perfectly fine questions, but I don't know.

It's really hard for me to, like… Critique another reporter.

Well, it's hard for me to critique somebody else, but it's also hard for me to feel like this rises to the level of me waking up at night and really feeling a lot of emotions, especially when I've been waking up at night wondering if the Supreme Court has come down with the redistricting.

Right.

Yeah.

I know that I saw on social media that Mark Maxwell on Channel 5 is doing – he's got an interview with Elliott, and that's going to air tomorrow, I believe.

And then they have a full story that's going to be released online.

I think it's unfortunate because he has had such a stellar career, and the facts according to City Hall and some other folks, whether that's Megan Greene or some people have called his fact-finding and the way that he disseminates the information to his 200,000 followers on Facebook, that's been called into question.

What I don't understand is if you still want to be afforded all of the courtesies of being a working journalist, then why did you retire?

I mean, honestly.

You can't then become a commentator and expect the same kind of – I just think the fact that he's not connected to an outlet is kind of an issue.

There have been a lot of TV reporters who have become opinionated, usually conservative radio people.

They're certainly commentators, but they also have – they're also connected to an outlet.

So I wouldn't say – if they wanted to show up to a press conference, I don't think that would be a problem, even though they have an opinion.

But I think in the world of social media, they're still trying to iron all of those issues out.

Let me take this opportunity to beat up on social media because I saw it sort of in its earlier days during Ferguson, where everybody was a reporter.

Everybody had a credential, and they were making them up and hanging them on a universal news syndicate.

And there is a problem, and I will always defend the press's right to be at events to cover it.

I do have a small amount of sympathy for governmental entities because – let's say someone has a complaint with MyCoverage or Jason's.

They can call STLPR.

They can call the post dispatch, get ahold of an editor and say, hey, your stories have been doing wrong.

It's got this error, this, that.

But what we have now are basically these self-contained, where they're the reporter, they're the editor, they're the publisher.

Who, if City Hall or state government has a problem, who do you call to say, look, you're a reporter?

Well, that reporter is that person.

And so the idea of basically giving them the status of a news organization that operates with checks and balances so that when they do have reporters who are breaking the rules, an editor can come in and go, hey, you need to be better with this or better with that.

Or sometimes the editor will go, we stand by our reporter.

They didn't do anything wrong.

But here there's no recourse for someone to complain about what they believe inaccuracies.

And I think that's a problem.

Not just with Elliott Davis, but it defines all of the social media journalists.

I'm old school.

I'm with you on that, Joe.

The thing I don't really understand is when the mayor making this an issue by he's still allowed to come, so he's still allowed to ask questions, but we're not going to send him notices.

I thought that's just giving Elliott a lot of publicity.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah, that's sort of where I come down to.

And that's exactly what's happening.

And I think, you know, he thinks of himself as being a disruptor, you know, the disruptor reporter.

But that's none of our job.

That's where you lose me.

He might be confusing that with just being disruptive.

All right.

And that was never any of our job to be a disruptor, disruptive, any of that.

I'll tell you what, and I'll give him credit.

Professional sports teams were the first people that said we got a little problem here, and we're going to handle it.

If you're not with a radio station, newspaper, something, you know, an Alvin's Loudmouth podcast, like, no, you're not sitting in the press box.

You can buy a ticket, do what you want to, but they're a little step ahead of, like, city governments.

Bill, speaking of county governments, San Pedro County are suing Explorer St.

Louis to get Michelle Walton Gray and, oh, Kitty Ratcliffe put on the board.

I mean, a little hardball, but I don't mind it.

Well, I think it's the craziest thing I have seen in years.

I mean, first of all, the choices of Kitty Ratliff, who used to run the thing, and then maybe it wasn't her fault that everything went bad, but everything did go bad.

Cost overruns, couldn't get conventions.

The idea that we're going to put her on the board, I couldn't see that.

And Michelle Walton Gray, you know, I mean, the sins of the father should not be laid on the daughter.

But I remember what happened to the Northeast Fire Protection District when Albert Walton took over.

And I think I don't know why you would want to put Michelle Walton Gray on that board.

And, gee, we paid Kitty $500,000 to leave, and I don't know why she would want to come in knowing that she's not welcome.

And, you know, I can understand Sam Page being angry at the world because he's about to stand trial on these baloney charges.

But be mad at Andrew Bailey or Kathryn Hannaway or Tom Sullivan.

Don't take it out on the people.

But now the county council is part of all this mess, and maybe he's just standing up to them.

But they had already arranged, you know, that he was not going to make any more appointments between now and the end of his term.

And I'm not so sure if he doesn't realize or doesn't care how much that council dislikes him.

And let's keep in mind there are also Democrats on that council, too.

Right.

There's only one person out of seven that has his back.

You should be able to read that.

And this one here, you know, the police board appointments, OK, no big deal.

But this one here was a spite appointment.

Yeah.

It was absolutely done in spite.

It was like Matt Davis and Tony Cousins putting Millicent Borges in as superintendents.

But now they had to have more than just the two votes.

But this was done to be provocative.

Right.

It was done to aggravate, especially Kitty Ratliff's appointment.

And you say why would she want to be on there?

Those are the people that got rid of her.

That's exactly why she wants to be on there.

And that's exactly why she put her on there.

I will defend Rochelle Walton Gray, though.

I've spent a lot of time following her career as a state rep and as a county councilwoman.

She's not her father.

I understand Albert Walton is a very intense person.

She's not the same personality.

She had a very solid elected career.

Her sister, Angela Walton Mosley, while she did not win county executive, is a pretty well -regarded senator among some people in the Democratic Party.

So I understand the criticism of Kitty Ratliff because she was controversial.

But I do want to just, like, say from my experience, I think Rochelle Walton Gray is a pretty serious person.

You're a very nice man.

We'll leave it at that.

Let's go back to city government.

Okay.

In the city of St.

Louis, which I think would be a very good idea, would be to possibly increase the sales tax to support the preschool programs throughout the city of St.

Louis.

They are needed.

That's a fact.

But at the same time, how does the money that is raised get divvied out, Wendy, with that, the Board of Aldermen, City Hall?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Not against the backdrop of the tornado and all the questions that we have about the future.

We just need to step back on this because this is a half-cent sales tax, and it's really talk about we've had so much fun with the word transformative.

It's going to transform the daycare, the early childhood, those who work for daycare centers, those who, you know, run the daycare operators.

It's going to be transformative for the families.

So when they start going down that road where this is everything to everybody, I say absolutely do not put it in the hands of the Board of Aldermen.

It's funny you said the word transformative because I remember interviewing Steve Stanger when he was talking about Proposition P in St.

Louis County, and he said those same words.

It was going to be transformative towards fighting crime in St.

Louis County.

That's right.

Now, I want to be nuanced here.

Proposition P has done a lot of good things, like pay police officers more so you can recruit better officers.

But I do not think that it transformed crime fighting so much that we don't have crime in St.

Louis County.

And I think, again, I'm just agreeing with Joe 100% today.

He has that power.

It is a regressive tax, and I think that you can't just throw taxes around and say it's going to do things and not have results.

So that's an alley-oop to you, Joe.

Let me say that this early education stuff is so important.

That's right.

And we need to fund some, and it's especially important for children coming out of poverty.

And, you know, this might not be the right road for it, but I'd try to find some way to.

Well, Bill, I didn't disagree.

I think we all agree on that.

When you talked about finding some money to fund early childhood education, I was like, yeah, yeah.

Run by an independent board appointed by the St.

Louis Board of Aldermen.

Man, you lost me.

Joe lost me.

More money to the Board of Aldermen so that they can handle it wisely.

Something that you touched on, I think this is important.

It would be divvied up between the daycare centers themselves, parents to go, and then I guess there is some mechanism that people who work there would have to get some type of raise.

You know, it's one thing to do it like that, which I don't have a problem with.

But what I do have a problem with is that aldermatic board.

And this is a board where right now you've got an alderman, you know, threatened to do something terrible to another alderman.

It's about to get censured and on and on and on.

And they're locked up over this.

This is taking all their mind power.

This is occupying every bit of their gray matter right now.

All right.

Well, anyway, the Cardinals aren't going to the playoffs, okay?

That's too bad.

Maybe they'll make it again next year.

I got to throw this in here to my White Sox fan and my Cub fan here.

This is only the third time since they started keeping records of baseball that both the White Sox and the Cubs have been in the postseason at the same time.

And one of those times was the COVID year in 2020.

There's a Pope.

There we go.

All right.

Well, if you want to write to us about the White Sox or anything else, send it to Donnie Brooke here at 9PBS, 3655 Olive Street, St.

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Thank you, Jason Rosenbaum, for sitting in with us today.

Go White Sox.

Go Cardinals next year.

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Have a great night.

Donnybrook is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.