Huckleberries: Millions in air as QB huddled at Capone’s

It’s not every day that someone turns down $5.3 million over a coupla brewskies at Capone’s in Midtown Coeur d’Alene. But ex-NFL QB Jake Plummer did just that – in summer 2007, while quaffing $3 Molsons served by Tom Capone’s servers. Writer Chris Ballard provides the details in a nine-page feature story in the Feb. 14 issue of Sports Illustrated. The offer to Plummer, who now coaches Sandpoint High football, was made by then-coach Jon Gruden and GM Bruce Allen of Tampa Bay. Ballard writes: “Gruden leaned in and started selling. Join us in Tampa Bay, he said, and with our defense and your leadership we’ll have a shot at the Big One. Come to Florida, he said, and you’ll be the hero you could never be in Denver in the shadow of John Elway.” Plummer told the Tampa Bay jumbos that their offer was “sweet.” But not sweeter than the freedom he’d found in retirement.

Slimed

Special-ed teacher Meghan Ridley of the Lakeland (Rathdrum) School District has learned no good deed goes unpunished. Meghan found herself being compared to infamous Washington pedophile Mary Kay Letourneau by commenters (aka trolls) on the Coeur d’Alene Press website, after granting an interview for a Press series on education. On Page One last Sunday, Meghan was pictured helping a student with his reading, wearing a dress that provided a hint of cleavage from the photographer’s angle. That bit of female sexuality incited online Press trolls to slime her. So much so that Meghan complained to Press muckety-mucks who took four days to delete the offensive remarks, also axing her comments defending herself. She had said: “… the words I read about myself on (the Press) blog were the worst I’ve ever heard about myself. To watch it snowball and escalate was nothing short of shocking. From a low cut shirt, to selling sex, to then finally being compared to Mary Kay Letourneau … I’m almost speechless.” Meghan told Huckleberries that she wondered whether the Press simply doesn’t monitor its online comments or agrees with them.

Huckleberries

After Idaho’s radical House Republicans voted to nullify federal health care reform – unilaterally and unconstitutionally – last week, Lake City Councilman Mike Kennedy quipped: “I think I’ll make a motion at our next City Council meeting to nullify Idaho’s sales tax formula and keep our revenue here locally” … That sign on the popular White House Grill in Post Falls announcing new Sunday hours caused a stir on my Huckleberries blog (www.spokesman.com/ blogs/hbo): “Due to boredom, Obama, etc., we need your money.” Some commenters said they wouldn’t eat there anymore. Others shrugged and said, basically, more room for us … Did newby Rep. Vito Barbieri, whose House District 3 (Hayden Lake area) has a long history with the Aryan Nations, really conjure the image of the Nuremberg trials to defend his goofy health-care nullification bill? F’shame.

Parting Shot

Best line of recent New York Times article re: ongoing FBI investigation of attempted bombing of Martin Luther King parade in Spokane? Last Monday, KKKer Shaun Winkler, of Hayden, who denied any connection with the bomb attempt, was quoted as saying: “We don’t have that kind of intelligence level to make that kind of explosive.” Or much other intelligence either.