It Seems the Guy Who Said He Didn't Want PTSD Soldiers or Breast Cancer Survivors in His Neighborhood was Only Kidding
Boston – A man’s comments at a public hearing about a proposed medical marijuana dispensary on Newbury Street have shocked people on both sides of the issue.
During a hearing for the Zoning Board of Appeals, Back Bay resident Oliver Curme stepped to the microphone to speak out against the proposal. His reasons, however, stunned many in attendance.
“All my friends and I are against this because it’ll bring undesirable elements into the neighborhood,” Curme told the room. “Just so you know what I mean, there are army vets with PTSD. We don’t want them in our neighborhood. Just give me a break. They can get over it.” …
“The second thing is people with wheelchairs, M.S. or whatever. … Well the third one is women with breast cancer. They all have that cadaver look and they wear those ridiculous turbans. Newbury Street is a high-end shopping district. We don’t want people like that scaring off our clientele.”
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UPDATE: Curme’s wife is saying he actually supports the dispensary around the corner from their home in the Burrage Mansion on Commonwealth Avenue and was attempting to be “satirical,” something not obvious to the people shaking their heads in the eighth-floor hearing room in City Hall.
There’s mindset in doing stand up comedy that I happen to agree with that says, “It’s never the audience; it’s you.” If the bit fails, you can’t blame the crowd. It’s your job to read the room and understand what will work and what won’t. And while I try to live by it, once in a while you simply get a bad crowd that not even Louis CK Jim Gaffigan could win over. And that’s what my man Oliver Curme ran into here.
Hey, can Curme help it if the Zoning Board of Appeals is a tough crowd? Is it his fault that they don’t get sarcasm? That the sorts of people who take a night out of their lives to sit through speeches in a commercial district licensing hearing have no concept of a guy being meta? I mean, what more do they want? He held up air quotes! What part of that doesn’t scream I’M BEING IRONIC RIGHT NOW.
OK, sure. Part of it is on him. If you’re going for that, you’ve got to really sell it. He should’ve known that like Twitter, sarcasm doesn’t translate well to local political meetings. And the veterans of those things have probably hear haunted, broken, unstable crackpots at these things all the time, like in Parks and Rec:
So expecting them to just assume you’re a reasonable guy who’s fer the marijuana dispensary and not agin it, is kind of a big ask. Lesson learned. And the lesson I’ve learned from all this is to stick to comedy clubs and continue to avoid local zoning board meetings.