BLUNDO
Angeles, Chicago, Houston, New York, Boston or several other cities I could name — you know that Columbus, by comparison, has no traffic.
What we have are traffic quirks.
Anything that wets the pavement — snow, sleet, rain, some guy sneezing out a car window on I-71 — paralyzes the metropolitan area.
And we are so flummoxed by roundabouts that a couple in Hilliard was struck in one from March through October before emergency crews finally managed a rescue by deliberately sideswiping them into an exit lane.
Bezos won't have to worry about weather emergencies because Columbus barely has weather.
We have five light-tomoderate snowfalls, two heat waves and one tornado warning a year.
People react to those events with apocalyptic fear, but that’s because the rest of the time the weather can be described in seven words: partly cloudy, 40 percent chance of rain.
True, Washington has more clear days, but no one notices because the pall cast by bitter partisan division blocks out the sun.
You know how complicated life gets when a politician from Washington decides to visit Columbus for a campaign event? Roads close, motorcades speed down streets, protesters square off against supporters, the entire city grits its teeth.
That happens every day in Washington.
Columbus mostly just has to tolerate state politicians, who are minor-leaguers in terms of their ability to interfere with the orderly proceedings of society.
Columbus would come at Bezos like a slobbering puppy.
The Ohio State University Marching Band would perform Script Bezos at home games. We would let him park anywhere he pleased in the Short North. We would name our children Bezos.
In Washington, the capital of hostile dysfunction, every move Bezos makes will spark intense political warfare. He’ll constantly struggle to mollify a mob of federal, state and local authorities. Within days, he would realize his mistake.
And, when he does, guess which Midwestern metropolis of 2 million people — many of them stuck in roundabouts — will be waiting with open arms?