Daniel P. Finney is the Des Moines Register's sorry-ass version of the Goodyear blimp.
The major difference between Finney and the blimp is that the blimp can still get up and can still move around.
Finney is a 500-going-on-600-pound medical catastrophe waiting to happen.
When he permanently goes down for the count--something that could happen any day now--the only thing to feel sorry for is the concrete that will crumble when he collapses in the parking lot or on the sidewalk.
Finney visions himself as a humor writer. But if Finney is a humorist, so was Benito Mussolini.
The only thing funny about Finney is his appearance. You should hear how people in the office talk about him.
Finney is a mean-spirited person who hates everyone--including himself.
It says in the paper that Finney "pokes fun at the passing parade." Well, with his track record, he deserves to have fun--lots of it--poked at himself. With 24/7 regularity.
So, in the spirit of Finney's 5, here are some thoughts and observations about this weird individual, who is an embarrassment to the entire dying journalism business, the city of Des Moines, Polk County, the state of Iowa and most of America's heartland:
1. When baseball's Ford Frick was a do-nothing major league commissioner a half-century ago, a knowledgeable sportswriter wrote, "An empty car pulled up in front of a hotel, and Ford Frick got out." Now I hear that an empty Mayflower moving van stopped at the back of the Register building downtown, and two dozen workers wearing blue coveralls rolled the ponderous Finney out of the rear door and onto a loading dock so he could inhale the 15 Jimmy John's pulled pork sandwiches he had delivered for his lunch.
2. People are wondering if there is a toilet seat and an elevator big enough and sturdy enough in central Iowa to hold Finney's huge ass. One suggestion on the transportation problem is to use a freight elevator used to haul John Deere tractors from one part of the factory to another. Folks are still trying to solve the crapper problem. A solution is to dispatch Finney to an outhouse in an abandoned area of rural Jasper county that is now being used by farm animals, then leave him there.
3. Managers of the all-you-can-eat restaurants around town want to organize a union so they can ban Finney from the premises. A half-dozen places have already gone bankrupt because he insisted on elbowing his way to the front of the line at their buffets so many times.
4. When doctors and other medical personnel were trying to find a place to weigh Finney, they called officials at the State Fair, whose job description includes weighing responsibilities in the annual Big Boar contest. The 2014 Big Boar winner was Peabody, who tipped the scales at a whopping 1,273 pounds. Some people think Finney and Peabody deserve each other. Peabody, however, is balking at such an idea. Peabody has observed Finney's act, and wants no part of it. Still on the subject of the State Fair, rumor has it that Finney has been attempting to woo fair officials, hoping he can take the place of the Butter Cow at the 2015 event. However, Finney's hopes have been dashed. He was told the Agriculture Building is not spacious enough to hold a sculpture of his enormously flabby body. Finney is the odds-on favorite to be chosen to give the keynote speech at the next World Fat Man's Convention, which is open to slobs who prefer all of their food fried, their desserts with real sugar and no artificial sweeteners, weigh at least 500 pounds and have cholesterol scores of 500 or higher.
5. Finney's weight problems have drawn the interest of his longtime sidekick, Roland H. Thompson, Thompson was the fake name Finney used to attack his bosses a number of years ago in a personal blog at the St. Louis Post Dispatch--a campaign that led to his dismissal from the paper. "St. Louis--the city, not just the paper--has a ton of problems, and Finney was one of them," Thompson said. "I sure feel sorry for Des Moines. Not only is 3-foot 2-inch Mike Gartner a laughingstock there, so is the humongous Daniel P. Finney." Finney is the worst and laziest columnist the Register has ever had. He is supposed to be the metro columnist, but spends most of his time making fun of people and places in his idiotic commentaries. Meanwhile, tons of other good stories around town go unreported. Finney sometimes speaks to high school journalists--perhaps about what it takes, and what it's like, to be in the news business. That's as ridiculous as John Dillinger speaking at the state bankers' convention.
[Logo courtesy of the Register and Google. "You are free to do whatever you want with the logo," officials of both companies told me. "We don't think much of Finney or the logo either.]
