Criticism
Cordish instituted a dress code in June 2008 that has been called racist by critics. The dress code includes a ban on bandanas, work boots, ripped or baggy clothing, shorts that fall below the knees, athletic jerseys, and chains. City Hall questioned the Cordish company about the dress code, noting that the dress code seemed targeted towards black males and was inconsistently enforced. Councilwoman Melba Curls said her son was turned away from the district, while Counselwoman Beth Gottstein stated that "the message I keep getting is that Cordish is only available to some." David Cordish stated that the company was merely attempting to reduce gang related activity. Critics further accused Cordish of exhibiting racial bias when DJ Jazzy Jeff left the stage early during a performance. Kansas City Power & Light District President Jon D. Stephens stated that "It was entirely an issue of audio and sound."
Cordish has also been criticized for being ungrateful for opposing festival licensing for other Kansas City businesses, festival licensing that it was granted to allow patrons to possess alcohol on the streets in the district.
In addition, Cordish CEO David Cordish has been criticized for repeatedly requesting additional taxpayer subsidies and police for the district. The tone of the requests was labeled "petulant", "greedy", and "uninformed" as it was noted that the company had already received over $300 million in taxpayer subsidies yet failed to open on schedule. This caused City officials to criticize the company for its "secretiveness and slowness."
Read more about this topic: Kansas City Power & Light District
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)