There is something about Cincinnati, Ohio (besides its complications in both pronunciation and spelling) which has always infuriated me.

Unfortunately, not even a bottle of extra strength Tylenol can alleviate me from it’s biggest headache…Marge Schott.

As sole owner of the Cincinnati Reds, Schott, unlike the helpless woman from the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials, enjoys her role as a major league Equal Opportunity Offender!

Her current suspension from baseball which lasts until the end of the 1998 season can be viewed as a big-time joke. She has learned absolutely nothing from her first sanctioned punishment back in 1992. As my late maternal grandmother would say, she’s just plain “HARDHEADED” ! Oh yes, she still is.

With a St. Bernard, named Schottzie 02 (who has a fixation for mayonnaise in his diet) as her sole companion, she lingers around Riverfront Stadium trying to buy tickets like other fans attending a Reds home game.

She used to live up in the owner’s box but violated suspension rules by sending a front office memo declaring that she still controls daily operations. Dumb move.

Despite her overt narrow-mindedness, I find it amazing that she has attained such strong positive reverence among many native Cincinnatians in freely condoning her bigotry. Those silly folks should be ashamed of themselves for tolerating the intolerable.

Humanity in Schott is vacant. For many in her era, it was simply based upon attitudes of moral bankruptcy that making derogatory remarks against others was considered acceptable behavior.

How should I know? My parents and Marge Schott are from that same generation. If any signs of judgmental behavior were present during their childhoods it was drummed out of their systems by both sets of grandparents. It was not condoned.

Like most African-Americans in the 1950s & ’60s, my family was not immune from the Civil Rights Movement, but it positively transformed our lives, unlike Schott, who is still using her carefully conditioned verbal expressions. She has gone way too far.

Fortunately, for me, I was wisely taught by both parents that no ethnic/religious jokes or racist/sexist statements were tolerable.

My earliest memory of venturing into anti-ethnic/religious sentiment took place when I was in kindergarten.

After eating cream of asparagus soup for three consecutive days during lunchtime, I declared my frustration to the teachers by saying “Soup. Soup. Soup. Why do I have to be a Jewish nut!” That specific anti-semitic remark immediately got me a three-day suspension from class.

The kindergarten program that I attended was in a predominantly Jewish private school in Brooklyn, New York with few non-Jews. My family was Protestant.

Two more examples of personally bigoted behavior took place when I was 12 and 22.

The first incident occurred when I got permission from one of my aunts to borrow her book on ethnic jokes. As soon as I got home, I started cracking these (what I thought were funny) jokes in front of my unimpressed mother who quickly reprimanded me. She started to remind me that I was not going to be brought up to degrade other people at the expense of making myself a bigger person.

Incident number two, where ethnic jokes served as a big factor in leading me to break up with a significant other (who was also African-American) by using them for his own personal comfort zone. He tried to force me to make these jokes which truly made me feel uncomfortable. Quite frankly, I couldn’t remain in a relationship with him or anyone else who could be that judgmental. I simply cannot.

Redemption of past sins can come easily for those wanting a more meaningful life. However, Schott isn’t (nor ever will be) truly ready for a deep cleansing in the Holy waters.

So, to make her suspension period more constructive, I am offering this proposal to the local representatives from the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews: find an obscure location to lock up both Schott and Schottzie 02 for a weekend healing session with lectures and videotapes featuring the painful obstacles of the very groups she has openly denigrated, reinforced with weekly homework assignments and monthly informational meetings.

Being that I originally came from the East Coast, it would be extremely difficult for her to freely promote this kind of racist/anti-semitic iconoclastic garbage, especially in New York City. It would not be tolerated. Plain and simple.

If it were to be done, she would be on the first red eye flight out of either JFK or LaGuardia back to Cincinnati with a personalized NYPD escort and Mayor Rudy Giuliani waving a “GET LOST, MARGE!!” sign.

Adrian DeVore is a senior in Food Science from Newark, N.J. She has a B.A. in English from Rutgers University (Douglass College).