SAM MILLER IS THE FUNNIEST MAN IN TOWN

My best laugh on a trip out West for warm air came when I read on line Sam Miller’s tribute to himself as part of Cleveland Magazine’s take on Cleveland’s most powerful people.

 

Sam’s powerfully funny. He may have lost a few steps at 88 years old but he’s still got the great one-liners. Possibly to some he’s even believable.

 

The man’s a genius of humbuggery. A combination of 2 percent Will Rogers and 98 percent P. T. Barnum. Maybe a touch of Henny Youngman. (The doctor says, “You’ll live to be 60!” “I AM 60! “See, what did I tell you.”)

 

What I can’t understand is why Cleveland Magazine doesn’t do the top charlatans in town. It would be much more interesting. Maybe it did. You just change use your imagination and switch. From Power to Faker.

 

“I hate journalist,” says Miller. Are you kidding? What journalist ever gave Sam some treatment other than deferential? He loves them as much as he loves politicians. Why not? So serviceable.

 

“Power is the ability to do good or evil. Once you depart from the path of goodness, you are now using your power for evil. You’re pulling God’s beard when you don’t have to,” he said.

 

Sam’s been one of the most evil men I’ve known in Cleveland. He’s done so much damage to Cleveland you couldn’t even hope to record it all. His fights with Dick Jacobs were a double dose of greed. The town didn’t matter to either of them as they grabbed whatever they could.

 

I hope I’ve at least recorded some of it.

 

I think I have. One night out for a sandwich with my wife, we went to the Eddie Sands Blueline restaurant at Van Aken shopping center. A receptionist always accompanied you to your seat. The place was empty on this Friday night. Except for one booth. So wouldn’t you know she takes us to a booth right next to the occupied one?

 

Occupied, yes, by Sam Miller. He sees me and gets up to shakes my hand. And he says, “Let me shake hands with the most inaccurate reporter in town.” Sam is truly a one of a kind.

 

Of course, I had recently written about Sam’s (and Forest City’s Ratner family) escapades at the Halle’s building downtown. It was highly subsidized by the city as have most their downtown projects.

 

Government has been very, very good to Sam.

 

The Halle’s project shows well how the game works. The city was to share profits on its $7 million loan to renovate the building. It never made a penny.

However, Victor Voinovich, brother of the saintly Mayor George Voinovich, got the job as leasing agent. The politically connected Climaco law firm got new fancy digs. The city share helped pay the salary of Forest City executives.

 

The city even helped pay for umbrellas in case it rained the day of the opening. Officials did disapprove the cost of a piano for the opening, however.

Give a little; get a little. Sam knows how it works. He’s perfected the concept.

Sam loves Catholics. Especially those with power. He has a wall in his office he calls his “Catholic wall.” (He has a Jewish and social wall, too. Didn’t tell about the fourth wall.) He used to deliver bagels to Bishop Anthony Pilla’s mom. Every good deed should go rewarded. Somewhere. You’ll note in his Cleveland Magazine he brags about a crucifix from Pope Benedict. “Would you like a crucifix bless by Benedict XVI?” I guess he has a bushel full of such trinkets. People love trinkets. Sam provides.

 

Sam’s a common man. He tells us so. Once he called me to complain that I had counted up his loot too cheaply. I hadn’t counted certain holdings he had. His wealth was larger than I had reported. Inaccurate reporting, you know.

 

But you have to hand it to him. He’s truthful sometimes. He tells us that you should buy politicians early. “The very person that, let’s say, is a precinct committeeman, a relative nobody politically – one day, you wake up and discover he’s a senator for the state. When you helped him as a precinct committeeman, that he’ll never forget.” Buy early, he tells us. But Sam buys early, later and latest.

 

I noted back in the early 2000 when a then young Joe Cimperman ruled the downtown ward how generous Sam and his cohorts were. Al Ratner gave $500; Sam $300; other family members another $3,200. Forest City was pushing Council for a convention center on its land at the time.

 

Yes, Sam is common guy. A man who gets his economic data from cabbies and parking lot attendants, humility lessons from Big Jim Rhodes - another charlatan - and telephone ideas from the Wall Street Journal – “answer my own phone and never ask who’s calling.” It is the common touch.

 

Sam says that “my power is diminishing…”

 

I guess it is. He lost the County administration building deal to Jacobs when the Commissioners bought the old Ameritrust buildings instead of his Higbee’s. Then he lost the Med Mart to Tim Hagan’s buddies in Chicago. Slipping?

 

So Sam’s power may not be what it used to be. At least not here. Elsewhere, Forest City seems to be still active and alive.