THE FREE TIMES CRUSADE (continued from yesterday): Why do I have my briefs in a knot about this, you ask? Good question.

It's not that I have a problem with WiFi. On the contrary. I love my home 802.11b network, over which this comes to you. We've been building a little hotspot at the West Side Community Computer Center, where our DSL is now shared by a GED classroom down the hall and a few offices across the parking lot... and soon by some nearby homes. I've been happy to help the folks who are creating a community WiFi in Tremont. I've spent many happy hours studying homebrew antenna designs.

And I certainly have no problem with the City promoting digital infrastructure or even owning it. Hey, I'm a Muny Light booster from way back. If the FT was calling on the city to get out on the leading edge by creating the nation's first municipal wireless network -- all over Cleveland -- I'd be right there, a hunnerd percent. A little skeptical, maybe... but right there.

Furthermore, let me state for the record that I'm glad the Free Times is back. And glad Dave Eden is running it.

So my problem is not with WiFi, City infrastructure-building or the Free Times itself. My problem is with the aggressive New Elitism that pervades the FT's argument in this case. You know what I mean; you hear it all around you. The New Elite says: The city's greatest need is smart, entrepreneurial, educated young people ("like us" is always the unspoken subtext.) We are the "creative class" and we need to be attracted. Entertained. Catered to. So get with it, City Hall, and give us free, fast Internet access wherever we go, so we'll think Cleveland is cool. Well, anyway, the parts of Cleveland where people like us live... the rest is, you know, not our problem.

Jane Campbell and Tim Mueller work for a City whose people are over 50% African-American and nearly 10% Hispanic. Only 17% of our young adults (25 to 34) have finished college, and 22% of that same demographic haven't finished high school. Our average household income is about $26,000 a year, which makes us 49th among the fifty biggest U.S. cities. Our current jobless rate may be unknowable, if George Zeller is right, but there's no doubt that that we have at least 25,000 to 30,000 residents out of work, and many thousands more working part-time.

There are many reasonable arguments about what it will take to improve this situation, including Richard Florida's theory of a "creative class" spurring entrepreneurial growth. There's a case to be made for public investment in high tech infrastructure. There's a case to be made for continuing to pour money into downtown -- and then a sub-case for concentrated residential development there. I suppose there's even a case to be made for "coolness", whatever that might mean.

But Clevelanders who argue these fashionable theories need to recognize what they're proposing, which is trickle-down economic development. And the Free Times proposition -- let's make Cleveland cool by giving free digital infrastructure to the creative class in its downtown neighborhood -- is such a pure version of the New Elite Theory that it approaches satire.

Now, I don't think the FT editors actually believe what they appear to be arguing. In fact, I'm sure that many of those now burbling with New Elite enthusiasm -- very nice, compassionate, civic-minded people -- think of themselves as grassrootsy, populist, small-d democrats.

All I can say is... listen to yourselves.

Even better, listen to some other people. Spend some time in the parts of this city that aren't ever going to be cool, but where the large majority of your fellow citizens live. Talk with some Clevelanders who don't have college degrees and laptops. Ask what they would think about their Mayor and Council spending public money to provide free Internet service to downtown and maybe a couple of other selected islands of "the creative class", just because, well, they'd like to have it.

Where's Roldo when you really need him?