Lipstick, Pigs, Young Professionals Somehow, in the photo-ops, the truth always comes out. This one, which the payrolled optimists at the PD's online arm have entitled "Brain Gain: Believe in Cleveland," features pictures from an after-work cocktail/pep rally event. Mayor Jane Campbell and other luminaries, including an obligatory "young professional" of the kind the city wishes to keep (blonde haired, blue-eyed, the best of Cleveland youth), gave a series of empty speeches that were back-lit, a la our president in his own remarkably false photo-ops, by rather schlocky AV-club style lighting effect: a pink Believe in Cleveland! logo. Why pink? Who knows? Perhaps to cash in on the warm feeling of other successful public service campaigns like the one against breast cancer. Perhaps to remind us of cartoon pigs, so that we might better understand the situation that the ad campaign is trying to put lipstick on. As you look through the pictures, note that the PD couldn't even spare a pro photographer for the event, even though they themselves are spearheading the whole Believe in Cleveland! campaign. Note, too, that the crowd is overwhelmingly white (I counted around 9 minority faces, going through the pictures casually), and certainly does not reflect this city's ethnic make up. Indeed, one wonders how many of these "young professionals" were commuters from the suburbs. Considering the sheer number of bald pates in the photos, too, one might begin to wonder if the four or five young blondes might have been imported from Strongsville.