Look who's leading cheers for Baltimore

The Baltimore Sun

A new campaign to coax ordinary, camera-shy Baltimoreans into making video tributes to their city has already found a taker: Molly Shattuck.

A video starring the retired Ravens cheerleader and wife of Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck popped up on the city tourism Web site the other day -- just as tourism officials announced an effort to promote Baltimore with independent videos.

The "Visit My Baltimore" campaign claims to be looking for unpolished, YouTube-y authenticity. What they got in the Shattuck video were slick production values and, at the start anyway, a featured activity unavailable to the average mortal, much less the average tourist: professional cheerleading.

But once you get past all the shots of impossibly flat abs on the 40ish mother of three, most of us can relate. Shattuck takes the kids to the science center, the aquarium and lunch at the Inner Harbor.

No hint that this is the wife of a guy paid $20 million last year, unless you count the end, when Shattuck describes what sounds like a nightly ritual: Tucking the kids into bed and heading out with her hubby for a night on the town at Pazo. Who can afford a babysitter and Cindy Wolf?

Shattuck -- reached yesterday on vacation in Colorado -- told me she and Mayo only go out "probably two times a month. I do cook a lot."

(She also mentioned, as a means of stressing that she was trying to promote Baltimore, not herself, that she'd recently turned down an offer to do a regular segment on a "major network" morning TV show, which she wasn't naming. The gig would have required her to live in New York three days a week. "That's not a reality," she said.)

At least on the Web, most of Molly's Baltimore looks like Baltimore for the rest of us. Credit the production company: Working Stiff Films.

Call in the troops?

Edwin Frederick O'Brien, used to overseeing priests in war zones as archbishop for U.S. military services, will become archbishop of Baltimore.

If O'Brien didn't know there was a joke there, he found out yesterday at his first press conference as archbishop-designate, The Sun's Doug Donovan reports.

A reporter asked O'Brien how his military position had prepared him for service in Baltimore. Before he could respond, the Basilica crowd broke up laughing.

Overcoming adversity

Bishop Oscar E. Brown of First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church says his church will overcome this week's devastating fire, just as he's overcome other trials.

"I've been pinned with a lot of stuff, but I never let it derail me," he told 1,000 congregants and supporters gathered in West Baltimore. "They say that I was gay. Some folks said I was cheating on my wife. ... Then they said I was stealing money. Then they said I was arrogant. But I don't care about them."

He said all this to rousing applause, The Sun's Julie Turkewitz reports, so apparently church members had heard it all before.

Brown also said the fire could have been worse, since the church had somehow let its property insurance lapse. Someone came to the door in March and alerted him to the problem, he said. He straightened everything out so that by the time of the fire, the church had coverage worth $4 million.

"They're going to rebuild our church 100 percent," he said. "That's a blessing."

Icy offering

A worker with Keiffer Mitchell's mayoral campaign took a pint of strawberry ice cream to Mayor Sheila Dixon's office yesterday. Peace offering?

No, a response to Dixon spokesman Anthony McCarthy, who'd pooh-poohed Mitchell's proposed 15 percent salary increase for police thusly: "The reality is, I'd like to put an ice cream machine on every corner, but we have to balance people's wants and desires with fiscal reality."

The Mitchell camp also sent a personal note. The gist, I'm told: We can afford ice cream. We can't afford the status quo when it comes to the murder rate.

So was it premium ice cream or the supermarket stuff?

"Supermarket," said Mitchell campaign spokeswoman Antigone Davis. "We spend wisely."

And did Dixon dig in?

"The mayor doesn't like generic-brand ice cream, and it was pretty much melted when it arrived, and she prefers vanilla to strawberry," McCarthy said. "But it was the thought that counts. I understand he's pretty much short on cash, so maybe the generic was the best he could do."

Connect the dots

Mayor Sheila Dixon is trying to tap into fans of both professional sports and crustless cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches with a pair of very different fundraisers. There's "high tea" at the Engineers Club on Sunday, which costs $1,000 a head for those who opt for the VIP reception. And then there's the "pep rally" and "championship reception" at the Capital Grille on Thursday, with a host of professional athletes: nephew/NBA player Juan Dixon, Mike McCrary of the Ravens, former Ravens Spencer Folau and Kyle Richardson and Kurk Lee, star of Dunbar's 1985 national championship team who also played for Towson and the New Jersey Nets. That one will set VIPs back $4,000. ... Baltimore turns yet again to New York for leadership, and wadda we get? A Yankees fan, of course. And the new archbishop isn't the only one in the city's current batch of bishops, The Sun's Liz Kay reports. Urban Vicar Bishop Denis Madden, born in the Bronx, also roots for the team.

An item in the 2B column yesterday on the First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church incorrectly reported when Bishop Oscar E. Brown said he was told the church's insurance had lapsed. He said he was alerted last fall.The Sun regrets the error.
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