A guest commentary on the local PBS newsmagazine suggested that the name of Our Fair City's downtown revitalization project should be changed because people have come to associate the name with "boondoggle." (Clearly he means in the sense of "work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy," and not in the sense of "a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or nation," and certainly not in the sense of "a plaited leather cord for the neck made typically by a camper or a scout." I digress.) He thinks that changing the name of the project will allow people to start to believe in the project again.
My first thought about the gentleman in question is that he hasn't read Shakespeare, or he'd know that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, or that conversely...
Appearances are important, but they're not the most important thing in the world. And I don't buy that changing the name of something will necessarily improve the substance of that something. This town has had downtown revitalization projects for almost a century. We've seen this before. We're not going to think things have changed downtown just because someone attaches a new name to the same project. We'll believe things have changed downtown when things change downtown.
