What's wrong with this picture? (Part 2)

It's okay. Take your time.

Who's that, you might ask? Why, that's Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, Jr. two-time mayor of Providence and two-time convicted felon who enjoyed solid approval ratings while he was on trial for racketeering. He's our very own Marion Barry! It can't be denied that he did a hell of a lot to clean up the capital city in the 1990s, even if he did it by establishing a pay-to-play system that didn't let anything move forward until the right palms were greased. Anyway, you might notice that Buddy's picture is on jars of tomato sauce, because why not? You might not have recognized him because he used to look like this...

...until a particularly brave (and ultimately disappointed) hawk swooped down and snatched that roadkill-looking thing off of his shiny pate during a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Kennedy Plaza or some such. But back to what's wrong with this picture. Have you guessed it yet? Here's a hint:

That's right! One jar of the Mayor's Own Marinara Sauce will set you back Six. Damn. Dollars. Granted, this is at Dave's Market, where you pay a little more to keep things local, but still. Wait, though -- it's a little blurry, but the label says "Benefiting Providence School Children." That's nice, if not a little vague... does it benefit all of them? And if so, how? How much benefit are we talking about?

Okay. Here we go. It seems that the Providence school children who benefit from Buddy's sauce are a few who get $1,000 scholarships. That's... nice? No, no, it is. Hey, if I were offered a thousand dollars, I would not turn it down. (Offer me a thousand dollars right now. I'll prove it.) But with how much today's schools cost, how far does it go? Oh, crap. Do you think maybe the scholarships are so small because we're not buying enough six dollar jars of tomato sauce? That if we all joined together and bought as many jars of comically overpriced tomato sauce as we possibly could, many more Providence school children "with acute financial need" would get another drop in the bucket for their college tuition? Well, great. Now I have guilt!

If only I could find some comfort... say, by gazing upon a handsome face on a jar of demonstrably delicious tomato sauce... which retails at a reasonable price... and offers an un-vague description of the amount of profits it gives to charity...

Yep. That's the stuff.

To learn more about Buddy Cianci, why not check out his recently-released, overtitled memoir, Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Dined with Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community, and Lived to Tell the Tale? Let me know how it is.