I don't mean he is any kind of a moron. He is so smart he almost outsmarts himself sometimes. But he is also a man who somehow manages to get his arms around ideas that come from opposite points of the compass.

So when Rep. Yates, D-Cincinnati, threw a Baby Ruth in the political swimming pool by asking Gov. Bob Taft for $4 million to prevent riots in Cincinnati this summer, I thought maybe he might have a point.

Sure enough, Yates surprised me. He's not just another program junkie with jerking knees. His letter was not a ransom note from the riot-protection racket.

"I had begun to notice teeming numbers of young people on the corners, from as early as 10 a.m. to late in the evening" he said. So he wrote a private letter to Taft. He wanted $2 million for 3,000 summer jobs for teens, and $2 million for job training for young men, 18-25.

Sign me up as one of the Top 20 Skeptics. So is Taft, who politely said "no."

But it's not unreasonable to get kids off the corners and put them to work cleaning up their neighborhoods. Modest job programs can do more than $15 million for monitors, lawyers and collaborative meetings.

"There's been a racial and cultural phenomenon in the African-American community for 40 years, called the disappearance of work," Yates said.

That's the other Yates speaking, the one who has "put myself on the line publicly denouncing the boycott as wrongheaded." That Yates said, "The African-Americans and white community cannot condone behaviors that are anti-society and anti-assimilationist."

"I would give almost anything to speak to the leaders" of the Urban League and other groups, he said, and tell them to get out and introduce the kids on the corners to Mr. Job and Mrs. Self Respect.

"Bill Cosby and I agree 100 percent," he said.

In case you missed it among all the headlines about Madonna's foreign policy, Clinton's excuses and J-Lo's marriage of the month, Cosby gave the NAACP a seizure recently by saying, "Lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting.

"I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit," he said. "Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father?"

As jaws dropped, Cosby said, "People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? ... People with their pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?"

He asked why parents spend hundreds on sneakers, but can't afford Hooked on Phonics to teach their kids to speak proper English. He said black families should quit blaming the cops when their kids are arrested.

And Yates said, "I would like to ask him to come to the state capitol in Columbus and repeat his remarks and I will stand up there beside him."

Disagree if you want. "Predictable" and "Yates" may not belong in the same sentence. But he's a stand-up guy.

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E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.