[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img] This message is directed at the leaders of the Sunkist Park Neighborhood Assn. who will host the next forum for City Council candidates next Wednesday evening:

The dumbing down of Culver City now is two Community Forums old.

What our town needs, though, is an imaginative old-fashioned debate.

Not another dull, useless “Community Forum,” a prissy little inoffensive format that was designed for 7-year-old schoolboys with patted down hair who are sentenced to military schools.

This is as wasteful, as puerile as asking a bridegroom to stand before his prospective in-laws and present an objective critique of his new wife.

After watching all nine candidates do their trained-seal gig for more than two silly hours last week at the Senior Center, and after repeating with four candidates last night at the Democratic Club meeting, I have just blown three hours.

Yawn, Yawn

I have learned nothing about them from these vacuous exercises. And I doubt any voter has gleaned a seed of information.

The solution:

Face off the candidates against each other.

I guarantee that some of the Culver City 9 can’t distinguish between the rhythms of Buffalo and the rhythms of this town.

Some candidates have not done their homework.

Under tough questioning, they will panic or fold — or both. I already hear their knees clicking together.

Get Rid of the Deadweight

If imposters are cluttering the field, weed them out before the April 8 election.

When you separate the candidates and pit them directly against each other, only then will you have a chance to gain a meaningful assessment.

By utilizing a fast-paced debate scheme, you will accomplish at least three objectives:

Test their fount of knowledge.

Test their ability to communicate clearly.

Genuinely test their ability to think under a modicum of pressure.

A warning: To make the change, from useless format to worthwhile, will require imagination and courage.

It does not take any brains to ask nine candidates a common question.

Eight Thumb-twiddlers

The heat is on the first respondent. He deliberates and gives a thoughtful answer. Subsequently, each of the lucky Other Eight reaches for a rubber stamp and says, mechanically, “I agree.”

This happened week after week during the School Board race last autumn.

The most feared sentence at every community forum is, “I have a question for all of the candidates.” Ugh.

There is at least as wide of a gap among the nine candidates as there is among the former Mrs. Noonans.

But you never would know it from the way these bullet-proof forums are run.

Perfect Imperfections

Typically, each of the nine is allowed a 5-minute opening statement to tell you what a terrific fellow he is. (So far, each one has given himself a 100 percent grade.)

Then come questions sprayed at all of the candidates. Questioning ran so interminably last week at the Senior Center that I emailed my mortician to go on standby.

Finally, there is a closing statement, a slightly scaled down exclamation mark, a sloppy application of icing to the already inflated puffery

A serious voter would learn more about the candidates by repairing to his garden and planting tomatoes than he would by attending one of these Community Forums.