[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Re “Morale Will be Devastated if City Workers Flee En Masse,” “Malsin Accuses City Hall of Miscalculations” and “Culver City, the Odd 1 Percent Community for Health Benefits”
Darfur or Somalia might be stronger tests of the human will.
Not by much, though.
By my count, 139 consecutive heavy evenings at home devoted exclusively to grim soul-searching — without television, laughter or carefree activities — will end next Monday night.
After telling the newspaper last June 24 he had no idea what he would decide, only that he would be closely evaluating his future for the next six months, City Councilman Scott Malsin officially will announce his decision to briefly leave the dais to protect his healthcare insurance against the tsunami of new City Hall regulations that take effect Dec. 31.
Sure enough, he told the Culver City News last week what he told me in June — he still was thinking it over, trying to reach a verdict.
Talk about twice-told tales.
Would you believe two million?
By him.
This yarn has been spun more times than any you will find in a bible.
Stale News?
His announcement will not come in the form of a sizzling bulletin.
At least since October, he has been telling friends Dec. 12 is the night he will unveil his plans before an arguably panting audience in Council Chambers. He will tell them he is resigning for a few minutes, pause and mark time until he can sign up again on Dec. 19 to compete in next spring’s election. By magic, he hopes to be back on the Council, present healthcare benefits as intact as his skin.
Mr. Malsin’s stand-alone page in the Culver City history books has been assured almost since he sat down.
How to Become Known
He is, quite by strategic design, the best-known City Councilman because he has seen to it, through deeds and personal promotion.
If he were going to leave office, he reasoned last summer, it was not going to be a mumbled secret. Let the voices be heard from hilltops.
He took the extraordinary step of publishing, on three consecutive Thursdays, nearly identical essays criticizing the city for ending healthcare benefits as we have known them — especially for him. Except the several words about himself were presented deflectively, in an easily overlooked sentence.
That, however, was not the story. The field planning and distribution were.
Mr. Malsin meticulously calculated the coverage his three promotional pieces would yield.
The essays were submitted to two or three of Culver City’s print newspapers for Thursday publication. Only the next day would they be offered to Culver City’s online newspapers.
Further, Mr. Malsin developed a website dedicated to further trumpeting of the three pieces in case you missed them in any of the six newspapers.
Should you have suffered the misfortune of having blown these chances, Mr. Malsin last month emailed the neatly identical message to a select list of registered voters.
It is not known whether a blast email is planned between now and next Monday.
(If Gen. McClellan had mapped his Civil War campaigns this carefully, Lincoln would not have fired him.)
This has been the longest — temporary! — farewell gesture not only in the history of Culver City but in the history of Harry Culver’s family, dating back to Charlemagne’s preliminary baptism in 324.
I would be shocked if Sarah Palin and Harold Stassen (look him up) hadn’t been incessantly telephoning Mr. Malsin for insider trading tips on how to keep a stabbed-to-death story alive at the top of a front page.
This story has been so overmilked it could wipe out the ten largest herds of cows in Texas.
Mr. Malsin has left almost no computer key unpunched in a half-year mission to say, “Hello, Dolly, Goodbye, Dolly, Hello, Dolly.”