[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.
