Since the pretty successful Thursday night Summer Music Festival series is scheduled to start in several weeks, meddling season has resumed, time to talk about firing the, by now, longtime producer of the series, Gary Mandell.
Truthfully, it doesn’t matter whether it is June, October or January. Ringleaders in the “Never Mind the Month, Let’s Fire Gary Mandell” campaign never rest. One of them always seems to be trying to chase the likeable Mr. Mandell into a corner to beat him up.
At Monday night’s 7 o’clock City Council meeting in Council Chambers, I imagine that several people who can’t stand to breathe in the same county as Mr. Mandell will be brandishing their long knives.
Insecure members of the Cultural Affairs Commission, who did not major in sensitivity, diplomacy or business-sense back in their school days, are feeling under-utilized. Drinking their Wheaties every morning, they detect a need to justify their appointments to the commission.
Standing Around, Looking Occupied
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If Mr. Mandell does all of the lifting for the Summer Music Festival series — which starts on July 9 —what can they do?
Busybodies around City Hall have devoted chunks of their lives to attempting to discourage Mr. Mandell. They want to elbow him out of the limelight, such as it is, to make space for themselves and their egos.
In the minds of some persons who have been trying for years to dump him, Mr. Mandell’s faults never are quite clear.
His critics are bothered that he is an expert who always lives up to ambitious billing. He did not grow into mavenhood by seniority, rather by attainment.
The central trouble is, he has made turning the Summer Music Festival into a premier attraction look easy.
His amateur critics have been reduced to devoting their energies to nitpicking.
Open season has arrived for the green-eyed.
Let’s Test the Scales
Yes, Mr. Mandell has made the Summer Music Festival more successful than non-visionaries in and around City Hall ever dreamed.
Yes, he is well connected in the entertainment world. He can pull out of his hip pocket, practically on an hour’s notice, what ever kind of performer one of the amateur entrepreneurial wannabees around City Hall just was inspired to see.
Yes, his work habits are tidy and professional.
Yes, he is a sound businessman who treats City Hall’s dollars as if they were just extracted from the vault in the cellar of his grand home.
Yes, he is of decent, perhaps even admirable, character.
Running out of professional criticisms of the estimable Mr. Mandell never has been a deterrent for determined critics.
Is it the pimple on his left ear that annoys City Hall’s cosmetic ideologues?
Or the color of tires on his luxury automobile that nettles his noisy critics?
My ears simultaneously crackled to attention years ago, the first time I heard Councilman Gary Silbiger say, roughly, “Yes, he has done a respectable job. But let’s see who else is out there.”
If only we could do that with some Council members.
