[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Patti Jaffe or Gary Mandell?
Whose slightly warm chair would you choose to sit in this afternoon?
Better to dance in dirty stocking feet atop steaming coals — unless, of course, the mere mention of coal upsets the delicate cerebral conditions of the daffodils who have sworn unswerving fealty to climate (Lawdy, Lawdy, I do believe and then some) change.
For a few hours this nervous evening, starting at 7 o’clock, Ms. Jaffe will wear a poker face. No choice. Has to. Can’t show glee. Can’t reflect crushing disappointment. Must pretend she is a tourist who just sailed in on the Noon Balloon from Saskatoon.
Meanwhile, five emotionally charged people, close enough to hit with a fluffy crumb of untoasted bread, will decide whether she will be the Fulltime Super of the School District, starting pretty soon, or will be led out to pasture and coolly handed a nearly blank card that reads “Thank you. Goodbye”
Actually, all that will be determined tonight is whether one School Board member will join the Present President (Scott Zeidman) and the Last President (Steve Gourley) to vote the Ineligible to Run for Fulltime Super clause out of the Interim Super contracted she signed last June.
A new Super will not be voted upon tonight.
And if it’s not going to be Ms. Jaffe at the next meeting in two weeks in Council Chambers, I say almost blithely, who cares?
If it is Freddy Willard or Willard Freddy, does it make any difference? Not to me.
Only if it is the 40-year School District teacher/administrator veteran whom seemingly everyone in Culver City wants to be the next Super except for two (or three?) members of the School Board.
How would you like to be the affable Ms. Jaffe, who will need to display more professional aplomb than ever before in her sunny career?
Musically Speaking
Turning to Mr. Mandell, the bedeviled, the besieged, the sadly targeted producer of the Summer Music Festival series since the turn of the century, I was thinking about him while my wife and I were enjoying a belated dinner.
Said I to Mrs. N: “You have been a pretty darned good spouse. You don’t snore. You bathe regularly. You are pretty punctual. You are more fragrant than the Cosmetics Dept. at Macy’s. We get along better than your predecessors. You prepare the foods I like best. But I have been scouting around. We have a successful marriage. But I think I am capable of forging an even more successful relationship. I have seen at least three prospects in recent months who pack the potential to surpass you. Oops. I am late for an appointment. Let’s pick up this thread another time.”
Once again at last night’s Redevelopment Agency meeting, Mr. Mandell, after a decade of glowing success — putting a capacity crowd, or almost one, in the seats every week — was roasted as if he just hitched into town from the farm and was applying for the Assistant Hayseed’s position.
The people of the community love him, support him. A critical but pocket-sized crowd in City Hall does not.
Before the outcome is decided at the Feb. 21 Agency meeting, I ponder one question:
Who ever heard of penalizing a man for being successful?
I wish just one of his critics who make a candid admission:
I want Gary Mandell fired because I don’t like him.
The words are easy. Plenty of former Mrs. Noonans have said it about a journalist who gravely regrets the absence of class in this hustle out the door.
