Better yet, throw a tent over the Board Room at District Headquarters. Tell ‘em they are in the circus now.
Anything to shatter their mold of moldy behavior.
Even thugs have a sense of humor. I know. I was related to one, briefly, during a marriage that reminds me of this edition of the School Board.
Beyond Puerility
If the puerile tormentors of Ms. Davis were merely childish, well, many of us have our twelve-year-old moments. But Board members are worse than professional gloomists.
They remind me of those popular dolls, the Meanie Babies. They are mean-spirited. They are very good at it because they have been practicing fanghood for all fifty-one months that Ms. Davis has been on the Board.
Just as we remind our readers every morning how many days have toddled into history since the County District Attorney made his statement to the School Board about excessive heath care benefits, so will we prod the misbehaving Board members to adopt more respectful conduct toward Ms. Davis.
This Board is a starving therapist’s dream. I will bet the team of therapists one of my saintly former wives hired to celebrate our divorce could afford to retire after examining this crew.
From this perch, the School Board seems determined to drive Ms. Davis away.
Even if they were standing around, pushing their doubled-up fists into their pocket linings, watching paint dry and grass grow, they would be investing their time more fruitfully than they are by pretending their names are Sherlock.
Why are they obsessing — not even trying to mask their emotional consumption — over the source of Ms. Davis’s recent honorary doctorate?
For sheer wastefulness, this is the equivalent of an unemployed Democrat holding up a light pole instead of searching for work. It is irresponsibility, abandonment of mission.
If Ms. Davis received her honor from Boys Town in Nebraska or a YWCA in Birmingham, why do you care? It is quite unrelated to the operation of the welfare of the School District.
A Solomonic Interlude
I see where classy ol’ Doc Russell — who surely was not trying to embarrass Ms. Davis — produced his own academic documents last Tuesday night for the world to inspect. That is why he is classy ol’ Doc Russell.
People who were there called it a game of show-and-tell as he flaunted his perceived scholarly superiority.
This was the cresting moment for the Culver City Chest-Pounders who are resolved to discredit Ms. Davis.
Do you suppose her detractors sleep cleanly when they go home?
The same evening the noblest members of the School Board found room on their busy personal agendas to opine on the dead-horse matter of perks for the Board president.
As I understand it, the perks in question were the same ones that have been awarded to previous presidents.
Ms. Davis has told me several times that the bullies have rained so much personal criticism on her that she does not let it scar her anymore.
I don’t think that reaction is true or reasonable. It has to hurt.
I have been writing for nearly as long as Ms. Davis has been alive, and personal criticism — usually well deserved —still haunts me.
“Doesn’t make any difference to me what they say,” Ms. Davis said yesterday. “I am just proud that someone recommended me for this honorary doctorate.”
In the interest of honesty, Ms. Davis is not a direct descendant of Casper Milquetoast, the obsequious, mild-mannered doormat. She is gifted with a provocative personality. Frankly, she is as capable of sparks as her dubiously estimable rivals.
So debate. Argue. Wrestle. Democracy, as they say, is messy.
In the years’ long rantings of her dubiously estimable rivals, though, I never have heard anything from Ms. Davis that is even vaguely deserving of such bullying opprobrium.
As a group, this Board covers itself with shame every time it mounts a witch hunt to embarrass Ms. Davis.
Instead of emerging looking like eggheads, one of those soft-boiled babies may wind up running down their old hardboiled faces.
Hand me the egg-timer, Murgatroyd.
