When Scott Malsin began reading his I Am Sacrificing for You resignation speech at last night’s City Council meeting, I had three options to ward off the rapidly encroaching chill:
• To dash to my car for an overcoat.
• To run down the block for an armload of kindling to ignite a bonfire.
• To drape my overcoat over my eyes, sparing myself the embarrassment of watching an ocean of nothingness wash over Council Chambers while Mr. Malsin told us how much he had given up to serve the community.
If he had been standing in the in the center of Death Valley on the 4th of July, addressing a convention of mutes, the silence that surrounded Mr. Malsin’s oratory could not have been more eloquent.
This was not malaise or extreme passivity.
This was a booming statement rich with commanding messages and revealing questions:
• Didn’t anybody think it was strange that not one of his colleagues offered a syllable of regret or congratulations — something?
• Even granting there was a small audience, the tepid applause would have been stronger if an invisible person had trapped a mouse.
• No one in the whole room said “Sorry to see you go” or “Thanks for six splendid years.”
The charade of:
Will he or won’t he quit wore us down.
For six months this tableau played out. Step by step. Day by day. He may. He may not.
And now we are asked to stand by for 35 more fun-filled days — the filing deadline for the spring election being Jan. 17 — while Mr. Malsin decides whether to run.
One wise guy in last night’s crowd said the melodrama has played out like a balloon with a slow leak.
“After months of buildup,” said one audience regular, “this was pretty non-explosive.”
Flash to the community: He always was going to resign just in time to, let’s say, circumvent the system, so he could sock the spirit of the City Charter in the nose. Run again in the spring, win a fresh four-year term and then run again four years after that.
My gosh. By that time even Swishy will be too old to run for office.
The takeaway: If you have served honorably for six years, but you telegraph your intentions with one eye for half a year while winking with the other, and at the end not a single darned person says anything in your defense, perhaps it would be prudent to solicit a second opinion.
