Make Mine Vanilla, Please
And so it was that last Tuesday, a member of the community brought up a tame question of general interest. Instead of proffering a milkshake to slake the gentleman’s thirst, an artificially pumped up member of the School Board haughtily suggested the person make himself disappear and do an imitation of ol’ Ben Franklin in his kite-flying days. The question was carried, delicately, diplomatically, by George Laase, my sometimes-colleague.
Are You Friend or Foe?
If you think the Board likes the nosey Mr. Laase, then neither you nor I want to know how the noble Board treats its enemies. I have noticed a latter-day guillotine consultant hanging out on Irving Place. But the last time I saw him, he had a discouraged look on his face. I hope he was turned down. Mr. Laase pokes around where the immensely secretive, obsessively possessive School Board thinks he shouldn’t. He asks questions that are our business. Choosing his words on Tuesday night as if they were lying on white velvet in the window of Van Cleef and Arpels, Mr. Laase wondered “what is the District cost” of the total compensation for retiring — going, going, gone — District Supt. Dr.Laura McGaughey?
It Ain’t Personal, Pal
Board member Stew Bubar, self-styled Defender in Chief of All Things Even Vaguely Related to Superintending, immediately piped up. “That is an inappropriate question,” ruled the untitled, but evidently entitled, Board member. There he goes again. Stew,baby. How can you? This is Memorial Day weekend. We have fought wars for more than two centuries to preserve the precious right of free speech. Free speech, baby, means that community activists and journalists have a right to pose innocent questions or to publicly criticize windbags who always carry bicycle pumps with them so they never will be caught shortwinded.
No Pepperoni on Mine, Thank You
Mr. Laase was not asking whether Board member Dana Russell tips the pizza delivery boy. He was not wondering whether Mr. Bubar covertly contributes to the A.A.C.L.U. (the Anti-American Civil Liberties Union). These hot-tempered School Board members must have studied under My Least Favorite Ex-Wife. She could turn a wedding, a bar mitzvah or a lottery victory into a disaster in under ten seconds. All Mr. Laase wanted to know was how busy the chute is that leads directly from the School Board Vault into Dr. McGaughey’s ever widening bank account. Based on the compensation reports received during the presently concluding school year, Dr. McGaughey’s School Board-aided bank account must resemble a roly-poly young fella who has managed to stuff 198 marbles into his two cheeks. Mr. Laase’s question was framed politely, almost unobtrusively. I mean, if I were a little younger, I would enroll in Superintendent University, even an online hurry-up course, so I could get in on all that cabbage the seriously generous School Board is determined to hand out to the retiring Super.
Who Died and Made You King?
You would think that when the School Board was elected by a yawning, not a fawning, public, each one was fitted for a crown of gold, handed a loaded rifle and told to plant his body, forever and ever, in front of the steaming hot School Board Pool of Dark Secrets That Ain’t the Business of No Dirty Lowdown Commoner. I presume, civically speaking, that self-confidence has been no problem in Culver City ever since this gilded edition of the School Board was elected because they have enough arrogance to cover all 40,000 residents — and New York City, too.
Postscript
The members of the School Board also are the luckiest chaps in town. Unlike their rivals for attention, the City Council, hardly anyone seems to care what the School Board does every other Tuesday. That is how they can regularly escape rebukes, or worse, with their periodically unseemly behavior.
Mr. Bubar, if you ask what grounds I have for reaching the above conclusions,I would reply that you have posed “an inappropriate question.” On the other hand, if you wanted to know my hat size, I would be happy to respond.