Don't miss the comment section. I take my lumps from the fans. One guy tells me I am old and will die. This is invigorating stuff. leeDear Anonymous: You make a good point. I am dug in when I think I am right. And I usually think I am right. Every leader has to have that quality, or he or she is not a leader.
I am angry with Susan. She fooled me; that makes me mad, mad at myself for being a dope. I am a sap when it comes to being too easy to convince that you are a good person. Then I am furious when I find you fooled. me.
What revolts me is that Susan has not only been passive on the podium but that she pissed away all that money when there are children in the county who can’t afford the supply fees so can’t participate in the class projects. She must know about things like that, yet she spent $50,000 to go pick up those gimcrack cracker-jack awards the education bureaucracy manufactures by the truck load to hand out to each other to disguise the fact that its minions are the underperformers of the academic world but have captured its administrative apparatus and are lording it over the smarty pants in college who headed straight for teaching. I think I am mad at her now for her bad values, her plain old lack of brains, and her willingness to fall in line with Elia because she has a forceful personality behind closed doors and can overwhelm these weak board members.
I suspected Schmidt from the start but didn’t recall until his second or third communication that he had run before. But I thought it was good that Susan had an opponent since she needed rousting. When I became aware that he was the guy whose wife also had run against April or Susan in the past, the scales fell from my eyes in medias res. But Susan still needs an opponent to this day. Otherwise she will never do anything on the board. And even an opponent may not prize her from her torpor.
In addition, there’s the breakdown in our chain of humanity when we label a person a fiend for running against someone in a political race even if it’s for negative reasons. When is running in a political race anything but for the reason Darwin locates in The Descent of Man: to win the admiration of other people? He says in The Emotions of Men and Animals that the desire for admiration is the number-one motivater of the human psyche—both in humans and our cousins down the phylogenetic tree. All people who run for public office lust for approval and admiration. Schmidt lusts for the approval of Elia primarily. And he lusts for positioning himself to augment his retirement loot. That's what the double dippers Lamb and Edgecombe have done. This is all part of the Dark Side of the human psyche. And seemingly benign people who run for the school board have it as well as does every single soul on the planet.
I can’t hate Schmidt because he desperately wants a school-board throne. So does Susan, and I am not sure her motive is any more elevated than his. It’s what they do with the position that concerns me. And I don’t think Susan has done diddly. And besides, her open display of cowardice repels me. I hate gutlessness wherever I encounter it. That is what Susan and April have displayed on the board. Whatever other word you find for their behavior does not obviate its being gutlessness. The other board members have long ago surrendered their souls to Elia. But I thought Susan and April would not. Dumb me.
And, yes, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Hitlers of the world. I claim that right. I was a psychiatric nurse for a while learned to be fond of some of the worst patients on the ward---ones that would cut your face to ribbons if only they could get out of their strait jackets (which we euphemized to “camisoles”). Hitler was good to his dog, Blondie, a big old dumb German shepherd. And his slipping her a cyanide pill before he put the gun to his head was an act of love. Nobody is totally bad or totally good. I myself am about 51-49 percent divided. And my creative ideas emerge from the 49 percent side of my psyche. I don’t know if you have noticed, but crazy is always more interesting than sane.
Now that we have slogged through my psyche, let’s turn to yours. Maybe you can solve for me the mystery of why the teachers of the Hillsborough County school system are so terrified of Elia and her Wizard-of-Oz terror apparatus of the Home-ec Kipley's Professional Standards Cell Block that they cower behind anonymity and are afraid to turn up at the school board meetings or stand in the middle of the street and blast Elia and her minions to hell and back. Why are they afraid to use free speech as their Teflon armor? This is America. I shut Tom Gonzalez up from threatening me with an extortion law suit to close down my comments by filing an ethics charge against him with the Florida Bar. I didn’t win, of course in the ordinary sense, but I forced him to answer the charges, an exercise which ruffled his massive, misplaced self-confidence. I have the case online for general review. I sent it to the county law guys. Le Gonzalez has shut up on his threat of extortion law suits against me, and I feel some satisfaction in having paid him back a little bit for his telling poor Erwin that he had Whistleblower protection and then pushing him out in the clearing to be run crazy by Lennard, Davis, and Hamilton and the complicity of the entire school apparatus, including the board members, and his ending up a babbling bundle of nerves before he finally smartened up and went to an attorney who cleaned the school board and administration’s clock and got him a settlement so that he could flee the hell of the ROSSAC inferno to Georgia.
Write me an essay on why school people won’t come out of their holes and fight Elia et al in the open. If they can quote the Bill of Rights and Milton's Areopagitica, there is no excuse for this reticence to plow into Elia and her palace guard. Besides, teachers outnumber her. You are ninety percent smarter than she. You are probably 99 percent better looking too since she looks like a bag of dirty clothes on the way to the laundermat.
And don’t ever fool yourself that I won’t triumph over Elia. Just give me a little more time. I believe I will live to see a decent superintendent head the school system. And, yes, Susan will still be on the board and still be a coward. lee
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008 9:00 AM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Comment Worth Considering from Valdes's Opponent.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Comment Worth Considering from Valdes's Opponent":
Lee,
I have noted something interesting as of late and want to share it with you.
Your coverage of Schmidt started with enthusiasm and high hope. You clearly percieved him as a change agent.
As people started to weigh in with concerns you stuck by your guns challenging people to bring you the proof of Mr. Schmidts perfidy.
Mr. Schmidt himself delivered this proof in the Valdes/Schmidt debate.
Your disappointment was clear, but you continue to push Mr. Schmidt. Apparently you will not change for the very selfish reason that you want to punish Susan for daring not to do things your way.
Lastly people have started to weigh in with some very valid and well thought out arguments and you defiantly stand by Mr. Schmidt.
Lee, if you cannot accept and admit your mistakes. If you cannot change your mind. If you cannot separate your emotions and personal feelings from your work how are you any better than the Abu-Ghraib administration that you struggle against?
One of the greatest injustices that you have railed against is Elias close minded arrogance. Her inability to consider external perspectives and change.
You are exhibiting these same behavioral traits. I am beginning to wonder if the real issue between you and Elia is that you are too much alike. After all, the most difficult person to live with is yourself.
You admit no mistake, you defiantly refuse to consider a change in your position, and you punish those who dare not to grovel at your feet (i.e. Susan and April). Sounds like the very injustices that drive you to fight against the Elia administration.
One of the greastest dangers in war is that we must remain ever vigilant to not become that which we struggle against.
Publish this comment.
Reject this comment.
Moderate comments for this blog.
Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:59 AM
1 comment:
I agree that Susan has created a mess... and I have personally told her as much (Yes I have direct access to both Valdes and Griffin).
And I can agree that Susan needs to feel some repurcussions for some poor decisions, but gutless she is not.
As for needing an opponent right now, that's a no brainer. By having an opponent it allows her to run a campaign and further build her own name recognition. Any incumbent should WANT an opponent for that very reason.
Lee, both Susan and April are fighting, just not in the tone and tenor you had hoped for.
As for why the teachers do not revolt. One can only guess but it is an intriguing question.
Bueracracy seems to invariably evolve to a state in which the primary focus of the beuracracy becomes the perpetuation of its own existence.
This is where I believe that Susan and April have had an impact. Before April, the administration did not have to work to ensure that everything went according to script. In Candy's words it was all a "well orchestrated play". The administration now does have to work to perpuate it's existence. It's harder for them. It disrupts them. It makes them less organized and more prone to make mistakes. Why do you think the administration fights them so hard? If they were rubber stamping go along to get alongs, the administration would not be fighting so desperately to undermine them. If the were go along to get alongs, Elia's husband would have given $500 to Valdes instead of Schmidt.
In studying power, it is common to see the ruling class (i.e. Administration) create a system that is purposefully constructed to impose phsychological dominance on those who are ruled (i.e. staff, teachers, etc).
Consider this: Why did the Jews in the Nazi concentation camps not revolt in the face of certain extermination? They had a vast superiority of numbers. One could also argue that they likely had a superiority in character, courage and intelligence. Yet they did not revolt. I believe that the answer is that they had been pshycologically beaten down.
Another common tactic is to distract the "riff-raff". If you have a very dysfunctional environment were things that upset the workers are continually surfacing, the staff cannot focus long enough on a single item to craft a coheisve strategy to attack any single issue. If they cannot plan and execute a strategy, you have them where you want them: disorganized.
I think the school administration has leveraged these concepts in their organizational model. All in the name of perpetuating the existence of the system that they ride to luxury and power.
Additionally I don't think this economy makes it any easier. Jobs are hard to find and I assure you HCPS leadership is very aware of this. Threats of retaliation and termination are far more intimidating in a tough economy that in a booming one.
I could be way off base but that's my $0.02.
Post a Comment