By ROGER BAYLOR
Caucus — A city council meeting that isn’t, as attended only by those council members who won’t admit aloud to being Republican.
— A New Albanist’s Dictionary
When last we looked with appropriately ironic detachment upon the fictional antics of Councilman Cappuccino and his faithful sidekick, Li’l Stevie, they had been joined on a nocturnal downtown street corner by CM Ceesaw, and were making barbecued bologna hash out of Robert’s Rules of Order as is their twice-monthly custom.
But we didn’t know at the time that back here in the absurdly “real” world of persistently futile council follies, such a gathering of more than three council members had already taken place and might (or might not — who’s your mouthpiece, brother?) be a violation of Indiana’s Open Door law, as opposed to the benumbed lawlessness of the Open Air Museum that we inhabit.
Then, as word of the dastardly caucus seeped out like the contents of a tarpaper sewer pipe, council president Dan Coffey chose the occasion of another of “his” council’s trademark dirty laundry airings to offer a piously non-specific statement of cascading caterwaul to the unfortunate denizens of the council chamber (as reported by The Tribune):
“Coffey responded he ‘morally’ objects to any private meetings regarding the city, and that he wasn’t specifically referring to the caucus.”
Now we know that just as Bill Clinton didn’t inhale, CM Coffey doesn’t accept invitations to undemocratic Democratic gabfests that are immoral, illegal and probably fattening. A better explanation might be that he didn’t have an unpatched caucus jacket to wear, because it’s hard to grasp what “morality” has to do with open door laws and private meetings in the broader sense of quasi-religious rectitude that he insists upon both proffering and ignoring at his leisure.
To a pants-down progressive like me, any coherent moral code might inform Coffey that it’s objectionable to attempt the physical throttling of a dissenting taxpayer in front of witnesses in a public watering hole, but this commonsense information pertaining to genuine morality quite possibly escaped his attention in the same strange way as the city’s master plan, which inexplicably tiptoed past his finely calibrated blinders even as he sat on the commissions charged to investigate it.
Given that Coffey’s council co-conspirators (with the notable exception of John Gonder) were never able to comprehend the immorality of his copperhead shake ‘n’ bake at Studio’s in January, and to this day remain reliably unable to muster an intelligible, moral response to his ceaseless, instinctive bullying, it’s probably no surprise that relatively minor matters like state-mandated ethical codes might also elude their attention.
It is a question for the attorneys to decide, and as they confab, the closest we can come to a sure thing is surmising that the council president’s current round of situational moral zeal is being aimed in the direction of the 5th District’s representative, Diane Benedetti, who has committed the unpardonable sin of steadily growing into her job, and as she does so, just as markedly distancing herself from the mundane habitat of institutionalized mediocrity that is forever necessary for ward heelers like Coffey to survive in politics — even the degraded politics of retardation practiced in New Albany.
In a raucous, dysfunctional atmosphere mimicking the back alleys of Mogadishu, Yangon or Outer Birdseye, even the clouded Wizard of Westside periodically can appear to be shining, a state of affairs that embodies both optical illusion and clinical delusion, and leads us back to a final quote from our burgeoning local book of observations.
HANDICAPPING
A head-scratching voter’s calculation: Is an incorruptible politician who is wrong 100 percent of the time worse than a corruptible politician who is right half the time?
Depressed yet? You should be, because we’re left with the usual options, the customary lamentations, and the daily question directed toward all council members not named Coffey or Price:
Don’t we deserve better than this pathetic, ongoing spectacle?
On a happier note, at least to me, five years ago today was the occasion of my very first blog entry at NA Confidential. It went like this.
“You don’t need a gumshoe with rotten breath and one too many alimony payments to figure out the problem with this town. It’s something in the water that causes people here to lose their vision. Q: What do New Albanians call Southside’s mashed potatoes? A: Freedom Foie Gras. Well, we’re here to change all that.”
60 months later, Southside no longer slings hash, the pioneering Bistro New Albany has come and gone, and a whole new crop of downtown businesses have taken their place amid unprecedented optimism.
James Garner isn’t the mayor, Doug England is, and the politically antebellum Mike Sodrel’s congressional tenure proved to be mercifully brief. Nowadays, Baron Hill appears in Michael Moore movies.
The YMCA finally was erected in spite of the best efforts of the city council’s Gang of Four congenital obstructionists, but apparently the tap water in New Albany is the same, and we’re still having trouble enforcing the most basic of ordinances.
I confess that it was far too cheeky of me to boast about changing “all that,” and yet, progressivism has made steady, substantive gains in the period since the blog’s inception. The aim all along was to write the history of these times, and this modest goal has been fulfilled. Stay tuned for more, and thanks for reading.
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