Scylla and Charibdis
Either government doesn't matter, or that's all that matters. I don't know which.


I'm really wishing I had a poster version of this fantastical, post-collapse illustration of a road trip. And I wish I could be responsible and tell you a) the artist and b) where I got it. I've had this for awhile and just slugged the title as "Road Trip2" and a search for this didn't turn up the picture. If anybody knows where or how to credit this, say so.


Should I Go To Monterrey And Watch The Whales?

About two weeks ago Amy Goodman had Ralph Nader on Democracy Now! He was also profiled by Paul Farhi for the Washington Post, because, yes, he's running for president again.

From Farhi:

"So at 74, shunned and marginalized, he's running for president for the fifth time.

"It's the rational approach," he declares. "If you're locked out of the governmental system, if you can't get a hearing, and I can't, you go to the electoral system. What's my alternative? Should I go to Monterey and watch the whales?"

Having burned so many bridges, and persuaded for decades in the righteousness of his cause, Nader insists not on harnessing his dwindling sympathizers to the current Obama Hope train but instead takes every opportunity to drub Obama about how he's really just another suit. And Nader could be right.

Obama must run as a centrist candidate--much as Doug Wilder did when running for Lieutenant Governor and Governor here in Virginia, and what he sought to do when he ran for President for 10 minutes in 1993. This is the same reason Colin Powell was bruited for one executive office or another; but frankly, I don't know if Powell--one-- has the stomach for the fol-de-rol of campaigning and, two, with the way he was trotted out to fall on his sword for a lying administration, if he wonders himself what the hell he built a career in the military fighting for. Or maybe I'm naive. The latter is the most possible.

My gullible nature notwithstanding, if Obama ran as big a liberal as he likely is, there's no way he'd turn out the votes he needs. He's got a tough enough time being black and half-white and not Muslim. Politics is politics. Nader must know that.

I once met Nader, prior to his 2000 bid that made so many people angry. He was speaking at a philanthropy conference and I had the opportunity to interview him for a publication. We were backstage at a brand spanking new performing arts center at the University of Richmond. With a straight face, the only one he owns, he worried whether the blown-in insulation above us was asbestos. I got anxious because the little table upon which I rested my notepad wiggled and that caused the small lamp on it to flutter, with an obvious electrical short. I thought better of this, and rested the pad on my knees.

I remember how in 2004 Michael Moore and Bill Maher got down on their knees to beg Ralph not to run. The former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell -- who always made the best points on the shows she was on -- makes the point that Nader changed the way people throughout the world think about power. And said then he could be out there as the gadfly mobilizing people. He could be part of a feet-to-the-fire campaign. Use a check list, and f a candidate doesn't do it he pays the price. If Nader helped somebody win, he's still a player, and has influence where influence is everything.

Nader didn't take her wise advice. He's got his own reasons.




From the Post feature:

"Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University professor and a liberal author, admits he becomes "splenetic" on the subject of Nader the candidate. "I regard him as a saboteur of the cause to which he purports to devote himself," Gitlin says. "Nobody I can think of in public life has so willfully repealed his contributions to American life with such intensity and conviction."

Eric Alterman, another liberal commentator and author, calls Nader "a megalomaniac" and "a Leninist," in the sense of Nader's belief that things must get much worse before reform can begin. "There was only one person in entire world on election eve who could have prevented Bush's election."

Nader doesn't feel a need to apologize. He doesn't worry that the first line of his obituary will describe him as the spoiler of the 2000 race. He often quips, "You can't spoil a system that's rotten to the core." To strangers who get in his face, he has another deflection: "Gore won. The election was stolen. Go after the thieves."

It wasn't his responsibility, he says, to persuade people to vote for Gore. If voters were attracted by his positions and issues, he says, then Democrats were free to take the same positions. Bottom line? "The Democrats couldn't beat a bumbling governor from Texas," Nader mocks.

Nader wasn't the only man who could have changed the election's outcome. His name was one of eight third-party candidates on the Florida ballot, all of whom attracted far more than the 538 votes Gore needed to change the outcome.

Nader thinks it's futile to keep arguing about it. He also thinks one man could stop the "scapegoating": Gore. "If he would stand up and say publicly, 'Ralph Nader wasn't responsible,' that would make a huge difference," Nader says."

Nader: Obama Is Running For "Panderer-in-Chief"

From Democracy Now!:

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, on his first day as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Barack Obama traveled to Washington to address AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This is some of what he had to say.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Let me be clear. Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state—the Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper, but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

AMY GOODMAN: Obama later appeared to backtrack on his comments about the future status of Jerusalem as capital in a follow-up interview on CNN. He said it would be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate. Ralph Nader?

RALPH NADER: Well, I think Barack Obama is in training to become panderer-in-chief. That was really a disgraceful speech. It didn’t further the peace process, the two-state solution favored by a majority of Jewish Americans, Arab Americans, a majority of Israeli and Palestinian people. He basically sided with the militaristic approach to occupying, repressing, colonizing, destroying the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. He hasn’t even spoken out against the international crime of the blockade of Gaza, one-and-a-half million people, from medicine or drinking water, fuel, electricity, food—lots of silent fatalities in Gaza because of that.

Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z. In his voting record, he voted against reform of the Mining Act of 1872, which gives away our hard rock minerals. He voted for a terrible class-action restriction law that the corporations wanted him to vote for. He, in many ways, has disappointed people who had greater hopes for him. He’s voted for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. He refuses to even discuss—he’s vigorously against impeachment of Bush and Cheney. He won’t even support his colleague Senator Russ Feingold motion to censure the Bush administration for systemic repeated illegal wiretaps. He—you know, he’s letting the corporate-dominated city of Washington, the corporations who actually rule us now in Washington, determine his agenda. And that does not augur well.

He’s just appointed economic advisers right out of the Robert Rubin school of Citigroup and the University of Chicago. His Middle East advisers involve people who actually helped write his AIPAC speech. You know, it’s a sad thing to see, because he knows better, but he’s suppressing himself repeatedly until he becomes a different person, should he be elected president.
.............................

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I wanted to play for you two clips, one of Barack Obama and one of McCain. This is Barack Obama speaking about Iran.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything.

AMY GOODMAN: On the campaign trail, John McCain accused Obama of being naive on Iran.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: My friends, they are developing nuclear weapons. Also what is totally unsatisfactory is that the Iranians are making, are manufacturing and shipping into Iraq the most lethal explosive devices that are killing young Americans. That’s not acceptable. And Senator Obama wants to sit down without any precondition across the table and negotiate with this individual. My friends, that’s not right, and that’s naive. And that shows a lack of experience and a lack of judgment.

AMY GOODMAN: McCain’s position and then your assessment of Obama?

RALPH NADER: Well, it recalls Michael Abramowitz in the Washington Post in March and New York Times reporters a few weeks later saying that if Obama or Clinton were elected president, the foreign and military policy would not be much different than the foreign and military policy of George Bush in his second term. And that illustrates that. The military-industrial complex and the politicians like Obama and McCain who support it—$700 billion, over half of the federal government’s operating expenditure now is the military budget—are desperately looking for enemies, desperately exaggerating enemies.

Iran has not invaded anybody in 250 years. Yet it’s obviously frightened. It’s surrounded by the US military west, south, east. It’s been labeled “Axis of Evil” by Bush, who invaded Iraq after he labeled them “Axis of Evil.” We have Special Forces, according to Sy Hersh, that go in and out of Iran. What are they going to do? They talk very belligerently nationally, but they’re really scared. I mean, we supported Saddam Hussein, logistically and with materiel, in invading Iran, which took a half a million Iranian lives. They remember the shooting down of their civilian airliner years ago."

Theodor van Thulden - Sirens, Scylla and Charibdis, 17th century via, orrologion.


I admire communal and even anarchic principles and can see how they may work in small communities where the consent of the governed, or un-governed as they case may be, is easy to gauge. But with a nation of 300 millions, spread over a continent, there is little real way of maintaining a democratic relationship forever without periodic renovations of the structure. And that happens every, oh, 200 years or so.

Am I just throwing up my hands, and therefore saying; OK, you win, bring on the despot? Or am I saying: I am a concerned citizen, but I have too much going on in my life, with an accumulation of interests and a good group of friends and colleagues, to allow my precious life moments to get siphoned off in the affairs of national government that is beyond repair. On a street and even block level, this is where when I have the emotional energy spare on such matters. I mean, at this point, I don't see any other way to retain my balance.

Obama can give no speech and Olbermann can make no Special Comment that'll save us.

"Hope And Fear Chase Each Other's Tails"

I'll keep voting, though I feel that beyond the local level, it doesn't matter much.

Jim Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation isn't the place to go for cheerful news, usually, but I do on occasion run into somebody who has written thoughts I harbor but haven't articulated. As in here, with Djinn:

"All this talk about the presidential election, and candidates and their stated policies, underlines an emerging situation that people have yet to get their heads around: IMHO politics and the political structure in the US have already proved themselves ideologically and intellectually irrelevant, and I think they are about to become manifestly irrelevant.

Government is structured in such a way that sound and sensible policy decisions are politically impossible. Besides that, not that many of the problems we face can be addressed using the political machinery, even if there was any will to address them. We are looking down the barrel of something that government simply can't do anything about. We can be sure that government will perform its customary function of implementing policies so misguided as to assure that the coming catastrophe is as catastrophic as possible."

No Hope In Hope

Djinn also gave an extensive excerpt from activist Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe. This piece came from Endgame, published in June 2006 by Seven Stories Press, and is about how Jensen gave up on hope. Things are bad, and getting worse, and hoping something will intervene is, well, he says, folly. I've truncated it, but you can see it all here.

"Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.

To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness. One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.

Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they’re getting worse. Rapidly.....We’ve all been taught that hope in some future condition—like hope in some future heaven—is and must be our refuge in current sorrow.

...I’m sure you remember the story of Pandora. She was given a tightly sealed box and was told never to open it. But, being curious, she did, and out flew plagues, sorrow, and mischief, probably not in that order. Too late she clamped down the lid. Only one thing remained in the box: hope. Hope, the story goes, was the only good the casket held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind’s sole comfort in misfortune.

The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.

Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.

...

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.

Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate situation. Many people probably also fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate things are, they may be forced to do something about it.

Another question people sometimes ask me is, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just party?” Well, the first answer is that I don’t really like to party. The second is that I’m already having a great deal of fun. I love my life. I love life. This is true for most activists I know. We are doing what we love, fighting for what (and whom) we love."

One of the aspects I enjoy about this image is the dynamic between these women.
They've stopped to discuss how best to proceed. Should they continue on, or will they be able to make it to the distant and ruinous city (seen in the larger example at the top of this post) before nightfall? Should they even try? What's the best way to proceed? Those cute rucksacks don't appear to be large or lumpy enough to have bedding materials inside--but maybe, if stowed in a neat fashion. Maybe this is a short reconnoitering hike to see what's Beyond The Next Hill before returning to their outpost.

The former highway's surface is cracked and on the verge of getting reclaimed by nature. A busted car is just ahead, crooked jersey barriers, a discarded tire. This is not quite the Yellow brick Road. And, I admit my bias, I have a thing for women in shorts and hiking boots. And I also like that neither of the women appear to have weapons (though I suppose you could smite somebody with that walking stick).

I'd like to read the story about these intrepid women.

Newsflash: The Governor-Mayor won't run again

Any celebration round Richmond may be short-lived, however. Though the Governor Mayor made his official announcement this morning, who will run to replace him is an open question.

So far we have:

• An elder career state politician who is yet another sanctimonious demagogue, who can exhort his congregation to vote for him

• A crazy person who used to work for the Governor-Mayor and accepted being on his payroll without qualms (But -- maybe -- crazy is what we need? Really? )

• A well-meaning but unknown architect

• Dirt Woman


There are others waiting in the wings, and with the playing field now leveled by the departure of the Governor-Mayor, they'll be rushing to declare.

Whoever runs must carry five of the nine districts and that means the candidate probably will need to be an African-American. Except...where is our magnetic, magnanimous, knee-weakening stem-wending oratorical visionary, less-talk-more-action candidate?

Nowhere.

That person doesn't exist, or isn't running.

Why? Why is Richmond so impossible to govern? Or why must we again and again subject ourselves to loonies and mediocrities? The city's political class didn't descend upon us from on high. They were not foisted upon us. They come out of the population.

Because, as some have suggested to me, Richmond chased away its potential black leadership base during the 1950s and 1960s. Certainly Arthur Ashe thought so; in one of his memoirs he made a list of Maggie Walker High School graduates who'd gone elsewhere to become surgeons, symphony conductors, university professors, museum directors, civic leaders, etc. This example was his way of saying: see what you did? You drove out some of the best with your short-sighted policies and ignorance. Now you're really stuck, Richmond. Because both black and white parents want to send their children to good schools, and would prefer safe streets.

The ones who stayed behind; well. And there've been exceptions. Ask yourself, why was it that the great Oliver Hill served just one history-making term on City Council--1948-1950--and he was defeated by just 44 votes when he ran again. How different might Richmond be had he attempted another run; or somehow, that he could've won in '50? He didn't make the effort again; that he was the only black man on Council certainly had something to do with his decision and he was outvoted by six whites. And there were greater issues to tackle--like integrating the schools. Still, since then, when has such intelligence and courageousness taken seat in Council chambers? That's a long, long time -- and just one man.

For the most part, we've seen a leadership fatally flawed and too easily taken in by consultants and schemers and anxious to use the positions of public trust as ways to advance themselves. These are people who've risen to Council level who've been for some reason convinced of the "bomb the village to save it" way of approaching urban improvements.

The list is long and sad: Sixth Street Marketplace, the Coliseum and Project One Building -- all realized while there was a majority African-American City Council--I'd even go so far as to criticize the decision to place the James Center and Omni where they are, as they defaced and permanently ruined the potential to restore the Great Turning Basin, (three blocks long, two wide and 50 feet deep), and wiped away the Tidewater Connector canal locks. An unknown tourist revenue was forsaken, and an aesthetic quality that no other East Coast city could match. At least when the Reynolds Metals Corporation built its plant along the canal, that firm chose to preserve the locks unearthed there. You can walk among the dry, antique locks today.

Then in the later 1990s somehow the electoral process delivered unto Richmond a Council composed of winners beginning at the top with the Rev. Leonidas Young, Jr., --later indicted and accused to stealing the life savings of one of his parishioners while on her death bed.

Under Young's watch, the horrendous 1995-1998 "Ministry of Fear" Crestar bank complex was placed upon prime bluffs overlooking the river. Crestar was bribed with $25 millions of "incentives" to build there; and that later became SunTrust. To paraphrase, those perjuries against architecture ought not to have been authorized, then they should never have been built-- at least on those properties, and not in that sleek, featureless Tysons Corner Baroque style. [Image via Richmond City Watch.]

Why does Richmond seem persuaded that it either cannot deliver, or doesn't deserve, better? As I've written before on glossy pages: for most of its history, Richmond was governed by a white majority that sufficiently mismanaged the city to almost wreck it. From 1977 on, Richmond has been governed by a black majority that has sufficiently mismanaged the city to almost wreck it. We are running out of colors and running out of time -- if Richmond should join the sorority of great cities to which she could make rightful claim, next to Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. Instead, the city and its leadership has hurried us along to become not the best Richmond, but a fake one, a copy of the Charlottes and Atlantas and Northern Virginia suburbs that are long on add-cement-and-reflective glass-and-mix building and short on character. As a Richmond Grande Dame once said of the family moving into one of the new mansions off River Road, "Well, I'm sure they have good plumbing."

"It would be side-splitting if it were not so heart-breaking..." as Richmond novelist James Branch Cabell once observed.

If I were to run--and I'm not--but if I was going to, well, I would've started months ago. And my campaign would've been to walk every street of the city, from east to west, working north to south, shaking whosever hand, asking what is on people's minds and taking notes. I'd have a backpack filled with flyers and DVDs of me talking about who I am and why I'm doing this, a laptop and a video camera. I'd establish a web site about the excursion--my 'scanning' of Richmond. I would make no promises, but try to offer some approaches to solutions, and see whether people actually understand that politicians are just people, not miracle workers.

At night, I'd seek to stay with whomever would let me, wherever they happened to be, and I would learn about them and their part of the city. I'd update the website. I'd accept whatever donations were given to me and hand them off to whoever was assisting me.

And that's what I'd do. No real speeches, no campaign per se, and when I ended up back home I'd sit on my porch, go through the research I would have accumulated during my journey, consult with people smarter than me about possible actions, and wait for whatever happened in November.

Instead, we're going to get the same old tired thing delivered by the same tired, old people. My city, my city, I weep for it.

No, he really said that...


Lori Petty as Tank Girl, arriving just in time to clean up Richmond's
current political mess.

I didn't see it mentioned here in the Richmond Blog o' Blogs, so I thought this would be the appropriate place. This morning, the Governor-Mayor's Plenipotentiary was quoted in the newspaper saying that he'd told the Governor-Mayor that he expected a purge of School Board offices would have legal consequences. When the Plenipotentiary was asked why he chose to continue with this academic maneuvering, he said, "It's not my call. My responsibility is just to execute." And further pressed about who made the final decision to continue, he said, "I don't know how to answer that."

Excuse me. But what this sounds like the Plenipotentiary is saying is: I was only following orders.

Holy criminy. It's come to this. Look away, Richmond, Vee-ay, look away.

.....About Last Night



Tragic-Comic Opera, the Seafarer by Paul Klee (1934) via humboldt.edu

I doubt that when Paul Klee created this work that he could've imagined the metaphorical qualities fitting the political situation in Ruch'mun' Vee-ay. Here, the exquisite early autumn days have lapsed into late August soggy humidity and heat and I think the change of temperature--besides giving people sneezes and soar throats--has made RVA's political class go stupid. Illustrated here is the vainglorious giant fish slayer, as Hizzoner perceives of himself, poking in the eye with a sharp stick the School Board and anybody else who gets near his position of power.

The billion-eyed audience could care less about our municipal sturm und drang; however, I live here, and the events of Friday, September 21, 2007, reinforce my loving and loathing relationship with this, the city of my nativity. So in my tunnel of work, art, writing and Colonial Avenue I was unaware--and with a certain bliss that is often paired with ignorance--of the fracas at City Hall.

Assorted bloggers and bloggists have joined the howling, handwringing, and metaphorical wrenting of garments and pulling out of hair that accompanies these not infrequent city embarrassments. I in most cases agree with these befuddled and flabbergasted accountings of current events, so I don't devote much time to such topics at the Blue Raccoon. Most times, these days, politics whir above me like the sounds of cicadas along West of the Boulevard's bosky streets.

But this one, well, I can only provide some perspective.

Joy in the Streets

Before I knew any of this, I was at the New York Deli quaffing Legends and later finding my hips and knees shake and swerve to the inspired sounds of the House of Prayer brass band that visits Carytown, usually on Friday nights. More effective than any sermon, far more poetic than a corner exhortation by a sweaty-browed, hoarse-voiced zealot, these guys just make a joyful noise, including a version of Amazing Grace that had me singing like I hadn't since being in the Stockton Memorial Baptist choir. And never with such enthusiasm. Oh, billion-eyed audience, you'd have thought you were in New Orleans.

Unknown to me, across town the public celebration and unveiling of a reinvented portion of the River District/Shockoe a plaza was getting its ribbon-cutting. You can read of this here and here. I cannot speak to the feasibility or aesthetic quality of the space, I've not seen it, but if, like well-placed furniture, it ties together an otherwise fussy room, this sounds like a positive innovation within Richmond's cityscape.

While this design may be a good omen, the events which overshadowed it carry an internal sensation like this 1912 De Chirico painting, with the appropriate title, Enigma of the Hour.


Now, Richomnd's Governor-Mayor was in attendance and according to a news report, was seen "dancing with a blue glow stick around his head." Hey, I'm all in favor of elected officials getting into the spirit, but when contrasted with the train of events of this day and evening, his joyous behavior seemed more absurd than exuberant. Like, a kind of down-market Tony Soprano at a roisterous party while a hit was carried out against a cross-town rival.


A Few Easy Ways To Make Richmond Look Even More Ridiculous

From early afternoon, the Governor-Mayor's minions conducted a purge of City Hall. First , the Minister of Enlightenment declared that a "pattern of porn usage" had been uncovered throughout computers at City Hall. This followed a similar discovery by the city's internal fiscal coordinator that after hours, service and security personnel had run up thousands of dollars in calling phone sex lines. Which leads me to suggest, that while Virginia is for lovers, and visitors should live passionately, that Richmond's slogan should be "Me So Horny."

All City Council aides were instructed by the Governor-Mayor's plenipotentiary that they would need to set up interviews to determine if they could retain their jobs. Then, much later in the afternoon, the Minister of Enlightenment sends round an e-mail urging employees to scat and not come back until Monday morning. Police began to seal off the building although some members of Council and the School Board were permitted to enter.

Now, at this point, the Governor-Mayor was following the rule book for running a coup. Seize the communications, purge the dissenters, and make sure the constabulary is on your side. The Governor-Mayor and the School Board have been at loggerheads since day one, and matters haven't been made better by a group of private businesspeople (The Gang of 26) who want to return to an appointed School Board, rather than an elected one, a suggestion that was met--near as I can determine--by almost uniform apathy by all except for a few media and civitarian types. And bloggers.

The Governor-Mayor hasn't made any friends on the Board by insisting that they should move elsewhere, the pretext being they could save the city money by getting out of City Hall. And so, movers began packing up their offices from six floors of the Great Metal Waffle that is the sad example of the Richmond's City Hall. The School Board tried convening an emergency public meeting but neither the public nor media were allowed to attend, and police threatened journalists with arrest. The Board tried forming a rear-guard defense on the steps of City Hall, but all they could do was look impotent and flabbergasted. The Board commander couldn't persuade police to relent and allow the public in, which, last time I checked, is a Constitutional right. So the School Board members did what most city officials do when at a legal crossroads: they dispatched a runner to jostle awake Henry Marsh III.

Around midnight, a Richmond circuit court judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent any more moving to be undertaken, and all the king's men had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

It was like some kind of Gilbert and Sullivan (or the film Topsy-Turvy) meets banana republic government take-over. And to paraphrase James Branch Cabell, were it not so heart-breaking, it would be side-splitting.

And yet, overnight polling of Mr. and Mrs. Murgatroyd indicate that most television-watching Richmonders (who are probably in Henrico and Chesterfield counties) think it was a jolly good show, since all they care about is entertainment value, not actual functioning government.

What? No gun play?

So this morning I am preambulating past the new Tom & Jerry's ice cream store, when I see this headline: "Chaos erupts at City Hall -- Wilder alleges porn link to Pantele's computer--City evictsd school officials; police ban public from meeting."
So, no shots were fired, except cheap ones, and no harm done except to bruised egos and the backs of movers. A long-standing feud between Council President Pantele--really, almost all of Council-- and the Governor-Mayor has become ugly and personal, and now that the "porn" word has shown up in proximity to an elected official's name, my guess there'll be calls for prayer breakfasts, FBI investigations and televised hearings on QVC.

Billion-eyed audience, the political forecast for Richmond for the next several months is, I predict, storms with subpoena-sized law suits. The affronted School Board, the insulted President of Council, and heck, I think the whole city should engage in a class action suit against the Governor Mayor. Just for drama, you understand.

Frankly, I think there's only one savior possible for the City of Richmond, Virginia. And here she is:


Leeloo, from the Fifth Element, or, more to the point, in this version:



Yup, she swaggers into town, and all this unpleasantness will just go away in bloody ribbons because she's armed and fabulous. Can you not see it? She bursts into the Governor-Mayor's office, assumes a martial pose and announces, "Hey Gov, don't look now, but it's Milla Time."

But, more of her, anon.


What Price Democracy?

Meanwhile, on B-2 of the morning paper, Governor Tim Kaine was reported as having addressed the 2007 National Federation of Press Women and said that when his term expires in 2010, he may not seek another public office. He voiced concerns about seeking elective office, among them low voter turn out, public scrutiny, time away from family and the sheer expense of campaigning.

"The price of elections is high enough that it excludes an awful lot of good people who might otherwise run for public office. It may not be unconstitutional, but it has the same kind of effect."

A-men brother, a-men.