ELECTION WRAP-UP, or the things it really isn’t wise to say when you’re a candidate like I am. One thing that stands out from this campaign is the startling number of reverential references to “the state.” At a candidate’s night in Ukiah the potential people’s tribunes referred to “the state” as if it were an unusually remote deity of some kind. “Well, of course, that’s up to the state.” Or, “The state would have to approve that.” It’s in God’s hands, my son.
LOCALLY, THE CANDIDATES for the Community Services District Board, asked about traffic control, repeatedly pointed out that Highway 128 is a “state” highway and that there was little we could do to slow traffic down. Ukrainian farm hands speak of the state in the same way. At least the Ukrainian has an excuse. If the Ukrainian complains about the state too often and too loudly, the state kills him, or at least puts him away for a long time. What’s our excuse?
I ALSO GOT A BIG CHARGE out of the candidates for the Mendocino Community College Board description of the college faculty as “superb.” A number of years ago I enrolled in a night class at the alleged college. The class was held under the auspices of what is called “liberal arts.” I wanted to see what kind of school it was, not that it’s fair to judge from a single experience, but the teacher was a full-time member of the faculty. Not only was the guy a terribly boring instructor, he didn’t have a firm grasp of the subject matter. An old geezer in the class, very alert and articulate, asked him several questions about the matter at hand. That instructor was unable to answer. I’ve talked to a number of people who have had similar experiences at Mendocino “College.” Yet every single candidate for college trustee referred to the faculty as “excellent” and “superb” as if the place were staffed by Oxford dons.
ALSO, YOU MIGHT be interested to know, that a hardcore of the faculty over there belong to the same church, the Church of Burger King, right down there by the Perkins Street off ramp of Highway 101. The congregation of Burger-church also includes at least one County department head and a number of prominent Ukiah Republicans which may explain the daffiness of not only the “college,” but Ukiah generally. Membership in the Church of Burger King should be ipso facto evidence of faulty academic training and automatically preclude employment on any college campus in America. Santa Rosa Junior College, on the other hand, on the other hand, has a number of teachers who have national reputations in their fields, people who would not embarrass themselves on any campus. The faculty of Mendocino College is very much like the town of Ukiah, terminally mediocre. There was not one candidate for trustee of the college who would recognize “excellence” if excellence walked up and kicked him in the butt. The word “excellence” was invoked nearly as often as the word “superb” in relation to Mendocino College.
I HOPE YOU GOT AS BIG a kick of Bobby “Controlled Burn” Beacon’s letter to the editor appearing in today’s paper as I did, especially Bobby’s description of “real newspapers” as those whose purpose it is to make money. He’s right, of course, that it is the purpose of the American newspaper which is why they are so spineless and boring as they have become little more than flack sheets for local chambers of commerce; flack sheets for people like Santa Rosa’s Hugh Coddingsqualor and other free enterprisers who have made this country what it is today; a polluted, noisy, vulgar, violent, drug and alcohol-soaked monstrosity that devours its own children along with the resources of much of the rest of this world. The deterioration of the country over the past thirty years should make any real American weep.
BEACON IS ALSO WRONG about the Redwood Empire Fair in Ukiah which has about as much down home country charm as a Montgomery Ward’s parking lot sale. Modeling Boonville’s fair after Ukiah’s would destroy it.
MIKE SHAPIRO CALLED ME the other day to tell me that the sign advertising his real estate business, mounted just south of Boonville, had been vandalized. Mike suggested I editorialize against this kind of vandalism. I like Mike. We’ve been friends for many years. I’m sorry it was his sign that was trashed, but I can’t honestly say I am outraged because I regard roadside signs as blights on the landscape. The number of signs at both approaches to Philo, for instance, is ridiculous. It’s almost as it they were put there by some practical joker since you have to be a speed reader to absorb the messages hurled at you six times in the space of a hundred feet or so. I honestly have to say that the persons actively removing roadside signs seem to me engaged in an entirely commendable “crime.”
FOR THOSE DESPAIRING of local schools, your vote for me was the best revenge.
Be First to Comment