Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:58, and sunset is 6:26, for 11 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 12.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Run for Trey 5K Fun Run takes place today (registration open at 8 AM, race at 10 AM, at Treyton’s Field of Dreams, 504 W Starin Road in Whitewater.
On this day in 2010, Instagram, a mainstream photo-sharing application, launches.
Consider three vignettes on humor: a prank, a response to it, and a contemporary rendition of puns. These vignettes are respectively clever, dull, and clever.
The Prank: Students have for generations strewn toilet paper into trees. The prank is part of Americana. It’s time-honored and harmless. One such TP mission took place recently on the grounds of Whitewater High School.
Clever, and in keeping with American culture.
The Response: Whitewater’s high-school principal and athletic director rode around on a golf cart, with a mechanical claw, picking up pieces of toilet paper, and later posing for photographs.
There’s a backstory to the recent Whitewater incident. This same principal, Brent Mansky, only a year ago was accused in his hometown of Williams Bay of pursuing and tacking a teenager for trying to place toilet paper on Mansky’s house1.
Whitewater Principal Mansky, after the recent Whitewater High toilet papering, gave a statement to the Banner, a publication of the Whitewater Community Foundation:
Principal Brent Mansky and Athletic Director Justin Crandall displayed no irritation while cruising the campus in a golf cart to retrieve paper from the lawn on Friday afternoon. “They have to learn to do it better,” Mansky told The Banner. Noting how the perpetrators seemed to hit each tree only once, he continued, “Next year we’re going to make it into a competition between the classes; each grade will be assigned a section. They’ll have to clean up what’s on the lawn by Friday evening.”
Consider that statement, in light of Mansky’s past overwrought and under-thought conduct in Williams Bay. His present remarks are humorless and, truly, backwards. Humor, if any at all, after his past conduct should have been contrite and self-effacing (well, I had that coming, etc.) Instead, Manksy’s reply brittlely repeats part of his past mistake: a false projection of strength (“they have to learn to do it better”) like the false strength of turning off his yard camera while waiting for minor children to come into his yard.
His humor’s backwards because his perspective is backwards.
The Banner‘s subject line, “WHS Principal Takes Homecoming TP in Stride: “They have to learn how to do it better” is obtuse. That’s not taking this harmless prank in stride. If Mansky took it in stride, he wouldn’t be projecting demands for more onto his pranksters. He would be self-deprecating. More likely: this is an embarrassed man who found a soft-touch staff member at the Banner to salve his embarrassment.
Here’s a saying that describes this local effort: can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. It’s a dull and humorless effort.
A Contemporary Rendition of Puns. I’ll offer a palate cleanser by way of a truly humorous rendition of old-school puns2. I’m not much for puns, yet listen to a talented Instagrammer, contemporary in style and delivery, make something old vibrant again:
Now that’s clever3: someone of a new generation (about the age of my daughter-in-law, I’d guess), through fashion and manner, transforms the old into the new (and, I’d say, even better than before).
Delightful.
- Rachael Perry of WKOW reported after the incident that Bodycam video released after Whitewater principal accused of tackling teen: “”When they came up through my property they started chucking the f toilet paper in my yard,” Mansky said. “I got one kid,” he told the officer. The officer asked what Mansky meant by that, and he replied “I got his hoodie from him.” Mansky later admits to the officer that he watched as the teens were TP-ing area houses and waited for them to approach his. He said he ran after them and tackled one to the ground. That’s when he explained he got the sweatshirt from the teen. The officer asked Mansky if his cameras caught the teens on video. He replied, “I turned them off so they wouldn’t get activated when those little d*** heads came rolling through”….One teen told officers Mansky tackled him to the ground. “He gets me into the headlock, and then I slip again,” the teen said. He claims Mansky stood over him before grabbing him by the neck. “He picked me up from my neck and started strangling me,” he said.” ↩︎
- Serendipity and Synchronicity are with me: Although it’s not my normal fare of cat & nature accounts, the Instragram algorithm recommended this account to me only a few days ago. ↩︎
- The account’s tagline is invitingly self-aware: “If you don’t roll your eyes, what are we even doing here?” ↩︎
Good take on the school district. Many poeple were upset about how the last TP episode with Mansky was handled.It’s a bad joke that someone wants to say “see he’s not melting down again!” The TP is not the problem. This unaccountable principal is the problem.
Let’s all feel really good that principal Man-Baby is learning how to take things in stride.
Better late than never huh?
absolutely no way this clown deserves a pass.
it is stoogery by they guy who took these pictures of him sitting with a sh*t eating grin for the camera.
Thank you for this perspective!!! Why does the Banner think we are impressionable children? The incident last year was disqualifying to many many parents. I guess the district thinks a Banner story is more important than our own views as parents and a police investigation in Williams Bay. Sorry not sorry to Lynne, Brent, and Caroline but we are not buying your gaslighting over an actual incident last year deserved real action from the district.
Good evening.
Better schools will not come from boosterism or toxic positivity, with the impulse of those perspectives to ignore or revise history for the sake of a supposed better present & future. Whitewater cannot pretend its way to improvement.
The proper standard, especially considering last year’s incident, requires much more than what’s offered in a dull post from a community foundation.
‘All better now’ is more than a photograph, more than an unpersuasive statement.
It’s creepy to read their attempt to erase his lack of self control with a few photos.They knew where to go to get someone to help them make a joke out of it.Congratulations to last year’s anger management poster boy.