Here are a few of the empty and inapplicable phrases that politicians in Whitewater often use to describe and justify their actions. They’ve used far more expressions than these, but we can consider this post the first in an occasional series.
Bring solutions, not problems. I’ve teased about this before, yet this expression is as profound as it was the day I first saw it in an email. Not quite as good as “There’s no I in TEAM,” or “If you get lemons, make lemonade,” but it’s still pretty good.
I could kick myself when I think that I was born without insight this piercing.
Let’s not micromanage the department. I’ve teased about this before, too. Let’s be clear — One cannot micromanage our police department unless one first manages it.
Death knell. I’ve heard the expression more than once, concerning the encroachment of student housing into residential neighborhoods.
What, though, does the tune – the actual knell, so to speak – sound like? Is it low and sonorous, or high-pitched and piercing?
If one hears the death knell, it’s presumably a bad thing. That might be true for most of us, but what about the hard-of-hearing? Are they affected? If one does not hear a death knell, does it truly transform the residential mix of a neighborhood? If one cannot hear it, then perhaps it makes no demographic sound.
If so, then a group of homeowners with bad hearing would have much better chance of preserving their neighborhood from the depredations of student renters.
Let’s not open the flood gates to resolutions. Should I conclude that we’ve yet to reach a point of too much discussion on some matters – as though it has not happened, but might?
The flood gates were long ago opened to the hopelessly trivial, in our public meetings. If matters of American constitutional law are now too much for you, you have only yourself to blame. Quibble less on small matters, and find the energy for large ones.
Floodgates? Having tolerated the descent of the city into a Waterworld of silly discussion, there’s no longstanding incumbent in the city who should be complaining now.
If one were to repeat these four expressions elsewhere, they’d merely be trite.
Say the same words against the backdrop of Whitewater politics, and each one is low comedy. Add a few tigers jumping though flaming hoops, or a chimp riding a tricycle, and the city would have a suitable Vegas act.