Reading some comments about Myron Felgewater\u2019s reign of terror brought a smile to my face, even as I recalled some of the more rancid moments of my tenure under his boot. I\u2019ve heard it said that comedy is just tragedy plus time, and that\u2019s exactly how I feel about the Felgewater years.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one other moment, though, that deserves special consideration, especially during this wacky political season. <\/p>\n
It was when Myron Felgewater ran for mayor. <\/p>\n
As background, you need to understand that Myron Felgewater would ask questions to which he already knew the answer, or at least he thought he knew the answer. The purpose of his requests for advice was to seek reinforcement for what he had already decided. If you gave that reinforcement, you were a genius. If you in any way disagreed, you were an imbecile. This was especially true if you were a competent professional in Felgewater\u2019s industry, an industry Felgewater prided himself on knowing nothing about.<\/p>\n
I spent a good deal of time cringing as Felgewater would brazenly unveil his incompetence in meetings with competent professionals. He\u2019d do this in every setting imaginable. Favorite phrases were \u201cIt\u2019s not rocket science,\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s a no-brainer.\u201d (With Myron, everything was, by definition, a no-brainer.) For example, he hated doctors, because, according to Myron, none of them knew anything. To him, the only thing that was rocket science was, well, rocket science, and even there, he thought he probably understood it better than those egghead science geeks did. <\/p>\n
So at some point, Myron decides that it\u2019s time for him to spread his wings and inflict himself on the community at large, and he files for office to run for mayor of the small, bedroom community in which he lived. So, knowing I have a political background, he, for some unfathomable reason, comes into my office to seek my advice. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how it all unfolded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m running for mayor!\u201d he said breathlessly. <\/p>\n
\u201cCongratulations,\u201d I said. \u201cI hope you win.\u201d I meant it, too. If he had won, we might finally have been rid of him. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo what do I do?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
I paused for a moment before asking, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean what am I supposed to do to run for mayor?\u201d<\/p>\n
I blinked a few times and said \u201cWell, get out and meet the voters!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d he asked. \u201cLike, door-to-door?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s a small enough town that you could probably shake every voter\u2019s hand before Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople hate that in this town,\u201d he insisted. He started to get very hot under the collar very quickly. \u201cNobody wants to be bothered in their home. In fact, they\u2019d appreciate a candidate who was considerate enough to leave them alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, Solomon Burke is knocking doors,\u201d I countered. \u201cHe\u2019s out there running hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, and he\u2019s turning everyone off. I\u2019m not going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUhhhh, okay,\u201d I said. He\u2019d made up his mind, so I didn\u2019t press it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about lawn signs?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about them?\u201d I said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSolomon Burke has, like, a million of them out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, he does,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to work pretty hard to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m not going to do lawn signs,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re ugly. They clutter up everything. And they cost too much money, which my wife won\u2019t allow me to spend.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to do any?\u201d I asked incredulously. <\/p>\n
\u201cNope. I\u2019ve put up some flyers at Albertsons instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that he had. On the community billboard. Cheap, Xeroxed copies of a self-made \u201cMyron Felgewater for Mayor\u201d logo. Right next to the ads for one free guitar lesson and the \u201cHave you seen this dog?\u201d flyers. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo,\u201d I summarized, \u201cyou\u2019re not going to knock doors, and you\u2019re not doing lawn signs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I said, gathering up the courage to ask a transparently obvious question, \u201chow do you intend to let people know you\u2019re running for mayor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic forums,\u201d he said, looking at me like I was too dumb to see the genius of his non-campaign. \u201cI do great at the public forums. But the ones we\u2019ve had so far have been so podunk and stupid. They\u2019re a real waste of time. At the last one, all the guy wanted to know was \u2018why are you running for mayor?\u2019 He kept asking that over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what\u2019s the problem?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have an answer for him,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a stupid question.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course it is!\u201d he snapped. \u201cThis is a tiny, backwater, stupid little town! Why would anyone want to be mayor?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUmmm,\u201d I said, buying time to, once again, cite the bone-chillingly obvious without mocking him overtly. Then I said, \u201cYou and I probably agree there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d he said, feeling reinforced. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference, of course\u2026\u201d – and those of you with brains can see where I was going with this \u2013 \u201c\u2026is that you are, in fact, running for mayor, and I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo?\u201d<\/p>\n
Seriously. He still didn\u2019t get it. I had to actually ask the question. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if you think this is a stupid town and that the mayor\u2019s office is worthless, why ARE you running for mayor?\u201d<\/p>\n
It took awhile for me to convince him, at least for the sake of argument, that it was a question worth answering. As we talked in circles, it came out that the reason he was running was he was being charitable, and that the yokels who infested this beknighted town might benefit from the majesty of a Felgewater\u2019s wisdom. He fully expected to coast to victory on the basis of his name alone. <\/p>\n
Eventually, he put about five or six real lawn signs, moaning about how expensive they were and belittling Solomon Burke for being foolish enough to think they mattered. <\/p>\n
In the end, they didn\u2019t matter. There were three candidates in the race. The top two would face each other in a primary, and Myron consoled himself with an unwavering assurance that he could at least beat the other, non-Solomon Burke guy, because \u201cnobody knew who he was.\u201d Turns out about 24% of the town knew he was, because that\u2019s who voted for him. Whereas Solomon Burke won handily, with well over 70% of the vote. The number two guy opted out of a primary and backed Burke. <\/p>\n
And Myron?<\/p>\n
Admittedly, he did better than I thought he would. He polled 137 total votes, which, coincidentally, was about the number of Felgewaters who lived in the town. (There were probably more, but I doubt Myron even won a majority of his immediate circle of friends.)<\/p>\n
In his post-mortems, he insisted that he\u2019d only run so that Burke wouldn\u2019t be \u201ccoronated,\u201d because \u201ceveryone knew he was going to win, anyway.\u201d This despite the fact that Burke had relentlessly annoyed the town\u2019s citizens by knocking on their doors and putting up lawn sign clutter. He also complained about the conspiracies that kept him from learning about the \u201cgood\u201d public forums to which he wasn\u2019t invited. (The newspaper was in on that one.) Actually, I think he probably wasn\u2019t invited to several events, but that was because he and I were the only two people, other than his stingy wife, who knew he was running for mayor. <\/p>\n
I shouldn\u2019t gloat. I ran for office about five years later and lost. But I came in third out of five, and I lost by a 6-vote margin and gathered more votes than the bottom two candidates combined. (That sounds impressive, but there were only about 200 total votes cast, as I lost in a political convention among county delegates. So I lost by about 3%.) But throughout the whole campaign, I kept thinking about Myron Felgewater. I could survive losing, but not Felgewaterian humiliation. <\/p>\n
In the end, I shouldn\u2019t have worried. Nobody who runs for office will ever have to be that badly embarrassed, as long as they do two things:<\/p>\n
1) Have a reason for running, and
2) Actually campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Readingsome comments about Myron Felgewater\u2019s reign of terror brought a smile to my face, even as I recalled some of the more rancid moments of my tenure under his boot. I\u2019ve heard it said that comedy is just tragedy plus time, and that\u2019s exactly how I feel about the Felgewater years. There\u2019s one other moment, ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4907,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/4907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}