Jim O'Bryan wrote:Valerie took me to task, for not reporting everything . . .
. . . So, as I have become Lakewood's favorite pinata let's string me up, question me, and see, was I playing games? being coy? Dancing around suspicion? Think I was somehow better than anyone? I have been accused of so many things. So this will be a great learning experience, and see who dropped the ball and when?
Jim, though many people do understand that there are often reasons to hold back details of a story, different for different situations, and sometimes these reasons are very practical, righteous, sensitive, moral, etc., the fact is that Betsy started this thread as a recap of the School Board meeting, stating in only a portion of it that there was a strong request by a School Board member to move the ABLE program because of some sort of incident. Your immediate follow up post sort of zeroed in on that aspect and suggested that the incident was indeed serious enough that not only might it be MOVED, but that there was "some talk behind the scenes to rethink the entire program" and/or of "taking the program apart". Sounded very serious, drastic, ominous, etc.
So, I thought, I'll bite. I felt that I'd missed something, and desiring to take part in a constructive conversation, I wanted to know what it was I'd missed. I don't think I (or Valerie or anyone) was attacking you personally so much as wondering why someone who apparently knew wouldn't say.
I eventually understood that you couldn't say, or strongly felt it best not to. That's fine! But no one came to you out of the box and said Jim tell us, because it's your job, until you made such serious mention of the drastic consequences ("rethink the entire program" and "take the program apart"). Can you blame people for saying, whoa, hold up, before I can get into the wisdom of Lakewood's courting of a population needing social services beyond a healthy degree, uh just what did happen?
I'm not asking now, but I'm telling you that you covered yourself in honey and walked into an ant hill. That doesn't make you bad in any way, but neither does it make those who nibbled or bit hostile or judgemental towards you personally. I think it's just the way the conversation rolled out, and it wasn't the way you'd hoped. I never thought you were bad, though I did say "coy", and I retract that, because I no longer think that's correct. (But it did seem so at the time, honest.)
I just heard the best joke I've ever heard. . . it had me rolling on the floor. What was it? I'd really like us to talk about humor, and its history, and how great jokes affects us. Trust me, though, it was really funny, nominated for big awards . . . That's how it seemed at first, in a way. And that's why some of us were like WTF?
(Maybe it was one of those jokes that even in translation makes you fall out of trees and die, and if the Nazi's get wind of it they can use it in the war against us. But many don't know Monty Python, and now have no idea what I'm talking about, or what I'm getting at . . . You know? I'm sorry if you felt persecuted though.)