Saturday, May 30, 2020

I'm Not Holding My Breath Waiting For Milton Hunter to Grow Up.


I got a call today about Milt Hunter's latest blog post.  Since Milt apparently likes to quote popular lyrics, I'll quote some: "he's ba-ack."  This time, Milt is going on, for some unexplained reason, about Roxy Ross.  And here's the thing about which Milt appears to be whining just now.  He sort of thinks Roxy is picking on poor David Hernandez, who Milt apparently thinks can't defend himself, and he thinks Rox is vying for some sort of imaginary dominance over the Village.  As an aside, it appears Milt also disqualifies Commission meetings, if he doesn't think there are enough viewers.  (The fact is, Commission meetings are completely legitimate, and essential, even if there are no viewers, "virtually" or in person).  But this is what appears to be on the seemingly otherwise idle mind of Milt Hunter right now.  You can follow Milt's tragic nonsense at www.thebiscayneparker.blogspot.com.  Not that I'm suggesting you waste your time (cartoons on TV, or endless hours of stuff on youtube, are much better, but you do have options), but just if you want to follow along.

Milt, get a girlfriend.  Or a boyfriend.  Or any friend.  Or a pet.  You're losing it big time, boy.  Funny enough, Milt even ends his pathetic screed by commiserating that he knows "that all of our nerves are a bit frazzled."  "A bit," Milt?  And keep in mind that "all" of us includes you.

But here's what appears to be Milt's sort of major point.  This is his thrust.  This is where he seems to think he's going with this.  He says Commissioner Roxy Ross, who is one of the INTERIM manager's five direct employers, is too involved with telling the INTERIM manager what she thinks is best for the Village (the Village: that's her constituency), and he thinks she threatened the INTERIM manager by saying that if he continued to use his opportunity to address Village problems (which, as I've discussed before, he is not adequately doing) to try to promote himself as a candidate for the PERMANENT  manager position, which is not the position he occupies, then she would make openly clear what are his deficiencies.  Which she would most likely do anyway, if David applied for the position of PERMANENT manager, since that might be her job, unless he succeeds, with the propping up of Ginny O'Halpin, Dan Samaria, and Will Tudor, in delaying this charade until after Roxy is no longer a Commissioner.  And if we're lucky enough "not to have [Will Tudor] to kick around any more," to quote or paraphrase Richard Nixon, and if we instead have an actually functional Commission, then maybe Rox won't have to say a word.  David isn't subtle.

Speaking of which, one of Milt's many specific criticisms of Rox is that the episode of the David Hernandez Show, Starring David Hernandez, masquerading as a PSA, about which Rox was complaining, lasted five minutes and thirty-seven seconds, out of which David only promoted himself for 22 seconds.  This proves to Milt that the PSA wasn't really David's self-advertisement.  Imagine some other advertisement, for some product, and it lasts for 5:37, but the product is only named or shown by name for 22 seconds.  Would you fail to get the point?  Me, neither.

Frankly, I don't know that anyone knows what Milt's real agenda is.  It's very possible Milt doesn't know.  Here's one guess I would make.  Milt does nothing at all for the Village.  He never has.  In the past, when I have suggested that he run for office -- since he seems to have such compelling ideas about what would be best for the Village -- he has declined.  Unflinchingly.  He sits by himself in his house, cranking out nonsense on his computer, and when he gets things wrong -- sometimes horribly wrong -- he refuses to let people correct him.  Roxy Ross, on the other hand, has been an unbelievable representative of this Village.  She is the finest elected official I have ever known of or heard of.  She is smart, incredibly well-organized, rarely or never gets anything wrong, is level-headed, expends endless energy on behalf of any task she undertakes (most certainly including the Village!), and is humblingly generous.  So one thing that occurs to me is that Milt is (rightfully) embarrassed by his comparative inadequacy or inferiority, and he's frankly jealous.  And he wants to settle his feelings of inadequacy, inferiority (both well-deserved) and jealousy at Roxy's expense.  If that's not the explanation for poor Milt Hunter, then maybe it's something else.


By the way, Milt makes a logical error in his post.  He says that Roxy is now a Commissioner, with a term ending in November, because she ran "unopposed."  She was not at all unopposed.  She was opposed by every qualified Biscayne Park resident.  And every one of us forfeited, either because we knew she would make a better Commissioner than we would, or because we knew we couldn't beat her at the polls.  That includes Milt, me, and everyone else.  And we were all right.




7 comments:

  1. I meant to say one other thing about the title of this post. I want to reveal, in "full disclosure," that when I was in elementary school, toward the end of my time there, I was on the Safety Patrol. I had one of those white heavy fabric sashes, and I had my own badge. When Milt signs his posts "Standing Watch," I always think back to my experience being on the school Safety Patrol, and how proud and authoritative I felt, helping other kids cross the street safely.

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  2. I just rethought this post, and it occurred to me I alluded to one of the rare things I would say in retropspect Roxy got wrong. And the conclusion that she got it wrong relies critically on a retrospective view. It almost never happens, but maybe once or twice, it has. It was one day back in February of this year, Rox was back on the Commission for her first meeting of her new partial term, and we were suddenly desperate for a warm body who would be our emergency replacement for Krishan Manners. And Rox agreed, without what would be normal adequate vetting, to elevate David Hernandez. David was already the head of something in the Village, and we were sweating bullets, and we tapped him. In the past, it was usually the Village clerk, who was then Maria Camara, and on one occasion, it was the then outsider, Krishan Manners. But Krishan was a Tracy Truppman project, and we might have realized this couldn't be going anywhere good. Which it didn't. This time, it was David. And always, UNTIL NOW, the first order of business, even for the INTERIM manager, was to find a permanent replacement. We always knew we really needed appropriate qualifications, and more careful vetting. But not this time. That's not what ended up happening.

    So we can count that technically as a Roxy Ross mistake. Although it wouldn't have been a mistake if everything that came after it happened normally. And Roxy can't have known in advance that what happened would happen. I guess that makes it a toss-up as to whether or not Roxy made a mistake. David didn't make a mistake, because he's taken with himself. Ginny, Dan, and Will didn't make a mistake, because they're incompetent and lazy. They couldn't do better, because they're not capable of doing better.

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    1. Milt is irrelevant? Rox is irrelevant? I'm irrelevant, or this post is? Or did you mean you felt irrelevant, because I didn't mention you? There was no need for me to do that, considering what this post was about. And you're powerless the same way Rox is powerless. All you can do is be right, which you are, and which earns you getting outvoted. But if it makes you feel better, you either did or didn't make the same mistake Rox either made or didn't make. You agreed to David when we were desperate, and Ginny revealed she had already secured his agreement to step in/up, too. Normally, it doesn't matter who's the interim of anything, because we immediately set ourselves the task of a getting a proper replacement. You had no more reason than did Rox to know what would happen after David assumed his perch. Is David kind of a cocky guy, and we should have waited an extra half hour to discuss this, before we breathed a sigh of relief, and handed him the keys? Yeah, maybe we should have. Maybe we (you and Rox) should have asked more questions about what conversation Ginny had with David, exactly, and how she chose him as the person with whom to have it. But as I said, what happened was not normal. It's not what happens around here. I don't think any of us predicted this, unless Ginny did, based on her conversation with David, and with whoever suggested him, and her perhaps knowing her own limitations and inclination toward inertia.

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  4. Rox is a commissioner, which makes her very relevant. I'm a commissioner, which makes me very relevant. Fred's a blogger who allows open comments on "his" public blog, so the author and the blog are very relevant. So, check those folks off the list and whatever "bad actor" is left is irrelevant.

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    1. Milt might be the most "relevant" of all. You and Rox are not fully relevant, because you just get outvoted. I'm not relevant, because it doesn't matter what I say. But if Milt is pulling Ginny's strings, which appears most likely, and we're not looking for a manager in the proper way, because Milt doesn't want to, then Milt is running the Village. That makes him very relevant, doesn't it? Dan doesn't know what to do and has stopped asking the right people for advice, and Will couldn't care less. So whoever controls Ginny controls the whole Village. As best I understand, that person is Milt Hunter, who gets all of the authority, and winds up taking none of the responsibility.

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  5. Fred think back over the years that you/we've known Milt. All the authority and none of the responsibility is exactly the way he likes it. Took him a while but now he found his person. Actually persons as from what I've heard Dan is part of this too.

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