Here's something you might be interested in.
“[T]he people are a master who must be indulged to the utmost possible limits.” -- Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Reading the lead story in the Reader some weeks ago reminded me of something I used to tell a good friend, a joke based on another joke. Larry Miller used to say that “if women had any idea, just for a second, how we look at them, they would never stop slapping us.” I told my friend that if I ever knew everything that went on in this City I would never stop throwing up. I told him this joke after he told me some particularly horrible bit of information he’d learned about something the City had done. Anyway, he laughed.
It happens that this friend of mine did know, or thought he knew, having been invited into the top floor sanctums, the conference rooms, the cramped offices, the back hallways, a lot about what was going on in the City. Running the City is an interesting business, based partly on information and analysis, partly structural, part horse-trading, part money, part influence, mostly politics. The City, via its political leaders, bows to the people, to its benefit and detriment. Things run smoothly, or bumpily, along. It isn’t as mysterious as they may want to make it seem to certain journalistic nosey parkers. It isn’t as nice and clean as they may want to make it seem to their constituents.
Cada cabeza es un mundo, goes the old Mexican saying. Each head is a world. No one can know everything that goes on in a government, in a city, in a town, in a village, in a hamlet, in a single head, in one heart. We can only observe workings. From that we understand how things works. From that we glean how to make things work. When the moment is right, we can speak into an ear.
The City moves.
“[T]he people are a master who must be indulged to the utmost possible limits.” -- Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Reading the lead story in the Reader some weeks ago reminded me of something I used to tell a good friend, a joke based on another joke. Larry Miller used to say that “if women had any idea, just for a second, how we look at them, they would never stop slapping us.” I told my friend that if I ever knew everything that went on in this City I would never stop throwing up. I told him this joke after he told me some particularly horrible bit of information he’d learned about something the City had done. Anyway, he laughed.
It happens that this friend of mine did know, or thought he knew, having been invited into the top floor sanctums, the conference rooms, the cramped offices, the back hallways, a lot about what was going on in the City. Running the City is an interesting business, based partly on information and analysis, partly structural, part horse-trading, part money, part influence, mostly politics. The City, via its political leaders, bows to the people, to its benefit and detriment. Things run smoothly, or bumpily, along. It isn’t as mysterious as they may want to make it seem to certain journalistic nosey parkers. It isn’t as nice and clean as they may want to make it seem to their constituents.
Cada cabeza es un mundo, goes the old Mexican saying. Each head is a world. No one can know everything that goes on in a government, in a city, in a town, in a village, in a hamlet, in a single head, in one heart. We can only observe workings. From that we understand how things works. From that we glean how to make things work. When the moment is right, we can speak into an ear.
The City moves.