Politics as usual February 15, 2013
Attaining power is difficult, and keeping it, as much a
struggle, needs money to build it.
This is the reason the Virgin Mayor needed to do his
fundraiser and why those around him cling to his nearly kingly robes.
But it was a surprise that the owner of the venue allowed RR
to attend since RR once tried to shake him down for protection money when he
was still a cop, and what eventually drew the attention of the feds to him,
setting the stage for his big lie, one he would tell over and over again, how
he worked undercover to help bring down the police chief, when all he really
did was turn in his own friends in the department.
Although I was also invited to the swank affair, I chose not
to for obvious reasons – she would be there, decked out, an amazingly beautiful
distraction I did not need to engage at this moment in time, just when it’s
taken so many months to recover from her.
Ironically, I passed the doors to the place on my way to a
rare assignment just up the road from it, tempted to pause, but wiser for not
doing so.
The same logic applied for this as for the magazine party so
many months ago. That’s her turf, not mine, and she knows how to blossom in it,
where I would shrivel up in the corner, embarrassed at my attraction, and
scared to death that she might turn the dogs out on me.
She’s amazing eye candy for the mayor’s supporters, but she’d
dangerous for me.
Besides, as much as I admire the Virgin Mayor, I disliked
the corrupt crowd around him, and wonder how she puts up with them since essentially
I’ve concluded she is not corrupt, but if she’s still tied to RR, then she’s
being forced to follow the money the way RR is, and events like this only make it
all so obvious.
Politics is an organized sport – but a sport in which
everybody cheats, back stabs, and does everything and anything to get the drop
on everybody else.
While the Virgin Mayor has enough money to fund his own
campaign, he can’t rely on buying votes. He can’t give every resident of his town
a job. He needs to build a network of people who have followers he can count on
to bear the weight of the campaign, to show that he’s really about real people
and not just political hacks. People hold fundraisers to show that they still
have popular appeal.
Yet I was puzzled when I talked to him Wednesday and learned
he was selling tickets at $1,000 ahead, far out of reach of ordinary people.
He’s playing to the big shots, which may explain why she
said she needed to get plastered before she went, she’s that nervous being
around important people, still she also said she intended to dress to impress –
I can only imagine.
Again, this recalls her poem about settling for a lesser
role. But that’s not her style. She is the kind of people who needs to be (and
possibly should be) important, and yet oddly enough, she is a wallflower who has
to work at it, developing routines that allow her to get ahead. As her poem about
the old woman on the cruise ship alluded to, she used to hate the people who
got to cut in front of the line, and yet eventually became one.
She is beautiful enough, talented enough and savvy enough to
make this work, when the rest of us envy her from the back of the line – one more
reason for me not to go to the fundraiser to see her in her glory, trying to
advance her agenda.
Who knows how disappointed she might feel in a room full of
the usual suspects, some of whom let her hang around, but offer her not avenue
for advancement, the truly big shots too remote to access at such an event,
most of whom are boring as hell, wealthy vendors looking for contracts etc.
By bringing her camera, she got to play the role of official
photographer, and did me a service when she posted their photos, allowing me to
put a face to the roque’s gallery, giving me a road map of who is who behind
the scenes – a lot of big-time players on a small-town stage.
Politics is the wrong venue for someone like her and with
her talents. She needs to meet people in the arts, people who can recognize her
abilities and offer her a way to get her foot inside the door, a different kind
of power elite, not the stuffy old shirts of politics, but the more alluring
world of creativity.
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