STFU, Please: Dade B of E Redefines Message (Shaddup!) Via $400,000 Focus Groups

The Dade County Board of Education was distressed that taxpayers felt it wasn’t hearing their voices.  Thus it hired an Atlanta PR firm to reshape and refine its message (STFU!) to something that cost a bit more.

STFU, Please:  Dade B of E Redefines Message (Shaddup!) Via $400,000 Focus Groups

By Robin Ford Wallace

            “What qualities are important in a prospective superintendent of schools for Dade County?” asked the moderator, Brighton Perky of Perky PR and Market Research. 

            “Well, I believe he – or she, of course – should be an able administrator, but also a reasonably well-educated person,” one middle-aged woman spoke up timidly.  “Of course we know it’s the superintendent’s job to manage the system efficiently, but this time, in choosing a leader, we should remember that the main reason for schools is learning. Imparting knowledge --"  

            “Ma’am?” interrupted Perky.  “I wasn’t talking to you.  I was just reading from the questionnaire."

            “But …”
            “You can sit down now.”   

            It was Monday evening, and a group of parents, teachers and community leaders had gathered at the Dade County Board of Education offices on Tradition Lane.  Taxpayers had expressed frustration at the botched rollout of an online survey on the school system’s website that appeared to solicit their input on choosing a new superintendent, but which many had found impossible to open until March 20, when an online message informed them it had closed on March 19. 

The survey actually did time out on March 21, by which time a pack of ravening would-be input-givers had encircled the B of E offices, snouts raised heavenward and fangs dripping, opining brokenly at the moon.

            Furthermore, even when taxpayers were able to access the survey, many had found registration requirements intrusive.  Rather than offering an opportunity for anonymous input, it required a participant’s name, email address and position in the community.  “May we contact your present employer?” it asked.  And:  “Are you the parent of a child in the system we may harass mercilessly in retribution until graduation or dropout date?  Please supply name, grade and known allergies. Bwah-hah.”

“It was a PR nightmare,” Brighton Perky told The Turnip during a lull in Monday’s focus group session.  “So the great minds on the school board applied their tried and true formula:  Shell out obscene amounts of taxpayer money to an Atlanta contractor.  In turn, the contractor agrees to (a) make the problem go away, (b) testify to state authorities that it never existed to begin with, or (c) unilaterally, and for no apparent reason, redraw the county voting districts into aesthetically pleasing, color-coded territories that make little geographical sense but will make voters laugh until they vomit.  In our case, we thought we’d start out with these focus groups and see how much more we can milk – er, where we should go from there.”

The B of E is paying Brighton Perky & Crew $400,000 to conduct these focus group sessions, Perky told The Turnip as participants furrowed their brows over questionnaires they had been asked to fill out.

“A new superintendent should be (a) handsome, (b) smart, (c) honest, (d) a good kisser,” read one sample question.  “Check all that apply.”

“It’s a quiz we copied from a women’s magazine,” confessed Perky.  “ ‘Looking For Mr. Right,’ it’s called.  We could have gotten a new questionnaire designed just for this purpose, but why pay extra?  This is Dade County.  Nobody cares about the writing.”

“Anyway,” he continued.  “The Board of Education is springing for the focus sessions because it’s distressed that the taxpayers feel their voices are not being heard.  That notion has recurred like herpes ever since three packed public hearings in July 2011, when board members sat so still people speculated they had died the night before.  The one exception was the chairwoman, who came out of her trance long enough to read written rules forbidding the board to respond to the public in any way, including blinks, farts or throat clearings.

“And sure enough, the board didn’t twitch an eyelash,” Perky went on.  “Quite a feat considering that the room was filled with teenaged girls who cried, education veterans who gave stirring speeches and angry old ladies who brandished their canes menacingly.  One audience member held a mirror to a board member’s mouth.  Another stuck board members with straight pins.  Nothing.  There was talk of a mass burial.    

“But at the end, one board member came to life long enough to explain to the local press that all budget decisions had already been finalized, and the public hearings had simply been a formality necessitated by state law when the millage rate was raised.

“Those who enjoy funerals were not disappointed, though, because the issue the public was so het up about was the B of E’s decision to murder the local public library, and the next day the then-superintendent accordingly had it whacked.”

One of the men seated at the focus group table raised his hand.  “Mr. Perky?” he said.  “What I think we need is somebody local.  Somebody who understands the Dade community and knows the Dade people.”

“Button it up, little man,” said Perky.  “Can’t you see I’m talking to The Turnip?”

“But I thought the point of a focus group was to let us talk about what we think,” the man protested.

“The purpose of a focus group,” said Perky, “is to collect 400,000 easy clams for my PR company.  You think anybody in Atlanta gives a crap what you hicks out in Hickville have in your hicky little heads?  Now sit down or I’m calling security.”

“But …”

A large, vaguely Italian-looking person, wearing trench coat, fedora and mirror shades, hulked up from the sidelines, placed a large, meatlike hand on the man’s shoulder, and leaned. 

The man sat down.  

Perky laughed.  “Gotta love these Dade County hayseeds,” he told The Turnip.  “Just because 75 cents of their property tax dollar goes to the B of E, they think they have the right to hitch their thumbs behind their overall straps and deliver opinions on how to spend it.”

“They, er, don’t?” asked The Turnip.   

“Hell no,” said Perky.  “If the school board wanted public input they wouldn’t make all major decisions behind closed doors in executive session.  Why would they have gone to the trouble and expense of running for the board unless they get the right to dole out contracts to their brother-in-law and award jobs to the football coach’s wife’s best friend?” 

He snorted.  “Anyway, they’ve got to get while the getting’s good.  Public education is on the way out.  The Georgia legislature is working hard to convince the electorate that teaching the poor to read is a commie idea to begin with.  The only reason the boys in the House put up with education at all is it’s such a golden opportunity to channel taxpayer money to their buds in the business sector.”

“But why hold the focus groups?” asked The Turnip. 

“For the same reason as the survey:  To make it look like they’re paying attention,” said Perky.  “But you think the school board really wants public scrutiny of their hiring decisions?  After some of the wingnuts and Froot Loops they’ve paid top dollar for?  It would be like you asking if those jeans make your butt look fat.”

A man at the end of the table cleared his throat.  “I think …
            Three armed goons materialized from the shadows, wrestled him to the floor and began slamming his head against the tiles.  “Shut the f—k up!” they screamed.

The Turnip retreated, pale, shaken and gazing worriedly at the reflection of its butt in the glass doors.

 In time, though, The Turnip collected itself enough to contact the board of education for input for this story.  Board Chairwoman Carolyn Bradford did not address the specific issue but made the B of E’s standard response:

She dived behind a potted fern.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

             

Just a note to announce that the newest straight-news source in Dade County is now online.  The Dade County Planet will be updated as news unfolds.  Here's a link:

http://dadeplanet.blogspot.com/]

Just Off The Truck ... Sex Week In Dade County?

Just Off The Truck….

(News Briefs From The Turnip)

March 6-13 Not To Be Declared Dade County Sex Week

At the regular March meeting of the Dade County Commission on Thursday, Executive Chairman Ted Rumley is not expected to proclaim March 6-13 Dade County Sex Week. 

Thus, festivities will probably not kick off with naked wrestling at the commission meeting itself, and the highlight of the evening is unlikely to be a special one-on-one match between District 1 incumbent Mitchell Smith and challenger Lamar Lowery, who held that post for two terms before being unseated by Smith in the 2010 Republican primary. 

Lowery has now announced he will attempt to win the district back from his usurper, but there is absolutely no reason to suspect he and Smith will grapple for supremacy on Thursday evening while coated in coconut oil but otherwise in a state of glorious and rampant nature.

Nor is there a reasonable basis to believe that the other commission members will attend the Thursday meeting in ladies’ prêt-a-porter hot off the Paris runways, and previously modeled only at a drag revue at the quarterly Methodist Men’s luncheon.

A condom Easter egg hunt in Veterans’ Park has not been scheduled for later in the week, and further festivities do not include an around-the-clock  “Do It In Dade” erotica marathon including segments entitled “Joy in the Morning,” “Afternoon Delight” and “Because the Night Was Made For Loving.”

There are no plans for an “Aphrodisiac Cooking, Dade-Style” class featuring such local faves as Come-Hither potato salad, Magic (Chicken) Fingers and I-Must-Have-You-Now CoolWhip-Jell-O Goop.  Nor will there be a symposium on the erotic potential just waiting to be unleashed in every can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.     

The county’s human resources director has not requested a slot on the agenda for a lecture on “Choosing the Right Pronoun:  Gender Sensitivity When Employees Return From France.”

And The Turnip would be very much surprised if anybody at all played naked volleyball.   

END

Who Needs TV When We Got East Ridge?

Who Needs TV When We Got East Ridge?  Municipalities Gather For Appreciation Luncheon

By Robin Ford Wallace

            City mayors and councilmen from across the Tri-state area gathered today in Chattanooga for a special “East Ridge Appreciation Luncheon,” featuring dignitaries from that Tennessee municipality as guests of honor.

            “We want the East Ridge city fathers to know how grateful the rest of us are,” said one member of the Chattanooga City Council.  “They make everybody else look like heroes.”

            “Right,” said a council colleague.  “Seems like every time one of our city cops is charged with rape, Tases a nun or beats a cripple to death, East Ridge steps right up to the plate and does something else amusing. ”

            “Takes the heat right off the rest of us,” was the chirpy rejoinder from a northwest Georgia mayor, in whose city a law enforcement officer had recently been charged with supplying his drug habit with evidence from the police evidence room. 

“Who needs us when they got East Ridge?” agreed a municipal maven from Cleveland, Tenn., whose police chief recently resigned after members of his force had their wrists slapped for on-the-clock sex with minors – they wouldn’t have done it if anybody had been sober – and whose personal extramarital trysts, cleverly staged at a storage warehouse fitted up with mattress, brandy and flowers, were captured on security video and featured on local television.  “Remember when they roughed up that fortuneteller lady?”  

He referred to media attention focused on East Ridge in 2010, when the city tried to enforce its ordinance prohibiting use of “supernatural powers” within city limits, shutting down a Tarot-reader’s fortune-telling booth at a local flea market.  The big-earringed practitioner of the Dark Arts fought back, invoking not magic but her First-Amendment rights.  The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against East Ridge and it didn’t take mystical prognostication to predict which way a federal judge called that one.

            Then there was the East Ridge city manager who hired his 19-year lawn boy for a $35,000-per-year municipal administrative position over 70 other candidates, some with master’s degrees, and who disciplined a court clerk for “mishandling” his daughter’s court case.  East Ridge eventually paid the manager $67,000 to go away rather than firing him, which council members feared could make them liable to a lawsuit – an especially troubling prospect since they had recently paid their city attorney a similar sum to take a hike of his own.   

            The attorney had been fired for overcharging the city, improperly squandering taxpayer funds.  Immediately afterward, though, the East Ridge city fathers approved a pay hike for his replacement, who pointed out that East Ridge was, after all, currently being sued by everybody and his brother George for doing one stupid thing or another.  "It's always something coming up,” the attorney was quoted at the time in the Chattanoogan.com.  “We've got 65 lawyers in our firm and 64 of them are working on East Ridge." 

            Most recently, East Ridge made headlines when the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation took up the matter of an ordinance (or ordinances) the city may (or may not) have passed regarding towing service providers.  Ordinance no. 1 seems to promise all the car towing business in East Ridge to three companies, with the caveat they must be owned by different proprietors; but ordinance no. 2 “grandfathers in” two of the three companies, which are owned by only one.

            The TBI must determine which ordinance is the one that was actually passed by East Ridge.  “But what the question boils down to,” laughed one East-Ridge watcher at the luncheon, “is whether the East Ridge gummint is embroiled in a sick, fascistic, un-American cabal with three towing companies or just the two.”

            The issue arose when another towing service operator wished for a piece of the East Ridge action.  The municipal ordinance in effect quashes any attempt at competition with the three (or possibly two) favored companies.   “It doesn’t surprise me that this happened in East Ridge,” the would-be competitor is quoted as saying in The Chattanooga Times Free Press. 

            The city leaders gathered at today’s luncheon weren’t surprised, either, but they certainly were tickled.  “Nice to have state law enforcement investigating somebody else’s town,” said the aforementioned Georgia mayor, one of whose city commissioners had been arrested in 2012 after a GBI analysis had identified saliva from a complainant’s left breast as originating from his pie hole.  “Good old East Ridge.”  

            “With the cheerful way those boys shower taxpayer funds on the unworthy,” said a county government colleague who had accompanied him to the luncheon, “who’s going to notice our board of ed just coughed up $45,000 to get rid of the schools superintendent, when we had vigilantes ready to ride him out on a rail for free, no extra charge for tar and feathers?”

            The East Ridge Appreciation luncheon was a glamorous affair at an upscale Chattanooga eatery where East Ridge dignitaries washed down the bitter pill of public censure with the milk of human kindness as supplied by their grateful colleagues from across the region.  The entrée was roast beef au jus.

            “We thought about serving them Cornish game hens,” said a luncheon organizer. “In the end we ruled out birds, though, on the principle these poor slobs eat plenty of crow already.”

Tennessee Bans Sex; Georgia and Alabama Not Far Behind; Already a Moot Point In Mississippi

Some say that Tennessee’s recent posturing against sex is simply damage control for the humiliation the state endured at the hands of Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Dist. 4).  DesJarlais’s rampageous amatory friskiness, outed in 2012, did not go unnoticed by the national press.  Nor did the Congressman’s uncanny resemblance to a certain feature of the male reproductive system.   

 Tennessee Bans Sex; Georgia, Alabama Not Far Behind; Already A Moot Point in Mississippi

by Robin Ford Wallace

The Tennessee House of Representative passed a nonbinding resolution on a 69-17 vote Monday night condemning sex.

“I support First Amendment rights,” said the resolution’s sponsor, state Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga. “But you don’t have a right to drag the Tennessee brand … through the mud.”

  Though nonbinding resolutions carry no legal weight and require no further legislative action, and though the move has been seen by some as no more than an election-year come-on to the religious conservatives that many Republican lawmakers perceive as their base, some political insiders are warning this may be the first step toward an outright ban of participatory reproduction in the Volunteer State. 

And given the militant conservatism of the rural South, some pundits say Georgia and Alabama will not be far behind.

“I gave up sex when I became a Republican,” said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.  “Probably the adage that sex was invented in 1963 is just a silly joke, but it’s also true we had a Democratic administration that year.  You can’t help connecting the dots.”

Sex has, of course, been illegal in Mississippi since 1964, when the state’s anti-miscegenation laws were made universal to comply with new federal guidelines against racial discrimination established by the Civil Rights Act. 

North- and South Carolinian Republicans are both testing the anti-sex waters with a series of local public referenda banning intercourse in certain locations or within certain degrees of kinship, and Texas advocates are selling proposed anti-sex legislation to Lone Star lawmakers as a natural extension of their war on women.

“Heterosexual sex involves close contact with females,” pointed out Herman “Tex” Smith of the anti-sex advocacy group GROSS.  “And with the other kind God only knows what you’re getting into.”

(GROSS is an acronym for God-fearing Republicans Opposed to Sex on Sundays.  Though the Texas GROSS chapter successfully pushed through criminalization of Sabbath-day sex in the state in 2012, and though its next target is sex on Wednesday, the popular Protestant Bible-study day, members chose not to change the name to GROSW on the grounds they could not agree on pronunciation, or in fact number of syllables.)

Back in Tennessee, some moderate commentators close to the legislature claim that Monday’s anti-sex resolution is not so much a real strike against biological propagation as damage control against the tarnishing the Tennessee GOP took at the hands of Congressman Scott DesJarlais (R-Dist. 4), in civilian life a physician.  Dr. DesJarlais’s affairs with patients, colleagues, drug representatives and select farm animals did not escape the attention of the national press, and nor did the shaven-head doctor’s physical resemblance to a tall, ambulatory, three-piece-suited male organ of regeneration. 

In any case, rhetoric at the Tennessee legislative session was peppered with such pejoratives as  “outrageous” and “atrocious” as lawmakers voted along party lines in condemnation of multi-party, fluid-exchanging reproduction of the species.  

“I’m raising my 17-year-old daughter in Tennessee,” said House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga. “What kind of people that are up there are doing this stuff?”

“Your parents, at least once,” riposted one Democratic lawmaker, engendering, as it were, loud boos from the right side of the aisle, and a fierce warning from McCormick to “leave my mother out of this.”

Here is an excerpt from the resolution.

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 666 

WHEREAS, the members of this body were most distressed to learn that “sex” is being conducted in Tennessee; and

WHEREAS, this news has also distressed countless clergymen and their parishioners who are extremely upset by the practice;

WHEREAS the practice of “sex” contributes to or in some cases is the single causative agent of teen pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease, marital infidelity, naughty films and the regeneration of the criminal classes; and

WHEREAS, "sex" fits nowhere within the mission of the State of Tennessee,

nor should it ever; now, therefore,

            BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, THE SENATE CONCURRING, that this Body hereby condemns the practice of “sex” within the State of Tennessee.

           

In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena was born asexually, emerging from the forehead of her father, Zeus, after he'd had a particularly bad headache. Now Tennessee hopes that "parthenogenesis," named after this event, may be the answer to its own sexual headaches.  

* * *

Tennessee Considers Parthenogenesis as Alternate Form of Perpetuating Species

By Robin Ford Wallace

The overwhelmingly Republican Tennessee House of Representatives with its HB 666 [see accompanying article] took a strong stance this week against sex.  Now Democrats are challenging that position with the same argument they made against the GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act:  that Republicans have proposed no feasible alternative.

“No one can argue with the premise that sex causes problems for people,” said one Democratic representative, speaking on condition of anonymity.  “But it also makes more people.  I’m not defending recreational sex, just the kind that results in an expanded constituency.”

The lawmaker admitted he had tried sex personally, though only in college and only with a view toward perpetuating the human race.

Now some Volunteer State thinkers say they may have found the solution to the sex problem:  Parthenogenesis.

Parthenogenesis is asexual reproduction, the development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell.  It occurs naturally within certain insects, fish and amphibians, a very few birds and, presumably, American families depicted in 1950s sitcoms, in which the ubiquitous twin bed would have made any other form of regeneration impracticable.

Now Tennessee seems poised to adopt parthenogenesis as its norm, and in what state would that be more apt?  Only Tennessee can boast a full-size replica of the Athenian Parthenon, temple of the Greek goddess Athena, for whom the process is named.

Tennessee built its Parthenon in Nashville in 1897 as part of the state’s Centennial Exposition.  Inside the majestic columned edifice is a copy of the statue of Athena, 42 feet tall, covered in gold and faithful in every detail to its original across the Atlantic.

Athena was a celibate goddess who took the thing seriously:  Peeping Toms on her watch didn’t just go blind, they got eaten by their own dogs. 

Parthenogenesis, on the other hand, was named not for Athena’s own amatory practices but refers to her birth, emerging full-grown from the forehead of her father, Zeus, after he had suffered from an unusually severe headache.

Zeus in general was a rather spectacularly uncelibate deity whose other children, from a variety of divine and earthly mothers, were fathered with the usual method and delivered via the conventional orifice.

Tennessee did not, however, build a temple to Zeus. 

* * *

Fortunately, Tennessee already has a full-size temple to the virgin goddess in Nashville.

Manson Likely Pick To Head Dade Schools

Nothing is official yet, but sources close to the Dade Board of Education say Charlie Manson looks good to be tapped for Dade's top school administrator.  Board members say Manson, who persuaded members of his youthful "Family to carry out gruesome murders in 1969, is "good with young people."                                                                                      

Manson Rumored Favorite For Dade County Schools Superintendent

By Robin Ford Wallace

With the accelerated retirement of current Dade County Schools Superintendent Shawn Tobin effective immediately, the burning question in Dade has become:  Who will the Board of Education pick next?

Nothing is official yet, but one name that cropped up again and again as The Turnip pressed county officials for speculation was:  Charles Manson.

Objections to Manson’s selection as the next leader of education in Dade seemed overwhelming, in that he is (a) 79 years old, (b) currently incarcerated and (c) an international icon of evil. 

But a source close to the school board said, who spoke on condition of anonymity, commented:  “And that makes Charlie less suitable than Mr. Tobin … how?”

Tobin announced his resignation Jan. 27 in a letter peppered with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, George Patton and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively an American president, an American general and a German philosopher whose doctrines were bedtime reading for Hitler.

Tobin had announced his departure date as May 1, but the Board of Education at a special meeting on Feb 20 invited the administrator to, as Shakespeare put it, “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once”; or as a local wit paraphrased, “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.”

During Tobin’s three years as the county’s top educator, he banned books at the high school, effectively assassinated the county library and lost the schools hundreds of thousands of dollars in income when his campaign in favor of continuing the educational one-cent sales tax culminated in the revelation he had neglected to put it on the ballot.

“But his fall from grace came about when he suggested rich people pay school taxes,” said The Turnip’s anonymous source.  “We’re forgiving in Dade County but you have to draw the line somewhere.”

The source referred to the B of E’s push, for which Tobin was the front man, to amend a piece of local legislation which exempts citizens over 65 from paying any school real estate taxes on their homes. 

The amendment would have allowed seniors to exempt the first $125,000 of home value from taxation, but blue-haired Lookout Mountain residents arrived at subsequent board meetings by the limo-load to protest that that wasn’t enough.

“If I had to pay school taxes on my Dade mansion, I wouldn’t be able to afford my other one in Bimini,” one protestor commented through his butler.

“But we do support young people in Dade,” a neighbor added.  “Not to educate the little darlings, maybe, but I personally don’t mind paying them to mow the yard and scrub the toilet.”

“We’ve used locals ever since our Mexican died,” her husband chimed in.

As for Tobin’s possible replacement, Charles Manson’s death sentence for high-profile mass murders in California in 1969 was commuted to life imprisonment when the state put a temporary kibosh on capital punishment in the early 1970s.

But sources close to the B of E insist that Dade officials are negotiating with the warden of Corocoran State Prison in the Golden State for Manson’s temporary release to attend a series of job interviews with board members.   

Why should Dade County hire a convicted California resident, whose major claim to fame was brainwashing his followers, the so-called “Manson Family,” into murdering, among others, a pregnant movie star?

“Charlie is very good with young people, and from somewhere else,” explained The Turnip’s anonymous source.  “They hired Tobin on less than that, mostly on the grounds that he talked like a Yankee.” 

Superintendent Tobin, pictured here at a book-banning session in November 2011, will be a tough act to follow, but sources say contenders include some pretty big names -- not only Manson but Kim Jong-un, who made contributions to education similar to Tobin's in his native North Korea. 

 Associate Superintendent Cherie Swader, who has been named interim superintendent, was previously a principal in the Dade system, and seems well thought-of by local teachers and administrators. 

But the Turnip’s source says that’s the kiss of death with the Dade B of E.  “Forget it, honey,” the source told the Turnip.  “They’ll recruit from the prisons before they promote from within.  Hell, they’d sent feelers out to Kim Jong-un before Mr. T had even started packing his carpetbag.”

The source elaborated that proponents of the North Korean dictator have adopted as the slogan for their campaign for hiring him:  “Jong-un for our young’uns!”