Wednesday, July 26, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Famous mayoral
meltdowns
The video that surfaced
this week on BookFace of
Sisters Mayor Chuck Ryan
in a rant directed at one of
his neighbors was certainly
evidence of bad behavior
— most likely personally
embarrassing, and definitely
intriguing, but hardly worthy
of a 60 Minutes segment.
If you haven’t seen it, I
strongly encourage you not
to bother. The background
story, as I’ve learned it, is
fairly mundane, and open
to all kinds of interpreta-
tion. It’s barely even a story,
really, except that Mr. Ryan
is the mayor of Sisters, and
therefore ranting at a neigh-
bor from his porch becomes,
at least briefly, flashy news.
Whatever the origins
of this bubbling neighbor
vs. neighbor pot that sadly
boiled over, the mayor’s
behavior in the video —
since taken down — is
clearly not his best foot
forward.
And also, we can prob-
ably just mute the apolo-
gists, who in these pages
frequently offer the notion
that volunteering for politi-
cal office somehow excuses
bad, or at least ridiculous,
behavior.
It doesn’t.
Reserve Police Officers
don’t get paid either, and
offer themselves up for com-
munity service in frequently
far more demanding and
truly dangerous circum-
stances. But when they step
in it, they are subject to all of
the same rules as the deputy
who collects a check.
The real lesson from this
sort of interpersonal micro-
drama is that whatever good
work we do — and one
thinks our mayor probably
does a lot of good and wholly
unacknowledged work — it
can easily be overshadowed
by even the briefest regretta-
ble video posted to Al Gore’s
Internet.
One suspects that is the
case in this event. And one
hopes the fallout from it is as
brief as the video, with les-
sons learned on all sides.
For perspective, there
have been far greater, and far
more consequential Mayoral
Meltdowns. Mayor Rob Ford
of Toronto, may he rest in
peace, is probably my per-
sonal favorite in the modern
era. Ford loved gang mem-
bers and crackheads, and
refused to enter rehab even
after video of him hitting the
pipe like a deranged Chris
Farley in the Viper Room
consumed large chunks of
A Partnership
Beyond Your
Expectations
Internet bandwidth.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, of
New York, is another uber-
modern example of may-
oral lapses in judgment.
Last week, for instance, he
winged over to Germany to
hob-nob with the assembled
Molotov cocktail-throwing
nihilists and black bloc anar-
chists at the G-20 meetings
— the day after the killing of
Miosotis Familia, a veteran
New York policewoman and
mother of three who was
assassinated in the mayor’s
own city.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray,
who is a study in political
hubris, continues to defy
calls to resign, even after
apparently substantiated
sexual abuse claims from a
number of victims.
And who can forget the
delightful former mayor of
Washington D.C., with the
suspiciously Russian middle
name of Shepilov — Marion
Berry (yes, that’s Marion
Shepilov Berry) who was
polite enough to smoke his
crack, and take his bribes,
in hotel rooms with hookers,
rather than befoul his own
Georgetown manse with
questionable dalliances and
the particularly rancid odor
of rock cocaine.
In the film “Red Dawn,”
Mayor Bates of Calumet,
Colorado, was a real cau-
tionary tale. A spineless
collaborator with Russian
paratroopers (oh good God,
the Russians again!) who
talked his son into swallow-
ing a tracking device —an
act of astonishing betrayal
that saw most of our par-
tisan Wolverines killed by
Spetsnaz commandos.
Anthony Weiner, who
preferred the moniker
“Carlos Danger” when
texting underage girls, ran
for mayor of New York,
which qualifies as a scandal
on an unprecedented num-
ber of levels, even though he
wasn’t elected.
The list of mayoral indis-
cretions is as endless as the
post itself.
But there is, at least in
literature, an alternative nar-
rative. Mayor Orden, for
instance, hero of Steinbeck’s
“The Moon is Down,” for
which the author received
one of Norway’s highest
honors, the Freedom Cross,
comes to mind. A quiet,
well-considered model-
train enthusiast, the mayor
resisted the Nazi invaders
to the bitter end, reminding
the groupthink jackboots that
“to break man’s spirit perma-
nently” is impossible. Orden
encouraged his fellow citi-
zens to resist — even while
under arrest and threat of
imminent execution — and
all in the Socratic spirit.
Our local guy, in the
video at least, was none of
those very serious criminal
or anti-heroic characters. He
was, it appears, having an
un-extraordinary bad day,
and most of us do that from
29
time to time.
If anything, and if only
for liability’s sake, he should
probably be counseled, by
someone, that invective
offered in falsetto is never
quite convincing as a truly
menacing affront. Especially
out here, in Sisters, home of
the Outlaws, after all, with
our Wild-West storefronts
and Quilt Show blowouts.
And maybe the neighbor
who filmed the freakish epi-
sode and posted it on social
media should figure that out,
too.
But still, things being
equal, it didn’t look too
good. Any town’s mayor will
always be held to a higher
standard than his neighbor
— it just comes with the bil-
let, and is better accepted
and embraced as the price of
public service, voluntary or
otherwise.
Probably, and I’m just
guessing here — the winds
of Sisters being what they
are — a public acknowl-
edgment that the Mayor’s
recorded behavior was,
ahem, not exactly mayoral
material, would calm the
aggrieved.
And then perhaps we
can all collect ourselves,
and begin the real work of
sandbagging our bunkers,
and storing fuel, water,
and food, for next month’s
Eclipsalypse.
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