Sir Lawrence of Quinn Asks a Question. Or Does He?

The Board Majority Promised More Entertainment and More White People and Dammit They Delivered

So many questions so little time to bubble in the answers. I don't get to a lot of Board of Education meetings but I was able to catch most of last night's affair. As I was navigating the catacombean basement of City Hall by way of the Elmwood entrance, Lars Quinn posed a question I can't really make heads nor tails of. "Why," asked the highly compensated doorman who smiled and nodded as Danny Briere, Chris Drury, Pat LaFontaine and Stu Barnes left the Sabres, "are parents interested in having their kids refuse New York State tests?" Hmmm, I guess the most common initial response to this interrogative would be "Are you effing serious Lar?"

 I only remind both of my readers of the coiffed one's doltish ineptitude as "a hockey guy" because it may well explain how a medium profile hanger on like Quinn elected to the school board in a city with 30 some thousand kids has no earthly grasp of why anyone refuses to participate in the test and punish paradigm our amusing ed reform friends have established as the status quo for public ed. It appears to me that a school board member in 2015 may very well and should very well have a well informed opinion on this business of test refusal. Pro or con makes no difference, but said board member should have a definite stance. Any board member at this point in history who asks such a cringer of a question -- publicly no less and sitting in his board member's chair as he's asking it-- would be the hockey equivalent of a GM shaking his head and asking how come every time that dude in the striped shirt blows that whistle everybody just quits what they're doing?

 If you have ever googled Leisure Class Larry's hockey exploits you will find no shortage of invective, contumely and scorn troweled upon him. Imagine Carl The Churl Paladino wandering into an AKA house party with a handful of his well wishers from Doc's and you can pretty well get a feel of the things sports fans  sports writers and irritable bloggers had to say about his ability to produce a winner on the ice. I know it's common for sports fans to insist that failed executives are imbeciles, morons, dumbasses, etc. etc. and I have no current WISC-R score with which to defend or attack Sir Lawrence. I have heard he's ever the well read bon vivant who charmed the shamrocks off of tenor Ronan Tynan somehow, so I can't accept that he's really as dumb as Brownie from Seneca Street might have insisted in a blog post back when Drury and Briere bid Lars, B-Lo and the Sabres adieu. 

Let's try this the other way then. As a believer baptised and vested in the church of the ReformEd, shouldn't Capn Larry be hip to all the whys, the wherefores and henceforths of the movement for which he's been advocating since he boarded this tub? How is it he doesn't have the talking points down and why can't he like all the rest of the mewling corporate zombies recite the life and death importance of high stakes testing? What exactly does he gain for the cause and for himself to pretend he's flummoxed by this how you say "test re-fusal?" If you read that with a Jean Lafeet accent, the Capn Crunch pirate I mean, it sounds better. 

Ahh but then again this is B-Lo and the sun never set on a more passive aggresive collection of disputatious lubbers than we have here cheering against sports teams and for injuries or slowing down to 45mph to bedevil that a-hole who tailgated us on the Skyway. So maybe it's just a little taste of the local flavor our Boy Larry is serving up to the masses. He doesn't do so well when he starts flapping his jib and trying to keelhaul the small folks. The guy he called an idiot at Lafayette is now running to become BTF President. That could prove awkward and karmic too with any luck.  When Lars told the cop the toss Mr. Gibson from their super special meeting Lars ended up with Sandra effing Tan in his grill, hectoring him about First Amendment rights. Damn, dude if you're an ed reformer in Buffalo and you manage to piss off a charter loving, union hating pro corporate reform worshipping Buffalo Newser to the point that she's straight up calling you out as a bullshitter you really must have some kind of reverse Midas hoodoo working against you. 

So I think I see now where our guy Larry is going -- that is if he really knows why parents refuse to allow their kids to be tested. What better way to peeve the proles than to play dumb and ask in your best antebellum drawl "Why ever do they not favor the tests? It simply escapes me..." The only fart in that elevator however, is I'm not entirely sure Larry Quinn really does or really doesn't know. Maybe we should ask Pat LaFontaine. Or Danny Briere. Or Chris Drury.