Just When You Thought It Was Safe for Carl to Be Carl Again, This Happens!

With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemies. Am I Right?



Just when the circus of incompetence that has marked Carl Paladino's tenure as a member of the Board of Education seemed to be settling down it looks like new storm clouds are gathering. I shouldn't be surprised by this of course as Carl's term on the Board has been an endless volley of missteps, explosions, accusations and mantrums since Day One. So let's just say the beat of Carl being Carl goes on: Seems the guy who was Carl's driver during his ill fated $10 million campaign for governor, a guy named Russ Thompson, is married to a lady named Jul Thompson who runs a Tea Party flavored blog that has accused the guys who released Carl's horsey porn and racist emails of fraudulently creating the emails themselves. Yeah. That must be what happened.

Why at this late date, some 5 years after the fact would a Tea Partier with ties to Paladino take a run at a local blogger who moonlights as a lawyer and who did actually blog for WNYMedia.net, the web site that released the emails, but was not the guy who released them? I'm not that clever but if you are please find my email on this blog and enlighten me. Or post it in a comment I promise I won't moderate you.

To make a short story of this mess is a tricky business but suffice it to say Carl's friends -- whatever their motives might have been -- in accusing BuffaloPundit aka Alan Bedenko of fraud appear to have shoved their friend Carl into yet another public relations minefield if not one with legal ramifications too. As Bedenko states in his piece on BuffaloPublic.com Carl Paladino is also a lawyer. When these emails were made public Carl had all kinds of time to make claims if he had any to make. Instead, being the lawyer and semi savvy businessman that he is, Paladino allowed his campaign manager to handle it saying there were a lot of questions about the authenticity and source of these emails and he really wasn't even going to discuss them. Period. No finger pointing at Bedenko, no threats or promises or baseball bats. Just that the campaign was not going to dignify these things with a comment or idle speculation.  Here is the link to Alan's piece on ThePublic.

And now that Carl is currently and endlessly going toe to toe with an African American female caucus on the Board of Education trading emails and insults on a regular basis I can't help but wonder how it's going to play out if Bedenko has to sue Carl's friends for slandering him and accusing him of fraud. There is no way this thing gets revisited without all of the previously released porn and racist laden missives being brought to light for everyone's perusal --AGAIN!

You'd really have to wonder with this sideshow going on in the background what kind of an endless distraction it would create for Board members who already can't be in the same room for ten minutes before somebody MF's somebody on the other team. If nothing else a lawsuit would provide a treasure trove of material for the women to fling at Carl when things started to heat up as they always seem to do.  I have to wonder if one of his own majority members would have the nerve to take him aside and ask him to fall on his sword for the greater good. Or "for the good of the kids" as people like to say when they really mean something else entirely.

Not that I can see Quinn or Sampson showing the stones to confront a guy of Carl's temperament -- Sampson almost got jawed by Sharon Belton Cottman last night fer crissakes -- but maybe they could send Hello Patti or Hey Bartender on a suicide mission to give Carl the message that he should quietly stand down for the good of -- the children. In a normal universe a friend or associate would handle this awkward bit of business. But when egos like those of the Board Majority are involved and their world is compromised of pissants and elephants -- with them being the elephants -- it's the next closest thing to impossible for anyone to reason with them. They're not too different than terrorists in that they only bow to superior force.

Maybe this is where Dr. Nevergold's "Fifth Vote" enters the equation again creating sufficient uproar and protest that Carl is left with no other option than to say "It's just not working out as I planned," and returning to his business ventures. We've seen stranger things already from this board so who's to say where the latest twist will take us? Stay tuned.