Friday, January 24, 2014

Superintendent Pamela Brown Announces New Policy of Glasnost. Promptly Reneges on It


Grumpy Old Man and Soulless Yuppie Don't Like Pamela Brown Even a Little Bit

Buffalo Schools Superintendent Pamela Brown Ph.D. Harvard announced she was setting sail on a new course of openness and transparency and generally looking for a chance to embrace the media and the community. Well the media showed up at the Board meeting to get some details and Pamela Brown went from Gorbachev to Putin in about 2 seconds flat. So much for the B-Lo Schools and Glasnost. When Channel 2's field reporter tried to ask Brown about the new feel good and hugs policy Pamela Brown Ph.D. Harvard turned her back to the camera and refused to answer. As usual, the BPS version of Tariq Aziz intervened essentially telling the reporters she'll talk to you when she's good and goddamned ready. Oh and by the way, don't go writing in your notebooks that we're doing this every Thursday either, we'll do it whatever damned day we feel like doing it. After the characteristic stonewalling from the 7th floor crowd WGRZ's reporter turned to Board President and Brown cheerleader Barbara Nevergold for some input on why the Sup is crowing about a new policy of transparency then turtling when a media person tries asking about it. Naturally Nevergold made an excuse for her about there being so many other things on the agenda. Park District Board member Carl Paladino was less generous with his smoke screen.


I wasn't able to divine the magic code to post the video but it will be worth our comic dime to click HERE and see it yourself. Paladino's bitter irony fairly drips off his tongue. It must have taken every facial muscle he has to keep from performing a 3 star eye roll. And if you listen carefully to Nevergold you'll hear her buying into the half baked rhetoric that Brown can prove to her critics that she is not aloof and removed from the community and the media by calling a little chinwag every week or so at her convenience to show everyone how wrong they are about her. Feel free to refer back to my previous post on the topic of engaging in public relation campaigns to prove to people that you don't give a rat's ass about that you really are a conscientious and dedicated employee whose career in education could give Mother Teresa a run for her rupees. By allowing her naysayers to get under her skin to the point that she is launching her own personal crusade of Glasnost, Brown has admitted she is is exactly what they say she is and she actually confirmed it by turning her back on a rolling camera within 24 hours. 

Footnote: In the car today as we were coming home from Dicks where my oldest son just blew most of two Tim Horton's paychecks on a new D-pole for Lacrosse we heard Pamela Brown Ph.D. Harvard speaking on the radio. My boy chuckles and asks Why is she trying to sound like she's a southerner? She is, I answer him, she was born in Mississippi. Oh, that makes sense he says. Yeah it does but I never knew where she was from until the Buffalo News ran a little bio on her the other day. Well into her second year here it strikes me I should have known that. What's even funnier is I never picked out a southern twang in her speech before, not until today. I am thinking if there's an epigram for this lady's current state of affairs it should be Too Little Too Late or A Day Late and a Dollar Short. You don't answer your critics by trying to prove they are wrong when they are correct. And you don't hide in a bunker behind Ms. Cala for a year and a half then suddenly decide you are going to go all Omar Bradley on our asses with a big wide smile and a handshake for the working folk. It's almost as hopeless as watching white people try to prove they aren't racists when the facts are painfully obvious that they are. Sometimes you are who you are and that's all there is to it. 

1 comment:

  1. Take a moment today to look at the Powerpoint Presentation that was shown at the news conference. (in the News School Zone blog along with the article). It is as insultingly bland and simplistic as Dr. Pamela Brown Ph.D. Harvard's previous powerpoints. But even more importantly, it actually highlights what Pamela Brown has NOT accomplished up until her recent mystically religious, soul-searched, New Year resolution to be a better Superintendent.. Funny! Whenever I see a Pam Brown powerpoint production, I giggle a bit and almost vomit a bit when I envision the high level administrative sessions and hours spent putting one of these 'made for and by idiots' productions together. I imagine Elena Cala in a fitted suit and heels sitting with Pamela Brown in a fitted suit, heels and pearls, in an oaky City hall office laced with ladylike decorative touches, drinking perfectly steeped, unsweetened tea out of china teacups with saucers. Bland and blander coming up with, as I've said before, a powerpoint that could have been put together by any BPS fifth grader. Sheesh. It screams for an SNL comedy skit.

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