[Vision2020] Kicking Pollyanna to the curb

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries:
  
Believe it or not, a small strip of Pollyanna still clings to me.  (I think it must be on the sole of my left foot because periodically it itches, and I have to sprinkle it with Gold Bond powder.)  It was this tiny, annoying strip of optimism that made me assume Paul Kimmell chose Robert E. Lee as a leadership model for the Chamber of Commerce because he wasn't thinking clearly.  I assumed that he'd just made a stupid mistake, albeit one in a series of stupid mistakes, beginning with his failure to pay the Chamber's payroll taxes for two years and moving on through his dodgy hiring practices and poor oversight of the Chamber's bookkeeping.  But perhaps I was wrong.  Perhaps Pollyanna, blinded by her rose-colored glasses and deafened by her loud singing of Zipedee-doo-dah, led me down the primrose path.  It wouldn't be the first time.
  
An insightful friend has suggested to me that this Robert E. Lee business was no mistake; it was instead a calculated move on Doug's part to keep the pot stirred.  We all know where this Lee business comes from -- admiration for Lee is an integral part of the Logos/NSA curriculum.  It could be that there's some nose-thumbing going on here, a little f--k you gesture from Doug via Paul to the Chamber and hence to us.  If Paul is obliged to apologize or step down from his position at the Chamber over this (and other concerns), will he claim religious persecution?  Will Doug and Company trumpet this from the NSA rooftop as an example of our supposed liberal intolerance?
  
As I look over the list of the Chamber's board members, I can't help but note that nearly one third are directly affiliated with Doug.  I suspect that the veneration of Robert E. Lee is nothing new to these members and consequently might have seemed entirely appropriate or even laudable.  One board member, Bob Hieronymous, represents the University of Idaho in the Chamber.  Is veneration of Lee now official university policy?  Does the university want to be a willing participant in the neo-Confederate rewriting of history?  What does President Tim White think about this?  Can a college which has failed to meet any of its minority recruitment and retention goals possibly imagine that membership in our Lee-admiring Chamber of Commerce will do anything but hurt its diversity efforts?
  
I'll be writing to Tim White later today to ask him these questions, and I will post any response I receive to the list.  Let's hope that he's more forthcoming that Mr. Kimmell has been.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment     Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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