Las Vegas School Board Meetings

Looks like I've been missing out! Maybe better than a Las Vegas show!:

NEAR THE END OF THE MOST RECENT school board meeting, Clark County Board of School Trustees President Ruth Johnson was wailing and begging for mercy.

"I'm not going to allow myself to be attacked! Please don't attack me personally anymore!" she wept.

Trustee Shirley Barber pounded angrily on a table with an I-will-bury-you force.

"I'm going to file an ethics complaint with the Attorney General! You do not control me! You do not control this board!" Barber bellowed back, pinning Johnson against the rhetorical ropes with blow after blow.

"We're violating laws here!" Barber continued. "We have not been honest in evaluating ourselves and our superintendent! This is not acceptable!"

Johnson shrank, punch-drunk, and babbled tearfully about false accusations and her family's honor. Yet that didn't stop Barber from pummeling her. There was no referee. Johnson screamed at the audio man to shut down the microphones. Barber howled at him to leave them on.

The few stragglers in the audience (it was late) were riveted to their seats, wide-eyed, mouths agape.

...But Barber is black. As is a large contingent of the area she represents. For years Barber has watched schools in her district struggle without basic necessities while schools in more affluent areas have flourished.

...This gruesome threesome that Barber consistently condemns as impediments to progress in the school district are Johnson and trustees Sheila Moulton and Mary Beth Scow. An unspoken implication of their cat-fighting is that the rumble is, sadly, really about race and religion.

"The past is not dead," William Faulkner said. "In fact, it's not even past."

... What finally stopped it? I did. In 20 years of teaching I've stopped hundreds of such fights. That's part of what I do. I'm a trained professional. I started applauding loudly while the women were going at it.

... "Thank you! That was excellent! I love performance art! You should be proud of yourselves! I'm sure 18,000 teachers in the district would appreciate the incompetence you have demonstrated here tonight as they slave for poverty-level wages in the trenches of our overcrowded classrooms! Bravo! Beautiful! Thank you!"