The end of the Himmler Semler story and a lesson about the piñata

Recently, behind the Buzz Blog paywall, Yael Abouhalkah has been out to do some damage control among all the folks rich enough to afford their luxury news service.

Sad thing is, his take on things is so out of touch and skewed in the Mayor's favor that he's basically making up the news as he goes along.

But it's not all bad and he has at least one decent point.

The Semler story is over.

Six weeks later, Semler is still on the board, going around town looking at various parks and recreation sites. So far, she has weathered the protests.

Why? In part because her opponents ran out of steam. It turned out Semler's controversial membership in the Minutemen group didn't bother a lot of other people. Or at least bother them that much. A number of newspaper letter writers and radio callers favored her stance against illegal immigration, for instance.

Fist of all, it's good to know that talk radio stations based in Johnson County have such control over KC's political scene . . . Secondly, in a desperate attempt to back the pony he pushed into office Señor Boom Shakalaka simply proves that he is completely blind to political realities in Kansas City and has absolutely no knowledge about KC's Latino Community.

Certain naive souls in KC expected the Mayor to rescind his decision or ask the old lady to take a hike . . . I never held such lofty notions. What KC saw when the Latino leaders along with most of the City Council and a slew of other people in this town stood against a so-called hate group was pure political theater intended to see how the Mayor weathered criticism. And it's safe to say that Mayor Funky won some points . . . From the folks in Johnson County and the outlying area on his backing of the anti-immigration lady. Still, his milquetoast endorsement of Semler BUT NOT HER IDEAS makes his support seem tacit at best and not really the big win that local anti-Latino forces were expecting.

In the end, the Latino leadership speaking out against Mayor Funky's silly choice merely gave the Mayor a black eye. Additionally and much more importantly, the mini-controversy created an opportunity for Latinos to forge a better relationship with City Council Members and create/maintain a dialog with people across the City who are interested in standing against vigilante and hate based groups.

As a brief aside, I have to admit that I'm pretty disappointed that the main criticism directed toward local Latino leaders like myself (the most important Latino in KC) was that we should simply be quiet . . . That's the gist of what most white people said was basically that Latinos should "shut up and support a cause that seeks to put people like your grandparents on trains like cattle." Kind of discouraging considering that every weeknight the cable airwaves are dominated by white dudes screaming their head off about whatever makes them mad. It goes beyond double standard and really points out some of the unspoken notions of "supremacy" that shape our discourse.

Anyway . . .

Since the mini-controversy, the stupid sentiments of the Funkhouser campaign have lost a bit of their luster and the Mayor's weakness when it comes to compromise, his stubbornness and the bumbling nature of his support staff have been revealed. All things considered, that's a pretty effective result of one press conference and a community meeting.

And this leads me to the lesson of the piñata. Of course there is religious significance to the cultural item but don't let that confuse you.

The piñata is one of those great devices that teaches children about the nature of social interaction, politics and power. The blindfolded kid with a stick doesn't benefit by breaking open the piñata, in fact a smart kid won't crack the thing open if he's lucky enough to locate it. Yet, the other kids in the crowd encourage the kid to bust the thing open so that candy will rain down . . . But the aggressor in this circumstance won't see as great a benefit as those kids in the crowd who aren't blindfolded. The kid at the center of the game must learn to control his machismo/aggressiveness.

The lesson is simple, the smarter kids will learn to ignore taunts, encouragement and direction from the crowd and instead work only to loosen or crack the piñata instead of breaking it apart . . . So that when his turn is over, he stands to rake in more candy.

When it comes to the political discourse in this community, the Latino Leadership has done a decent job in revealing that Mayor Funky isn't the reformer that represented himself as, he's not a charismatic man and his promises of inclusiveness and or even leadership that isn't particularly embarrassing didn't hold together for even his first month in office.

So while the media is disappointed that they didn't get their blood bath and Funkhouser supporters gloat over a pyrrhic victory, it's pretty much politics as usual.

I think the end of Semler story is just the beginning of the Mayor's problems with any group that doesn't buy his line of B.S. completely . . . Also, just like all politics, it basically amounted to a lot of talking with very little change.