This Is Gonna Get Interesting

Let us examine John Burke’s position.

He is about to take his seat as Supervisor. And there, alongside him, guarding his flank, watching his back is...anybody?

Henry (Hank) must dance in the private sector. The surprisingly puissant Bo will, perhaps, attend one meeting, speak of fire and the holding of feet, and then return to his burrow. And Bubbles, she of the golden hair and sparkling eye and baseless harassment charge - John claimed that she is in fact the winner of a four year tour of duty on the Town Board. He is confident that when the absentee ballots are counted this will be made clear to all.

The Uncle’s money remains on Queenan. The Uncle would never be so foolish as to say: "numbers don’t lie." In fact, they do. Numbers lie more often than Caruso does. And when numbers lie we have a special name for them, we call them statistics. But even so, the numbers (a 45 vote lead for Queenan, 101 absentee ballots to be counted) do not look promising for Darleen.

Without his running mates, who can John turn to? - or - To whom might John turn?

And a chorus of eager voices are heard calling out the name "Aronowitz."

You remember how those voices sound - these are the students who have scrunched down and hidden behind their notebooks all through the semester as one unanswerable question after anther is thrown at the class ("How did the emerging mercantile system affect the relationship of the middle colonies with their neighbors to the North and South?" and "If Walter has three times as many apples as George and George is traveling at 18 miles an hour ou est la plume de ma tante?") and now they (those scrunched down students, remember?) hear the unexpected - a question they can answer ("What were George Washington’s teeth made of?" or "Name a country starting with F" or "Who got Jennifer to leave Brad?") and knowing that this may be their only chance all semester to give a correct answer...

...to the question who will be John’s wing man...

...as one they give voice to the name "Aronowitz."

To which the Uncle smiles and says:

Maybe.

But maybe not.

Aronowitz has spent most of this past year as odd man out. The last of the Carusovians. And he has seen the toppling of the "brilliant one’s" statue.

Caruso, the man who lately has brought Larkin more grief than solace has been bounced, trounced and made to eat dog food by Rox the Fox.

Again.

And so now, as the realignment begins to take shape, Mike has to know that signing on with the Pomposity in the Pompadour might not be his smartest move. This might be a good time to make nice nice with his old pals.

Will he?

Stay tuned to this channel.

But let us turn back to Burke. A busy man. Not one week in office and he has already made known some of the changes he has in mind.

He will fire Gary Thomasberger.

He will fire Donna Wanamaker.

He will fire Bobby Kwiatkowski.

He will fire...

Hey, hold it!

First of all, aren’t some of those jobs civil service?

Yep.

And wouldn’t John need a majority of the Board behind him to even attempt to fire anybody?

Yep.

And aren’t there a bunch of people on his list that are very, very, very well thought of in this town?

Yep.

And if John can’t fire them, but they know that he wanted to — won’t that make working relations somewhat, er, icky?

Yep.

So John has announced that he will fire a bunch of very well liked people, whom he can’t fire anyway and with whom he must work and whose good-will can make his job so much easier but that ain’t gonna happen all that much ‘cause good-will and "I wanted to fire your ass" so rarely coexist and Lord this guy must be dumber than dirt.

Yep.

For John, even a journey of a thousand miles must start with his foot in his mouth.

Don’t go away.

This is gonna get interesting.