Yesterday’s City Council meeting provided the citizens of Dallas with some entertaining moments. It would have been nice if we’d also gotten sound policy-making and good governance. But whatever. We’ll take the lulz. Mayor Rawlings got things going early, when he cautioned the Council about posing difficult questions to City Manager A.C. Gonzalez, who’d only been able to study the Beasley plan for a day. The mayor said he didn’t want council members trying to “stump the dummy.” That got some laughs.
But the best line of the day came from Councilman Lee Kleinman, who didn’t much care for a tricky move made by Councilman Philip Kingston. He said, “Mr. Kingston is trying to put our balls in a vise over that.” The utterance prompted Mike Drago, a member of the DMN editorial board, to tweet: “Doh! Now we have [private parts, rhymes with walls] ‘in a vice’ from @LeeforDallas. Have we broken new ground at Council?” I’ll forgive the homophone mixup. I share that weakness. But declining to tweet the word “balls”? Especially when it’s something an elected official has said? I don’t get that. I also don’t get how the paper’s account of the meeting could omit what Kleinman said. Which gives you a better sense of what happened yesterday? Reporting that “distrust defined the meeting as long-simmering tensions over the proposed toll road prompted officials on both sides to accuse each other of playing games”? Or reporting that Kleinman accused Kingston of trying to put his balls in a vise?
As a citizen and an American and a voter, I’d like to know whenever testicles come up at City Council meetings. Thank you.
