PUPPY LOVE

PUPPY LOVE: Anyone who watches our poorly produced two-day-delayed televising of the tapes of the Kaua`i County Council has seen the seven gushing blowhards falling over themselves while presenting “certificates” to groups and individuals. The cablecasts come complete with costly captioning while the Council pleads poverty when asked to cablecast budget deliberations and interviews with prospective board and commission nominees.

Usually the fast forward button takes care of these “awards” that can go on for an hour sometimes as every member of the fourth place soccer team gets up and tells us about their parents, siblings and other such information while the Council gloms on to their semi-lustrous achievements before the final “grip and grin” photo for the newspaper.

But for some reason the picture of the wide-load of Mayor Baptiste flanked by two students caused us to hold the itchy trigger finger for one this past week..

It turned out to be fortuitous forgoing of the zip-through because in the first few seconds we found out that the two apparently embarrassed young ladies were there because they had written prize-winning essay’s on the Superferry- one “for” it and the other “neutral” as she insisted even though the Mayor thought she was “against”.

Seems they had won the Leader for a Day Contest and were forced to shadow Baptiste for a day, not a hard job given the girth-casting Bryan provides causing Mel Rapozo to actually ask “what did the loser get?”

Two days?

While one of the middle-schoolers had trouble keeping her hand from her mouth, the other was a lot more proficient at public speaking. after the perfunctory “no need EIS-need EIS” statements regarding their essays the Council and Mayor seemed determined to draw this thing out, since this is an election year.

But the council- seeing yet another opportunity to smile primp and blowviate for the cameras couldn’t leave well enough alone.

After eliciting the mandatory genealogy it seemed about over until JoAnn Yukimura decided to ask if as future leaders “either of you have any advice for present day leaders- we love to hear from young people” probably figuring whatever they say could only serve to enhance the Council’s image.

But the one who wanted to be a television journalist actually answered the question as any Kaua`i citizen who pays attention would “like to see”.

“I’m not saying that you don’t care” she told them. “What I feel students or teenagers would like to see (is) not just telling us all these rules that we don’t understand but going ahead and explaining to us what it’s about so we would all understand.”
Needless to say, interview over.

What does this say when a shy yet articulate teenager politely as possible tells the council to stop being so secretive and lay their public policy cards on the table.

It says the issue is so severe that even our children understand innately that there is a problem.

Apparently Uncle Kaipo Potter’s Council Chambers of Secrets knows no bounds when it comes to not “explaining to us what it’s about” by acting in accordance with secret attoryneys’ opinions and the contentions that there is testimony from some huge mythical invisible populace that is too shy to openly state their opinion.

Even our children know it and when given the chance will say so. The bigger question is whether their parents will see it the same way this November.