A D.C. pic, commentary and some links …
[Adams Morgan community bulletin board, Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]
Washington, D.C.’s mayoral primaries took place Tuesday, which is essentially ‘the’ race for mayor. Since D.C. home rule was established in 1975, all six of Washington’s mayors have been Democrats. It will continue to be that way via staunch city political demographics. And that’s why the primary decides the race for mayor.
This year, it’s been determined that former D.C. Council Chair, Vince Gray, will replace incumbent Adrian Fenty as the Democratic nomination, and ultimately mayor. I wasn’t particularly a fan of Mayor Fenty … his arrogance and increasing lack of transparency (after he practically ran on the ‘always available’/'Mayor BlackBerry’ platform in 2006) have been very off-putting, yet his aims, for the most part, forward-thinking. Now we have old-school Gray, who provides an unknown, but assumed threat to return to ancient ways. Not exactly fair, but he’s going to have to come out with a bang to fulfill promises and quell the skeptics already lining up. I think I would’ve rather had Fenty’s efforts continue, but am not that torn up about it.
And the picture above, I suppose, can be the icing on how Fenty lost this year’s race. He was in denial over his own obliviousness in addressing constituent needs in a reasonable manner, or pretty much anything in a reasonable manner (don’t get me started about the Nats ticket fiasco), rather opting to perch himself so high that he became convinced that his methods and actions needed no explanation. And so he toppled, got his goofy face plastered on the community bulletin board in Adams Morgan with the caption “Denial,” got that lady in the photo pointing in jest, and finally lost the mayor’s race. Godspeed D.C. — Life continues.
In many ways, the demise of Fenty, as the youngest mayor in Washington’s history, conveniently parallels, at least for this Wizards blogger, the fall of Gilbert Arenas, who previously basked in his own popularity, calling himself the “Black President” (but before Obama came on the scene). Arenas got caught in his own obliviousness. He couldn’t comprehend how the outside world, rational and irrational, dealt with his coping mechanism of ignoring/casting aside life’s uncomfortable moments with laughter, jokes and pranks. Maybe fine for when a teammate gets an STD … not exactly in the aftermath of guns being brought into the locker room.
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Grunfeld’s romanticism of old school team management tactics to past battles with assessments of Andray Blatche (after being around him as a person this past season, I’ve grown to like him … it’s just that his previous bonehead decisions and court attitude have been teeth-grinders).
