Beside the Point: An Open Letter to Rich Oppel

Mr. Richard Oppel, Editor

Austin American-Statesman

Cox Newspapers Conglomotron, Mount Doom

Dear Rich,

What a drag it is getting old, huh? My 30th just passed last Friday (still waiting on that free subscription!), and the signs of my encroaching age and maturity started arriving at my door – literally. First the sofa delivery. Passing off my well-worn futon like some cigarette-burned baton stinking of stale Lone Star, this was not a matter of small import. Then came the 37-inch HDTV I ordered online – refurbished, of course. (It's amazing how much money you save when you ween off the Lone Star and American Spirits!) I bemoaned my increasing yuppietitude to my sister, who indeed soothed me with some well-chosen words of wisdom: "Yuppies shop at Pottery Barn, not IKEA." So there's that, at least.

But, as we established in this space a few weeks back, there seems a greater, more troubling sign of my encroaching age (and no, it's not, as one well-wisher so eloquently put it, the first gray hair on your happy trail): agreeing with some of your editorials, Rich.

You've always had an on-again, off-again relationship with City Manager Toby Futrell. What wasn't to love – the prototypical up-from-the-mail-room, bootstrap story, all pluck and moxie. Sure, things got rough around the time of the Midtown Live loan controversy (hmm, is that why the mayor's taken all the lumps over Las Manitas?), and, during your paper's embarrassing missteps over the Barton Springs "poisoning" in 2003, she certainly didn't make you guys look good when she tested your parking lot for the chemicals they found in the drink. Believe you me (or better yet, ask the ex-girlfriend), I know all about rocky relationships.

The Incredible Shrinking 'Statesman'

So when you began your current jeremiad against Toby, through your editorials and Sunday columns, I was as shocked as anyone. Not necessarily at the things you were saying – we've been critical of the city manager's indiscretions and abuses of power before her Austin Energy hire came to light, which looks positively penny-ante compared to earlier conflicts of interest (see Wal-Mart or Bill Moriarty's firing from the Austin Clean Water Program – for which she's now looking likely to be deposed). No, I was shocked that somehow you, Mike Levy, and I were all on the same page.

But it's been also seemingly all of a piece: Ever since the Statesman redesign shrunk you an inch, you've exhibited a mild Napoleonic complex. Now there are exhortations to City Council to "get a grip" and the mayor's office to nut up in selecting a new city manager – and possibly speed the departure of the current one. (You reached rock bottom when, commenting on the bring your own bottle laws enacted after Kevin Brown's shooting, you revoltingly told council not to "wait for a tragedy before taking the concerns of East Austin residents seriously." Are you shitting me?) Again, BTP's largely on-board with the city-manager talk, but are we sure this is the real deal and not some faux-advocacy journalism designed to rejuvenate with the redesign?

Just to get this outta the way: In the hackneyed realm of "opinion-editorials," no archetype engenders more awe and respect than the "conversion story," where, as dreamt up by some bastard brainchild of Joseph Campbell and Robert Novak, the adept leaves his liberal leanings behind for the more studied realms of conservatism as he grows older and wiser – here exemplified by the Cox empire.

This sure as shit ain't that story.

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May Day

Back to the Futrell affair, criticism is coming from some more expected quarters. Last Thursday, having invited comment on "the profile of a new city manager," the American Civil Liberties Union's Debbie Russell asked council point-blank to sack Futrell before her planned May departure, to avoid "overlap from this old reign that might serve to infect the new." (With all characteristic understatement, Russell then sent out a press release titled "Toby must leave NOW!!") The other voice of protest came from Richard Franklin, with the Black Austin Democrats. Less explicit but no less damning, he said the new city manager needs "impeccable integrity." Citing the young men he mentors, Franklin said he strives "to make them understand the importance of personal responsibility but also the responsibility of a society." At the city, he lamented, "there has been none of that."

When the damaging accusations about Futrell started to trickle out, people would accuse me of carrying a certain amount of schadenfreude around regarding the situation, because I've been so critical of her in this column. But now that the dam is breaking and her May departure is looking less certain, I've been congratulated for hating Toby before hating Toby was cool. Before you made it cool, Rich.

Again, neither is the case –it's just that over the years, we've grown tired of the orderly, unquestioning lines of succession, the staff-dominated groupthink that's developed and dominated the insular universe of City Hall. We're glad you're aboard, too, I guess. As measure of my burgeoning age and maturity, I think I can live with that – even if it arises from some noble, if slightly misguided, place.

Now stop biting my shit.

Sincerely,

Wells Dunbar