Page Two: City Slights
In our civic dialogue, grace and respect have all but disappeared
By Louis Black, Fri., July 20, 2007
Life is magnificence. Life is dark and light, honesty and lies, the beginning of any possibility, and the elephant's graveyard of all hope. But to pretend the future is greater than we are as people is to engage in a cowardly act of surrender. Vicious hatred spewed vilely, often across the Web, has become a lazy road to individual identity, which is pathetic any way you cut it.
Life is about taking chances, about caring if one accepts it not as an end but as a quest. Mostly it is about being defined by yourself and your passions. It is not about being afraid of what others think. Every time someone calls another person an "asshole," "jerk," "scum," or "moron," every "we're going to get you," "die because you have ideas different from mine," "mean old witch," and "head up your ass" is heard by all not as condemnation or daring, but rather the whining of someone so afraid that they do not think and are scared of breath itself.
One's heart should go out to any public servant trying to do his or her job in Austin. Offhand, I can't think of a single issue so trivial and mundane that there are not at least some citizens taking two different positions on it and fighting over it – and each side being just as vicious, militant, and convinced it is right as the other. Finding issues for which there are only two sides would be almost, but not quite, as difficult as finding those for which there is any kind of even near-harmonious agreement. One can easily claim that Austin is not as progressive a city as it likes to believe or that it is also not as hip, enlightened, or aware as it thinks it is. (I'm not making those arguments, but they can be made.) But to decry Austinites for being apathetic is a lost cause. They may be apathetic on some issues near and dear to someone's heart, but generally apathetic they are not. Ann Richards said that Texas politics is a contact sport. Well, in Austin it's a blood sport, one so viciously partisan it makes passionate football loyalties look like undercommitment.
This is not to argue that this is in any way unique to Austin. This is a microlevel consideration of the city's tendencies, not a macro look at the world. Here, the only positions more wildly attacked than standing still are those moving forward, sideways, or back. In the same way that Gertrude Stein noted that there is no there there, there is no right action here.
Any issue is cause for controversy, while any civic expenditure removes civilized constraints from the discussion. Politics in Austin is not about reason, compromise, or consideration. Sure, those exist; many citizens, politicians, and public servants operate largely within those guidelines. At best, though, there are far too few of them to curb the pollution of the public discussion.
This intensity of feeling leads to a combative mode, in which one's position does not represent mere personal opinion or one way of approaching an issue, but instead is the only reasonable truth. If someone disagrees, he or she is seen as purposefully evil. Usually when the city acts on any issue, there are almost always more people condemning the decision as heresy motivated by corruption, stupidity, and derisive cruelty than there are those in any way happy or placated.
In the eyes of at least some, and usually many, any city expenditure is corruption; almost all public servants are either incompetent, overpaid, or unneeded – as often as not, all of those. In so many ways, given the level of vitriol that so many believe is the only dialect for public discussion, it is amazing anything gets done.
This is, of course, about Toby Futrell leaving her position as city manager. An aggressive, visionary, proactive city manager who doesn't just love Austin but gets it, she was doomed from day one. One of the lovely things about Austin is that, with all too many folks, if you make 30 decisions and they like all but one, they respond with a kind of verbal violence, as though they've never agreed with you at all: "You are hateful, and how dare you do this?" The less a city manager does, the longer he or she might last, though many in Austin don't hesitate to shoot at a sitting target.
Certainly, I'm not even suggesting that any prominent public figure should be immune from criticism, second-guessing, and even attacks. In Austin, it is the ferocity, the accepted vileness, the unrestrained hostility, and pure, uncut hatred that shocks me.
"Smart Growth" is now a term that has the same resonance to many along the lines of "ethnic cleansing." It represents massive, deliberate civic stupidity and a significant misspending of the taxpayers' money. It's best to leave aside for the moment the thought that absolutely any civic expenditures are regarded by one sizable group or another as corrupt misspending of monies. Certainly, Smart Growth provided little relief from the suburban sprawl surrounding our city as it was supposed, and prophesied, to do. There were, as well, at least three major development fiascoes associated with Smart Growth, when tax abatements and incentives were given out, only for the city to lose big (although all three ignored the established guidelines for such projects). So let's burn the head of Smart Growth, spit on its body, and curse its children, salting the ground where we bury it and throwing its ashes to the winds.
The only problem is that one of its most significant goals was to ensure a healthy, livable, vital Downtown so that Austin didn't experience the "doughnut" phenomenon common to so many American cities, wherein population and economic vitality move outside a central city to the surrounding suburbs, expanding outward so that a hollow downtown is eventually ringed by hollow suburbs as the geography of the "doughnut" expands. Our Downtown is now vital, with an extraordinary number of new dwellings, more on the way, and an almost shocking growth of retail businesses.
Austinites, ever quick to switch the target if it dares move, are now complaining not about an empty, dying Downtown but of one yuppified with dwellings so highly priced there is no affordable living.
Again, this is not to say these aren't legitimate issues; they are, in fact, of vital concern to the city. But, to many, we live in a city where nothing positive ever happens. No civic venture, no matter how successful, is not tainted with accusations and unrelenting opposition. There is no good deed or progressive action that is ever acknowledged, though certainly they are all punished. The civic atmosphere has become so densely polluted that one is forced to wonder why anyone would devote themselves to this city to the extent to which Toby Futrell and her team have.
Some will cite her salary, always the most dishonest and cheapest of shots. Given Futrell's brains and abilities, she could make far more in the private sector. This is a silly, self-righteous accusation to begin with, indicative of the attack mode, in which everybody besides oneself is paid too much and required to do too little.
The truth in what I'm saying here is probably evident in the shock so many Austinites will have that it is being said. Better to criticize than compliment, better to viciously attack than try any kind of reasonable appraisal: How, why, and what is wrong with anyone who would dare celebrate a local public figure? Almost everyone has the issue or issues on which he or she feels Futrell has not simply betrayed but has aligned with the devil. Finding criticisms of her accomplishments, her management style, her vision of the city, and relationships with city staff is easier than finding grackles.
Again, this is not to say she should be praised without hesitation. It is not to say she has not displayed faulty judgment, taken awkward positions, and made questionable choices. But a review of her tenure is not the concern here. Even if one were to do that, and the result was an overall negative picture, her management should not be denounced out of hand. The job performance of any public figure is difficult to assess and over time demands reappraisal.
The point is that, in the current political dialogue in this community, grace has been banished and respect is regarded as a sign of degeneracy. Accusations of the vilest motivations over the smallest issues are seen as not simply one's right, but a duty. Slander and vileness are viewed as necessary linguistic elements, lending validity and coherence to any political discussion.
I'm sick of it. I'm not sick of criticism, or ongoing skepticism about city government, or genuine disappointment over council actions, or even despair with the city manager's performance. I'm not asking for Pollyanna, Oz-like Technicolor or unrealistically tinted sunglasses that make everything seem bright and shiny. It is not the substance that I question, nor the rights and participation of all citizens. Any urban dialogue is going to be unreasonably charged and tainted with longstanding prejudices and unquestioned assumptions. The Chronicle is the baby in that bathwater and the bowl holding it. But the level of just plain mean-spirited viciousness that insists on white and black, heroes and villains, definably good actions and clearly intentionally evil ones has become too much the accepted norm.
It is time for common decency and a return to grace.
(May the first person to suggest that I'm celebrating Futrell and her accomplishments because of the city's interactions with South by Southwest, including substantial fee abatements, read the above just one more time before doing so. I'm sure it won't stop them, but at least we can all acknowledge how ugly, venal, and sadly motivated they are. In this column I try to be as honest and reasonable as I can. I don't attack 9/11 conspiracy theorists because I'm scared that, if I agree with them, the Chronicle will lose advertising [truly one of the dumbest accusations made in that ongoing debate]. I don't tailor my opinions to gratify advertisers, staff, or friends. And I certainly would never demean my deep commitment to the integrity of this paper to use this column to repay debts or service political favors. Not that I don't expect such charges to be made and believed. If I didn't, why would I have bothered to write the above at all?) 
