On the mayor's private business difficulties.

As first broached yesterday at the Diggin’ in the Dirt blog, and explained in depth today by the Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg (did a councilman call him directly with the tip, or use a proxy?) in today’s C-J, Mayor James Garner’s dry cleaning business is struggling, and he’s being sued for back rent.

Predictably, this news has been greeted with undisguised glee by more than a few city residents, including some who are small business owners (see above), and who undoubtedly regard the mayor’s business problems as a comeuppance of sorts.

Politics being what it is, this reaction is perfectly understandable, if not especially dignified, and I’m sure that Mayor Garner knew there were going to be days like this when he decided to run for office.

As anyone who ever attended Sunday School and didn't doze through it will tell you, there’ll never be a shortage of human beings who delight in the mishaps and “failings” of others, whatever their sources.

Indeed, among others, the Great Emancipator recognized that in the metaphorical sphere, human nature is composed of greater and lesser angels, and since local politics itself is nothing if not an intensified version of this dualistic outlook, it stands to reason that the emotions are hotter and run deeper than at other times.

Speaking personally, I have only this to say:

If you’ve never been an entrepreneur – if you’ve never gone out on a limb and started a business because you’re convinced that you have ideas and goals worth pursuing, and if you’ve never worked night and day to nurture your creation, and if you’ve never looked into the mirror at the bags where your eyes used to be and thought that you’d have been better off doing anything other than filling out forms, mopping, arbitrating employee disputes, dealing with suppliers and losing sleep -- then you possess little or no right to judge what it feels like to be on stage each and every day, struggling to get it right, with the glare of the spotlight always shining, and never being able to relax because it’s a competitive world and there’s no guarantee that your customer will return no matter how hard you try.

You’re perfectly free to criticize the mayor for his policies, to disagree with his decisions, to attack, maul, chew up and spit out to your heart’s content when it comes to politics – just don’t pretend you understand what being in business for yourself is like unless you’ve tried it yourself.

I’ve tended to laugh at the anonymous, vicarious viciousness that has increased in intolerance and intensity as this overheated summer has progressed, knowing that such mean-spiritedness is stoked not by “little people,” but by “little minds,” and for short-term ends that rarely add up to any coherent program for the advancement of society, but are designed to settle scores and wreak the havoc so essential to societal dysfunction and the petty politico’s desire to harness this dysfunction to his own ends.

See also: Profiles in abject and supremely petty moral cowardice: CMs Coffey, Schmidt, Price & Kochert publicly urinate on code enforcement in NA.

However, understanding full well that to say what I’m about to say will prompt the mindless guffaws of the underachieving jackals incessantly preying on the trials and travails of others who dare at least to try and achieve, permit me to say this to the mayor.

I feel your pain, and I hope it gets better.

Today we see as never before why the most talented and capable members of the community seldom go into politics. You, James Garner, at least have stepped up to the plate, and you're taking your cuts. More power to you.

You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't -- and if you're an entrepreneur, you get plenty enough of that each and every day without having to answer to anonymous troglobytes, lunatic fringe councilmen and clueless naysayers out to giggle at misfortune.

That's New Albany. The sooner it changes, the better. Mayor Garner understands this. Do you?