Thursday, November 21, 2013

A "principled" Blair votes no, but council approves resolution condemning HJR-6.

7:00 a.m. Friday update: WDRB makes my point with the final line of its report: "One council member abstained, and Scott Blair was the only council member to vote against the resolution." 

Earlier tonight, the Common Council of the city of New Albany approved R-13-16, a resolution opposing HJR-6.

The vote was seven in favor, with Diane Benedetti abstaining after a lightning-fast attempt to match a thicket of post-it notes detailing 5th district voter rolls with numbers from a flurry of phone calls she received late in the afternoon, presumably from the Koch brothers and their gay-baiters nationwide.

Scott Blair was alone in voting against the resolution. More about that in a moment.

Overall, with Blair the one glaring exception, the council acquitted itself well. Lone Republican council person Kevin Zurschmiede sounded confused for a bit, but rallied nicely. Bob Caesar said nothing, and was firm and crisp in joining the majority. John Gonder and Shirley Baird spoke convincingly, and Greg Phipps eloquently provided all the necessary preparatory information. Dan Coffey surprised some, although not me, by forcefully advocating for the resolution. I believe Coffey's life experiences have led him to savor the role of the underdog and downtrodden, and although the two of us come from entirely different poles, we have this one thing in common, if nothing else.

On the other hand, Blair achieved the rare distinction of striking out before stepping to the plate. All evening long, he spoke only one word with regard to a sensible, rational resolution opposing shameful violations of human rights: "No".

Regular council attendees of a particularly masochistic bent know that in the past, Blair has bizarrely confused his council seat with a slot on the Supreme Court of the United States, choosing to somewhat pedantically take issue with any resolution he feels does not pertain to his specific mission on the city council. It is entirely a procedural objection, and we are supposed to take this as an expression of profound governmental conviction even if he hasn't quite divulged the criteria for it in any great detail.

In essence, if a resolution strikes Blair as unsuitable for voting, he'll say so aloud (curiously, not so last night) ... and proceed to vote against it.

But how can either a "yes" or "no" vote be viewed as an expression of Blair's rejection of voting? Both are votes. As others before me have cogently noted, Blair's only coherent option if he wishes to express the view that he should not be asked to vote is to abstain from voting. Consequently, each time Blair has publicly diddled his "I shan't vote" principle, he has followed not by abstaining, but by voting -- in each instance, as again last night, by voting "no". In turn, this means that far from expressing principle, he is in fact choosing a side. History will record his vote, not his objections.

Has anyone on the council even tried to explain this to him, or is is some sort of hazing ritual gone tragically astray?

Consider that many of the folks in the gallery tonight do not regularly attend council meetings. They are not aware of Blair's tortured, quasi-Jesuitical "pick and choose then flip the coin again" soft shoe when it comes to proper versus improper resolution jurisdiction.

However, after tonight, what they DO know about Blair is that sans explanation, the 6th district councilman voted against a resolution opposing human rights violations. Yes, in effect, he chose a side. It is quite clearly the wrong side, because it's the side that mocks human dignity -- and at the end of the day, it's a public relations failure of epic dimension, all because of slavish devotion to an obscure procedural principle.

Perhaps as a banker, Blair mistakes principle for principal; after all, even if the principle of human rights fails to excite like the cost-benefit aphrodisiac, there's always high interest in principal, or rather the high interest owed on principal -- and as procedural devotion goes, and fetishes are nurtured, there's always the blessed penalty for early withdrawal ... except that premature stupefaction couldn't possibly be the desired outcome for someone like the councilman.

Could it?

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