I’m all for the little guy and the common touch and all that, but I do think there are rules of decorum that we must all follow. It upsets me when I see the rules flouted in certain circumstances, even when the flouters may not know any better. Ignorance not only is no excuse. It should add to the penalty.
This morning I attended the invitation-only inauguration breakfast for the new mayor and city council at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Of course I felt bad for the people who had to stand on the other side of a plush cordon and watch us eat, but that’s how it is sometimes. This side, that side. I didn’t make the world.
One of the people lurking out there in the uninvited hurlyburly was D magazine Publisher Wick Allison. He later conceded on FrontBurner that he had not been included on the guest list for breakfast.
Well, here’s my problem.
The rule was very plain. Only people who had been invited to the breakfast were to be seated on the main floor of the Meyerson for the inauguration ceremony. That should have excluded Allison.
But I saw him with my own eyes sitting not 10 seats away from me, big as a jaybird yak-yak-yakking away with people as if he owned the place. He must have ducked in behind somebody with big hair, like a stowaway on a cruise ship.
Probably had a big fat pocket full of croissants too. It just reminds me that you can always have too much of a good thing -- even democracy. --Jim Schutze
