Time to Abandon the Funk?

Recent coverage of Mayor Funkhouser has provided a case study of perspective. I've made no secret of the fact that I have backed Funkhouser from the day he announced, and I continue to do so. I think he'll make positive changes to our city, and change the atmosphere of "Rich developers first, common folk last" that, in my opinion, is what the Barnes administration morphed into. But this post is not intended to focus on the merits of Funk.

Now, I see the Star and some of my fellow bloggers turn on Mark, and it's odd to be in a pro-mayor mindset. He throws a free party for the city, and discloses who paid for it, and people attack him. He keeps driving his economy car instead of an ugly behemoth Barnes chose, and people attack him. He pays his Chief of Staff a typical salary, so the Star adds in money he had already earned and attacks him for it. He shows up at a George Clinton concert, and people attack him.

The thing is, I get it. It's a matter of perspective. As a contrarian, it's your habit to pick up whatever nugget of information you can get, and inspect it. Hold it up to different kinds of light. Turn it upside down. Compare it to other nuggets. And, if you can find something negative about it, scream it from the rooftops.

I just can't get there right now. Sorry.

When I began supporting Funkhouser, I thought he was a policy wonk with a straight-shooting, call-it-like-it-is approach and a quirky charisma. Nothing has happened yet to change my view. It's not that I'm being stubborn, or a pollyanna, it's just that I haven't seen anything that changes my mind about him.

But, here's where it gets interesting (well, I guess you're the judge of that). I know myself well enough to admit that, if Brooks were mayor, I might take shots at his inauguration party, no matter what form it took. I might question his choice of car, or Chief of Staff. (I wouldn't criticize him for going to a George Clinton concert, though - that's just wrong.) Maybe I wouldn't, because I genuinely like Brooks, but I sure as hell would if Barnes were somehow still in office . . .

More frighteningly, I probably wouldn't even know I was doing it. My hypocrisy would be unconscious and, thus, probably incurable. I wouldn't be taking cheap shots at Barnes - I would be exposing her corruption and wrongheadedness. I would be full of the same moral superiority that the Funk-slammers are feeling now.

And I'd think that anyone who defended Barnes was ignoring the signs of her corruption and spinning the truth to avoid facing it. Stupid kool-aid drinkers.

A part of me wants to get back onto the attack. And, I promise I would if Funkhouser really did do something that altered my view of him. But the fact that he won the election was not enough to turn me around.

Truth be told, I think bloggers are more valuable in the role of critics of power, and Funk now has some power (though not as much as the status quo). But I can't bend my view of the truth just to jump back to my preferred role.

The guy I helped elect is, in my opinion, doing a good job so far. The criticisms thus far have struck me as strained and artificial. When I read about what he's doing on the inside, I'm wildly impressed. He wants to strenghten and broaden communications between his office and regular voters - I genuinely believe that. And he's insisting that his people remember to be good people first. I know Mark, I know Gloria, I know Joe Miller, I know Ed Wolf - I trust them. Maybe I'll be disappointed in them at some future date, but I haven't been so far.

I had a lot of fun recently with a commenter who did not have his facts straight, and wanted to accuse Funk of being paranoid. One of the things that struck me in the exchange was that he felt entitled to be wrong - that if his attack was in the ballpark of the truth, it ought to stand unchallenged.

Sadly, I acknowledge that, in other circumstances, I might stand alongside him. I see people take quotations from rightwingers out of context or twist their words slightly so that they say something egregious, and then bash away, and I don't often correct them.

I'm not going to jump over and join the "gotcha" crowd on Funkhouser. I still see him as a good man with great priorities. But I hope that the experience of supporting the man in titular power forces me to be more self-critical in the positions I take in opposition to those I oppose.

And if I ever criticize someone for liking George Clinton, my son will boycott Father's Day.