Kirk's Conundrum

Let all things be done decently and in order.

You would think that after dedicating two full-length posts to the latest hit job on the city manager, there would be nothing left to say. But no analysis of this subject can be complete unless it deals with the captive elephant in the room, i.e. Kirk Menendez. That said, because 4,000 words have already been spilled, not to mention the fact that I am traveling at the moment, we are going to have to skip much of our usual inflight entertainment and speed through this last and hopefully shortest leg of our meditative trip.

Everyone and their distant cousin knows that the manager’s fate rests entirely in Kirk’s hands. He is the proverbial tiebreaker in this conflict and, bizarrely, no one—other than KFC’s inner circle, potentially—seems to know what he intends to do tomorrow. Despite the concerted efforts of a great many influential residents (former heads of state and various other heavy hitters that Kirk used to respect) to get a read on what Kirk is thinking, no one seems to know what he intends to do. There is broad agreement on what he will not do, however, which is defy his alpha, Ariel, by coming to the manager’s defense. They seem to think he will either vote to remove the manager on the spot or else attempt to broker one of his Grand Kirkian Compromises that isn’t really a compromise at all, e.g. a soft departure that would allow the manager to stay on for X months or something like that. It is important to note that none of these individuals sees much of a distinction between those two outcomes. In fact, the consensus is that the latter—the faux compromise option—would be the more repugnant of the two as it would be nothing more than cowardice heaped on top of treachery.

Not for nothing, but it is amusing how virtually no one is talking about Dr. Castro. No one seems to be interested in what she thinks about any of this, mainly because no one believes she actually thinks. It is as if everyone acknowledges that the part of her brain responsible for agency and self determination has been hollowed out by a rusty spoon so that all that remains is an empty space just large enough to accomodate the hand of her ventriloquist. And, no, this is not yet another Dr. Castro-is-dumb joke. I am referring only to her autonomy. Dr. Castro is a brilliant woman. She is a doctor for God’s sake! A hell of a doctor! An amazing doctor!

What is not amusing, however, is the notion that we should have to guess what Kirk intends to do at all. This annoyingly coy gee-I-guess-you’ll-just-have-to-wait-and-see-what-I-do routine he has been pulling with just about everyone is absolutely moronic. Frankly, it is bordering on unethical. I know Kirk used to be an attorney, but I wish someone would tell him that he is not a Supreme Court nominee, and that he has a commission meeting tomorrow, not a Senate confirmation hearing. He is not a judge being asked how he will rule in a hypothetical case, he is a politician being asked how he will vote on a straightforward matter about which all the facts and circumstances are known. He is being asked the basic question of whether he supports his city manager. He is being asked to do nothing more than state a position, something elected representatives have been doing every single day since the beginning of time. Look, here is the president himself, advising the United States Congress that he will veto any hypothetical bill that would raise the cost of “prescriptprmvrm drugs.” It is either that or “Brazilian jobs.” Either way, he had no problem telling the country where he stands on an issue because that is his job. Kirk was elected, not appointed, and the people who elected him have a right to know what the hell he is thinking.

But oh well, thanks to Kirk, I guess we are all going to remain stuck in the world’s second-worst reality TV show (the City of Miami’s commission takes the top spot). Looks like we’ll all just have to tune in tomorrow to find out whether the manager gets a rose!

Pick your poison

There are only four possible explanations for Kirk potentially voting to remove the manager tomorrow:

1. Kirk has been dissatisfied with the manager’s performance all along and is only now choosing to do something about it.

2. Kirk was previously satisfied with the manager’s performance but has recently become dissatisfied.

3. Kirk is not basing his decision off the manager’s performance but rather on the needs of his political alliance.

4. Kirk is not basing his decision off the manager’s performance but rather on his animus toward the manager and/or those who support him.

The first explanation is preposterous. For it to be true, it would mean Kirk has been lying for the past two years as he has done nothing but sing the manager’s praises. It would also mean that he was lying when he cast his vote of confidence in the manager last summer. Finally, it would raise the question as to why he never mentioned or did anything about it until now. Therefore, this is not a good explanation for Kirk.

The second explanation sounds like what Kirk would be forced to run with were he to vote for removal. His rationale for having become dissatisfied would likely rely on the discord that exists between Ariel and the manager. But that would be a tough sell with the majority of the community viewing the manager as a gentile and agreeable person. It would be an even tougher sell when you consider what we know about Ariel, how he behaves when he thinks no one is looking, and how long his list of enemies is. Of course, Kirk could try to tie his vote to allegedly poor performance. But citing discrete performance deficiencies could get tricky. For starters, people would rightly want to know why Kirk did not raise them sooner. Moreover, people might look into those alleged deficiencies and learn that, just like with Fritz and Franz, they were not really deficiencies at all. The fact is, Ariel is the one calling for the manager’s removal and it is Ariel’s rationale that is in play, i.e. insubordination, which as demonstrated in my last post, is a bald-faced lie. Therefore, this is not a good explanation for Kirk.

The third explanation is what many would suspect is the truth. It certainly conforms with just about everything that has happened at city hall over the past six months. Kirk burned his bridges with Lago and Anderson over the elections and salary increases. Moving and voting to censure Lago did not help either (funny how Lago’s saying mean things to the press earned him a censure, but Ariel’s comparing Lago to a Latin American dictator in the Miami Herald is met with nothing but crickets). For better or worse, Kirk chose to ditch his two Clydesdales and hitch his wagon to a couple of Shetland ponies. Ariel and Dr. Castro are all he has now (he does not really have them but he chooses not to see that) and so it is their bidding he feels he must do. In any event, Kirk’s vote in this dynamic is determined not by principle but by what he sees as his only path to a political future. Therefore, this is not a good explanation for Kirk.

The fourth explanation is easy to overlook largely because of Ariel, who can be so blindingly ruthless and vindictive that he actually obscures those very same attributes in others. To put it another way, seeing the viciousness in someone standing next to Ariel can be like trying to see the light coming from a match held up to the sun. But I will tell you what, I have been doing a lot of squinting over the past few months, and I will eat my hat if I have not seen what looks like a whole heap of anger and resentment emanating from Kirk at times. I see someone who is a far cry from a reluctant domestique—a portrayal that I, myself, am guilty of indulging in from time to time. Kirk still has agency, and, from what I have learned in recent months, may have some rather personal reasons for wanting to send the manager off to greener pastures—reasons that would not sit very well with the community. Therefore, this is not a good explanation for Kirk.

Peace and Justice

There is an old saying, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. True, and by the same token, extreme moves require extreme justification. Firing the city’s chief executive is an extreme move, but I am not so sure political expediency counts as extreme justification.

Nonetheless, if Kirk does vote to remove the manager, I believe it will be revealed over time that it was by virtue of explanations three and four and that he will pay the ultimate political price accordingly. Of course, that is just the opinion of some anonymous writer on the internet.

That said, sometimes being anonymous helps you come to know things you would not otherwise know. Things about Kirk’s properties in the Crafts Section, his relationship with developers, his questionable financial motives, and his sneaky machinations—ones that are more likely to work when certain people are removed from the equation. Then again, you have to wonder how well those machinations will work once the whole city knows about them.

It would be nice to see Kirk do the right thing for a change, although I cannot say I am optimistic. It feels like all one can hope for at this point is some kind of curve ball, like the rumors going around that Ariel badly bungled his succession plan when he tried to manipulate the assistant city manager into agreeing to being his replacement candidate. What a surprise! And it is said that the assistant city manager is, for some odd reason, less than enthusiastic about the idea of crawling over his boss’s corpse for the sake of a promotion, and that he is not the only high-ranking employee who feels that way. Apparently, several directors have demurred, and as a result Ariel has had to go deep into his bench to find someone willing to participate in his coup d'état. The last I heard he landed on the community recreation director, Fred Couceyro, which is a lot like calling on the secretary of agriculture to replace the president—what happened to your first eight options?

At least we can say this: if these rumors are true it would mean Ariel’s plans were frustrated by something completely foreign to him—human decency.

I suppose we will find out tomorrow whether that is something Kirk is more familiar with.