City council, you've been punk'd
Public participation is the cornerstone of democracy. So it is only appropriate that each week the Greensboro city council should dutifully devote at least 30 minutes to listening to the public.
People have been known to say surprising things when they step up to podium for the public comment period. This week alone, a poem was recited, a citizen recounted a sexual assault allegation, and one gentleman sought help for the hundreds of investigators he said have been following him. Across state lines.
Yep, it's never dull. And then, there were the guys with the kazoos.
Christopher Spence of Greensboro got up to talk about the endangered monkey whales.
His impassioned plea for the mammal was interrupted by a chorus of fellows with plastic pipes, humming in support.
Mayor Johnson, always the diplomat, asked them to keep it down so she could hear Spence's argument.
Spence had just enough time left in his three minutes to ask the council and the audience watching from home to visit www.monkeywhale.com and www.artbeatgreensboro.org.
Somewhere around this time, City Manager Mitchell Johnson got the idea that Spence and his crew might be playing an April Fool's day joke. He asked Councilman Robbie Perkins to use his PDA to search for monkey whales on the internet. And Perkins finds an, a-hem, adults-only site.
Word spread. Later, after the council returned from a temporary break, they noted that folks shouldn't take Spence's advice, that those sites just aren't family-friendly. Even further, they asked the city staff to strike his comments from the video record, which is posted online after the meeting.
Thing is, it wasn't exactly a prank. It was a performance art piece staged to help promote ArtBeat Greensboro, a visual and performing art festival to be held at the end of this month.
And the merry pranksters didn't mean to be sending folks to a X-rated web page, at least according to their marketing and public relations folks, who spent the evening trying to clear up the confusion. Last night, monkeywhale.com contained little more than a promotional video and a link to the festival site.
The festival promoter noted that when he put "monkey whale" into Google, he
came up with "N-Terminal Amino Acid Analysis Of Growth Hormones From Human, Monkey, Whale and Beef Pituitary Glands."
It's still unclear exactly what Perkins found on his PDA.
Comments (4)
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Maybe it's my profession, yeah probably so, but I find technical incompetence among city leaders in this day and age an embarrassment. Spence didn't ask viewers to Google "monkey whale," he asked viewers to go to monkeywhale.com -- an instruction that should have been easy enough for Perkins to follow. The video record should be restored. Save the monkey whale.
Posted on April 2, 2008 8:23 AM
I have tried every single speling that I can come up with for monkey whale and have yet to find an "adult site" of any discription. Thought, maybe Robbie Perkins can not spell, or the "adult site was one he had visited previously on his PDA" .
Posted on April 2, 2008 12:13 PM
I nearly fell off the couch laughing last night when the "Save the Monkeywhale" pleader was pleading. And the musical accompanying his routine was priceless. Given the boredom suffered at most previous City Council meetings where we were left staring at a replay of city propaganda while the City Council was discussing the city's business behind closed doors, I really welcomed this brief "commercial announcement". We really must have more of these. Perhaps the city can even sell commercial time during the audience participation segment. The proceeds can go towards paying the enormous bill we 250,000 tax payers are footing for the 1000 who are being inconvenienced by the odor of our trash. Albeit their choice to live near the landfill in the first place since the landfill and garbage was there before the houses. BB
Posted on April 2, 2008 1:21 PM
sounds good...i think i'll come advertise my company...all i need is a theme song and some people with plastic pipes.
Posted on April 2, 2008 4:40 PM