Much of Watchdog’s material comes directly from Naperville city council meetings. There is nothing better than seeing and hearing it directly from city council members via a video clip. When Watchdog first started in December of 2010 through about 2012, I would attend meetings. The advantage in doing that was being able to see the entire council, not just whomever is speaking, as is the case on TV or online. A lot of things can happen that you can’t see without being there, including non-verbal communication, council members ignoring speakers, and a couple of council members dozing off during the meeting. By not going to the meetings, I have missed those classic moments. However by watching meetings from the comfort of my home, has allowed me not to be distracted by bobbing heads of people also dozing off, sitting in front of me in the audience.
If city councils were described in flavors of ice cream, this Naperville city council would be vanilla; bland to the point of being unremarkable. Previous councils filled with characters would be Neapolitan or Chunky Monkey. They definitely kept viewers awake, and there was no loss of material for Watchdog.
I like to think that I see and hear most of what’s being said during meetings, but recently it was brought to my attention by a Napervillian, who never misses a meeting, that councilwoman Patty Gustin has a serious case of the ‘blahs’. I re-watched her portions of the last meeting, and sure enough there it was, when Gustin was commenting on passing an ordinance approving temporary use of property:
Then again, less than a minute later:
And again when discussing Naperville’s procurement code:
How could I have missed that, along with all the other times Gustin in previous meetings had the ‘blahs’. It dawned on me that I have a serious case of the ‘Patty Gustins’. I had become impervious to her comments because they either made no sense, or they really made no sense.
Apparently Gustin has the ‘blahs’ because even she is not interested in what she is saying. Or could it be that if ‘the devil is in the details’, then maybe ‘the devil is in the blahs’. I think it’s the former.
I realize it would be difficult if not impossible for councilwoman Gustin to recover from the ‘blahs’, but possibly she could substitute it with the “yada yada’s”.
It may be possible to yadda yadda some ordinances. Those would be interesting first readings…and short
Hmmm, this explains why so many of the comments made by the Watchdog seem pointless or irrelevant to me. I do not watch city council meeting to be entertained but informed (government transparency and all that other triviality).
City Council Meeting are not reality TV!!! They aren’t about behaving in away that will makes you popular and gains you a following, but about acting responsibly in the best interests of the community even when doing so makes you unpopular. You know, not acting but leading. It is this attitude of valuing entertainment over information that has made being ignorant so easy and informed so hard. It is what has destroyed the TV News making it impossible to become informed without watching 3-4 different News casts from different stations just to get the basic information needed to have some idea of what is really happening in the world (filter out the fluff and bias).
When I was young you could watch any news cast on any new stations and get the same information; so it was easy to have informed, intelligence conversations with people about the things that affect our lives and future. No pushing divisive issues or positions. No instantly questioning the intelligence of someone simply because they disagreed with you. But rations intelligent conversations were people could at least, at the end, agree to disagree rather then fling insults at each other.
I thought I was the only one who noticed, but Patty Gustin says “blah blah blah” at just about EVERY meeting at some point. A good drinking game would be to have a sip every time she says “blah blah blah” or Doug Krieger does him “ummm … ahhhhh …. ummmmm” routine. Seriously, does no one pull these people aside and say hey, stop doing that?
Oh wait, I guess we just did …