Attaining power is difficult, and keeping it, as much a struggle, needs money to build it.
This is the reason the Virgin Mayor needed to do his fundraiser and why those around him cling to his nearly kingly robes.
But it was a surprise that the owner of the venue allowed RR to attend since RR once tried to shake him down for protection money when he was still a cop, and what eventually drew the attention of the feds to him, setting the stage for his big lie, one he would tell over and over again, how he worked undercover to help bring down the police chief, when all he really did was turn in his own friends in the department.
Although I was also invited to the swank affair, I chose not to for obvious reasons – she would be there, decked out, an amazingly beautiful distraction I did not need to engage at this moment in time, just when it’s taken so many months to recover from her.
Ironically, I passed the doors to the place on my way to a rare assignment just up the road from it, tempted to pause, but wiser for not doing so.
The same logic applied for this as for the magazine party so many months ago. That’s her turf, not mine, and she knows how to blossom in it, where I would shrivel up in the corner, embarrassed at my attraction, and scared to death that she might turn the dogs out on me.
She’s amazing eye candy for the mayor’s supporters, but she’d dangerous for me.
Besides, as much as I admire the Virgin Mayor, I disliked the corrupt crowd around him, and wonder how she puts up with them since essentially I’ve concluded she is not corrupt, but if she’s still tied to RR, then she’s being forced to follow the money the way RR is, and events like this only make it all so obvious.
Politics is an organized sport – but a sport in which everybody cheats, back stabs, and does everything and anything to get the drop on everybody else.
While the Virgin Mayor has enough money to fund his own campaign, he can’t rely on buying votes. He can’t give every resident of his town a job. He needs to build a network of people who have followers he can count on to bear the weight of the campaign, to show that he’s really about real people and not just political hacks. People hold fundraisers to show that they still have popular appeal.
Yet I was puzzled when I talked to him Wednesday and learned he was selling tickets at $1,000 ahead, far out of reach of ordinary people.
He’s playing to the big shots, which may explain why she said she needed to get plastered before she went, she’s that nervous being around important people, still she also said she intended to dress to impress – I can only imagine.
Again, this recalls her poem about settling for a lesser role. But that’s not her style. She is the kind of people who needs to be (and possibly should be) important, and yet oddly enough, she is a wallflower who has to work at it, developing routines that allow her to get ahead. As her poem about the old woman on the cruise ship alluded to, she used to hate the people who got to cut in front of the line, and yet eventually became one.
She is beautiful enough, talented enough and savvy enough to make this work, when the rest of us envy her from the back of the line – one more reason for me not to go to the fundraiser to see her in her glory, trying to advance her agenda.
Who knows how disappointed she might feel in a room full of the usual suspects, some of whom let her hang around, but offer her not avenue for advancement, the truly big shots too remote to access at such an event, most of whom are boring as hell, wealthy vendors looking for contracts etc.
By bringing her camera, she got to play the role of official photographer, and did me a service when she posted their photos, allowing me to put a face to the roque’s gallery, giving me a road map of who is who behind the scenes – a lot of big-time players on a small-town stage.
Politics is the wrong venue for someone like her and with her talents. She needs to meet people in the arts, people who can recognize her abilities and offer her a way to get her foot inside the door, a different kind of power elite, not the stuffy old shirts of politics, but the more alluring world of creativity.
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