I almost forgot to mention the musical chairs her former beat has become.
The guy they hired originally to fill the post D vacated by coming south into Hometown got fired for some not-completely-clear reason. Perhaps too young and missing the point of what he was supposed to do.
They guy they hired now is more mature, and less vulnerable to outside influence. He seems to have picked up on some of the subtler aspects of our office and does not easily trust those seeking to use him. This may be the reason he asked me about the email she sent offering to “guide” him.
I didn’t have to say anything about her or the scene inside and outside the office; he picked it up on his own. I don’t even think he’s read the blog by Hometown blogger GA. He just minds his own business and does his job – which means he won’t likely remain long, although I hope he stays. For the first time, I feel I don’t have to watch my back, and feel assured the gang up in his beat won’t be using him and our office to get back at their political enemies.
This is hugely important because Hometown is about to heat up, and there will be plenty of backstabbing going on without having to worry about the northern part of the county, even though many of the players are the same people.
At this point, the most dangerous person in our office is the owner, who has about as much political sense as a pet rock. He tends to cuddle up to the most unscrupulous of the police players -- and by this I don’t mean our poet friend, although she also pulls him strings, I suspect.
Latching onto the owner was perhaps her best move since she misfired with me and our former Temporary boss, and has no influence over the current boss, who is a better inside player than our poet is, and is interested only in maintaining her position, and would never let our poet get enough power inside the office to become threatening.
The boss is part of the reason why our poet got in trouble with the Neighboring Mayor. Our boss – being influenced by the Private Detective who hates that mayor – sent our poet friend to go after the Neighboring mayor.
This is not to exonerate the poet, whose words about the neighboring mayor at our staff meeting still haunt me, about his being corrupt and how he was hiding in the housing authority a teen-age girl he supposedly got pregnant.
I think our poet was simply showing off, mimicking something someone else said – possibly RR – in order to show our boss that she could still be as tough on the Neighboring Mayor as the boss wanted her to be.
The fact that the neighboring mayor refused to meet with the poet, the boss or the owner unless I was in the room with them, suggests just how little he trusted them, and their determination to keep me out of such a meeting showed their need not to have an objective party involved.
I still don’t understand that dynamic. But the boss was not able to get more recent writers to do the same dirty work she pushed our poet to do.
The neighboring mayor blamed the poet more than he did our boss, suggesting some other possibly more personal relationship between him and the poet out of which the anger sprang.
Once, our poet resigned, a lot of the tension eased.
D, who replaced the poet, seems infatuated with her, making her possibly much more dangerous if as rumor suggests, she is involved in the Hometown election.
I don’t know what happened with the young writer that so briefly replaced D – but he must have done something pretty terrible to get fired in his first two weeks.
Since the boss sets our agenda more than the owner does, it will be extremely difficult to openly manipulate us into supporting any of the Hometown candidates. But money speaks volumes and if someone brings him a shit load of cash (as in advertising) he’s likely to go along – regardless of how bad it looks to the general public.
Stay tuned. Much more fun come.
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