Common Sense? Not a Drop in the Bucket
I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but the signs are impossible to ignore. We’re dealing with an epidemic today that is more virulent than any strain of bird flu. I’m talking about the death of common sense and humility.
You may think I’m talking about Tom Cruise’s claim that he was going to eat his wife’s placenta, but that’s small potatoes compared to what came out of Inglewood recently. In case you missed it, an elementary school principal there ordered students to pee in buckets after allegedly misreading a district handbook.
But let’s save the best for last and begin with Amanda Scheer Demme. The hostess of two celebrity-studded clubs at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood is aghast at her firing. Seems to me that if you’re not going to allow hotel guests -- and newspaper columnists -- into the hotel’s bars, you’re begging for trouble with management, but Demme didn’t see it that way.
“I’m an idol maker,” she told the New York Times.
She should have asked me. I would have told her that most hotels are reluctant to alienate the paying guests by telling them they’re not hip enough for the bars. But then again, I didn’t have the opportunity to tell her. As I reported in this column, I didn’t make it past the velvet rope at Teddy’s, one of Demme’s clubs, because I didn’t have the right look.
I knew I should have worn an eye patch.
Let’s move on now to His Eminence, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who continues to ask that we abandon common sense altogether. Despite having kept molesters in the ministry and losing yet another round in his fight to keep the files of accused priests away from investigators, the cardinal expects us to believe he’s a reformer.
Pray for him.
And then there’s Mayvis Coyle.
She’s the 82-year-old woman who walks with a cane and got a $114 jaywalking ticket. An eagle-eyed LAPD sentry said she entered a crosswalk after the “Don’t Walk” light started flashing, but Mayvis disputed this and said it’s impossible to cross in time.
Last week I went to the same Sunland intersection and timed the light. It was crystal clear, your honor, that anyone the least bit hobbled could not possibly cross in time. But that didn’t keep many readers from siding with the LAPD.
“I am tired of hearing how right she is and how wrong the cops are,” said one.
“Will she violate 21456(b) V.C. again?” asked another.
All I can figure is that these readers had their development arrested as pupils of Angie Marquez, the principal of Worthington Elementary School in Inglewood.
On March 27, when students at nearby secondary schools joined a walkout to protest immigration legislation, Marquez swung into action. She ordered a lockdown of Worthington, and the K-5 students were told to do their business in classroom buckets rather than risk that they’d slip out to join the protest while on a trip to the bathroom.
It doesn’t happen often, but I’m at a loss for words, so let’s hear from a parent.
“My daughter didn’t want to do it, and she was embarrassed to see other kids go,” says Zoila Juarez, the mother of a second-grader who may well be scarred for life.
Equally astounding was the explanation from Tim Brown, director of operations for the Inglewood Unified School District. Brown called the principal’s actions an “honest mistake,” saying she had misread the district handbook and imposed conditions reserved for a somewhat bigger threat.
“When there’s a nuclear attack, that’s when buckets are used,” Brown told The Times.
Sounds reasonable. Hey, is that a mushroom cloud? Let’s get the buckets.
I’d like to see this handbook, by the way, and so would Inglewood community activist Diane Sambrano. She was wondering if the same handbook called for students to shield their heads with tin foil when the big one hits, but Sambrano’s calls to the district weren’t answered, and neither were mine.
OK, for the sake of discussion, let’s say the principal really did misread the so-called handbook and thought standard protocol was to order students to pee in buckets. At a certain point in the thought process, wouldn’t most people say to themselves, “You know what? I’m just not sure this makes much sense, so maybe I should call headquarters.”
And what were the teachers thinking? If I had been running a class and the principal told me to set up a potty line in the back of the room because of a nearby rally, I’d have called the proper authorities, notified the parents and led the students on a walkout, in that order.
I’m not sure this principal should be in charge of the supply cabinet, let alone the entire student body and faculty. Those kids are lucky the survival handbook didn’t call for students to attack the weakest among them and eat their flesh.
What’s needed here, quite obviously, is a federal investigation to determine how a person this dim could rise to the level of principal. But I can guess at the answer. In school districts across the land, corrosive politics and stifling bureaucracy tend to work against the more creative thinkers while rewarding loyal mediocrities. And we entrust these people with our children.
This has led, no doubt, to the plague among us -- the steady, inexorable death of common sense.
I want the principal to write that last paragraph on the blackboard 500 times, and if nature should call, there’ll be a bucket in the back of the room.
Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.
