The story of how mic got hot
A news story and John Breunig column last week reported on a Greenwich Board of Education Zoom meeting during which member Peter Sherr uttering a profanity while his microphone was unmuted. Sherr offered this response.
What a silly way to ruin a great vacation! I returned to Greenwich at the end of a wonderful two-week family vacation to find out I had left a microphone open during a Board of Education meeting and was heard mumbling expletives about an unrelated private matter.
I’ve always found I learn the most from mistakes I make and recent events were a healthy reminder of prior learnings as well as the misery of being a public servant in today’s hyperpolitical environment.
First, don’t do four things at once because you’re going to make a mistake. Don’t try to be on vacation, run your business, deal with your mother’s COVID infection, and fulfill your civic obligation. That is how you wind up at 10:30 at night in an interminable five-hour board meeting, getting absolutely nothing done, not muting your Zoom mic, and using totally unnecessary profanity to complain about a personal problem.
Second, haters and hypocrites will be haters and hypocrites, ignore them. A few years ago, a new political class developed in Greenwich which thinks nothing of calling elected volunteers the most unimaginable things, trolling people online, or publishing one’s face on gun-range targets. Comically, many of these same people are active political supporters or operatives of certain BOE members so I always laugh when they conflate anything to the level of their own boorish behavior and then loudly protest to create news in the local media. But heck, welcome to modern political shenanigans.
Third, the politics of personal destruction comes with the territory. I’ve always relished debate of ideas and facts. I’m not a grudge carrier and don’t personally vilify political opponents. I’m just not that angry and frankly it’s too much work. Unless someone openly lies to me, I’m inclined to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. That said, I know I’m serving in town government with some perpetually angry and personally insecure unhappy people whose default mode is to try to destroy people who disagree with them. This isn’t the first time in 12 years that they’ve tried to destroy me and sadly it won’t be the last. It’s what happens when you’re a fierce advocate for kids against the status quo.
Last, and most importantly, I’ve been reminded of the sage advice from my tough-as-nails Texas grandmother who said, “profanity is for the uneducated who don’t have a complete vocabulary.” As always, she was right. I’m a work in progress so I always endeavor to be a better person and I guess now a better Zoom user.
Apologies that I don’t have any more time for this subject. There are actually important things such as recovering huge student learning loses, mending student mental health, fixing a broken special education system, stopping the dumbing down of academic standards, and addressing declining enrollment that actually need doing for your kids and mine.