https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2002-01-11/84304/

Page Two

By Louis Black, January 11, 2002, Columns

Judging Jesus Garza, although there are going to be a lot of relatively superficial analyses over the next week (including in this publication), is going to take a long time. A city manager is the oddest kind of CEO. There are some similarities to the corporate structure. As public corporations have stockholders, the city has citizens. As the companies have boards of directors, the city has the council. But these comparisons are really superficial. Most stockholders care simply about quarterly and annual financial performance. A city manager is beholden to all his constituencies every day. It isn't an annual check; it is being stuck at a light too long or a late garbage pick-up.

Whereas it can truthfully be said that any good manager is working for their staff as much as their staff is working for them, in the city, staff is one of the most potent constituencies. They are entrenched and empowered, with decidedly powerful fiefdoms. To beat this analogy further to death, boards of directors usually evolve slowly, while the council can change radically. So, actual management of the city, though in the manager's hands, is a dicey affair.

A city manager's effectiveness is somewhat obvious during his or her term, but only the next decade will really indicate Garza's overall legacy. Through turbulent times, Garza has proven a focused and efficient leader.

As city manager, a controversial position and lighting rod for criticism (and we've contributed our share), it's hard to win. The city's successes can always be waved away, its failures magnified. Given that this is a city that can get into a block war over the most timid idea, the position is even more of a hot seat. Which constituency to serve? Who to listen to?

Garza brought an almost corporate efficiency to the operation. The most common accusation is that he could have been a bit more politic, in the small p rather than the big P version. We're not talking about capitulating to back-room deals but being more sensitive about different constituencies' concerns and goals. In impossible circumstances, with the city growing wildly amid a reasonable power base that felt that growth should be as controlled and environmentally friendly as possible, Garza got things done. His critics accuse him of a lack of vision, but a city manager with too much vision is a problem in the democratic process.

Are there legitimate complaints? Sure. Lots of them. But any mature assessment is going to find that, more often than not, the fault is not that of the city manager. Despite being saddled with an almost-impossible list of conflicting priorities, and a city code full of decades' worth of sloppily layered laws as interpreted by the present council (and term limits are going to make this process stink even more), Garza ran the city. To those who criticize too much, I say think back one city manager, a manager of "vision," and wait to see who the next one is and how they perform.

If you missed the recent XLent cover brouhaha, it was similar to the one over our holiday gift guide cover. Their AMP (music) awards story featured a guitar amplifier blowing a wave of white smoke in obvious homage to the WTC. The Statesman was very apologetic, though all this over-mythologizing of symbols makes me nervous. Neither cover offended me, but that's not saying much; hell, I helped initiate one. But to me the weirdest part of Editor Rich Oppel's apology in the Statesman was where he lashed out at talk radio. I think it was mostly aimed at Dudley and Bob on KLBJ-FM, who must have really trashed the cover. I love morning talk radio. I think a genuine dialogue is going on there. If some of the thought is offensive to some of us, isn't that the idea? The beauty of ideas, even childish and perverse ones, and the boundary-defying power of language are being worked out in the most unexpected places. There is more dialogue over current Austin politics on KVET's Sammy and Bob than anywhere on the radio. Yet community activists tried to get them off the air years back. Whatever else Dudley and Bob do, while those of us in white towers ring our hands in anguish over the moribund club scene, they daily promote club gigs, featuring new and old artists. And I'm not even mentioning KGSR (Oppel overly celebrated KUT-FM already). When our controversial cover came out, I was thrilled to hear we were attacked on Dudley and Bob and discussed by John Aielli. What more could you want? I tuned in the next day, but heard only Bob's utterly accurate comment, "Maybe we should just give them the benefit of the doubt that it was Pearl Harbor's anniversary and close to Christmas." To apologize for what you personally believe is a bad idea by attacking the free flow of ideas elsewhere is truly perverse.

Screwball comedies are the funniest films ever made. Erudite but not afraid of slapstick, they offer an appealing combination of character and story, wit and farce. "Lunatics and Lovers" is an Austin Film Society series (Tuesdays at 7:30pm at the Arbor Theatre) featuring eight of the best of them. There are only masterpieces here; catch them all. Okay, so if you held a gun to my head, I would have to say My Man Godfrey (Feb. 5) is a delicious dissection of the class struggle, though ô la Hollywood rather than Marx. It features a "class"-defining performance by William Powell. When discussing what films to show, I argued against The Thin Man (Jan. 22). Later I realized I was arguing against it because I owned a tape and had watched it two or three times a year for much of the past decade. If you haven't seen this, you almost don't deserve to. Dinner at Eight (Feb. 26) reminds me how much times have changed. This used to be a repertory classic shown at least twice a year at all your better revival theatres, usually on a double bill with Grand Hotel. Finally Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (Feb. 19) will blow your mind and make you rethink the Thirties. I'm hard-pressed to think of many Nineties comedies that come close to its daring -- maybe Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy and Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, and neither of those is nearly as sophisticated. Woody Allen at his absolute best comes close, but Lubitsch is slyer and having a better time. This series is a genuine treat. Bring the kids, bring the grandparents -- this is one is for everyone. On March 5, Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party will be shown at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown at 7pm as the finale of this series.

It's time once again to vote in the annual Chronicle Music Poll.