Lin-Lin's Mendacity: A Dead Horse?

Well, apparently Lin-Lin thinks it is. Your scribe wonders if anyone else thinks so.

Lin-Lin Goes Off the Deep End

Another day, another bundle of gaffes from Lin-Lin. How can this woman keep shooting herself in the foot so often and not keel over?

Today's story concerns a Town-wide mailing from Lin-Lin that accuses her opponent of "cronyism" - the very word your scribe used recently in regard to Lin-Lin herself. Once again, dear reader, we see her habitual projection at work.

And once again, it has come back to bite her in the bum. For it turns out that the subject of her accusation, the Town's new harbor master, had never met Peter Tesei until he was nominated for the post. "I wouldn't know Peter from a hole in the wall," says the harbor master. To which Peter adds, "I did not know him before he applied for this position."

But this, of course, makes no difference to Lin-Lin. "Peter has many friends, and [the harbor master] is very affable, and I thought they were friends," Lin-Lin whines. Someone on her campaign committee ought to tell her that her thinking something does not necessarily make it so. Quite the contrary, in fact, from what your scribe has been oberving recently.

But Lin-Lin refuses to back down. "My claims stand," she said petulantly, and went off to consult her hair stylist about her "do" for her swearing-in ceremony.

It gets worse, dear reader. Lin-Lin's mailing went on to say that "Peter Tesei hired a friend [sic] to be our dockmaster [sic], while we pay his salary." Oops. Dockmaster and harbor master are two different jobs. "A typo," Lin-Lin huffs. "So what if I can't spell. And who cares about the difference between a dock and a harbor? They're all down there by the water somewhere. Besides, I have more important things on my mind, like choosing my wardrobe for my coronation as First Selectman. Or is that Selectwoman? Hmmm...maybe I should learn to spell, after all...."

And who is the "we" who pay the harbor master's salary? Lin-Lin seems to suggest that we, the citizens of Greenwich, are paying the princely sum of $750 for the harbor master's annual stipend. Whoops! The harbor master's position is appointed by the Governor of Connecticut, not Peter Tesei, and his paltry $62.50 monthly salary is paid by the State. This is cronyism?!

OK, what else? Oh, yes, the "new boat for the dockmaster [sic]" that was purchased with "taxpayer money", according to Lin-Lin. But, it turns out, the Town already owned the boat. Oops. True, the Town spent around $2,900 to refurbish and repaint the boat to ready it for its new function. And guess who, dear reader, voted to spend that modest sum? Why, Lin-Lin herself, of course. Oh, my! Cronyism at work? You be the judge.

Peter Tesei sums up the whole brouhaha about Lin-Lin's mendacious mailing this way: "It's not reflective of the truth. To make such statements so irresponsibly...calls into question [her] judgment...behavior like that will get the Town into lawsuits."

Yes, Peter, it will. The harbor master apparently has no plans at the moment to sue Lin-Lin for her reckless, untrue, and slanderous statements, but if he chose to do so, he would have a pretty good case. Fortunately, for the moment Lin-Lin is still a private citizen, and thus only she and her campaign committee would be liable at this point. But what if by some unimaginable twist of a malevolent fate she were actually elected to be First Selectman? Then the Town might be impleaded as a co-defendant, and the taxpayer costs would really begin to take off. Can we afford to have Lin-Lin as First Selectman of the Town of Greenwich, dear reader? Your scribe tends to think not.

Finally, it is obviously high time to address the underlying problem here: Lin-Lin is congentially incapable of telling the truth, it seems. A shrink might conceivably diagnose her as a pathological liar, one who is unable to deal with objective truth as perceived by the rest of the world. And while he was at it, he might add denial to his diagnosis: "Everything I said earlier still holds," says an unrepentant Lin-Lin.

Yeah, right. Perhaps it's all still true in Lin-Lin's own little world, but the rest of us happen to know otherwise. Once again, Lin-Lin has managed to marginalize herself still further. Perhaps she ought to do the decent thing and drop out of the race now, before she embarrasses herself, her supporters, and the Town of Greenwich any more than she already has.

What Planet is Lin-Lin From?

Every time your scribe thinks Lin-Lin can't make herself appear any more ridiculous than she already has done, she manages to surprise him anew. Harken, dear reader, to her latest absurdity, prominently featured on the front page of today's issue (dated tomorrow, for reasons not easily fathomed) of the local weekly, Greenwich Citizen:

"In just a few days, Greenwich voters will walk alone into their voting booths...."

Yikes! When was the last time Lin-Lin voted in an election here in Greenwich? The voting booths have long since been done away with, and now we fill out paper ballots that are optically scanned at the polling station exit to verify that we have not made any glaring errors, such as voting for both candidates for First Selectman.

Your scribe finds this very troubling, dear reader. Lin-Lin claims she is a viable candidate for First Selectman, but she doesn't even know the proper procedure for voting for herself?! There is something seriously amiss here.

Well, unlike her hasty revisions to her web site after your scribe called her out on the factual misstatements therein, Lin-Lin will not be able to redact retroactively her boo-boo in the Greenwich Citizen. She can't even buy up the entire print run in order to destroy it, since the paper is given out free of charge. But if you happen to see her emptying out the paper boxes along Greenwich Avenue and elsewhere in Town, dear reader, you will know the reason why....

In Which Your Scribe Almosts Loses His Lunch...

From time to time, dear reader, your scribe graces the Greenwich Senior Center for lunch. Today's offering was a generous serving of roast turkey fresh off the bird, accompanied by stuffing, mashed potatoes, and petits pois, all smothered in giblet gravy. Yum! Plus, of course, a bowl of tasty vegetable soup, a fresh salad with lettuce and sliced red peppers and Russian dressing, and lime Jello with pears and whipped cream for dessert. Price for this delectable feast? All of $3, tax and tip included. The Senior Center is one of the great bargains in Town, and membership is free. All you have to do is to survive for half a century, and presto! you qualify. Nothing too difficult about that.

But the real price of the scribal lunch was far higher, alas. There was what appeared to be a crazy lady in gray wandering around, looking lost and uncertain. No one seemed to be talking to her, despite her basket of gaily-colored handouts and some kind of visual prop she was carrying in her hand.

"There's the crazy lady," your scribe said to his tablemate.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"There's the crazy lady. She lives in a world of her own making, in which she imagines things that never happened, and that have no correlation with what you and I think of as objective reality. Isn't that the clinical definition of crazy?"

"I suppose so," said the tablemate. "Is she the one running for office?"

This was a difficult question for your scribe to answer. "Well, she thinks she is," he replied at last. "But remember, she's living in her own world. It's hard to know what's really going on with her."

A short while later, a young woman came up to the table and began to solicit the tablemate's vote on behalf of Peter Tesei. Before long, your scribe heard her quoting his own blog post of four days previous. Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere, dear reader!

Your scribe finished his meal and bused his tray. As he left the Senior Center, feeling pleasantly full and relatively content, the last sight that met his eyes was Lin-Lin trudging through the rain, clutching her basket and her visual prop, utterly unattended by any of her minions, and looking every bit as gray as the weather. If you wonder why your scribe has been describing Lin-Lin as "increasingly marginalized", dear reader, this snapshot image says it all....

Lin-Lin the Liar?

A curious thing has come to pass, dear reader. When your scribe blogged about "Lin-Lin the Time Traveler" four days ago, her web site clearly indicated that she was taking credit for "creating" Kids in Crisis. Your scribe found this to be something of an exaggeration, inasmuch as KIC was created some five years before Lin-Lin even came to Greenwich. But it seems that Lin-Lin herself reads your scribe's blog, because suddenly her web site no longer makes that claim.

Do you think, dear reader, that Lin-Lin has suffered a sudden attack of remorse for the way she stretched the truth? Don't count on it. Having been caught with her pants on fire, Lin-Lin has gone on the attack. An email from her opponent points out, quite rightly, that "in business, such a blatant distortion of the facts and falsehood on a resume would lead to termination of employment." But Lin-Lin apparently begs to differ.

"This behavior is shameful," she fulminates. She doesn't mean her own, of course; Lin-Lin knows she is perfect, just as her little circle of sycophants tell her each and every day. No, dear reader, Lin-Lin is indulging in a bit of projection here, and trying to cover up her own shameful behavior by saying that her opponent should be ashamed of calling attention to it. Excuse me? Is Lin-Lin back in kindergarten?

"I want it to stop," she says in her five-year-old tantrum voice. "He has accused me of lying." Well, not exactly. He, like your scribe, has merely pointed out the facts. Lin-Lin is the one calling herself a liar, it appears. Sometimes projection can boomerang right back at you.

In any war, the truth is always the first casualty. In the hostilities between Lin-Lin and her opponent (which she, be it noted, was the first to begin), the truth has suffered mightily up to this point. But truth will out, as Shakespeare pointed out over four hundred years ago. The Big Lie may work for a while, but in the end it crumbles under its own weight. See how it has fared in history at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

And so Lin-Lin has revised her web site in an apparent effort to bring it somewhat closer to the truth. Or was it done merely to cover her tracks? Given Lin-Lin's track record in the Greenwich community over the years, your scribe is quite certain of the answer.

Greenwich United Way in Disarray?

Well, they can't even unite well enough to set a fund-raising goal for the coming year. "We'll take whatever anyone wants to give us," seems to be the message. As a former professional fund-raiser who pulled together over $75 million for worthy causes over the years, your scribe finds this about the most pathetic "campaign" he has ever heard of.

Recently a secret source who code-names himself "Deep Greenwich" has been whispering in your scribe's ear as to why this might be so. It seems the local United Way has been focusing on a different campaign these days: that of the increasingly unpopular and marginalized Lin-Lin Lavery. They seem to have forgotten their roots as the former Community Chest, working in support of non-partisan charitable organizations here in our local Town, and to be now injecting themselves hook, line, and sinker into partisan political dogfights like low-income housing and stumping for Lin-Lin.

In the olden days, the IRS would have been quick to investigate such a change in their mission statement, and to pull their 501 (c) (3) certification forthwith. But the Federal government, too, is at sixes and sevens right now, what with Obama playing basketball and golf while Iraq goes up in flames and our well-meant but increasingly ill-advised military adventure in Afghanistan continues to go down the tubes. An historian might query whether any lessons at all have been learned from the British misdaventure there a hundred and fifty years ago, or the Soviet debacle in more recent times; but historians seem to be in short supply these days. "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," as Winston Churchill once famously said.

Alas, even today there are still British troops in Afghanistan, fighting and dying for a cause no more winnable that that which wiped out the Light Brigade. Someone had blundered then, and others seem to be blundering now. And the Pashtuns still hate the Tajiks and the Turks and the Mongols, all of whom cordially hate them in return. Do we really think we can bring "peace" to such an environment? At the moment, the only people the local tribes hate more than each other are the foreign armies on their soil. Does this mean that we have managed to "unify" Afghanistan? Talk about a hollow victory!

But back to Lin-Lin and her pet board of advisors, i.e., the board of the Dis-united Way. Do you think it is appropriate, dear reader, for a local not-for-profit organization to be meddling in local politics? Would we allow this kind of behavior from the YWCA, or the YMCA, or the Bruce Museum, or the Greenwich Arts Council, or the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, or the Land Trust, or our local churches, or our local libraries, or any of the other organizations that make our Town such an outstanding place? Why, then, should we tolerate it from the Dis-united Way?

Your scribe does not presume to answer the question himself; he merely raises it for others to consider.

Lin-Lin the Time Traveler

Einstein would be in awe of Lin-Lin's ability to bend the laws of space and time, not to mention the poor battered truth. Harken, dear reader, to the latest feat of the Amazin' Lin-Lin, She Who Would Lead the Town of Greenwich:

"Lin created Kids in Crisis, which has since helped thousands of children at risk of abuse and neglect and their families."

Or so it says prominently on Lin-Lin's web site. There's only one small problem with this, dear reader: Lin-Lin moved to Town in 1983. Kids in Crisis was created in 1978.

Oh, well, Lin-Lin is well-known around Town for playing fast and loose with the truth. Recently, she has been blaming her opponent for the world-wide financial meltdown of the past year or so. And pretty soon, no doubt, she will be telling us that she co-invented the Internet along with Al Gore.

It seems ludicrous, dear reader, that someone as mendacious and unreliable and inexperienced as Lin-Lin should be putting herself forward as a serious political candidate in this day and age. But maybe she figures that the voters of Greenwich are merely a bunch of sheep waiting to be led around by the nose, and that they don't really expect experience or integrity from their elected officials.

Is Lin-Lin right? Have the townsfolk of Greenwich become so uncritical in their thinking that Lin-Lin can spout her nonsense and nobody says boo to her?

In a way, it would be amusing if Lin-Lin somehow managed to get herself elected as First Selectman. Your scribe would give it no more than six months before the first petitions began to circulate to impeach her. And wouldn't that be a fun spectacle? Your scribe is unable to find any provisions of the Town Charter that might cover such an eventuality, but no doubt the Legislative and Rules Committee of the RTM could draft some suitable language for the purpose.

And then the RTM could enact the legislation, which might well include appointing itself as the body to hear and decide upon the charges. Such charges might include malfeasance, nonfeasance, cronyism, or just downright plain old incompetence. And then all work of Town government would stop for the weeks or months that it would take to address and resolve the charges against Lin-Lin.

On second thought, maybe it wouldn't be so amusing after all....


Update:

Since the link sent by "Anonymous Bob" appears not to work in the Comments section of this post, your scribe hereby moves Bob's message and the scribal reply up into the body instead:

2 Comments:

AnonymousBob said...
Hmmm...

Kids in Crisis wasn't actually called "Kids in Crisis" until 1995 though:
http://www.kidsincrisis.org/content/publish/aboutkic.shtml
October 23, 2009 1:38 PM

Bill Clark said...
Thanks for the link, Bob. You're right: the name change came in 1995. So maybe Lin-Lin could take credit for being around when Kids in Crisis took on its present name. But "creating" it? I don't think so....I hear that the folks at Kids in Crisis have made a number of telephone calls to Lin-Lin asking that she remove this specious claim from her web site. I am further told that Lin-Lin has not bothered to return any of them....
October 23, 2009 1:48 PM

Lin-Lin's Loose Lips: the Ghettos of Greenwich

Ms. Abrasive Personality herself, the ineffable Lin-Lin Lavery, has stirred up more controversy by reportedly referring to two of Greenwich's affordable housing projects, Wilbur Peck and Armstrong Court, as "ghettos". Tone-deaf as she is, Lin-Lin apparently failed to realize that such political rhetoric in this day and age stinks - literally. You know the old joke, dear reader: how do you spell UP backwards? PU. Well, you can't get much stinkier (or PU) than Lin-Lin, it seems.

Of course, she can always try to deny that she actually said it, since the public record of the event at which she made her remark is inexplicably missing that two minute and thirteen second portion of the tape. Well, heck, that's peanuts in comparison with the eighteen and a half minutes that Rose Mary "Stretch" Woods managed to erase in the White House back in 1972; her feat (later shown to be between five and nine separate erasures) far surpasses the one by Paul "I could care less" Curtis in this latest modification of our Town's public records.

Your scribe was somewhat distressed when a long-term friend told him this weekend that he was utterly wrong about Lin-Lin, and that she was the sweetest, kindest, nicest, most wonderful person on earth. She didn't want to hear any evidence to the contrary. Well, perhaps she, too, thinks of our Town's public housing projects as "ghettos", despite her staunch religious convictions. If so, she will continue to stand by Lin-Lin. If not, perhaps she may offer your scribe an apology one of these days. (But he is not holding his breath.)

Meanwhile, there is an increasingly strident effort being made to get people to come to the "Greenwich Has Got Talent" show put on by the increasingly strident Chamber of Commerce (the more empty storefronts on Greenwich Avenue, the more they proclaim themselves as the solution to - rather than the source of - the problem; Josef Goebbels would be proud of how they have have leared to use his "Big Lie" technique, which you can read up on at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie). Well, whether or not "Greenwich Has Got Talent" is truth or falsehood, it is unquestionably a solecism of the first order, totally typical of the garbled level of discourse so ardently espoused by our local Chamber of Commerce over the past decade or so.

It should come as no surprise that Lin-Lin Lavery will be one of the exhibits on display at this "talent show". What is surprising is that Peter Tesei was incautious enough to agree to appear as well. Peter, if you don't already know it, Lin-Lin is sure to direct some more of her snide remarks at you that evening. It might be a good time to come down with the 24-hour flu, don't you think?

Of course, Lin-Lin will go on being as snide and abrasive and stinky as ever, whether Peter shows up or not. Frankly, he might do well to avoid getting down on Lin-Lin's level. Your scribe has mentioned before the old adage about why one should avoid mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty, and the pig loves it.

Well, dear reader, it will probably not be long before Lin-Lin's remarks about the ghettos of Greenwich becomes front-page news in the national media. The missing sound bite will only add fuel to the fire. And this person is pretending to be a serious candidate for First Selectman? Only in Greenwich, dear reader, only in Greenwich....