"Wha' Happened?"

For some reason, the local papers are suddenly rushing to fill up their otherwise empty (but still empty-headed) pages with stories about Lin-Lin Lavery, who ran one of the worst election campaigns this Town has ever seen (read "dirtiest"), shot herself in the foot (or perhaps both feet), and lost her supposedly "safe" seat on the Board of Selectmen. The latest paper to waste ink on Lin-Lin is the Greenwich Citizen, which in today's issue asks the question that heads this post.

Well, if you read the first sentence of this post, you already know what happened. Lin-Lin simply dug her own grave by her abrasiveness, her mendacity, and her total disregard for fact or truth. She took credit for herself where none was due, and broadsided the Town with vicious attacks on her opponent that contained not a shred of truth. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin let her true nature come to the fore, and that's all it took.

Over the course of the years, Lin-Lin has made many enemies for herself by her arrogant, self-aggrandizing behavior. Your scribe has talked with many women in this Town who have seen her in her various roles, and to a man - er, woman - they had nothing good to say about her. And lots of bad. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin simply sank her own ship.

But she had help, of course. Dave Robotson robotically parroted all her lies, pretending blithely that they were all Gospel truth, twisted and deformed by the evil Republicans in Town. No doubt he also blithely advised her that she was doing a great job, and to keep it up. So she did. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin's crew not only failed to do damage control, but also made the damage worse by compounding her lies. That's no way to save a sinking ship.

And yes, there was the small matter of her rude interruption of your scribe as he was doing his Times crossword puzzle that day back in July. Or her running after him on Calf Island loudly proclaiming that she had so been properly introduced to him, "at Christ Church," to hear her tell it. Your scribe is unable to find Lin-Lin's name in the church's directory, and he has no recollection of ever seeing her darken its doorstep.

There were plenty of witnesses to that incident on the island, but the irksome Robotson had the effrontery to call your scribe a liar at last Monday's RTM meeting, claiming it had never happened. Well, that pretty much encapsulates "Wha' happened": Lin-Lin simply couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it. And her political life did depend on it, and she continued to lie, and thus she crashed and burned.

Oh, yes, there's one other piece to the answer to the question of "Wha' happened": the blogosphere happened. When she decided to make it her mission in life to annoy and harrass your scribe, he held up the mirror to Lin-Lin for all to see. In the several weeks before the election, it seemed just about everyone in Town was reading this blog, and reacting to it with glee and hearty approbation. Person after person came up to your scribe the night of the election to say how much they loved reading the blog, and how it had clearly made a significant difference in the election results. The implication was that without his posts, Lin-Lin might have managed to hold on to her seat on the Board of Selectman.

Ah, the power of the blogosphere! It allows one to put the truth out there for all to see, and to heap scorn on those who go about spreading lies. It apparently helped to knock Lin-Lin right out of the box. But don't look to see that part of the answer to the question "Wha' happened?" printed in the Greenwich Citizen, or Yellowwich Time. They seem to think that they are still the media of record in the 21st century, and that they can continue to print whatever they wish and get away with it. Well, there was a time when that may have been true, but as the kids around Greenwich are wont to say, "That is so last-century."

And thank Heaven for that!