Only the mule-headed need apply

We begin today’s two-part sermon with a cry for action.

I ask you – the Spokane voting public – to leap on my new political bandwagon: “Marie Yates for Mayor.”

I haven’t actually spoken with Yates. So I don’t know if the 83-year-old woman is up to the treachery and deceit that a political campaign demands.

But I read in Friday’s newspaper that this senior publicly called a defenseless citizen “an ass.”

This tells me that Yates has the lip and crankiness to make city government entertaining again.

Am I the only one who thinks City Hall leadership has become more boring than elevator music?

I miss the dysfunctional good old days, when council members Steve Eugster and Roberta Greene would square off each Monday night in a verbal cage match to the death.

Today’s council is as hot and spicy as tapioca pudding.

Electing a mouthy mayor like Yates could launch Spokane back into the glorious chaos of yore.

Yates is an unabashed law enforcement booster. She represents Spokane Police Department captains and lieutenants on the Citizen Review Commission, a panel that was supposedly set up to examine cases of cop misconduct.

It was a con job. Past police administrations feared the light of exposure more than vampires fear the dawn.

So a lack of forwarded complaints kept the Citizens Review Commission working on a 10-year run of never having anything to review.

Only that fabled Maytag repairman has accomplished less.

But the panel’s amazing do-nothing string came dangerously close to snapping the other day. Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick demonstrated how new she is to the job by sending a cop complaint to the commission for examination.

She wanted to fulfill her promise to create an “open, transparent and accountable” police department.

Have you ever heard anything so sweet and naïve?

Yates and the other non-reviewers must have been beside themselves, wondering what in the world they should do.

Then, after nattering behind closed doors for two weeks, the commission’s record was spared by a loophole. A rule gives the panel jurisdiction only in cases where an officer hasn’t already been disciplined. The copper in question had earlier received a day’s suspension.

The review commission was saved.

But the close call left Yates steaming like a boiled bat.

According to a news story, she approached Bob DeMotte, the complaint’s originator, in a hallway.

“I did call him an ass,” Yates later confirmed to a reporter.

That isn’t the worst of it. Earlier in the proceedings Yates really got down and dirty. She actually accused DeMotte of being …

A Californian.

“ Part Two: Who among us can deny the power of the catchphrase?

I’m talking about such sound-bite nuggets as …

“I’ll be back.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Go ahead, make my day.” – Clint Eastwood.

“What the hell does a prosecutor do?” – Steve Tucker.

And now Spokane has become part of the national vernacular by having its own community catchphrase:

“Let’s go inside and get some porn!”

Already America is beginning to associate these seven words with the Lilac City.

Just the other day a nationally syndicated radio talk show made sport of our new slogan.

Our newfound celebrity stems from a recent Sheriff’s Department adventure that went south.

Deputies thought they were busting a fiend who was making dirty telephone calls to female Whitworth College students. Unfortunately, when Detective Tim Hines tracked the obscene caller’s phone number, he copied down a wrong digit.

This led to a half-dozen squad cars converging on the home of a completely innocent 67-year-old man and his wife.

An unintentional numerical mistake is one thing. But before the raid, a pumped-up Hines was heard uttering his now-famous porn charge.

Take note, Marie Yates. Not to besmirch your blind faith in law enforcement, but this is the handiwork of an ass.