ON THE SIDE. . .



ON THE SIDE. . .
This and that from the world of Valley politics.
SAD FAREWELL: I may be the only one, but I'm going to miss Clarence Boles as a Youngstown city councilman. Boles resigned after this newspaper discovered that he was convicted of two felonies, and therefore cannot hold public office.
There is no doubt that Boles is a huge blowhard who used the race card as often as some people use the restroom. When in doubt, Boles blamed "The Man." When he decided that the school district wasn't using enough minority contractors on construction projects, Boles didn't hesitate to blame "The Man" -- the predominantly black school board. When things weren't going the way he wanted it to go on city council, Boles blamed "The Man." It didn't matter to him that in those cases, "The Man" also was predominantly dark skinned.
I guess "The Man" finally had enough. Perhaps if Boles could have kept his mouth shut for five minutes on occasion, "The Man" would have left him alone.
What I liked about Boles was he had two personalities. The first one blamed "The Man." I got a kick out of that one, mostly because I didn't have to deal with Boles that often.
The other personality was a guy who would wink at me, a white Jew, while he blamed "The Man" for every problem in the city. It was as if Boles didn't really feel that way, but to get his point across, he had to act this way. Some people would describe a person like that as "two-faced," and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with that characterization. Boles was a walking sideshow, and an entertaining one at that.
skolnick@vindy.com

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