Here is a question that might possibly break the ice if you are stuck at lunch with someone who will not respond well to anything else you say:  What does the 2010 Santa Clarita City Hall race and “American Idol” have in common? Here is the answer:  In both productions, the appreciation of a true class act is enhanced by sitting through preceding acts that can be as boring as they are boorish.

Check this out.  Just a few years ago, the valley witnessed both the best and the worst in American Idol acts side by side at the Santa Clarita City Hall.  One party was Mr. Frank Ferry, a City Councilman whose recent public performances may have been inspired by 19th Century histrionics.  This is a school of acting made famous by Joseph Jefferson and Edmund Kean, who magnified their roles by shouting directly at the audience and stomping around the stage in squeaky shoes or boots.

Sitting alongside Mr. Ferry was Mr. TimBen Boydston, also a trained actor, but who is better educated in the modern Method Acting style.  Against Mr. Ferry’s expansive melodrama, Mr. Boydston used an internalized Actor’s Studio style as a form of theatrical martial art.  All Mr. Boydston had to do was give Mr. Ferry an eye that had Kung Fu seriousness to have Mr. Ferry figuratively fall on the floor by the action of his own imbalanced weight.  This is according to the basic principals of a martial arts dojo as well as the report in the local newspaper.

In fact, this dramatic confrontation was reported in detail by Santa Clarita Democrat Party activist Bruce McFarland, writing as a guest columnist for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. It is true Mr. McFarland has been known in making political accusations against others for using hyperbolic words to draw more attention to what he is saying.   This may be explained by the fact that Mr. McFarland is the most outspoken Democrat in a city that is almost totally ruled by Republicans. So Mr. McFarland will sometimes use hyperbole in the role of a loudspeaker to raise his voice above the Republican noise.  But here is the story again without the volume.

McFarland reports Ferry covering his face

In his guest column, Mr. McFarland established a scene in which the City Councilman were suddenly forced to deal with someone on the council disagreeing in public with another city council member – at one time this was considered to be about impossible, but it happened.  Mr. Boydston said something out loud on the Council that Mr. Ferry did not like and did not approve of beforehand.  It was already known that Mr. Ferry was getting the willies over the increasing reservations by Mr. Boydston – a long-time property manger – about rushing into city commitments into fantastic local sports complexes head-first with eyes closed.

So after another such comment by Mr. Boydston that seemed to question Mr. Ferry’s clairvoyance about super sports complexes, Mr. Ferry told Mr. Boydston that since he was appointed to the Council instead of elected by the People of Santa Clarita – i.e., the People of Santa Clarita representing for this purpose about 5,000 voters who actually vote for a winning candidate on election day – that Mr. Boydston did not have any right to voice any opinion of his own now that he was City Councilman.

Later this was clarified – after studying the past minutes of City Council meetings.  Mr. Boydston was found to have been able in the past to speak his mind as long as he was basically agreeing with Mr. Ferry.

In his narrative of this City Hall meeting, McFarland reported that Mr. Ferry after giving his reasons for banning Mr. Boydtson from ever making another disturbing comment again, Mr. Ferry passed the next part of the meeting with his hands covering his face.  Trying to perk Mr. Ferry up, and perhaps to see if he were all right, Mr. McFarland suggested that Mr. Ferry apologize to Mr. Boydston for making a goof about the law that would have also damned former President Gerald Ford’s executive decisions after Ford had been appointed – not elected –both president and vice president. 

But Mr. Ferry reportedly tore his hands away from his face and said something to the effect that he was not on the City Council to be apologizing for his interpretation of the law (Mr.  Ferry had at one point been a law student).

Here is where TimBen Boydston and not I for example proved to be a class act in City Hall.  As a teacher, I would have felt compelled at that point to exercise basic classroom discipline on Mr. Ferry in order that like a rabble-rousing student he did monopolize the atmosphere against every other person in the room.  For example, this often involves standing over a troublesome student and talking over his voice.

But TimBen Boydston seemed to know that his overt participation in such a scene might have once again found the Los Angeles Times learning about the confrontation, and as it has done at least once in the recent past, written about the Santa Clarita City Council as if it were a helpless loony-bin.

Surely, TimBen Boydston’s restraint on that evening showed he was more concerned about the innocent people who are harmed by City Hall eccentricity and egoism than he was interested in gaining any meaningless one-up-man-ship from the debacle.

Chris Sharp- Commentary 

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.