In the wake of raucous interactions among citizens, councilors, the City Manager, and police, Charlottesville’s City Council meetings have become prime, circus-like entertainment for local (and sometimes national) audiences seeking a thrill.

While everyday people broadly have eschewed attending due to security concerns, Charlottesville’s own TV10 has become must-see TV on the first and third Mondays of the month, as a cavalcade of “performers” entertains.

Here, for your viewing enjoyment are the vocal and lyrical stylings of Carole Thorpe singing “The Silly Clowncil Song,” with apologies to James Darren.

 

 

Source material is the song “Goodbye Cruel World”, music and lyrics by Gloria Shayne Baker
As made famous by James Darren (#2 Billboard Top 100 Hit in 1961)
New parody lyrics and vocals by Carole Thorpe
Recording engineered by Rob Schilling
Video production by Schilling Show Media
 
The Silly Clowncil Song
 
(The biggest thrill…)
(…in Charlottesville!)
 
Oh, it’s Monday night.
I’m off to City Council.
Gonna be the Greatest Show in Town!
A side show in the peanut gallery
And, count ’em, five leftist councilors —
Every one of them a clown.
 
(…in Charlottesville!)
 
It’s quite a sight
To watch the Silly Clowncil
Juggle the agenda with an ineffectual mayor.
Frantic to keep the spinning plates up in the air,
It’s a hard act to follow —
I’d rather watch a dancing bear.
 
(…in Charlottesville!)
 
(Oh-oh-oh) Step right up 
To the microphone
For “Matters of the Public”.   [1] 
Son, you’re on your own!
You can reach for the flying trapeze,
So you can swing up high above the flying obscenities.
 
It’s fun tonight,
So gitcha popcorn ready.
Oh, Mister Barnum —
Save a seat for me!
 
We will hang the biggest tarp of all   [2]
Like a big top over City Hall.
It’s a World Class Circus   [3]
For all the world to see,
 
With the City Manager 
Playing the calliope.
 
(…in Charlottesville!)
 
SPOKEN: “Play it, MoJo!”   [4]
 
[Slide whistle solo under recorded meeting pandemonium, presided by then-Mayor Michael Signer.] 
 
Let’s all hang the biggest tarp of all
Like a big top over City Hall.
It’s a Progressive Circus,
A dog and pony show —
And you’re the suckers
Born every minute, don’t ya know?
 
(The biggest thrill…)
(…in Charlottesville!)
 
   [City Councilor Wes Bellamy recorded quote.]
 
References:
 
[1] – “Matters of the Public”: The period of time allotted prior to the business of each Charlottesville City Council meeting for citizens to redress their elected representatives for three minutes on a topic of their choosing.  This segment typically devolves into a profanity-laden meltdown of the speaker and audience (typically Marxists), due to the inability and/or unwillingness of the mayor to enforce the rules of conduct.
 
[2] – The unusual use of the word “tarp” has a specific meaning.  It is intended to draw a correlation to the highly controversial ruling by Charlottesville City Council to cover two Confederate war memorials in city parks.  It was a politically motivated action which was successfully challenged in court, thus forcing the council to remove the tarps and rightly endure public embarrassment. 
 
[3] – The phrase World Class Circus is a poke at Charlottesville’s self-aggrandizing and ridiculous slogan, “Charlottesville – A World Class City”.
 
[4] – “MoJo” is a commonly used nickname for Maurice Jones, Charlottesville’s City Manager.

 

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Rob Schilling is founder of the multi-award-winning Schilling Show Blog and News, proprietor of Schilling Show Media; host of both the Schilling Show Unleashed Podcast and WINA's The Schilling Show heard weekdays at noon; husband; father; worship leader, Christian recording artist and Community Watchdog.

14 COMMENTS

  1. the highly controversial ruling by Charlottesville City Council to cover two Confederate war memorials in city parks. It was a politically motivated action which was successfully challenged in court

    That’s correct as far as it goes, although “political” just means responsive to the voting public. Regardless of the court’s ruling based on a technicality in Virginia law, however, the command to “love your neighbor” remains in effect, and one of the obvious things it means is to not give needless offense. To love your neighbor means to apologize when you or yours hurt him, and to go out of your way to make amends for the offense. It’s impossible to imagine Jesus carrying a sign saying “Don’t Erase Our History.”

  2. Ken, I hope you’re carrying oxygen up that mighty moral mountain you’re climbing. Apparently you have forgotten the commission elected by Rob’s Town Clowncil that was discarded because it didn’t suit their agenda. You also forgot the naming petition that was circulated and eventually discarded because the results were opposite of what they expected. Loving your neighbor should work both ways. I have seen little attempt by the left wing activists dominating Charlottesville’s social and political discussion to do anything other than demean and hurl insults at those that dare stand up and disagree with them.

    I am not one bit surprised that 8/12/2017 happened. I am surprised and disappointed at the types of people that were recruited to show up here in full confrontation mode. Make no mistake tho, the anti-rally folks had a core of the same types. Other than one lunatic that committed an atrocity due to an inept police response and a helicopter that crashed due to mechanical failure of some sort, this fiasco would have ended rather harmlessly even after that aforementioned city clowncil did everything it could to cause exactly what happened.

  3. Al, leftists could be complete and total hypocrites, and I could be one too, and that wouldn’t touch my argument. “You are a hypocrite” is not a refutation. But if you’ll notice, I’m not loath to criticize leftists, and I agree that on average they’re no more charitable to you guys than you are to them. If you could take a white supremacist and an antifa and switch their life circumstances, you’d switch their political positions. Neither has any empathy for the other. Both came loaded for bear on 8/12.

    I don’t know what you’re referring to by Rob’s Town Clowncil. I share some of your cynicism that City Council solicited but then ignored public opinion about renaming the parks, but tell me with a straight face that if the question was whether to revert back to “Lee” and “Jackson” and you guys lost the popular vote but had the votes on City Council you wouldn’t do the same thing. Also, there is a time to exhibit moral leadership, and to do the right thing whether the majority likes it or not. By heeding the will of the victims and not the sons of the victimizers, the Council did just that. Is it so hard to understand how hurtful those statues are to many African-Americans? Or do you just not care?

  4. Ken: At the risk of sounding like I’m fishing for a compliment for the song, I’ll use an adage, paraphrased, from old time comedy; “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

    I find it interesting that you choose to nitpick over one descriptive in my glossary for the lyrics (which I provided as a courtesy for non-locals who may not understand some of the terms used) rather than comment on the piece itself.

    Shy of further response, may I perceive your lack of rebuke as having hit a home run? LOL.

  5. Carole, I hadn’t actually listened to the song as opposed to reading the lyrics, but yes, it’s quite clever, especially the trapeze/obscenities rhyme and image. Very nicely done.

  6. Only one short comment Ken. You imply the council made a “moral” decision. Apparently part of a SJW membership includes the assumption that they are the arbitrators of all that is moral and just. I like most people set my own parameters of morality meaning I scoff at those who are always claiming moral superiority whenever a social crisis arises.

  7. Al, in society today where there are so many competing voices, and where we’re all free to choose whom to listen to and whom to associate with, every individual is necessarily his own arbiter of what is just and right. We’re all called upon to make frequent moral judgments, and as it happens you judge SJWs just as surely and just as harshly as they judge you.

    As for myself, I try not to judge people entirely or even largely by their political opinions, and I have friends whose politics I don’t understand but who are wonderful people. But like you I see no problem with making moral judgments around issues, and in this case I have no problem saying that because we whites historically wronged blacks, not the other way around, we whites should do everything we can to make amends, including taking down statues to Southern white heroes if that’s what blacks ask. That is not my preference, but it is the good and right and Christian and just thing to do. You clearly disagree.

  8. “We whites”? This white man had nothing to do with slavery. Blacks in Africa that helped round these people up to send them here had more to do with it than I. Should their descends by villainized? You evidently are on a guilt trip and a fan of repraition. Anyone that knows anything about human nature knows you open more wounds that lead to more conflicts by blaming later generations wrongs of the past.

    Furthermore the Civil War was started by a group of elite southerners and politicians. It was also aided in abetted by a congress controlled by the north that was increasingly hostile to the south. Of course a biased and arrogant media played a role. Only a fool uses modern social standards to judge and then attempt to erase the history of those that lived in a vastly different era and were motivated by a lifestyle entirely differently than today.

    If Charlottesville wants to move the statues, go about it in a legal and orderly way. Instead that let an individual with a history of tweets that would have disqualified every white person in the nation from public office. In case you didn’t know at least one of those tweets occurred in 2012. Most were from 2009 – 2011. Yet, this man is suddenly a PHD proclaiming himself to be an arbitrator for unity and inclusiveness. My moral antennas are telling me loud and clear that the man is a blatant divisive fraud. The fact that he entered the political arena in 2013 is the basis for my belief.

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