Courtiers and Kabuki

The end of session used to be the best of times for a Capitol reporter, with the hallways full of lobbyists trying to buttonhole bill sponsors for late-night negotiating sessions, and a general sense of things happening, bills getting passed or going down. Sometimes you even got a glimpse through a chink in the wall of three-man-in-a-room politics, although nothing could actually get done without at least tacit approval from those mighty satraps, the Assembly speaker, Senate majority leader and governor.

Now that we have a surplus of Senate leaders, no one controls the chamber and individual senators are conscious of their power to tip the scales one way or the other, you might think it would be an interesting time for representative government. It isn't. I showed up for the Senate session today, at which the only thing they did was recognize their own interns. A colleague tells me I need to blog more, to keep updating it, but the main news in this endless end-of-session is a variety of gossip about the Senate, the tit-bits on that luncheon meeting of potential rebels or this opinion by one public official about another's constitutional proposal. The Senate stalemate seems to have made Albany more than ever a place for back-room secret dealing, with reporters, courtiers and tourists part of the show.

I haven't gone yet to Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," which is being performed at the Spa Little Theater by the Lake George Opera Festival. It's directed, reportedly with a Kabuki theme, by Helena Binder, who also directs the annual LCA show. Not that I know anything about it, but Kabuki seems like a good theme for the Senate. This year's LCA show, which had a mock-Shakespearean theme, included a prescient number by (hacks playing) Sen. Malcolm Smith and his Democratic colleagues in the Gang of Four. Here's the chorus, with the tune being "Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho" as sung by the seven dwarves in Disney's "Snow White":

Alas, alack,
It's like we're all on crack.
It's plain to see
Majority
We just
Can't hack.

Comments

[Terry O'Neill, Esq.]

BREAKFAST AT THE CROWNE PLAZA

Long ago an Albany hand did coin this famed expression:
"No man's money's ever safe when those guys are in session."
Now we have a paradox; they're not convened to steal
Or pass a law or raise a tax or even cut a deal.
The force that's irresistible in Albany has met
The object that's immovable and my bottom dollar's bet
That 'til Charles Darwin's theory about natural selection
Is proved to be the truth of things in next year's fall election
We'll read a lot of stories telling what the Gang of Four
Did have for breakfast every day and what it was each wore.

[Bob Conner]


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But how long will Sen. Carl Kruger keep picking up
the tab?

----- Original Message -----
From:

[Brian]

Ah yes, the Lake George Opera Festival which plays half an hour away from Lake George.