“I’m free at last! I’m free at last!,” Thelma Parks said the other day to some of those few compadres of hers still silly enough to listen to what she has to say.Mrs. Parks was telling her hangers-on that she’s glad her tenure on the Oklahoma City school board is now over after her resounding defeat and denunciation last week, and she went on to say to those who would listen that she was going to her home and would destroy anything and all things that was in any way related to the school district.
Isn’t that sad.
It is actually all of us who should be singing that we’re, at long last, free of the reprehensible Thelma Parks.
After she failed this time to sneak by without drawing an opponent, voters turned out with a vengeance, seemingly bent on getting rid of….once and for all….the bullying, mean-spirited school board member, who is so egotistical that she actually stole the name of a school so that she could engage in another level of self-adulation.
The vote against her was nearly 3-1 on Election Day; an unheard of margin of defeat for an incumbent….anywhere and at any time and in all the land of the living! There is no recorded history in any democracy of such a vote of denunciation. Hers was the reverse landslide of all times. Thelma Parks lost so badly, she ought to be called “Downslide Thelma.”
During Election Day, you could almost hear The People singing the adjusted lyrics to “The Wizard of Oz” tune: “Ding dong, the wicked witch is….gone!” Some of the voters were surely humming that tune as they went to the polls and voted Thelma Parks out.
But, interestingly, after her defeat, Mrs. Parks’ response was to make a remark that implies that she had been somehow forced into repeatedly and stealthily sliding down to the election board and sneakily filing for reelection, hoping all the while that apathy in her district was so rampant (if that’s the word) that no one would ever notice, and she would then have been, one more time, “reelected” by default.
Showing signs of being the psychopath many have long suspected she is, Mrs. Parks has decided to engage in a bit of denial; denying in her own mind that her community….her own constituents….her own associates who have grinned in her face throughout the years even though they greatly despised her….have publicly denounced her at the polls, telling her in no uncertain terms that they are sick of her shenanigans, tired of her brow-beatings and insults, and fed up with her mean-spirited arrogance and bodaciousness.
Unable to otherwise deal with such rejection, Mrs. Parks will perhaps go on telling others that the reason she was never opposed was because she was doing such a good job that no one saw the need to oppose her, but, of course, we all know differently. Clearly, all of District V has been waiting for some worthy soul (“Anybody….just anybody but Thelma Parks!”) to file for the office.
Alas, Mrs. Parks, having clearly misread her district, was so confident that no one would file this time that she went down there to the county election board and filed for the office on the first day candidates could sign-up.
(She even told a news reporter that she was confident of victory after she realized that someone else had filed for the position, arrogantly telling the reporter, “I don’t intend to lose.”)
Apparently, though, she did realize that almost anybody could beat her (Thelma Parks realizes how deeply she is resented and nearly hated), for the School Board Member by Default then tried to bully and harass the woman who did file as a candidate, Ruth Veales (the distinguished grandmother who appears to have a real burning desire to get something done as a school board member).
Recognizing she was going to be defeated, the clearly scared Mrs. Parks called Mrs. Veales practically all night after the candidates filing deadline had come and gone. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m., Mrs. Veales answered the phone.
Thereupon, Mrs. Parks resorted to the use of street tactics, and tried to jive-talk Mrs. Veales into withdrawing as a candidate. The School Board Member by Default offered one of those too-good-to-be-true deals. (It was one of those deals not tremendously different from that one offered to Jesus Christ by Satan, who tried cajoling the Good Lord by telling Him that, if He would throw Himself off a mountain cliff, God would send angels to keep Him from falling to His death….Yeah, right!)
Of course, as we reported last week, Mrs. Veales (so serious in her intent to do good and so “on to” Thelma Parks) did not yield. She did not accept the Thelma Parks proffered “deal of a lifetime.” (“If you’ll withdraw as a candidate, I’ll give you my seat later.”….Yeah, right!)
(Incidentally, we are told that Mrs. Parks is now denying that she tried talking Mrs. Veales into withdrawing, but we all realize that anyone who would actually steal a school name for her own glorification will also lie.)
If Mrs. Parks wants to tell folks that she’s now glad to not be still at the school board, acting the fool, as she has been the past 20 years by intimidating folks and accomplishing absolutely nothing for her constituents or for the children, then we want to declare that she’s not nearly as glad as we are to have her out of office.
Actually, it is us (not her) who should be singing our version of that old Negro spiritual:
Free at last!
Free at last!
Thank God, Almighty,
We’re free at last!
Free at last!
Free at last!
That Thelma Parks,
She’s gone at last!”
