Jake Allen’s Ockhamist.com

Here’s a little hometown madness . . .

Great Falls, MT, voters ousted school board chairman Mick Taleff and board trustee Elna Hensley, both supporters of closing the east-side middle school (creatively named, “East”), and replacing them with candidates who support closing the central middle school (”Paris Gibson”). The upper-class middle school on the north-side (cleverly called, “North”) has and will remain intact after each and every round of budget cuts.

Great Falls voters, eager to participate in free elections in an otherwise inconsequential state, chose change, responding to a tightly coordinated guerrilla marketing campaign. The campaign mostly used recycled “Anybody but Bush” signs and bumper stickers, but the message got through. In this last phase of an ironic self-sustaining cycle, economic data provided by the school board supporting their decision to close East could not be understood by a populace educated in local schools.

East middle school also has the highest number of Native American students. This, however, was not a consideration in this debate, because nobody cares about them anyway.

Madness!