Edgecomb Campaign Comedy Tour

Doretha Edgecomb,

Don’t you dare think about not running for school board and abandoning your essential role of comedy relief that we are counting on to get us through this next election cycle. Don’t you dare pull out like your cowardly cohort Candy Olson who we shamed out of running for re-election in 2014 (link).

Don’t you dare deprive us of that; you owe Hillsborough County at least that much because you are foremost a master comedian. You are like the Clayton Bigsby of Hillsborough County, seemingly unaware that you are black (Chappelle’s Show link). Most of us can’t go to a school board meeting without thinking of that classic Chappelle’s Show episode while we laugh and shake our heads in disbelief at how ridiculous you look in that role. Anyone seeing only your voting record would have thought you were as white bread as your buddies Candy, Carol, and Stacy. Whiter than that bumpkin Stacy White; if that is even possible. As South Tampa as former Superintendent MaryEllen Elia. Years of a jim crow school system and you were one of their voting block in your Clayton Bigsby persona! Your humor was so deadpan sometimes it is hard to tell when you were in character or not. As deliberately indifferent to your own people as MaryEllen Elia was to special needs children.

God forbid we have to endure a real election with real people that want to actually accomplish meaningful change.

You could have been making real change all these years but you were always dedicated to the comedy above all else. Your humor is even immortalized in a dedication plaque just a block away at the Edgecomb Courthouse where you said “George E. Edgecomb… would want this day and this building to be a reminder to all the young people throughout this community, how important it is to dream and how important it is to be courageous and try.”

Everyday hundreds of people must read that plaque and at first think “WTF! Comedian Doretha Edgecomb said that?” But then they burst out laughing realizing what an enormous sense of humor you have. You planted that joke there a decade ago knowing that years later the payoff would be in dumfounded laughter at the cutting juxtaposition of being “courageous and trying” against your own hilarious do-nothing record on the school board. Such timeless wit from a master comedian. Think of all the laughter you bring daily to our solemn courthouse.

Sadly, there will always be people who didn’t get your jokes, but you shouldn’t deprive the rest of us your insightful humor. You were so focused on your hilarious comedy antics that people like Marilyn Williams (link) had to file the federal complaint against the school district that you should have filed long ago.

Please we beg of you, watching the school board with you on it is like watching an old situation comedy. You are like the school board’s own version of Beverly Hillbillies. Plot: Local election backfires and Doretha Edgecomb becomes the lone black woman on an all white school board in a rural Deep South backwater. Fish out of water plot involves the outlandish efforts of school Superintendent Elia and her cronies to maintain their jim crow status quo by patronizing Doretha with a false sense of import and making the locals think that she is a wise old sage. Hilarious hijinks unfold as Doretha’s words, spoken often due to confusion or to a stating of the obvious, are repeatedly misunderstood by the townsfolk as profound; in particular, her rambling comments while fighting to stay awake on the dais are misinterpreted as allegorical statements about education and civil rights.

Doretha, you can count on us to support your campaign comedy tour. We are even starting a twitter parody account to increase awareness and amplify your unique brand of humor.