Edgecomb Leaving, Blacks rejoicing, Comedy Hour Final Season

At the last School Board meeting Comedian Doretha Edgecomb gave her signature hilarious rambling incoherent monologue about why she had finally decided not to run for another hysterical term on the school board. Filled with sharp contrasts and non-sequiturs she even blamed her own mother for her decision to not seek another term, in classic style. She is expected to take her show on the road bringing her shtick to comedy clubs throughout the country.

For more than 10 years Doretha was the Clayton Bigsby of Hillsborough County, seemingly unaware that she was 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 she looked in that role. Anyone seeing only her voting record would have thought she was as white bread as her buddies Stacy White, Carol Kurdell and Candy Olson (Both of whom we shamed out of running for re-election; link). 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 Doretha was one of their voting block keeping it that way in her Clayton Bigsby persona! Doretha’s humor was so deadpan sometimes it is hard to tell when she was in character or not. Doretha was as deliberately indifferent to her own people as MaryEllen Elia was to special needs children (link).

Doretha could have been making real change all these years but she was always dedicated to the comedy above all else. Her humor is even immortalized in a dedication plaque just a block away at the Edgecomb Courthouse where she 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 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 and foresight she had. She planted that joke there a decade ago knowing that years later the payoff would be in dumbfounded laughter at the cutting juxtaposition of being “courageous and trying” against her own hilarious do-nothing record on the school board. Such timeless wit from a master comedian, filling our solemn courthouse with daily laughter.

Sadly, there will always be people who didn’t get her jokes. She was so focused on her hilarious comedy antics that people like Marilyn Williams (link) had to file the federal discrimination complaint against the school district that Doretha should have filed long ago. Doretha was clueless about Superintendent MaryEllen Elia covering up the use of tens of millions in emergency reserve funding to cover shortfalls due in large part to the flawed Gates initiative that Doretha blindly endorsed as part of the Superintendent’s white voting block (link). Doretha even failed to advance the NAACP concerns about the Superintendent’s obscene employment contract (link) until the Superintendent was finally, mercifully fired by other school board members. So after more than 10 years of comedy on the school board, don’t miss this opportunity to show Doretha how much you have appreciated her focus on comedy rather than education.

Watching the school board with Doretha on it was like watching an old situation comedy. Doretha was 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.

Sadly, we will now have to endure a real election with real people that want to actually accomplish meaningful change at the School District. Don’t miss the last hilarious episodes of the Doretha Edgecomb School Board Comedy Hour.