By Sarah Lazarovic

It’s good to know that when bureaucracy and municipal inefficiency cause things to go pear-shaped, a columnist can just slap on a farce sticker and be done with the whole thing. How nice then, that John Barber provides such a classic example of the farce treatment in today’s Globe. It’s the old ‘what a world we live in where others battle tyrants and we have enough time to frivolously fret about posters?’ routine. But Barber, by reducing it all to an object of his idle satire, makes everyone look bad, and mixes issues like he’s a bartender concocting some sort of public space shake. At the end of the day, dumbly bureaucratic or no, it’s silly to forbid artists and promoters from postering. But who knows what Council will do with the mess dropped on their plates this week? Don’t ask John Barber – He’s adapting this whole imbroglio into a light operetta…Okay, no he’s not.