You know you’ve been naughty when a newspaper editorial comes out with the advice that everyone who works for, oversees operations of, sets policy for, or who is either specifically or generally unhappy with – the city – should sit down, take a deep breathe, exhale, then do it again and again until your focus about what’s happening at City Hall is less blurred.

There were moments of clarity during the oft-bizarre, five-hour City Council meeting Wednesday night, but when council members begin yelling at each other it’s evident there’s a problem. Take a side and join if you wish, but it’s about time the increasingly hardened line between one group of councilors and another is erased by the sides trying to find some middle ground.

The problem, it seems, is that both sides are righteous believers of their rigidly self-righteous stances on a variety of issues that have grown monumentally disproportionate during the second year that this council and manager have been thrown together by the voters.

Not everyone wants to admit that the actual mix of the seven-member council might have something to do with its current dysfunctional mode, but the split between one side (four council lawyers and a lawyer manager) and the other (three who are not lawyers) seems to evolve around who is right and who isn’t right, so help me judge. Sound familiar?

Some may consider this an overreaction, but it wouldn’t hurt if council members – sitting in a semi-circle, holding hands and humming “Kumbaya” – watched Wednesday’s meeting, and then replayed the occasions when the audience enjoyed a belly laugh over the proceedings they were witnessing.

Yes, the council is becoming a laughing stock and it’s time to end this childish behavior. This is serious business, perhaps, but not that serious. Besides, the audience is about ready to turn the channel.