Legendary comedian Rodney Dangerfield is not the only guy who can’t get any respect these days. A retired federal judge and a former big-shot CEO are right there behind him.

Only problem is Mr. Dangerfield is use to that. Gov. Rick Snyder and Judge Steven Rhodes, not so much.

Maybe you saw the video the other day of the governor coming into the lion’s den and getting roundly booed over and over again by the residents of Flint who were seeing their governor in public for the first time. All the pent-up anger and frustration aimed at the man who was in charge when the water was contaminated with lead came pouring out.

The governor kept repeating, “Good afternoon. Good afternoon.” But it was painfully clear that neither he nor they were having a good afternoon. The cat calls continued for what must have seemed like an eternity for this governor who never confronted that kind of behavior in the board room where CEO’s call all the shots.

He called no shots that day and stood there and had to take it.

And then this past week, the former judge got his first dose of disrespect.

It must have been a shock to his system because, as you know, judges reside in a rarified world of the court room where they are judge, jury, and even executioner and nobody in front of them can do squat to mute that power.

“Bailiff remove so and so from the court room!”

“Counselor, you are out of order and one more outburst like that and you’ll be held in contempt.”

Judge Steven Rhodes had no such power over the audience of angry Detroit school teachers and parents who are not pleased with his performance in running the beleaguered school system as he tries to get the district out of debt.

Their critics contend these guys deserved what they got. After all, it’s the governor who has conceded mistakes were made all over the joint by his administration and he, himself, deeply regrets he was not more aggressive in asking some tough questions to get to the bottom of this much sooner than he did.

But despite apology, after apology, the audience cut him no slack.

Judge Rhodes is in a little bit of a different boat. He was not around and responsible when this governor and others imposed one emergency manager after another on the city schools thus wiping out any remnants of a democracy. But the EMs didn’t solve the problem and in fact the critics counter, they actually made it worse.

But here comes the judge stepping into this mess that he has to clean up and the audience treated him just like they did everyone else who they thought was to blame.

The judge, sensitive to the climate he was stepping into, apparently tried to change the conversation by calling himself a transitional manager.

Ha.

Everyone knew he was EM number five and no spinning of the title, could wipe that impression out of the public’s worn out psyche.

He also made matters worse, some insiders contend, by going public with a condemnation of the Detroit teachers who took two days off from work right smack dab in the middle of a contentious debate in Lansing to bail the district out with state tax dollars.

Some argue the timing could not have been worse. The “sick-outs” turned a difficult chore in Lansing into a work product out of the GOP House that very few outsiders liked including the judge, the governor, the Mayor of Detroit and a host of others.

But the judge may have made matters worse by publishing that letter when others suggest he should have vented with the teachers in private and out of the glare of the news media.

Yet the two men remain steadfast on their mission to fix it.

The governor is not there yet and ditto for the judge.

At the end of the bumpy journey, if successful, there will be applause but right now it continues to be Rodney Dangefield time.