City councilors want respect and don't get it. The media make fun of them, voters mock them and the mayor's office laughs behind their backs.

It grates. And like Rodney Dangerfield, sometimes councilors' search for esteem assumes comic proportions.

Tickets and jobs. These are the trinkets that too often define how councilors measure their own worth.

Take this year's big summer event, the arrival of the Tall Ships in Boston Harbor.

The mayor's office handed out to each councilor 25 plum seats for viewing Tuesday's Parade of Sail, so that the councilors in turn could give them to their . . . ahem . . . constituents. Dusty Rhodes, organizer of Sail Boston, gave each councilor another two tickets to board the USS John F. Kennedy, the Navy aircraft carrier also in port for the celebration.

That makes 27 happy constituents per councilor.

The definition of constituents, by the way, is ``very good friends.''

Quick rule of thumb: To a politician, a $100 donation makes you a ``friend.'' Five hundred dollars and you're a ``good friend.''

Five hundred dollars and get a spouse to kick in as well and you become a ``very good friend.''

The councilors got so excited about the whole ticket thing they decided to take Tuesday off. They told their central staff to take the day off as well. Then, in a munificent fit, they urged the mayor to give all non-essential city employees the day off so they too could watch the ships sail by.

Mayor Thomas Menino, demonstrating once again that he has more political sense in his head than the 13 councilors combined, declined the offer to grant a vacation day. Nevertheless, the councilors declared the day a holiday, thereby apparently announcing to the world that they, at least, deemed themselves to be non-essential itself only a confirmation of a belief that many on the mayor's staff have held for a long time).

So while the rest of Boston craned its collective heads trying to see over the hats and hairdos of the spectators in front of them, the councilors and their ``very good friends'' could watch the whole resplendent show in all of its unobstructed glory.

To some councilors, that's respect.

Respect like this comes in many forms. Every summer, the administration makes available a certain number of summer jobs to each councilor. As soon as the budget passes the council, administration staffers trot into councilors' offices to let them know how many summer jobs they're allowed. Councilors average six jobs each, although ``bad'' councilors (those who in some manner did not cooperate in getting the budget passed) get fewer. ``Good'' councilors get more.

The jobs are hotly desired. Handed out to the children of councilors' ``very good friends,'' they prove councilors can deliver.

In a similar fashion, the mayor's office allocates councilors a certain number of police cadet jobs each year. Some councilors get no cadet jobs; others get three or four.

A lot of Boston kids dream of becoming a cop, and because cadets eventually become police officers, cadet jobs are truly the most prized. Doling out a job like this is real proof a councilor has clout.

That's why it's important to be a ``good'' councilor.

All of these are, as one councilor admits, little more than ``scraps off the table that keep the council well fed.'' But to those starving for respect, even scraps taste delicious.

There are some councilors who like to indulge in the fiction that these scraps mean nothing. But in truth tickets and jobs have a pernicious effect on the council. When councilors allow the measure of their power to be their ability to deliver favors like these, then it's an easy step for the mayor's office to demand fealty in exchange for making those favors available.

And that is exactly what it does.

There's a bright side to this, however. It's not as bad as it once was.

Years ago the entire City Council would show up for opening day at Fenway Park, watching the game from box seats, compliments of the Red Sox.

Today they stand in line like the rest of us.

Indeed, when the press last year got wind of an offer by the Sox to let councilors buy - buy, mind you - All-Star Game tickets, a small firestorm ensued. The Sox withdrew the offer and embarrassed councilors said they weren't planning on going anyway.

Even with the Tall Ships, some councilors (perhaps because of bad press) were reluctant to take the bounty they were offered. And despite having proclaimed Tuesday a vacation day, a number of councilors thought better of it and went to City Hall instead, making their weekly appearances at the Zoning Board of Appeal instead of enjoying waterside views of the Tall Ships.

One can imagine Rodney Dangerfield as a city councilor: ``I get no respect. Yesterday someone called and asked me for good seats to Christina Aguilera.''

City councilors aren't glorified ticket or employment agencies. They're legislators. Respect for the body, and respect for the position, will come when councilors finally figure this out.

Tom Keane writes every Friday in the Boston Herald. He can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.