Villaraigosa and the Newscaster, Again
On Wednesday, just couple of days after it was revealed that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was dating yet another local TV newscaster – this one a former Miss USA – the mayor told reporters that Californians don’t have any real interest in his personal life and that it won’t have any influence on whether or not he runs for governor next year.
The reporter, Lu Parker of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, isn’t talking and a spokesman for the mayor’s office says there won’t be any comment on what the mayor does in his private time.
You know, just like the cops at a traffic accident: “Move along, move along, nothing to see here.’’
And yet people still stop and stare.
Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Are We the Most Dysfunctional of All?
Here’s a quiz.
Name the state that has a legislature and governor contemplating making draconian cuts to education programs and eliminating some health and human services programs.
Name the state that is planning to pull back money from county and municipal governments and sell state assets (including three prisons) to deal with a record budget deficit.
Name the state where a moderate Republican governor is stuck on the idea of securitizing state lottery revenues to paper over the deficit.
Where the governor is fighting with legislative Republicans are fighting over the governor’s plan to raise taxes, including a one-cent sales tax. Where Republicans are calling that a betrayal of conservative values.
Where Democrats are mad at the governor for using the crisis to try to promote a spending limit.
Where the governor is getting nowhere with any of these proposals, and is sinking fast in popularity.
Is GM A Metaphor for California?
Now that the previously “unthinkable” has happened and two of America’s Big Three Automakers are in Bankruptcy, with GM’s behemoth filing now dwarfing the relatively simple Chrysler “shotgun marriage” with Fiat, or whomever, a thought dawned on me, and, I suspect, on many others as well. Is the history and fate of GM a metaphor for the history and fate of California?
The parallels are striking. I moved to the Golden State in the early 70’s from New England, as so many before and after me from all over the world, because I grew up believing California was the Promised Land. The Beach Boys, surfing (and ‘surfer girls’!), much of 60’s music, revolutions in culture, dress, lifestyle, and let’s not forget the weather – compared to New England, it was like dying and being re-born to actually be able to go to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day in a T-Shirt, while my compatriots were back home were out shoveling snow and cursing their frozen windshields; something I had only dreamed about while growing up.