I MISS JACK NEWORTH
No - he’s still with us. The esteemed, very popular longtime humor columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press has been suffering for many months from a series of medical problems that have kept him out of his cherished home at The Shores North Tower (he may have been the very first resident there when it opened – in 1969?), and bouncing between too many medical facilities to count, occasionally landing at home, but not for very long.
We’ve been close friends for a long time, though I haven’t seen him in person for years. That’s not unusual. Jack has always kept a very low profile - Man of Mystery - despite being known by so many in Santa Monica. I hung out with him a few times in the lobby of his building, and despite hiding under a big floppy hat obscuring his face, nearly everyone who walked by in that well-trafficked lobby said, "Hello, Jack!" If he backed some candidate or issue, you could count on hundreds of votes from The Shores.
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We talked on the phone often, usually late at night. If it was getting closer to midnight I would lose him because he was pretty faithful about hitting the gym at The Shores before it closed. We would talk about politics, national and local, sports, Idyllwild, and life. If you think Jack has a sense of humor in print, "in person" he’s as good as any top Catskills comic ever was. Superb timing and delivery. I love to try to make famously funny folks laugh, and I knew I landed a good one when there was a long pause and he came back with a sardonic, "I’ll tell the jokes around here."
What I miss most about talking to Jack, is when we would muse and grouse over this screwy thing we both do, that few do, writing a regular newspaper column. And so he popped into my mind once more as I stared at yet another mocking, torturing "blank page." So many times in our conversations one of us would, after a silence, plead, "So, what are you writing about this week?" And of course the reply was always, "Hell, I don’t know, what are you going to write about?"
I sure hope we get to have those conversations again, soon. We’ve had a couple since all this started but they were brief, and it’s hard to be lightheartedly cynical when so many things are going bad with your health. Jack Neworth is the most loved curmudgeon I have ever known, a legend in this small beach city of so many legends. He has told me he is itching to write more columns. Hang in there, Jack. You’ve got a big fan club out here.
IT’S GETTING HARD TO KEEP UP
With my mission of calling out misinformation and "lies, damn lies, and statistics" on the local political landscape. But unless you do, unless someone does, if they are allowed to stand, they take on the veneer of truth.
"Retired Former Mayor" Kevin McKeown kept me busy for a while with his many letters to the editor at the Daily Press, so busy I haven’t had a chance to get around yet to John Alle, self appointed global press officer for slamming Santa Monica to the world. I agree with many of his criticisms and issues, but it seems like odd, self destructive behavior for a businessman who owns property here, specifically at the struggling Third Street Promenade, to hang a huge banner on one of them that reads, "Santa Monica is Not Safe." A long term strategy, I suppose. But that image of the banner has gone around the world, news broadcasts everywhere, and certainly harms the reputation of all businesses here, our tourism revenue, even our Olympic hopes. But Alle also floods the email waves with very frequent diatribes that blame everything on a handful of his favorite punching bags, telling only half the story.
But now, I want to focus on one incessant lie that can be a very powerful weapon if people take it at face value, and many do. It is, that the "Change Slate" of Christine Parra, Oscar de la Torre and Phil Brock, elected to City Council in 2020, includes Lana Negrete, and constitutes a "conservative majority" on the Council. If that were true, they could be blamed for everything that has gone wrong in our city for the last four years.
I HAVE TO CHUCKLE
As I contemplate that funny fallacy. If you have even the slightest acquaintance with the records and philosophies of The Slate, you know they are anything but "conservative." But like "Republican," that’s a "bad word" in Santa Monica politics, a powerful pejorative lately being thrown about by a whole passel of shaky movers here who present themselves as "liberals," "progressives," and certainly "Democrats." But so many of them are anything but. It’s like the myth that Santa Monica is "compassionate," "diverse," "progressive." How compassionate is it to let people who can’t take care of themselves live on the streets?
It’s the same Big Lie that autocrats, oligarchs, MAGA and our local "Dems" and "progressives" employ. No, they are not about to vote red, but they are not above using those labels to slander their opponents. But let’s just talk about their math skills.
You have seven people on our City Council, so a majority would be four, right? That "conservative majority" comprising The Slate is so ridiculous, except it is being used to persuade a lot of low information voters.
Lana Negrete was appointed to fill an open seat in June 2021. In 2022 she won election to the Council. The Slate was elected in 2020, and Brock and de la Torre are up for re-election this November, 2024. As part of a different slate of four. Negrete is not; she serves until 2026. She's an independent and always has been. She may often vote with The Slate, and often, dramatically, does not. She has never been a part of The Slate. It is a Big Lie, and you might think they would be embarrassed to even float it. But, we set the bar very low in Santa Monica politics. The Big Lie – who does that remind you of?
And speaking of "Democrats," now the head of the SM Democratic Club, Jon Katz, is using a letter to my paper to spread that same "majority" lie. He’s part of the reason there is now a new refuge for disaffected SM Dems, the Blue Wave Democratic Club. I’ve heard that part of the admission requirement is that you can count to four.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 38 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at mailto:therealmrmusic@gmail.com
