WHAT A PREPOSTEROUS PURSUIT
It is to write opinion, for publication.
No, wait, stop! Don’t flip to Crime Watch — we know you love Crime Watch — ‘cause I’m not talking about myself, for a change. This week I have to take on other opinion writers. Because they have done us wrong, fair citizens of Santa Monica, and I’m here to stick up for our fast-fading honor.
The first and easiest target is gasbag Harold Meyerson, who wrote last Thursday in the LA Times under the headline: “Stephen Miller wants America to look more like his hometown of Santa Monica - rich and white.”
His lead sentence: “You can take the boy out of Santa Monica, but you can’t, apparently, take Santa Monica out of the boy.” Well, that certainly gets peoples’ attention, but it’s disingenuous and leaves a false impression, especially for that majority who won’t read much further than the first sentence.
For most of us here who despise Miller and every incredibly cruel, inhumane, despotic, racist shove he has given the Trump monocracy, and how embarrassing it is that he is a son of Santa Monica, this is painfully unfair. And Meyerson knows it.
IT’S WHAT YOU CALL A CHEAP SHOT
It’s lazy, careless, glib, dishonest and pandering. He does accurately go on to explain that “Miller grew up despising the liberalism of his Westside hometown. But even as Miller has rejected the inclusive politics, he seems to have embraced its demographics.”
What is that supposed to mean? Making the connection to Santa Monica because it is more rich and white than average America makes no sense except to slap us down for guilt by association. It would be more accurate to peg it to the rich, white Halls of Congress he inhabits and seeks to control. (He previously worked for two other GOP horrorshows: Michele Bachmann and Jeff Sessions. What a resume. Waiting for the Fourth Reich.)
THE DIFFERENCE
Of course, is that many of us in Santa Monica embrace the racial and economic diversity that we are fast losing, due to gentrification. (Given steroids by a City government overdeveloping our beach town like it was a young Arnold.) So Miller is the antithesis of the Santa Monica many of us know, yet Meyerson weds us because it serves his purposes for this particular piece. Ya gotta have a hook, right Harold?
He ran the LA Weekly for 12 years from the late ‘80s on, as editor. I would say he ran it into the ground, greatly responsible for its penchant for sensationalism and contrariness over what the heck actually happened. Hard to break old habits, eh Harold?
POLITICIANS ARE PROPAGANDISTS
At least, locally. OK, almost everywhere. A few exceptions. So a so-called opinion piece by one is going to almost fall over from being so slanted. Opinion yes, and even politicos have a right to them and to have them published. But put on your hip boots.
City Council member Kevin McKeown recently took umbrage to a column written in another paper that compared the politics of Trump’s Washington with Santa Monica shenanigans.
I take umbrage, because I’ve done that several times in my columns and McKeown ignored me. Hmmph.
I’VE GOT MY BOOTS ON
But it’s awfully wide and deep so I’ll pick just a couple bon mots.
First of all, McKeown either completely missed the point, or is intentionally ignoring it. He protests right off that “Santa Monica is about as far from Trump’s Washington as one can get, geographically and politically.” We all know that, Kevin, both counts. He starts in on our environmental policies being the exact opposite of Trump’s. We know that.
And it takes him only until the fifth sentence to mention how he was invited to the 2015 UN climate change conference in Paris, as our then-Mayor. “We were the only small city so honored.”
A point of pride, we might all think, but I have come to believe that this has been a focus of our selected politicians for a long time now. That reputation. That gives them notoriety, and invitations to conferences all over the world. But when they give their speeches I’m betting they leave out the part about the cost of their so-called enlightened policies on the residents of SM. Like spending tens of millions more than necessary on an office annex building for no extra benefit to the residents, but years of bragging rights for all present and future Council members. Tens. Of millions. Too much.
“The resident-friendly centralized offices will save money on operations and maintenance, costing taxpayers less over the life of the building,” McKeown writes. Less than what? So would a platinum LEED construction costing tens of millions less than the estimated $142,000,000. “Resident-friendly” — ??
“That kind of long-term fiscal responsibility is a hallmark of Santa Monica’s budgeting.” Change one word, to “irresponsibility,” and you definitely have your hallmark. Bus benches, anyone? $2.5M toilets? $20M+ of our taxpayer money to appeal a lost lawsuit, a desperate attempt to stay in power?
McKeown goes on but I cannot. Thank goodness for print, that has a stopping point.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 33 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
