Thursday, February 22, 2007

LET'S PRETEND

There’s a good, simple, functional definition of “an alcoholic.”

An alcoholic is a person who should never have another drink, not even one, for the rest of his or her life.

In yesterday’s TV interview, Hank Plante asked Mayor Newsom, who recently went into “sort-of rehab,” if he, the Mayor, is an alcoholic.

Our Mayor said, “I don’t know.”

This means that Mayor Newsom still holds out the possibility that he will re-introduce booze into his life at some point. Our Mayor has officially entered the rehab-relapse ping-pong game and he’s going to lose, poor guy.

The image of William Powell and Myrna Loy drinking day and night but remaining witty, sexy and vertical, and solving crimes to boot, is a lofty ideal.




We have to remind ourselves that movies don’t necessarily represent real life.

The raw footage (view it here) of the Mayor’s interview is painful to watch. The glibness, the everything’s-great-except-for-some-mistakes spiel, the shoulder shrugs, the way he talks about himself too much, the Ted-Bundyesque composure and sincerity—Gavin is white-knuckling it, poor guy, through life.




Not a word about Muni (public transit), nor about SFPD, but we heard some details about his rehab. According to Newsom, he used to look forward to some wine when his workday ended, around nine or ten at night. Now, instead of drinking, he goes to Delancey Street for rehab, and stays for several hours, every night with maybe a few exceptions.

It’s all pretend.

There wasn’t a single follow-up question, a poor performance from Hank Plante, who proves once again that gay people can be every bit as mediocre as straight people.


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