GAVIN'S NATIONAL SPLASH

Our mayor is talked about on Huffington Post. He’s going big time.

The article is by an East Bay writer named Mayhill Fowler. She disses our boy-mayor to a national audience.

As we’ve heard, Newsom has been on the campaign trail for Hillary [note: San Franciscans voted for Obama in the recent primary]. Ms Fowler begins:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is one of the prettiest but alas not one of the sharpest in the Democratic pencil box. Chatting with local pundit Phil Matier, in less than two minutes on the early morning news Mayor Newsom confirms the Clinton game plan for winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

[Note: she blows the first sentence. She should have said, “…alas not one of the sharpest Democrats in the pencil box.”]

Fowler continues:

"It's a very subjective thing--intelligence analysis. You can go either way," Newsom informs Matier. Since when does a city mayor know anything about national intelligence analysis?

And concludes:

Just returned from junketing with the former President around Texas, Gavin is parroting Bill, who clearly had a good time holding forth in the back of that black Texas SUV.

Later she gets in this dig:

"Do you think for a second the Bush Administration will take all that objective data and hesitate to manipulate it in the context of this campaign?" Newsom rejoins. Trust me--this reasoning is way too Machiavellian for the Mayor.

Picture this: Bill Clinton and Gavin Newsom sharing an SUV between dry Texas stops. Sooner or later they gotta start swapping desktop-tail stories.

Not a tornado, but converging dust devils.

----- o -----

ANYONE BUT CHICKEN

This shameful election morning Nevius column supports h. brown’s paranoia: that Chicken John is on the Newsom team.

Wannabe-eccentric John Rinaldi is being used by Newsom and his downtown backers to typify, and thus trivialize, the opposition to Newsom and his feed-the-rich regime.

Rinaldi’s platform IS his anti-conventional fashion statements. So amusing.

h. brown early in the race pegged Rinaldi as a Newsom “plant” and predicted that Rinaldi would be the recipient of Newsom-directed public funding of some sort—jobs, grants—as soon as the election is over.

Basically Nevius’ column says:

- Newsom is a shoo-in,
- His main opponent is a guy named “Chicken John.”
- Wouldn’t it be “so San Francisco” if Chicken John got a lot of votes!

Meanwhile, candidates such as brown, Sumchai, and Mecke who have raised serious questions which the Mayor refuses to address in open discussion, aren’t even named in the article.

The only other Newsom opponents Nevius mentions are “Grasshopper and the nude guy.”

Nevius refers to, or quotes others referring to, the field of opposition mayoral candidates as:

- offbeat
- midget
- fringes
- freaks
- ridiculous

At the downsizing Chronicle, Nevius must feel that it’s better to be a shill than to be unemployed. The janitor who empties C.W.’s wastebasket has, at least, an honest job.

The results of this Mayoral vote won’t make national news, UNLESS Chicken John comes in second. If this happens, right wing pundits will use the Chicken-vote to further trivialize and vilify San Francisco.

If you like Newsom, vote for Newsom.

If you dislike San Francisco, vote for Chicken John Rinaldi.

Elsewise, any other candidate will do.

----- o -----

DEBATE VENUES DOUBLE

The brilliant questions I wrote yesterday could have but one responder. Per his latest missive, h. brown might be the only candidate “under Gavin’s balcony” from 5:00 – 6:30pm this evening.

According to h.:

Except for me, tomorrow’s opposition candidates for the office of mayor this great City and county will be showing their wares at the MUNI station intersection in the Castro. 5-6:30pm. I’m told that since I won’t be there that Chicken John and Quintin Mecke who are both scared shitless of me will attend.

Fog City Journal’s story, written by candidate Josh Wolf, doesn’t mention h. brown at all. Candidate h. claims he was not consulted about the venue change.

The fact that article doesn’t even credit h. as in impetus for the Collaborative, per se, shows that Josh understands political ambition—you gotta step on people.

So h. is on the outs with Luke at FCJ, and Josh is flirting with Ted Strawser, founder of Party Party, who will be moderating the Castro Station group. [In addition to the written word, Party Party employs satirical art, as above, to get its points across.]

SF politics is so, interesting!

Fog City Journal, without h., is getting kind of sfist-y.

h. says he’ll keep his commitment to 12 Friday debates, “under Gavin’s balcony,” and vows to be there this evening 5:00 – 6:30pm.

Mayor Newsom, if h. really is the only candidate present, could say a big fuck-you to lots of people by coming out and exchanging a few jabs with the lovable/hate-able curmudgeon. Newsom would appear very manly in doing so.

The Wolf-Strawser hijacking of the Candidates Collaborative demonstrates why this blog endorses h. brown for mayor. We want clean, transparant government.

H. BROWN FOR MAYOR!

----- o -----

NEWSOM SHINES: DEFENDS SISTERS

Mayor Gavin Newsom came to the defense of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, per this SFGate story. Responding to criticism by Bill O’Reilly:

"This debate really is about San Francisco values. The Bill O'Reillys of the world are threatened by San Francisco because we value diversity, universal health care and civil rights for all. They will exploit any controversy to attack our values."

Good for you, Gavin!

Meanwhile, the Archbishop is apologizing for giving communion to two SPI’s.

A USF Jesuit says the Archbishop is obligated to give communion to all who ask for it unless there is some specific reason not to. Such specific reasons do NOT include unusual dress or heavy makeup.

I wonder what Niederauer was expecting. MHR has been a gay church for decades.

----- o -----

CIRCUS COMING TO TOWN

Mayor Newsom’s decision to employ the City Charter to oust criminally accused, but not yet convicted, Supervisor Ed Jew could set the stage for some entertaining political theater.

Here’s the process:

1. Mayor suspends Supervisor Jew and names his own employee, Carmen Chu, as “interim” replacement.

2. San Francisco Ethics Commission holds a hearing and otherwise investigates Newsom’s allegations against Jew.

3. The Ethics Commission concludes either that Jew should be permanently removed or not, and communicates their opinion to the Board of Supervisors.

4. The Board of Supervisors considers the recommendation of the Ethics Commission (and conducts its own hearings and investigations?).

5. The Board of Supervisors votes on permanently removing Ed Jew.

NOTE: There are eleven supervisors, one of whom, Jew’s replacement Carmen Chu, will not be allowed to vote. The City Charter requires nine votes for Jew to be removed. So Ed Jew needs the votes of only two supervisors to keep his seat.

Also NOTE: This City Charter provision has never before been utilized. Procedures are ill defined—nobody knows what they’re doing. Surprise? Newsom?

Ed Jew is fighting the mayor. Ed has a smart lawyer, Steveen Gruel, who’s going to make things tough for the Mayor. (Photo from SF Sentinel.)

This could get interesting.

Steven Gruel has issued two requests that Newsom can’t possible like:

First: Gruel demanded that the members of the Ethics Commission to immediately cease any ex parte communications regarding this case with the Mayor’s Office and its reps and likewise cease any ex parte communication with the Board of Supervisors and its reps. (Fog City Journal story here.)

As Gruel explains:

A basic precept of due process, of course, is that adverse parties and fact finders do not communicate about an active case in the absence of all interested parties. I see no reason why this simple rule ensuring fundamental fairness should not be followed here.

At least some of the Mayor’s critics see an unwholesome relationship between the mayor and the Ethics Commission.

The second Gruel letters really pissed off the City Attorney’s office (FCJ story here).

Gruel requests copies of all documents and communications used by or in possession of the City Attorney that were used as basis for his (actually the Mayor’s) charges against Jew.

Gruel’s letter might have sounded kind of hardass, quote:

Finally, I expect that your response will be complete, truthful and in full accordance with the law. Not only will your response, or the lack thereof, possibly serve as an exhibit in any future federal or state lawsuit, but anything less than strict adherence to your lawful obligations and duties could provide clear grounds for removal proceedings under San Francisco Charter Section 15.105.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera was so pissed he had his press secretary issue a statement that is simply nasty (forwarded by h. brown).

In it Matt Dorsey says:

Apart from running up his client's legal bill, I don't understand the rationale for Mr. Gruel's continued theatrics.

and:

At this point, I think Mr. Gruel would better serve his client to focus on Mr. Jew's numerous legal problems than to engage in this ongoing publicity campaign.

These statements sound political rather than truth-seeking. Our tax dollars pay Mr Dorsey to fire off this crap. The pretense of concern for the accused is cheap rhetoric. I think Ed Jew and Steven Gruel is beyond taking advice from Dennis Herrera or Matt Dorsey.

The Ethics Commission, isn’t quite ready to proceed. They have scheduled a meeting later in October, not to hear the case, but to discuss how to go about hearing the case.

I hope the hearings are on TV (Comcast cable channel 26).

Now Gruel wants certain supervisors to recuse themselves from voting on Jew’s ouster, if and when the case reaches the Board (SFGate story). Gruel says some supervisors have made public statements that show prejudice against Jew. Gruel threatens a federal lawsuit. SFGate story here.

Gruel’s strategy is to treat the Ethics Commission/Board of Supervisors proceedings like any other legal case in which all of the defendant’s civil and procedural rights are protected. This seems an impossibly high standard for the Ethics Commission.

There's no telling what will happen next.

I guess Mayor Newsom thought it was a good idea at the time.

----- o -----

CLIMBING THE FENCE

When I started playing tennis eight years ago I had access to a great “bang wall,” as Irishman Desmond calls it, aka a “hitting wall” in the play yard of Ulloa School, my alma mater if you count half a year of kindergarten.

It’s a fifteen foot high concrete retaining wall that runs maybe 250 feet and forms the eastern boundary of the school’s grounds.

I’d go there on weekends and after work for an hour at a time. Hitting against a wall is a way to get a lot of strokes in a short time, and it’s a good workout. To be realistic, a person doesn’t really belong on a tennis court until they can sustain a twelve or twenty stroke rally with a wall.

Sometimes teachers leaving late, at 5:30pm or so would look at me warily, but the yard was so big, with almost no kids around, and I must have looked non-threatening.

I got to know a female custodian who would alert me when she was about to lock the last gate. Usually I’d tell her “thanks, I’ll just hop the fence when I’m through.”

After a year of this I went to the schoolyard on a summer weekday and jumped the fence but was quickly and nervously shooed away by a guy who, I gathered later, was running some sort of summer program for kids. Small and private, he wanted me out of the facility he had rented with good money.

A week later signs appeared on the fences at the easy climbing spots warning against illegal entry. Very unfriendly.

I wasn’t the only one climbing the fence. Teenagers would play baseball-oriented games. Moms and dads would lift there kids over the low part of the fence and play in the little kids’ section. For a while there was a guy doing very disciplined footwork exercises, I think he was a boxer.

By the time the signs went up I was a good enough tennis player that access to the hitting wall was not that big a deal. But without it, I doubt if I would have gotten good enough fast enough to want to keep playing.

Community access to schoolyards for recreational purposes has just been in the news. Pat Murphy over at the Sentinel covers it thoroughly in this story. Mayor Newsom is proposing a trial program that would open fourteen schoolyards to the community on weekends.

The fact that this is a big deal tells you what a hick town San Francisco really is, and what a can’t-do spirit our civil servants have.

Anyway, Newsom is allowing his newly appointed interim Supervisor Carmen Chu to introduce the legislation.

I guess it’s nice of the mayor to give her a readymade resume item so warm and fluffy.

I don’t think that Ulloa School, with it’s great hitting wall is included in the pilot program.

After my tennis session this morning, I stopped by Ulloa School to photograph one of the nasty do-not-climb signs on the fence near the kindergarten classrooms where I debuted academically.

I hoped the kids would be in class but the playground was full. I worried I’d look like a creepy old man taking pictures of kids in a schoolyard, but I was greeted enthusiastically.

“Hey mister! Could you get us our ball?”

It had come over the fence and rolled down the street a little.

At first I didn’t see it. The kids told me it was a “Batman ball.” Then I spottedit, a smallish rubbery kickball thing clearly marked “Batman,” under a red sports car, and threw it back. One of their teachers came over to thank me.

The sign I found was different from the ones they originally put up—not quite as nasty, but still not too friendly.

----- o -----

UN-NEWSOM: HOPE AND DESPAIR

DESPAIR

This blog was shocked when Tony Hall removed his name from the ballot in the upcoming San Francisco mayoral election.

Historically, former Supervisor Hall was snookered by Mayor Gavin Newsom to give up his elected job for an appointed one, from which Hall was almost immediately fired.

This allowed the mayor to appoint sadsack amateur golfer Sean Elsbernd to fill Hall’s empty seat, and to run for the seat as an incumbent.

Tony has plenty of personal motivation to run against Newsom.

Hall said he had to drop out because Newsom’s crew threatened Tony’s potential moneybags donors with City Hall reprisals.

This explains why Hall can’t mount the kind of campaign that costs money.

But there was no need for Hall to spend money. Hall had a firm hold the secondary position. All he had to do was hang around and wait for an airliner to drop a hunk of frozen shit on the frontrunner.

So why did Hall ask to have his name removed from the ballot?

It must be one of the “B’s.” Bribery, blackmail, or buttheadedness.

There are some ethics charges pending against Tony Hall, with a hint of potentially more to come. Could that have scared him off the ballot? Will Newsom’s cronies now go easy on Hall?

No doubt Newsom’s investors have looked at the shit-from-the-sky scenario and have decided that chaos is preferable to a Tony Hall mayoralty. So they got his ass off the ballot.

I’ve been seeing a Hoogasian flowers commercial on cable TV recently urging listeners to patronize a San Francisco family business employing San Franciscans blah blah blah.

Of the challengers remaining on the ballot, Harold Hoogasian probably has the highest name recognition, but of the same quality as Harold Stassen, also a Republican.

It’s like, Harold Hoogasian? –he’s the guy that always runs for office and will never be elected to anything.

On his webpage Hoogasian promises to enforce ALL laws. Does he mean indiscriminately? It looks like Harold should probably stay in the flower business.

The rest of the candidates have close to zero name recognition.

So, there is no new un-Newsom. It’s Newsom or chaos.

Problem is, this is supposed to be a democracy.

Dictatorships and other totalitarian regimes are noted for sham elections, in which there is only one candidate for the top office. The explanation offered is that the dictator is doing such a good job that there’s no reason to consider someone else—there simply are no other candidates.

Such, apparently, is San Francisco.

Newsom will be re-elected, assuming Zeus doesn’t crap on him.

This is terrible! This is no fun!

[End despair.]


HOPE

sfwillie's blog implores Cindy Sheehan to come to San Francisco and become a write-in candidate for mayor.

Not that she would be elected, but

-It would be good practice for her run against Nancy Pelosi.

-It would give non-Newsom supporters a meaningful voting opportunity.

-It would focus national attention on the disconnect between Pelosi’s positions and those of her constituents.

-A high vote for Cindy Sheehan might nudge Pelosi a little toward the left.

-Even Gavin supporters might be tempted to vote for Sheehan, figuring Gavin has it wrapped up.

-It would be a lot more fun than not.

Fifty thousand people gathered recently in Golden Gate Park for the fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love.

Please come to San Francisco, Cindy Sheehan. Put some flowers in your hair. We’re ready for some more good lovin’.

[End hope not.]

----- o -----

BENEFIT RE-DO, FLOOD BLDG SPRUCE-UP

It looks like Tim Gaskin’s gone. Looks like Ruby, too, is now part of the bad old days at Benefit Magazine.

According to the mag’s Executive Director, Paul Corso:

"Benefit Magazine is on the verge of releasing a vastly improved editorial product in terms of depth and quality of coverage and of aesthetic design. We have come a long way in the past year. We are now responding to the stream of constructive feedback we have received from our board of advisors and our audience."

A “stream of constructive feedback”?

“Vastly improved…aesthetic design”?

If that ain’t disrespect, what is? Tim and Ruby poured their life’s passion into Benefit Magazine. Mayor Gavin Newsom himself graced the first cover.

How could anyone "vastly improve" this "aesthetic design"?

To celebrate the re-launch, Benefit Magazine has found some support from a San Francisco leading Interior Design firm, SophiSticate Interiors, which has underwritten the cost of a complete remodel at the Benefit Magazine headquarters in the historical James Flood Building in downtown San Francisco.

This, from a press release issued by SophiSticate, posted on Extra Realty blog.

Poor Ruby! Out in the cold. Maybe she really should write that book.

No word yet on the re-launch date.

----- o -----

THE UN-NEWSOM

Through my work I became aware of a funky marketing strategy called “Secondary Positioning.”

A familiar example of secondary positioning is the Avis rent-a-car campaign, “We’re number 2, we try harder.”

Hertz' primary position in its market was unassailable. While all car rental companies might wish to be number 1, Avis saw the value of seizing the second position.

It’s like a word-association game.

Q. Name a rental car company.
A. Hertz.

Q. Name another rental car company.
A. Avis.

Here’s a website celebrating the 40th anniversary of the We Try Harder slogan, which is still in use today.

The idea is that if for some reason Hertz is not available, or if someone is looking for a change, or if someone has a bad Hertz experience, Avis is there for you, and they WILL try harder.

Another easy example was the 7-Up “Un-cola” campaign. The position 7-Up was seeking was THE Un-Cola. When you get tired of cola beverages...

In San Francisco’s current mayor’s race, Tony Hall has undisputed (by this blog) possession of the secondary position.

Q. Name the next mayor of San Francisco.
A. Gavin Newsom.

Q. Name another candidate.
A. Tony Hall.

If this were a horse race there would be only three entrants to bet on: Newsom, Hall, and the field.

Newsom has a commanding lead over Hall. More importantly for this analysis, Hall has a commanding lead over the field.

This is relevant only because it’s impossible to predict the future.

Short of some major unforeseen event, Newsom will be re-elected. But what happens in the event of an unforeseen event?

What if Newsom gets struck by lightening and dies two weeks before the election? I’d say, “Mayor Tony Hall.”

Or gets hit by a bus.

----- o -----

NEWSOM IN THE NEWS

Our Mayor was much mentioned on cable news today for his pledge to maintain San Francisco as a Sanctuary City for illegal immigrants. The pronouncement is covered in this Chronicle story.

The Mayor is quoted:

"I will not allow any of my department heads or anyone associated with this city to cooperate in any way shape or form with these raids," Newsom declared. "We are a sanctuary city, make no mistake about it."

This is grandstanding. The discussions I heard on MSNBC and on Fox News were mostly disapproving, but they mentioned the full name, Gavin Newsom, many times. Some defenders brought up Newsom’s Gay Marriage gambit.

Listening only to the national news, one would gather that Gavin Newsom, whatever the direction of his policies, is bold and unafraid to break new ground in championing unpopular causes, a real comer.

Presumably there are some genuinely bad people pursued by La Migra, like, people who present a great risk of physical harm to the inhabitants of San Francisco, whom SFPD would, I hope, cooperate in capturing.

I’m sure the sanctuary to which Newsom refers extends only to the “good” illegal immigrants, whom we want and need for their cheap labor.

So, the real story isn’t about immigration, it’s about Gavin Newsom: “Newsom Gets His Name in the News.”

The national news doesn’t care that Newsom can’t make a stupid streetcar system run on time.

For an amusing take on “sanctuary” check out this story in the Brussels Journal blog.

It’s about illegal Muslim immigrants holed-up in Catholic churches. The picture and the lead-in were irresistible.

While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian Churches are committing suicide. A Muslim would never allow his mosque to be turned into a dormitory for non-believers. This, however, is exactly what the Belgian Catholic Church is doing.

Too many people! Again, from the Brussels story:

Earlier this week a 31 year old illegal immigrant from Morocco, squatting in a church in Glain in the diocese of Liège, sewed his lips closed to protest the fact that (a) he has no money to travel to Morocco to attend his father’s funeral and (b) that if he does go to Morocco he will not be allowed to enter Belgium again.

Exasperation knows no borders.

----- o -----

IMPASSE RESOLVED BY STRONG WOMEN

This second clip starts where we left off with the mayor ignoring the unruly crowd and looking down at the file cards containing the pre-selected questions.

Finally a mature woman explains to her youngers that some members of the community actually want to hear what the mayor has to say about the selected topic.

This doesn’t get much respect, then another woman whose name I should know finally gains control and chides the unruly ones and chides the mayor for refusing to answer questions.

And Gavin doesn’t even acknowledge the assistance these two women rendered him. He doesn’t even refer to them.

He’s been criticized for not engaging in unscripted give-and-take exchanges. From these clips, he appears phobic, like he’s really afraid to look at the hecklers.

The criticism must be painful for Newsom, and this experience must be painful beyond belief. He has staffers and aides there who work with him every day. They all know that on this occasion at least the boss fell apart.

It’s like school teachers, no matter how brilliant you are, if you can’t manage a classroom, you can’t teach.

----- o -----

IMPASSE

Messing with my new camera and watching the recent Mayoral townhall debacle on SFGOVTV, I put the two together and experimented with uploading to YouTube. Here is the result.

This clip shows our Mayor’s presentation halted by chanting attendees. Their beef is that the Mayor won’t take questions from the audience.

If Newsom were a teacher would be faulted for poor classroom management. It’s painful to watch. Other politicians would roll up their sleeves and wade right in. Newsom literally can't face his constituents.

I have to mess with some technical issues, then I’ll be post a clip that shows how this impasse is resolved.

----- o -----

BOY LEARNS NEW WORD: BUREAUCRACY

Kenneth Burke, or someone he quoted, used to say that bureacracy is the worst form of tyranny because it's the rule of no one. A monarch can be deposed, elected legislators can be replaced, but bureaucracies are designed to resist change and live forever.

We saw bureaucracy at work in this Matier and Ross report yesterday.

The basic story is:

1) Mayor sees a filthy public park.
2) Mayor tells Park and Rec to fire the gardener assigned to that park.
3) Park and Rec tells Mayor the gardener can’t be fired.
4) Park and Rec tells Mayor many reasons why parks can’t be better maintained
5) Other public official expresses frustration.
6) Mayor asks for funky workaround to address the park the Mayor complained about.
7) Nothing more will be done.

The most pathetic part of the story is Mayor Newsom’s delusion that he could get a city gardener fired.

The other pathetic aspect of this story is that nothing will be done.

Getting a civil service department to perform effectively is not easy. All levels of employees need leadership from above. Civil service selects against people with leadership skills.

It’s easy to pass bullshit nanny laws. It’s not easy to reform a city department.

Managing bureaucracies is like disciplining strong-willed toddlers. It’s difficult but necessary. Failure to do so results in disaster.

Bureaucratic response is pathetically predictable: lack of resources, restrictive regulations, unrealistic expectations.

Rec and Park officials say they're scrambling to come up with a solution, but that they keep hitting a wall of bureaucratic regulations.

They wanted to hire a couple of extra workers to staff the park in the late afternoon and evenings. But under city rules, hiring the workers meant hiring a supervisor as well, which they can't afford.

As for the maintenance worker the mayor may or may not have wanted fired, the department says it has no grounds to get rid of him. And even if his bosses did want to can him, the city's complicated disciplinary process would make it unlikely. (Not to mention that the custodian was on his regular day off when Newsom showed up, according to a co-worker.)

It’s like, the head of Rec and Park has never sat down with the mayor to hammer out performance criteria, i.e., what level of service CAN we expect from Park and Rec given the level of resources and regulations.

Without such criteria, the Mayor continues to flail in the dark. Creating such criteria is basic to any manager’s job. Gavin really deserves the title, Boy Mayor.

----- o -----

TWO VIEWS

Our mayor has a nice view from his condo. He can see quite a bit of the bay, not to mention Coit Tower, between neighboring buildings.

Our mayor’s sponsor, Gordon Getty, has a much nicer view. Here’s a picture of our mayor with his ex-wife on the floor in Gordon Getty’s house. The view from this window is pretty much 180. The Getty's look over neighboring buildings.

----- o -----

"DEAR MR. MAYOR AND STEVE"

In the midst of the final unraveling of Tourkgate, ABC7’s excellent crew fronted by Dan Noyes has released a copy of Ms Ruby-Tourk’s resignation letter. Here's the Chronicle story.

There are many ways to examine this letter: for truthfulness, for evidence of conspiracy, for genuineness, for back dating.

Full size pdf of letter here.

Pud views the letter as a sample of Ms Rippey-Tourk's English composition skills.

Pud asks, “Is this the quality of writing we expect from an office worker making $81,000 per year?”

Pud’s short answer is “No.”

“There are classes full of kids at Lowell who can write better than this!” Pud exclaimed.

“What the heck are we getting for our money!”

----- o -----

ANOTHER BAD DECISION

The downward spiral of our handsome but hollow Mayor Gavin Newsom has only accelerated with Newsom’s latest decision (Chronicle story).

Just days after the cuckold-your-best-friend scandal broke, the Mayor has announced that he’ll start treatment for alcohol abuse.

There’s lots of press dither about PR tactics vs true health concerns.

Our own Pudinhand Wilson says out loud what others fear to think. According to Pud:

“Gavin Newsom is facing a tough, life-defining decision. He has reached a true fork in the road.

“To make things simple the two tines of the fork are marked with signposts. One path is ‘Politics,’ the other path is ‘Alcohol.’ Gavin has to choose one or the other.

“And the poor guy is making the wrong choice again—he’s choosing Politics!

“Gavin has to understand that he drank too much because he wanted off the political career path. Even sfwillie understands this, as he showed in the recent post Gavin Newsom and Steve Howe.

“If he had chosen the alcohol path, he could have eventually moderated or even eliminated its effect on his life. While it’s rough on the body, alcohol was his friend. Instead he’s ignoring it, with potentially tragic consequences.

“Alcohol takes years to destroy a person. Politics can eat you up in no time.

“The real choice is both or neither. He’s choosing both. He has entered the rehab-relapse ping-pong game, with his soul as the ball.

“It’s not good for him. It’s not good for San Francisco. It’s just sad.”

----- o -----

MINOR LEAGUE TRYOUT

HuffPo wonders why Gavin Newsom sex is a national story.

It’s not, except that Newsom is a national politician in training and a lot of time and money have gone into grooming him for that role. He announced his ambitions by seizing the national stage on the same sex marriage issue. He did this only a few days after becoming San Francisco Mayor.

If Gavin Newsom had been in a serious car accident, say, instead of the sex thing, it still would have gotten national coverage.

He’s like a pitching phenom who signs a big contract but is sent to the minor leagues for some mellowing. San Francisco is the minor leagues. He’s using us for practice.

It’s a huge story in San Francisco because, well, we are the minor leagues, and Gavin Newsom was the biggest political prospect we’ve had in a while.

So the death of Newsom’s career is nationally newsworthy, at least as much as the death of Barbaro. Plus it has sex.

We were hoping for a successful season out of Newsom before he moved up to the majors, but it looks like that won’t happen.

SFWILLIE’S BLOG was incensed about the inaction of authorities regarding the Yale Baker’s Dozen Gleegate beating case. We wanted to know why.

Now we know. Our look at local politics just happened to coincide with Gavin Newsom’s meltdown. He doesn’t care about the Yale kids. He doesn’t care about the reputation of his home town. He’s got his own problems to think about.

Pud says there’s nothing else we can do. We’ve advised the ruling class to dump Gavin. We’ve requested that the Feds step in to investigate Gleegate specifically and SFPD in general.

I don’t know about Baghdad, but SF could use some sort of surge.

----- o -----

GAVIN NEWSOM AND STEVE HOWE

In this time when only the confused

Conform, everyone's a weirdo.

sfwillie, 1967

The way Gavin Newsom is sabotaging his own career reminds me of the Steve Howe Syndrome. Why would Gavin mess with success?

One hypothesis is that Gavin Newsom doesn’t really like the career path he’s on. Most people don’t understand how success could be un-fun, but according to Pud ‘n Willie’s Catechism of Minerality, this is exactly the point.

We’re here to have fun, and if being mayor isn’t fun for you, it’s just not fun, no explaining it. Most jobs, some would say, are un-fun, but people in those jobs endeavor to minimize the time and emotion they put into work, and look for edification elsewhere.

You can’t have a nine-to-five attitude if you’re a Mayor with national political ambitions, or if you’re a Major League Baseball pitcher. You have to love those jobs in order to succeed.

Steve Howe (wikilink) never could admit that he just didn’t enjoy playing baseball, so he sabotaged his career with drugs and got into the miserable rehab-relapse pingpong game.

Hopefully, for himself and for us, Gavin Newsom will summon the gumption to tell Gordon Getty that puppethood is no fun anymore and that he wants out. Poor Mr Getty, another failed project!

Gavin would be much happier for it. If he’s lucky and gets disowned, he might actually have to make an honest living, you know, join the human race. Who really wants to spend a life sucking up to the weirdos of Pacific Heights?

Gavin is still young (at least compared to Pud and sfwillie.) He still has a chance to do something with his life. This is his opening. He should go for it.

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