Watching City Hall #353, 3-18-05

“What a dumb idea. I hope it wasn’t Gavin’s”

(Rachel Foulmoth)

Meet Rachel. She won the contest to replace Eileen Left. I won’t explain, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. After interviewing over 2 dozen extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful imaginary women from all over the world, I settled upon Rachel to be my new sidekick. She won with a closing statement that pretty much said it all:

Rachel: (chewing gum loudly) “So, you say that the job doesn’t pay anything and you get to make all kinds of disgusting sexist remarks about my body and that I should stand for it because I am in reality, a fictitious character who doesn’t even exist and therefore has no rights?”

h.: (looking down from her angry, penetrating stare) “You’re a literary invention designed to make a sometimes boring subject more interesting. You are the second such character. I feel that by adding a little sex appeal and mystery and general weirdness, I can claim to be an experimental genius and not a dirty low-down muckraker.”

Rachel: (she’s around 5’2”, raven haired with 2 streaks of white, built like a brick shithouse and clearly, thinks she’s the one who’s real) “So, … what happened to your first sidekick?” (looking over the rims of maroon librarian type glasses often seen in fantasies – she’s curled up in the big leather chair in front of Alex Clemens’ giant television)

h.: (long, thoughtful pause) … “She left.”

Rachel: (turns and rises on her knees in the chair to look out the 20’ high windows that face the other line of ‘Joe O’Donoghue’ work/loft spaces across the street – she’s wearing tattered levis cut to into short-shorts and has a serious heart-shaped ass and powerful, crushing legs – calls over her shoulder) “Pardon me, but how the hell could she leave you if she was only one of your fantasies?”

h.: (nodding and looking down at the floor) “I thought about that a lot. I think that what happened was that she became more real to the guy she ran away with than she was to me. I really don’t understand it.”

Rachel: (turns back to stare at him) “Are you on medication?”

h.: (shrugs) “Nothing prescription.”

Rachel: (nods slowly in thought and tilts head slightly to right as she replies) “Why don’t you let me do today’s column and you just smoke your pot and drink your whiskey and think about getting some professional help?”

h.: (looks slightly surprised) “Eileen never did a whole column by herself.”

Rachel: (shaking her head in sad disgust) “That’s how I found out about you, dildo. She wrote several full length columns for Carlos Petroni before they went back to Argentina.”

h.: “You know Eileen!?”

Rachel: (holds left hand up gently in a cautionary manner) “Don’t go there.”

h.: (looks down, a bit confused) “OK. Write the column.”

Caught between a rock and a flagpole

(by Rachel Foulmoth)

It’s raining in San Francisco. It’s hot in Baghdad. Hot young men and women ask and tell in San Francisco. Hot young men and women are blown apart by huge roadside bombs in Baghdad. It is illegal for them to ask. It is illegal for them to tell. It is left for the hot young men and women in San Francisco to ask and tell for the hot young men and women in Baghdad. They will be doing this in front of the City Hall tomorrow at 1pm. Over 1,500 of them will be asking the same questions as the rigid Marine bugler pierces the rain and fog with the millionth rendition of ‘Taps’.

“Why did I have to die?”

“Does anyone care?”

“Will anyone remember me?”

“Will anyone honor my memory?”

In a unanimous decision, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors heard these echoing pleas from the grave Tuesday. In a 10-0 vote, the Board voted to honor the memory of all of the fallen in the Iraq war by lowering the American flags on the roof of City hall to half mast for one day. The mayor. The mayor. The mayor … disagreed.

Speaking on behalf of San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, spokesman, Peter Ragone told Chronicle City Hall beat reporter, Suzanne Herel … “City policy dictates that the flag is to be flown at half staff only when a prominent local figure dies.”

Can you get any colder than that? The numbing cruelty of Newsom’s decision is only surpassed by the sheer idiocy of the decision. Why the popular young mayor, long groomed for high office, would lower the flag for the death of the widow of a prominent white politician and not for the battlefield last measure of devotion sacrifice of black Hunters Point marines defies logic. Who would give the mayor such advice?

I’m betting, no one. I’m betting that this one was the Gav’s personal call. I’m betting that he overruled any number of common sense responses to the Board’s request. Like I said in the lead to your column. I just hope that it wasn’t Gavin’s decision. If it was, it means that he remains consumed by a loathing for the plebian Board that treated him pretty much as Gordon Getty’s political mouthpiece project.

It has to be Gavin’s slap at the united Board of Supervisors. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that while he is an internationally recognized leading San Francisco anti-war activist (I shit you not – read Herel’s fine piece on the front page of today’s Chronicle – Newsom’s spokesman describes the mayor as being “praised by people all over the world for his vocal criticism of the war”) … he wouldn’t have said that and then went about disrespecting the black marines by refusing to fly the flags at half mast in the City of their birth. … Couldn’t have been that. If Gavin personally made the decision, he wasn’t thinking about the grieving families of the troops. No, it had to be just a petulant insult aimed only at the Board.

We all hope that it was Gordon (‘my other wife is a Volvo’) Getty’s decision and that Gavin had no choice in the call. It makes sense that the oil billionaire Getty would support a war being fought for the sole purpose of controlling the third richest reservoir of oil on Earth. Sure, Getty would order that. He doesn’t give a shit about Ross Mirkarimi’s brother (a Major in the Special Forces) driving through Hell to protect he and his friends’ investments. Remember 3 years ago when they even tried to take over the Veterans building across from City Hall? Yeah, first they pushed the vets off of one floor after another, forcing the posts to double and triple up in little rooms while their trophy wives redecorated them out the back door. The people put a stop to that (led by Rebecca Silverberg) and voted to keep the Veterans building for the vets.

What Gavin should have done

He should have requested first spot on the podium to address the anti-war crowd. He should have waited til all were gathered, came ceremoniously down the Polk street stairs and came smiling and waving at the crowd that was eying him suspiciously (the boy ain’t an activist for anything but big money) … he should have dropped the smiles and become all serious as he approached the mike. Picture it.

He leans to the mike and says: “Please join me in a moment of silence.” … as he turned toward the building and gestured toward his office where a color guard of U.S. Marines were filing onto the balcony across from the crowd. Upon his signal, more Marines appear upon the roof and stand at attention. A rigid officer with a gleaming sword snaps in forward in a blazing order. A bugler begins a slow, mournful rendition of ‘Taps’ as the flags are lowered to half mast. There is silence as the Marines file out of sight.

Newsom turns slowly and returns to the mike wiping tears from his eyes: “How DARE you!!!” he bellows. “Of course I honor our fallen heroes!” … He turns and walks away leaving them to their petty whining. He has important matters of business that do not include them.

He could have used their stage and all of their work for himself and for Getty oil. He didn’t. Big mistake.

Peace: