Watching City Hall #408 (1-21-06)
“Other than the speeches and the music, it was a great show.”
(Jens’ reaction to first political fundraiser)
I couldn’t agree more. And, yet … it was the best time we had all week and we have lots of good times. The guests were the Gonzalez inner-corps & there isn’t a smarter or funnier posse walking the planet.
“The speakers made Castro seem brief.”
“Steal my woman or my money but don’t waste my time.”
(throwaway lines)
Oh, there were significant high points in the show. Jonathan Richman is an absolute treasure. He was the only speaker who had the faintest idea as to the mood and needs of the crowd. He translated a poem from Italian and bestowed it upon the 300 or so assorted Lefty armada like a blessing that awakened us from the coma into which previous droners had cast us.
Greens begin to rut as political season opens in earnest
I used to be a complete nut for football. As a child, I followed my ghetto, grade, then high school teams. As a young man, I drank heavily in bars and actually gave a shit whether or not the state teams won games. In my declining years, I retreated to pro football and drank heavily at my friend’s houses. In my senior years, I’ve left football for the blood sport of San Francisco City politics. It is infinitely more violent and consequential. It’s either that or Viagra.
Incidentally, I have to comment on a play that just happened in the Carolina vs. Seattle football game. It’s on Fox and you know how much you can trust them. I believe the network is still run by Rupert Murdock who has the morals & ethics of a low-life Hollywood producer. … Something just happened in the game that I’ve never seen.
The referees reversed a call that would have deprived a Carolina player of a touchdown. Now, that in itself, isn’t unusual. When, they go by the book. That would be, to toss a challenge flag and have the play reviewed in the booth by other officials. But, this kind of call by the official couldn’t be challenged. It could only be changed by a conference of officials on the field. And, it was.
This was significant because had the touchdown not been allowed to stand per the original official call, the Seahawk runaway victory over Carolina would have gone unchecked. Nothing hurts viewership like a game already decided. You’ve seen how people pour out of a sports stadium when the odds on your team coming back are overwhelming? Well, viewers at home change channels.
The refs changed their call. They gave Carolina a touchdown. Replays showed that the foul on the Carolina player actually occurred. Shouldn’t have been a touchdown. But, the guy who scored the touchdown was a player that Fox had spent a bunch of money highlighting in a pre-game show. The tough little guy who should have been the league MVP?
Talented or not, the player in question (Carolina’ Steve Smith) is a complete asshole. The cameras caught him screaming and yelling at his team’s Offensive Coordinator on the sidelines demanding more for himself. It was a deja vu of the prick, Terrell Owens yelling at Niner’s Coordinator, Greg Knapp a couple of years back.
Bottom line is a question. Was the call changed to keep viewer interest high and ads more valuable? We live in a culture where Wal-Mart in Arkansas can tell if you raise the thermostat on a store in Canada. Who’s to say that Murdoch’s advertising execs didn’t order the officials to change the call? Let’s see establishment media raise that question.
Where was I?
(1-24-06)
I have to write more. I have so many things going on that I end up just going from one event to the other, gathering data, then hardly writing anything. Let me do a stream-of-consciousness rant and get things out of the way:
A. Gonzalez’s introduction/fundraiser for Todd Chretien (Green candidate for U.S. Senate from California) & Kevin Zeese (candidate for U.S. Senate from Maryland). That’s the party at Slim’s I opened the column talking about.
As I said, it was a great show. There was (and continues) to be resentment from some of the SF core Green party members regarding anything Gonzalez does. Like me, they’re bitter when he doesn’t do exactly as they desire. Some are angry that he didn’t run for City Attorney. I have issues that he didn’t run for President. There’s anger that he’s nominated a couple of candidates who aren’t part of the local establishment. Many feel he doesn’t talk to them enough. It’s all a very confused kaleidoscope of lust for power and deflected sexual desires that’s very exciting to go sit and watch when you’re drunk and stoned. Last friday’s event throbbed with this strangely Green alchemy boycotted by Sue Vaughan & John Marks & Susan King & Michaeus Somethingorother (? - sorry, guy) and other people whom I’ve sat and listened to as they insulted Matt for hours on end: “I’ve given more money to the Green Party than Matt Gonzalez ever did!!” (those kinds of statements). Oh, they all had excuses for not supporting the Gonzalez affair but they were all bullshit. I mean, a 6 hour event sponsored by the party’s most visible personality and you can’t find time to drop by for 10 minutes to show support?
Well, the Gonzalez show (despite the lack of support from core party organizers) was a resounding success. Over 200 people jammed Slim’s. I sat with a hilarious contingent including Charles Kalish and Jens Nielsen and Barbara Early and Sean Penn (whom I never met) and Krissy Keefer and Marc Salomon and Zeese and more. As the crowd grew, tables were pushed to corners and we ended up with a hundred people sitting in clusters on the floor while others networked.
B. Last night’s Falun Gong vote before the Board’s, City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee was historic. After watching for 5 hours or so, I phoned Jack Davis to alert him. What had happened was that half of the testimony was in Chinese.
It was definitely a turning point for San Francisco for those who could see. Old line supporters of the tyrannical Chinese government (all 3 members of the committee are in this classification) were overwhelmed with a packed chamber of well-behaved Falun Gong practitioners. We were watching 2 changes of old guard for new. Clearly, the Falun Gong outnumbered the commie sympathizers like Bevan Dufty and it will be they who control the government on the mainland within a few years.
Further, the meeting showcased the new face of San Francisco politics. It is yellow. As in Asian Pacific Islander Americans. I kept phoning Peskin & Daly to try and get them to get a translator for the supes. I mean, face it, sober anglo college professors have trouble understanding Jake McGoldrick, imagine the dilemma for a chinese peasant whom he keeps ordering to stand up and get in line, then, sit down til your name is called. Really, they needed someone to do consecutive translation of the supes for the crowd. A few comments:
“My family came here 50 years ago to escape the communists.
Now, after all of these years, they have followed me to America.
The tactics of Rose Pak are the trademark tactics of the communist government.”
(very elderly speaker)
“Here are 3,000 signatures from Chinese residents opposing Falun Gong.”
(Rose Pak)
“Here are pictures of Rose Pak collecting signatures.
She has disguised her table as a traditional lottery.”
(They show pictures … the vile Pak is shown at a
table decorated in red, with a large stainless lottery drum at one end
telling the people that they should sign to win a prize.
She has covered the top of her petition.
People don’t know what they’re signing.)
“We have to be fair here.”
(Jake McGoldrick who extended the 3 minute time
limit for speakers to 12 minutes for commie-driven
head of Chinese Chamber of Commerce
…
McGoldrick, Dufty and Ma regularly cut off Falun Gong
speakers as soon as possible and allowed the commie
side to speak on and on and on. The tactic worked
for an hour or so until the commies ran completely
out of supporters.)
“I didn’t assign this item to committee. I let the clerk decide.
And, I don’t know why I’m speaking to you, anyway.”
(Peskin returns call asking if he assigned the Daly item
to a committee headed by Chris’s worst enemy plus
commie sympathizers Dufty & Ma so they could
kill it before it got to the Board where he’d have to vote.)
I told Peskin the truth. He was speaking to me because he realizes that I am this Board’s de facto biographer and that’s exactly true. I’m not the best writer in town folks, but I’m certainly the best one writing only about the City government. Talent aside, the rest of them are all writing with their heads up their ass or their hands tied behind them. And, sense of humor? Only Tommy Craggs & Don Asmussen approach my rarified air.
True, sometimes I publish pure shit. Last week I printed a piece sent to me that insinuated Peskin took a bribe in the form of a sweetheart land deal. I didn’t write it (did put a clever headline trivializing the charge) … but I published it and it appears to have been merely an attempt by a lobbyist to smear Aaron (lately, the facts will do that, there’s no need to distort) …
But, ploys such as the skewed Peskin attack, are part of any total snapshot of the present local scene just as the hilarious (to me) pictures of Pak’s fake ‘Lottery’ booth. When I see things like that, I always pick up the phone and call the person I think can appreciate the moves best. Yesterday it was Jack Davis.
“I think many of these people are from out of town.”
“It’s not our place to speak out against international tyranny.”
(Bevan Dufty)
No one looked worse than Bevan Dufty in these exchanges. He’s a gay Jewish man, for God’s sake! How the hell can he refuse to oppose a fascist government that tortures and murders on the basis of religious affiliation? Over and over, he made excuses for the unscrupulous Pak’s exclusion of the Falun Gong from the City sponsored, Chinese New Year’s Parade on the flimsiest of grounds. Over and over he gazed at the ceiling and spoke of the many projects he’s worked on with the demonic commie puppet bitch. It was disgusting to watch the 8th District sycophant grovel before the red money machine. No one can blow smoke up your ass like Bevan Dufty and he had his boiler going full tilt.
While Ma illegally campaigned on her Blackberry
The less said about Fiona Ma, the better. Suffice to say that, as she does at most Board meetings, she spent most of her time soliciting contributions on her Blackberry (illegal in City Hall, but who cares) while the other supes worked. She and I do agree on one thing 100%. She can’t wait to get out of City Hall and I can’t wait to have her gone.
“Falun Gong is a pathfinder for humanity.”
(a U.C. professor)
“In 30 years I have never come to City Hall.
Now, I come to support the Chinese Chamber of Commerce
and the government of the People’s Republic of China.
As an American, I have the freedom to support the PRC, no matter what they do.”
(Pak ally)
“We have a fundraiser this Thursday at 8pm at ‘Z’ Space.
Matt Gonzalez will be present but will not speak because
we banned his choice for U.S. Senate from speaking.”
(Sue Vaughan)
Make the Green party gig day after tomorrow folks. They are feisty. They are argumentative. They are disorganized. And, they are the best political party in the United States. Get drunk or high first, of course and reserve your right to throw things at anyone who speaks for over 10 minutes … do that and you’ll be OK and take home a memory. … Maybe not a good memory, but nevertheless, a memory that will be hard to erase … a memory that starts over here and goes all the way to over there … a memory of fabulous entertainers interspersed with long-winded, self-centered egomaniacs. Don’t try to change things, because you can’t. As I explained to an always-challenged McGoldrick:
“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
‘once I built a railroad’
