Perfect Models of Muddled Major Mayors

There was a horrible wrong-way-driver crash on the 101 in Santa Barbara this morning, complete with fatalities, and therefore the highway, and soon every surface street, was choked. We became a wonderful parking lot of not moving, not getting to work. Puts stuff in perspective. Late to work is much better than late period. Sometimes we have to be shaken out of our rush hours.

And much more mundanely, there was this--I turned to local AM radio hoping to figure out what was going on, what route might be best. This merely put me in the path of local pols trying to make their cases for being mayor. This merely made me dislike the candidates I already disliked even more.

As regular readers (hiya, both of you) might expect, just a word or phrase can be enough to set me off, as I'm in the business of words. (Didn't say I was a good businessman, just want my vocation clear.) First up is an ad from Steve Cushman, who wants to be mayor. And along his way to trying to prove that in 60 seconds, he says, "Because Santa Barbara is the best city in the world" or something very much to that effect. Sorry, Steve, but even as a big SB booster--I mean I do that professionally too, as George is my name and PR is my game--that's just an asinine, sucking up, bullshit thing to say. Who the hell knows what's the best city in the world? I might take Paris, another San Francisco, someone Cheyenne where I've never been. It's a stupid contest and a stupid thing for someone who has to make smart decisions to say. It means you'll say anything to be elected--it's like pretending that the whole damn town is one big baby to be smooched.

Next up was Dale Francisco, who instead of smooching, choose to shat on whole groups of people. He said to vote for him to keep "political activists and the unions" from running Santa Barbara. First, I sort of missed the political activists running town--I wish folks like Dick and Mickey Flacks were running things, but I'm pretty sure they're not. This "political activists" charge is sort of like when the right complains about "activist judges"--they only mean the judges who do things they don't want done. When the court rules in favor of corporations, white folk, etc., that's just justice, dammit. Comes direct from the god I made in my image.

And then the poor unions. Don't people realize that unions are just a bunch of people who actually work for a living? Sure, many unions are now white collar, not blue, but that's mostly because we've got rid of so many blue collars jobs or are very good at snuffing out any unionizing attempts before they can give people hope for better work conditions or a living wage. But there will always be a segment of the world (led by people like Wendy McCaw--gee, a rich woman hates unions, who'd guess?) that say the word union like they've just bit into a dog poop and maggot sandwich on a leper's shoe leather bread.

So it seems pretty easy, now, to decide who not to vote for for mayor. Glad your ads did the trick, gentlemen.