Category Archives: Essays
Courtship
In prodigious bulk they come—the mailers. Day after day—large, sleek, colorful, pictures and text on shiny cardstock. In the beginning I marveled at their abundance, and, like most, tossed them in the recycle. But after a time I began to read them. Within a day I was addicted. I began putting them aside so I could read batches at once. It was like taping Madmen for binge viewing. You should try this. Stack them somewhere, pour yourself a drink, put your feet up, and surrender. You’re being courted, and quite gallantly. That little vote of yours has made you a catch.
The most ardent of our wooers is Dr. Pan. He comes calling every day, sometimes more than once. House calls are back. He nearly always wears his white coat and his stethoscope. He’s a pediatrician so if you have young kids Dr. Pan will high-five them. He is frequently pictured with a cute little girl who seems bizarrely happy to be going to the doctor. It makes you think back. We didn’t have a fun Dr. Pan when we were kids. We had Dr. Koch, a nice enough man, but he always shone that light right into our eyes. Once I upchucked on his shoe.
Another big Dr. Pan mailer features a giant close-up of a baby with a glop of yellow goo on his lip. “Dr. pan, I could use a little help,” the text states. I don’t think this is a successful ad because the wet, runny, yellow glop dissuaded me from opening the pamphlet. So I don’t know what Dr. Pan is going to do to dry that child’s face. But no matter, Dr. Pan comes every day. He’s on the job. You have to admit that his barrage is working because now we know his name. This is a holiday and I actually sort of miss him, and am looking forward to his next visit.
Then there’s the sandwich. I have to say, I was gob-smacked by this one. It’s a close-up of a big Philly cheese sandwich. The candidate is quoted saying his first job was making these at a mall. Now, how is that sandwich going to win votes? Someone said that the plan was to trick voters into thinking it was a coupon, then turn the sandwich over to see the candidate’s parents smiling fondly upon him. But that’s a stupid idea, because what if you found no coupon and became irate? Or what if you’re a vegan and here comes this big, meat-dripping, cheesy sandwich through your mail slot? What can those consultants have been thinking? I know a candidate whose first job was sweeping up in a hair salon. How about a picture of a floor covered with different snips of human hair—hair of all styles, colors and texture to show diversity? Not a good idea? I agree. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
A hit piece on Roger Dickenson is also kind of loony. The first thing you see is a pink memo page with Dickenson’s name in red, a red X near it. So you think the X means Vote for Dickenson. Wrong. The piece asserts that Dickenson spends too much time away from Sacramento, but you never get to the message because you’ve been led astray by the red X. Then there’s the dark PAC mailer with the BIG RED EYE. Yes, it’s a full-page eyeball spewing red. The pupil is shaped like California. In case you still don’t get it, the text shouts, “They’re eyeing California.” Who’s eyeing California? Lift the dark flap and there’s our own Dr. Pan and, gasp, head-shots of the Koch brothers. Stacks of hundred dollar bills sit beneath Dr. Pan’s perpetually grinning face. So the doctor has finally made it—he’s familiar enough to be vilified by association. Unless, of course, you like the Koch brothers. It’s all a gamble.
Teachers are in this year. Many candidates claim teaching experience, though I expect few have an actual credential and served time in the classroom. But here’s one Assembly aspirant posing before a blackboard. To help you realize it’s a blackboard the words, Reading, Math, Science and Art are chalked on it, along with an algebra problem, a molecule and a big A+. Open it and there’s John F. Kennedy’s face taking up the whole of the left interior. “Leadership and learning are indispensable,” Kennedy announces. The rest of the mailer is logical but Kennedy was a surprise. He seemed plucked from the ether and planted on the page.
A real teacher has a worse ad. He wants to be Superintendent of Public Instruction and has that golden credential and relevant qualifications. But his lead photo shows a young woman amid four kids. “You’ve Been Here…Have They?” the text asks, showing a partiality for capital letters. But who’s You? Who are They? I had to open the whole thing and consult with others before being satisfied that the You was the teacher candidate, The Here was the classroom, and the They was his opponent. But his named opponent is merely one man. How can one man be a They? There’s an A+ pictured on this document too, but I’m giving it a D for lack of clarity and subject-pronoun confusion.
There’s an interesting race between Maggie Krell and Anne Marie Schubert for District Attorney. The Bee likes Schubert, the Guv likes Krell. Both have serviceable mailers but Krell says she’ll cut her own salary, so that promises an interesting final week of pledges and counter-pledges. This last week will be nice for all of us who await the postman’s blizzard of oddities. It’s cool to be courted by mail, cool to be desirable and important before we fade back into that neglected anonymous mass they call the public.
Pat Lynch
McVillage Rising
The City Council hearing on McKinley Village was, at least to this observer, another weary spectacle affirming that the fix was in, the deal done, the final hearing merely a ritualistic pretense at democracy. Sore loser? Yes, and no apologies. This isn’t a game or sport where you run to the net, bump fists and say a cheery congratulations to your opponent. Our loss means 3,500 more cars per day down streets never meant to handle that volume. It means the building of a dumb-growth chunk of car-centric suburbia that our councilmembers, judging from their windy explanations, applaud as “infill.” It’s been said before, but needs repeating: a leaking nuclear reactor on that site would be infill. It’s the kind of infill that matters. Distinctions like this, however, seem unpersuasive to our Deciders.
Here are a few of the evening’s more grotesque highlights. Councilman Cohn rationally explained that the city’s present method of assessing traffic impact was defective because it measures only Level of Service (how many times a driver pauses in his progress). Level of Service is plainly a remiss and irrelevant assessment model because it doesn’t analyze traffic impact on residents. The passing cars exude exhaust, imperil the safety of pedestrians (kids especially), clog streets, and so on, down a bleak litany of hazards.
Everybody heard Cohn’s message. Heads nodded. Level of Service analysis is idiotically narrow and inapplicable. It’s like going to a Level of Service pain doctor at the L.O.S. pain clinic. Let’s say you have fever, nausea and agonizing cramping in your lower right abdomen. The L.O.S. pain doctor examines only your left index finger. “Your pain is of insignificant impact,” the doctor declares. “But doctor, my appendix is bursting,” you say. “You experienced insignificant pain impact in the examined finger,” the doctor repeats in that flat, stubborn, stupid tone they use when testifying. Anyway, he refuses to admit you to the pain ward, your appendix explodes and you have to spend weeks in the ramshackle neighborhood organization facility being slowly drained of poisons by overworked volunteers.
Now Cohn didn’t launch into lavish similes like this, but he explained the L.O.S. deficiencies clearly, and added that San Francisco now included impact on residents in its traffic analysis. But it was as though he had not uttered a word. Up rose the developer to declaim over his project. He said his Level of Service studies proved there would be only the teensiest uptick in traffic impact. He continued to talk proudly about Level of Service as though its absurdities and deficiencies had not just been exposed. Doesn’t this seem remarkable, even a tad dim? I glanced around to see if people were stupefied but most looked merely perplexed.
But stupefaction was on the way. Councilman Hansen. Here’s a guy with some of the oddest logic I’ve ever heard. In explaining why he was for the project he dismissed our air pollution arguments by saying that African American kids with asthma lived close to railroad tracks in his district. Now what did this mean? Was he saying that since some kids already have asthma it would be unfair to prevent other kids from getting it? That’s what it sounded like. But who could be that nutty? And what did the kids being African American have to do with it? I thought about jumping up and saying, “We don’t want African American kids to get railroad-track asthma either.” But that might backfire and people would say, There goes another Nimby. So I kept quiet, Besides, I didn’t want to miss a word of Hansen’s unique reasoning.
He asserted that a much desired traffic-alleviating tunnel (that has no other city-wide benefit) would be built. Well, sort of. The developer wouldn’t build it of course. Why should he? Hansen would find the funds for it. (There exist, apparently, stockpiles of money to aid struggling millionaires in their quests to avoid spending any of their own profits). This was hard to absorb because many of us have still not recovered from Sacramento taxpayers subsidizing the NBA. But never mind, Hansen is on the job.
The tunnel will be built, right? This is ironclad? Not exactly. It turns out that some funds may be available, sometime, somewhere, somehow. In the meantime Hansen moved to pass the project with no rock solid guarantees at all. The developer is not obligated to do anything. The City is not obligated to do anything. It’s a one hundred percent giveaway. Neighbors get nothing but more visits with the L.O.S. pain doctor.
Speaking of the Level of Service, Hansen also admitted that it doesn’t measure true traffic impact, then said, “But it’s the only tool we have.” By all means then, let’s rely on the only tool we have, even if that tool is proven to be stupendously worthless—more than worthless—dangerous. This is just plain dotty. What we should do is reverse the whole L.O.S. traffic fraud, import from San Francisco the correct methodology, adopt, adapt and apply it. How long would that take? It’s worth the wait.
But it was time for the votes. Cohn, McCarty and Ashby voted for the neighborhoods. The rest, after windy explications (no two-minute limits on this bunch) about “what kind of a city we want to be” voted that we remain a city in thrall to developers and their doubletalk. It’s a shame. Neighbors straggled out, defeated. Some were angry. Some were cynical. One said, “What did you expect? They’re owned by developers.” Another man alarmed me when he said, “This city is going to end up looking like an auto mall.” Then various people described various cities that had ballooned into gross and gleaming auto malls.
It’s hard to get those images out of your head. But not impossible. After a night’s sleep you realize that we’ve lost a battle, but not the war. This isn’t over.
Pat Lynch
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