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TALKIN’ LOUD, SAYING NOTHING: You may not be able to teach old dogs new tricks, but the good news is that sometimes you can’t always fool them with the same old ones. A case in point is George Bush‘s notable failure to gain traction last week by yanking the old Marriage Protection Amendment out of mothballs. In this case, Bush sought to explain how the homosexual threat to the sanctity of marriage had grown so dire that the Constitution itself needed to be changed.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN: It’s all over, I suppose, but the shouting. The June primaries have officially ended, meaning our telephones, mailboxes, and TV screens can enjoy a few moments of respite from political solicitations. The big story, as always, is who didn’t vote. That’s most of us. Presumably the democracy we are so eager to export to Iraq is the democracy we see fit not to exercise right here at home. But who needs a lecture?
BEWARE OF FALLING SKY: I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t found the time to watch the remake of The Poseidon Adventure-that great water-logged disaster epic from the ’70s. Neither, it turns out, have my friends working at the News-Press. They’ve been too busy living their own version of the disaster movie, the big difference being that their turmoil is real. If and when the News-Press runs aground, it’s bad news for the whole town.
BASTA: Okay, I admit it: Long before construction even started, I’ve had it in for the monumentally silly new parking garage that’s recently erupted behind the Granada Theatre. It’s been explained to me a million times that this aesthetically overwrought and hyperventilated, five-story, $24.5 million parking lot is the second coming of sliced bread and Swiss cheese-not to mention the salvation of upper State Street-but such arguments fail to penetrate the perimeter of my cranial fog. The way I see it, upper State-the stretch between Carrillo and Sola-has been thriving very nicely without divine intervention of massive publicly financed construction projects.
SPARE ME: At first I dismissed it as just another campaign-trail brain fart. Then I figured it had to be political code-speak, coyly calculated to curry favor with the anti-immigrant voting bloc. Afterwards Sheriff Jim Anderson assured me at some length it was neither. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it was both.
ENOUGH ALREADY: Some of the recent rants appearing in the News-Press have demonstrated that it is, in fact, possible to have too much of a good thing. The good thing, at least in theory, is the daily newspaper as a fiercely independent and intensely individualistic expression of its owner’s moral and civic passions.
GOOD NEWS: Some people just don’t know how to throw a party. With the umpteenth annual Earth Day right around the corner, I am bracing for the inevitable tsunami of doom ‘n’ gloom factoids proving, yet again, how we’ve screwed up the planet beyond redemption. Okay, maybe we have, but is this really a reason to be so negative?
POTHOLE POLITICS: Until this past weekend I’d been hoping and praying that Santa Maria Supervisor Joe Centeno would wake up one morning, dust off that Superman cape hanging in his closet, and decide to be the hero that only he can be.
WHO’S WATCHIN’ THE MAN? Thank God the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force finally stumbled onto the Raging Grannies. I know I’ll be sleeping better at night. For those unfamiliar with the Grannies, they’re peace activists who subscribe to the impudently impish notion that it’s better to be outrageous than to be outraged. To this end, the Grannies wear big hats and goofy costumes and write clever songs against the war, which they belt out with more gusto than polish in public places. The Grannies boast sleeper cells-which they cleverly call “chapters”-just about everywhere on the Pacific Coast except, naturally, for Santa Barbara.
MERCURY IN RETROGRADE: The great tragedy of our times is that Karl Rove doesn’t make house calls. Late last week we learned that Rove, George Bush’s beloved political hatchet man, can affect long-distance medical miracles simply by picking up the phone and “touching” someone electronically. I’m referring to the dramatic improvement reported by Republican Congressmember Elton Gallegly, the Simi Valley arch-conservative who also represents much of inland Santa Barbara County, after taking a call from Bush’s chief plotter and schemer.
