Burke Says She Lived Here at Least When She Was Running

Ari L. NoonanSports

Poking along in the third lane of the 405 North yesterday afternoon, my hair suddenly whooshed to the left. The elderly driver of a silver Maserati convertible, moving jerkily, sliced in front of me, then quickly veered two lanes to the right, imperiling a dozen more cars. Immediately, I suspected the culprit, whose license plate started “5SNX,” was the much besieged County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

We know how fast she loves to escape every afternoon from the peasants doomed to residing fulltime in her 2nd District while she returns to her classy digs in Mandeville Canyon. A week ago this morning, the aging Ms. Burke was exposed on Page 1 of the Los Angeles Times as a suspected lawbreaker and an alleged fibber regarding her main residence. The Times’ thorough report indicated that the slippery Ms. Burke does not live in the 2nd District any more than Barack Obama. State law says she must. A close reading of her printed statements shows that Ms. Burke does not seem to even claim to live inside the district.

Burke in Trouble? No Problem. The Earl of Hutchinson to the Rescue on His Racist Steed

Ari L. NoonanSports

As a suddenly radioactive politician feverishly groping for a safe place to land, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke could not have found a chummier patch of green, green grass than the shining baseball field at West Los Angeles College.

Wasn’t She a Vision?

On Monday morning, barely three days after the Los Angeles Times nailed Ms. Burke for seemingly fibbing to its reporters about where she truly lives and sleeps, there was the retiring Sup, resplendent as the ball of fire in the sky.

The Night the City Council Folded up to Appease the Crowd

Ari L. NoonanSports

Quite a few years ago, at the time my first son was born, I was the night sports editor of a downtown newspaper. We had a mid-week ritual no one else needed to know about.

To avoid jamming the typesetters with copy late in the evening, at deadline, I would telephone the Olympic Auditorium in the afternoon. Hours before the evening’s wrestling matches were to begin, I would jot down the results and write a short story for the next day’s edition.

Cuddly Care Bears on the City Council Have Found 9900 Ways to Dither

Ari L. NoonanSports

May I apologize for my tardiness this morning?

I would have reported to my office in the Culver Hotel much sooner, but I was lodged behind three members of the City Council at a signal light.

There they sat, ironically at the intersection of Culver and Duquesne.

Frozen.

Catatonic.

Utterly incapable of making up their minds.

Should they go on the red, the yellow or the green?

Better, should they defer to their colleagues?

Still better, if they decide to defer, to which colleague should they defer first, Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum?

Why Columbus’ Launching Day Causes Jews to Mourn

Ari L. NoonanSports

The clock of history will ring more loudly than usual tonight at 8 o’clock.

This evening will mark the 515th anniversary of the date that Christopher Columbus launched a signal journey from Spain that led him to discover America 2 1/2 months later.

By Spaniards and most of the world, the date was Aug. 1, 1492.

However, by the Jewish calendar — Jewish days start the evening before — it was the 9th day of the month of Av. (English and Hebrew dates differ because Jews live by a lunar calendar.)

Caught in a Vise, Champion Grows into the Hero and the Victim of South Sepulveda Boondoggle

Ari L. NoonanSports

Did you catch the breeze?

Even if you disagree with him, it was refreshing to hear the impeccably poised, magnificently self-controlled developer Bob Champion finally abandon his role yesterday as the strictly neutral referee of the South Sepulveda redevelopment.

(See “Champion Emerges from a Cocoon of Stoicism to Have His Say on Why Project Was Halted,” July 18.)

Without making a specific citation, Mr. Champion indicated that the Citizens Advisory Committee member who made the motion on June 27 that led to closing down his project, had an ulterior motive, promoting her political career.

A pretty adventurous statement when placed alongside his prior comments, which were (properly) vanilla.

From Deep Inside an Aura of Power, Mahony Gets Away

Ari L. NoonanSports

That Cardinal Roger Mahony — the white man’s O.J. Simpson — has not been indicted is a tribute to the awesome power of the Catholic Church.

Except for the Communist Party in the heyday of the Soviet Union, I am not aware of any institution that successfully has challenged the Church in recent times when an issue of law was at stake.

Mayor’s Defender Pushes Part-time Mexican Label

Ari L. NoonanSports

Normally a voice of moderation, the Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez wonders this morning why Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles is being cast, negatively, as the Mexican Mayor, not just a random politician, now that he has driven his personal life — again — into the gutter.

Must have been a foggy weekend on the U.C. Irvine campus where he teaches.

That Mr. Rodriguez asks the question seriously is not a tribute to his clear thinking.

Choking on Its Mockery, the Times Raises a Toast to Hamas

Ari L. NoonanSports

How easily we are seduced.

Imagine this were 11 July, 1944. The Allies still were trying to defeat the Germans and the Japanese.

Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler’s chief henchmen, submitted an essay on Nazism to the Chandler family that still was running the Los Angeles Times.

Do you think the Times would have run it?

There is a better chance that FDR would have gone over to the other side.

Yet yesterday, the Los Angeles Times committed an equally heinous act.

The Night the City Council Skirted the Main Issue

Ari L. NoonanSports

If a sound reason was advanced for the City Council to reject the 9900 Culver redevelopment project last night, it escaped my attention.

A good reason may exist, but I did not hear one from the dais.

Now I could tell you about the wretchedly misshapen pale blue skirt that my second wife loved to wear until it disintegrated from her hips. I swear she wore it every Tuesday and every Thursday, probably because she knew the ugliness irritated me. But the skirt was not the cause of our divorce.