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Is Bernard Parks trying to lose the race with state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) for the seat on the County Board of Supervisors held by the unctuous Yvonne Brathwaite Burke? Does he not process his thoughts? He keeps embarrassing himself in front of sensible people. Or have you forgotten his sally into The New Yorker flap last month?
Ever since being fired as Police Chief, he has been aimlessly roaming the Los Angeles political arena, hoping to stumble into a comfortable resting place, almost compulsively running for every office that opens up.
Frankly, I cannot see the quietish Culver City Police Chief Don Pedersen moving to the City Council anymore than I can imagine the quietish ex-Chief Parks performing effectively on a City Council. Wrong career switch, guys.
After yesterday’s disappointing performance in Council Chambers in downtown Los Angeles, sensible people can agree Mr. Parks was not cut out for the City Council, but, in a sadly misshapen way, could be a logical successor to Ms. Brathwaite Burke, whose own career path is littered with hideous ideas and overstatements.
Dum, Da, Dum, Dum — Anna, Baby, Is Back
The story in this morning’s Los Angeles Times on Mr. Parks’s latest bizarre notion was sympathetically — nay, enthusiastically reported by the dwindling newspaper’s designated Sob Sister Editor, Anna Gorman. The little lady seems to spend her days lurking about alleys, hunting down illegal aliens who have done wrong, then dashing back to the office and writing a tear-jerking piece about the pathetic shlmiels.
Mr. Parks, who surely can’t be paying someone to produce these regrettable ideas, has been shamelessly pushing a scheme to force private business owners — home improvement stores, in this case — to build accommodations for the clutches of day laborers who hang by the roadway, looking for a day’s pay.
Darned if it didn’t pass the City Council unanimously. For sheer looniness, Mr. Parks’s amazingly intrusive concept rivals one that Ms. Brathwaite Burke — who truly swims with the fishes — came up with last year. The old girl wanted to rewrite the application policy for County government jobs to make it easier to hire felons. By golly, Murgatroyd, why didn’t you and I think that one up?
What a Team You Guys Are
Between them, left to their own slippery devices, the unserious Ms. Gorman and the struggling Mr. Parks could singlehandedly solve our illegal alien problem by Sunday — just stamp us natives as illegals. Give us 48 hours to convert or get out of town. And you can add a balmy academic to the Dim Bulb Bandwagon, one Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA professor. The cheerleading Ms. Gorman sunnily reports that the misguided educator has done “extensive research on day laborers and supports the ordinance.” By golly, I am stunned.
After digging him up, Ms. Gorman was not going to let the professor escape without a whizbang endorsement. Of Mr. Parks’s reach into the pockets of private business owners, Prof. Valenzuela said glowingly, “This isn’t an immigration issue. This is a labor market issue.” Good thing the Prof was not around in the ‘60s. He would not have been eligible to smoke what then was called “a thinking man’s cigarette.”
Coming Home
I see where Mr. Parks found time last night to slip into Culver City long enough to be visible at a 4-hour City Council meeting.
By the time the Council unanimously passed a weak, likely meaningless, resolution tut-tutting the County on Baldwin Hills oil drilling, Mr. Parks was gone, but his presence was commendable.
If he wins the Supervisor’s race in November, he won’t have to bother with such annoying trivialities. Copying Ms. Braithwaite Burke’s dreadful model, he can blow off all public appearance and pay flunkies to stand in for him everywhere — except at the pay window, at home and when tinhorn awards are handed out.
