The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, a weak weekly known laughingly to its detractors as The Lutheran Journal, produced a — shall we say, charitably? — creative interview in this week’s edition with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. (jewishjournal.com)
Following a mistake-prone first year as Speaker, the political acuity of Ms. Bass reminds her critics of the vacuous state of their gas tank after driving 400 miles without finding a service station.
In her rank immodesty and obsession with racial prattling, she reminds Sacramento watchers less of Willie Brown than of Buster Brown.
The embarrassed Speaker last was seen in April recreating the role of the lovable retired Police Chief Ted Cooke, swan diving under the nearest desk.
Ms. Bass desperately was praying for cover after her secret scheme to ladle out pay raises to dozens of staffers in a fiscally starved state was exposed by newspapers. To quote the remark most closely associated with Ms. Bass, “oops.”
Time for a Little Plastic Political Surgery
When the stink from her latest fiasco began to lift, Ms. Bass went scouting for a rummy to pitch frilly-dress questions to help her recover her footing. She scarcely could have fared better than landing the featherweight champion of Southern California political analysts, The Jewish Journal’s Prof. Raphy Sonenshein.
He spoon-fed her 21 questions a schoolgirl would have answered with greater zest and muscularity. Like a left-wing windup doll “of color,” being interviewed by a left-wing ventriloquist of non-color, Ms. Bass predictably kicked dirt in Republican faces because for the first time in her life she is a majority person in Democrat-dominated Sacramento. Unable to abandon whining altogether, though, Ms. Bass shrilly complained that she has been painfully laboring under two handicaps.
She said she is a permanent underdog in the legislature “as the only woman and the only woman of color,” adding this nagging kvetch:
“What plays out more in Sacramento than race dynamics is gender.”
Playing victim has gotten Ms. Bass through the first six decades or her life. And she ain’t dismounting her prize hobby horse now.
Tell Us About Your Miracle Rise
It would only be slightly hyperbolic to report that the main verifiable facts from the news-less two-page Jewish Journal interview were the names of Ms. Bass and her lapdog. If Prof. Sonenshein conducts his classes at Cal State Fullerton as safely and daintily as he led this love-letter interview, he or the school should lose its certification.
The Speaker’s veneer of modesty reached its lowest ethical ebb when the Professor asked her, roughly:
How in the world did you become Speaker of the Assembly?
If Fitzgerald or Henry James still were alive, he could build his next novel around Ms. Bass’s baloney-loaded response without altering a syllable.
Ms. Bass, at 56 years old one of those dreadfully inflated community organizers running the government today, is baldly ambitious. Usually, this is a blameless posture.
However, her unbecoming immodesty occasionally forbids her to acknowledge the truth. Some say that she and candor might not recognize each other in the same telephone booth.
Her response to Prof. Sappy Sonenshein correlated to: “I was so darned pretty they had to pick me. They couldn’t resist me.”
Like the angry, race-baiting Justice-to-be Sotomayor, Ms. Bass cleverly chose to be born to a minority mom as a career decision. She flings her carefully chosen race around her head in every interview as if it were a prize turkey — better yet, as if it were her accomplishment.
Gather ‘Round, Children, and Listen up
Ms. Bass, who entered the Assembly four years ago as Majority Whip from a standing start, related the fairy tale of her elevation to Speaker with enviable humility:
“It was another battle I was pushed and prodded in. Speaker (Fabian) Nunez really wanted part of his legacy to be helping the first African American woman become Speaker, and then a number of my colleagues urged me to run. I actually was headed in another direction. I was going to run for th (state) Senate seat that I believed Mark (Ridley-Thomas) was going to vacate.”
Yep, those mean, ol’ power brokers in Sacramento kidnapped her, removed her to their unmarked hideout, dropped to their chubby knees and blasted into begging mode. “Ya gotta run, Baby,” they crooned. “Ya just got to.”
Not quite, according to our sources.
As noted earlier, the cynical Ms. Bass is extremely ambitious. She craved the Speakership a year ago, all right, but just for a few personally convenient minutes. Like many Los Angeles expatriates in the capital, she found out that when she leaves her hometown, it is out of sight, out of print.
So she yearned to return to Los Angeles, our sources say, and run for the City Council, utilizing a brief but usefully flamboyant fling at the Speakership as her springboard.
Not being a household name, Ms. Bass unfailingly markets herself first, second and third as “a woman of color.” This handy gadget always attracts the attention of empathy-shlepping boobs, such as our Dear Leader in the White House.
My golly, Murgatroyd.
Ms. Bass also is Vice Chair of the Black Legislative Caucus, just in case presenting herself morning, noon and night as “a woman of color” was too subtle for the electorate to catch on.
Crass, greasy and above all pragmatic, the selectively ethical Mr. Nunez, whom she would be succeeding as Assembly Speaker, did not want the soiled seat further sullied. He and his boys told Ms. Bass, “If we make you Speaker, you will stay for the full two years, and you will not run for another office. Otherwise, we won’t give you the job.”
Her succinct response, we are told, corresponded: “Yes, sir.”
Sappy Sonenshein, who knows the story, lacked the guts to call Ms. Bass on her tale-weaving.
