Three of the strongest reasons Andy Weissman’s colleagues elected him to a one-year term as Mayor of Culver City last spring were:
• Mild-mannered.
• Moderate.
• No agenda.
All three separated him from his only rival for the seat. The risk-free faith of his supporters has been repeatedly rewarded.
The unflappable Mr. Weissman could be jolted awake at 3 in the morning. Before setting foot on the cold floor or opening his eyes, he could flawlessly run a City Council meeting in Manhattan, with television cameras blazing away.
The Mayor and I probably concur on 99 percent of his votes in the City Council’s decisions.
This was why I was keenly disappointed last week when he joined the runaway downhill snowball that his City Council colleagues had enthusiastically formed to banish Ms. Dee Seehusen from a city commission.
The trumped-up charge would have insulted a kangaroo court. But the boys on the Council unanimously said, “Yes, Lordy, we do believe.”
Thereupon, they dived, as a team, into a messy pile of innuendo. Without working up one bead of sweat, they sleekly sentenced her to civic darkness for the rest of her life. Given that Ms. Seehusen is 80 years old, who knows how long the darkness will last?
Without one cord of evidence, Ms. Seehusen was deemed to have audaciously committed the single irreversible sin of the 21st century in America.
She was perceived to have said an unkind word about two gay candidates for the School Board.
The cowardly accusers could not produce the damning evidence because, poof, there wasn’t any.
They made it up.
They wanted to believe this lady, whom none of them admitted to knowing, is “homophobic.”
Who cares if the charge is fabricated?
The accusers achieved their desired result. That is what truly matters to the touchy, not to mention creative, insecure boys and girls of the gay community. Deserved punishment should always trump truth, the dominant radicals of the gay community believe. Pity the person foolish enough to challenge this doctrine.
For at least the third time, we shall reprint Ms. Seehusen’s Nov. 19 letter to the Culver City News, which brought out the paranoid gay thought police:
“The reason I am writing this letter is to say that my husband and I voted our choices for new School Board members via lawn signs and our absentee ballots. As fate would have it, we did not vote for either of the homosexuals (Paspalis and Silbiger, Nov. 5, Culver City News).
“A note to Silbiger regarding your statement in the Nov. 5 issue that you have ‘always been open with anyone who asked about my sexual orientation.’ I think the public would have liked to have known before the election. Why? Because I do not believe you would have been elected had the public known, and that is what I think.”
Obviously, 104 harmless words to a community newspaper can be destructive to your civic health.
By now, more people have heard of the previously unknown Ms. Seehusen than suspected her commission, the Landlord/Tenant Mediation Board, existed.
Members of the City Council, I daresay, did not know how many members sit on the board. Or the last year it convened.
Across decades of public service to Culver City, Mayor Weissman has established an enviable, unshakable reputation as the principal voice of reason on every panel he has served with.
“ I am not sure Ms. Seehusen’s words themselves are a sign of prejudice,” the Mayor said. “But the way they were used raises a basic question of prejudice. I think her opinion raises concern about her ability to be objective. I do not believe the city is well served to place itself in a position where she would be voting on mediation. The process of mediation can be called into question because the objectivity of a mediator can be doubted.”
Further, Mr. Weissman said:
“You are treated differently when you serve on a commission. Your actions have consequences.”
Let The Fires Ignite
A small but noisy band of Culver City yahoos, perhaps high on Starbucks caffeine, wearing painted faces and toting burning torches, led an almost-comical charge for Ms. Seehusen’s scalp.
Oh, how the yahoos galloped down Culver Boulevard, bellowing between burps that this incredibly dangerous, remarkably undesirable lady should be tortured and roasted at the nearest, thorniest stake.
Confident that not one independent voice on the five-man City Council would be courageous enough to speak up, the yahoos descended on City Hall, demanded not merely a pound of Ms. Seehusen’s flesh, but her whole soul.
The yahoos were not satisfied to defeat her. They wanted to hurt her, publicly, and they brilliantly succeeded.
Humiliation was the goal, baby.
She should forever be marked as a tainted woman.
The yahoos meant to tar Ms. Seehusen with the unremovable badge of disgrace for homophobic convictions.
Please, heaven, innocent schoolchildren should be instructed to boo when they walk past her home.
It was the most disgusting display of legalized mob rule I have witnessed in years.
Once Ms. Seehusen is well enough to travel, who will be the first City Councilman to publicly apologize to her?
