A generous person on America’s birthday would file this egotistical battle under Boys Will Be Boys.
A sober person would judge that Bernard Parks should be ashamed of himself – and hope he will be showered with boos, or even booze, at tonight’s wildly unnecessary fireworks show. No chance.
We are indebted to crack City Hall reporter Rick Orlov for a holiday update on this story of dreaded rivals.
Even though he is 70 years old, Mr. Parks’s ego has been stuck on the darned Stop button during his dozen years on the Los Angeles City Council.
Compromise seems to be an obscenity.
The back story:
A couple of years ago when Council president Herb Wesson, feeling mighty powerful, was accused of stinking the skies with his zealous, shall we say, re-drawing of district boundaries. His version favored what would become freshman Curren Price’s 9th District over very disliked rival Mr. Parks’s adjacent 8th District. The soon to be termed-out Mr. Parks entered the fuse-blowing business.
We are talking near-to-Culver City South Los Angeles.
He sat down to talk about it one afternoon and convinced me that he had been wronged. I still agree with him, But gentlemen, the light has changed. Move along. Not Mr. Parks.
Gremlins in the City Council woodwork saw to it that the Coliseum was shifted into from enemy Mr. Parks to friend Mr. Price’s bailiwick.
Tonight, the largest fireworks show in the city, where Mr. Parks used to take bows, belongs to Mr. Price.
Mr. Parks, incapable of walking away honorably, convinced his not necessarily large-minded Council colleagues to spirit $60,000 from the Cultural Affairs Dept. budget. That way, burdened taxpayers could salve The Chief’s easily wounded ego by underwriting his Me-Too fireworks show tonight at Van Ness Park, 5720 Second Ave.
On the City Council, fireworks aren’t the only item to explode on schedule.
