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I hope that the aging and soon-to-retire Queen Yvonne — she specializes in charades — sleeps soundly tonight because the petitioning peasants of her kingdom, whom she will face tomorrow, will not.
Led by the two hardest working attorneys on the Westside, Ken Kutcher and John Kuechle,an undiscouragable band of Culver City area residents will troop downtown to 500 W. Temple St. for a 9:30 meeting with the Board of Supervisors, hoping to convince them to amend the present documents and delay making final decisions about the Inglewood oilfield.
Since Queen Yvonne seems to have had the precise timing of the outcome wired from the first note of this dispute, the results likely are sculpted in cement. The Queen’s legacy is at stake, you know.
The only Las Vegas wagering I know of on the results is whether Queen Yvonne will swallow her crown or her dentures first.
Was Queenie a Rassler?
This must be what television wrestling felt like, those choreographed matches that the late Olympic Auditorium used to stage in the ‘60s and ‘70s when the fabulous announcer Dick Lane was the star every week.
Just as the Olympic used to telephone results to our newspaper several hours before the wrestlers went into the ring, I have been sitting by my telephone this afternoon, awaiting the official signal from Queen Yvonne .
“Mr Newspaperman,” she would begin, “if you want to get a drop on tomorrow’s story, the vote on the Inglewood oilfield regulations will be, hmm, let’s see. Oh, yes, here it is, 5 to 0 to approve.”
Actually, that is fantasy. County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke does nothing for herself. She would order a flunky to make the call just as easily as she orders another flunky to feed her. Meanwhile, she is off at a spa getting her skin ironed out so she will look pretty for the peasants tomorrow morning.
A Little Respect? That’s How Much We Are Giving
This, of course, is no way to speak publicly about a lady in her 70s. She should have earned at least a teardrop of respect by now after spending a lifetime rolling around in the political gutter.
Honesty, however, comes to Ms. Brathwaite Burke with the difficulty that a midget has dunking a basketball. If Queenie had told the truth last spring and declared that the process of composing, reviewing and revising two sets of regulations for greatly increased drilling at the oilfield was an inside job, she could have spared thousands of people waves of disappointment this summer.
As it lies this afternoon, Mr. Kutcher, Mr. Kuechle and important others have made surprisingly deep inroads into the early documents, gaining impressive improvements in dozens of regulations. They have been heroic, and they have been rewarded. Almost miraculously, they have secured much tighter rules than would have been passed if they had just surrendered, as Ms. Brathwaite Burke had hoped.
Chaired strongly and reasonably by Hal Helsley, the County Regional Planning Commission was far more responsive to citizen complaints and suggestions than leaders thought at the start of the process.
It Used to be Called a ‘Fix’
When I see Queen Yvonne rhetorically pat her obedient little subjects on the head tomorrow morning and smile, artificially, as she glides into chambers, I will have the feeling that I actually am sitting in Dodger Stadium.
It is the first inning of the baseball game. The final score will be 7 to 6, with the other team winning on a tiebreaking home run in the ninth inning. It was planned out that way before the game started.
Similarly, after the Board of Supervisors vote is taken tomorrow, Queenie will open her dishonest mouth and say, “My golly. Gee whillickers. I prevailed. I will be darned. Now I can retire after the election with a clean conscience.”
Now I understand why Queen Yvonne is backing Bernard Parks for Supervisor on Nov. 4.
