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A sensible scold’s work never seems to diminish.
With the cry of bigotry from last night in Council Chambers still ringing in my ears, the Va-Va-Va-Va-Victim Train has stutter-stepped down the tracks and added still another chap who suffers from a caboose mentality.
This morning we were served one more stale taste of exactly what the wobbling Los Angeles Obama Times did not need:
Another runny-nosed left-wing essayist.
When we already are running behind the global warmies with a shovel, a broom and a teaspoon, why do we need another unethical ethnicist?
Like his Times’ stablemates, The New Guy feels the creeping temptation to declare that all other cultures of the world may be flawed, but by thunder, his people are darned near undefeated
His name is Hector Tobar, and we may need one to elevate him to the Introductory Level of sensible thinking.
Last seen, he was sprinting through the crime-crammed streets of East L.A., megaphone in one hand, leaking chiliburger in the other, bellowing out, “My people are victims of you gosh-darned majority folks.”
Please, Please, Please Pity Me
Readers of the Obama Times already are burdened with the colorless, color-conscious quibble queen of ethnicists, the officious, terminally teary-eyed Ms. Sandy (Have I Told You I Am Heroic Because I Am a Single, and Moreover Black, Mom?) Banks-rupt.
Ms. Banks-rupt was the scourge of my second mother-in-law, who leads Los Angeles in facelifts, because Floppy Face used to claim she was the only perfect Mom in town.
Playing Close to Home
Mr. Tobar, masterfully playing a denial game, must not have gotten out much in recent decades. With naiveté unbefitting a grownup, especially an Hispanic, he seems childishly ignorant of how drastically ubiquitous ethnic gangs have transformed our once safe environs into a dime-store shooting gallery.
He selected a rich, rarely investigated topic for his new weekly column, but he badly fumbled his assignment by interlacing and confusing two separate theories, and then pretended that he had not mentioned one of them because it is a sensitive, embarrassing subject.
In his first painful sentence, he misled us.
He tried to put a foot on two separated highways.
Tying himself into knots, first he argued that too many non-white boys are “mistakenly” labeled gangbangers when they are arrested, and then that the son of a celebrated Los Angeles Mexican politician was spared the plight of his fellow suspects in a recent murder because his father’s name is a door-opener.
Mr. Tobar’s ultimate thesis, was a perfectly fine one:
The troubled teenage son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian (My Hands Are Dirty, but Not in a Moral Sense) Nunez, a Democrat, caught a break in a November homicide case because his shady father is so well connected.
But first Mr. Tobar teased us with his Unfair Label theory.
Like many left-wingers, though, he choked. He has a hard time balancing his overwhelming emotions against his good sense.
His theory about non-whites and gangs would have been a fascinating one to trace.
But he may as well have poured a can of cheap orange paint over a tasty cake. He blew it. He flunked an essayist’s two most rudimentary obligations, clarity and follow-through.
From Man to Chicken
He dropped a stink bomb. Then, like a mischievous kid, he ran away. Mr. Tobar probably should be charged with leaving the scene of a serious point, if not a crime.
Like a bashful boy stealing a glance at a pretty girl, he made a strange accusation — that too many non-white kids are carelessly, irresponsibly stigmatized as gang members by police. But the assertion was too hot for him.
Raise Your Hand if You Are Innocent
I should like to escort Mr. Tobar on a tour of Death Row at San Quentin. By the darnedest coincidence, every single killer is the victim of witnesses who lied to put him there.
Not often in the history of Los Angeles has the son of a Mexican politician been envied because his father is plugged into the powerful sewers that line Sacramento and Our Town.
That would be a compelling tale to relate.
He had plenty of space to advance both theories.
Mr. Tobar’s essay began:
“I have no idea if Esteban Nunez is a ‘gang member,’ a term that’s used and misused so often that I prefer to give it a home inside quotation marks.”
He devoted the remaining 29
paragraphs to apologizing for even suggesting that someone with the name “Nunez” or any name that vaguely sounds Hispanic could be, heaven forbid, a gang member.
This is like a bank robber walking in the front door and shooting himself to death in the ear.
No doubt he was hypersensitive and hunkered-down defensive because his name is Tobar instead of O’Brien. He ducked into moral hiding. Maybe the touchy writer turned chicken-hearted because he feared retribution. That would be a fair reason for deviating. But, then, why bring it up?
After his opening sentence, Mr. Tobar melted into a stooge for the black and Hispanic gangs that roam Los Angeles at will, terrorizing Mr. Tobar’s family, yours, mine, anyone’s who lives in or near the Basin.
In next Tuesday’s essay, hopefully, he will untie the emotional knots and explain himself.
