Shall We Try to Fail Again?
Naturally, our liberal friends disagree with the above assessment. Four pages past the essay by Ms. MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, the professional wing of the Dim Bulb Society opinion writers on the Times staff swings into action with the 99-Cent Store solution the Times has been pushing for years. In the same way that Culver City liberals hijacked Martin Luther King Day to shunt Dr. King aside and promote Islam as the Panacea of the Day for what ails society, in the name of diversity, the Times editorialists also were predictable. Their gangs violence solution was to repeat the stock liberal remedy of the last 40 years a kings ransom in funding and layers of bureaucracy. Throw enough money at solving the gangs problem, the community will believe you are trying, and soon the cooked-up furor will die down and go away. It has worked like a Swiss watch since the Johnson Years in Washington. To serious people, it remains amazing that the dishonest editorialists at the Times can congratulate the misguided civil rights attorney Connie (We Gotta Find Somebody to Blame) Rice for producing 100 hackneyed solutions to the gangs problem answers that will keep her friends employed for decades to come. Overnight, the cunning Ms. Rice became an economic force in Southern California. Cunning Connie has ground out more stale baloney the last few days than Farmer John.
Sounds Like Jumbo-Mumbo
In the kindest words I can manage, there is strong evidence Ms. Rice has made a joke of her results. The language is bilge. If Ms. Rice is smart enough to come in out of the rain, she realizes this. Among the more than 100 recommendations by a well-heeled army of feel-gooders, here is the best Ms. (Gotta Blame Somebody, No Matter How Vaguely) Rice came up with for No. 12. I will issue a check for $100 to the first person who will explain, in writing, why this is sensible. Here is No. 12.
LAUSD will be a key institution in any neighborhood-based, comprehensive strategy. The District will have to radically change its role to become a strategic asset in neighborhood violence reduction strategies. LAUSD facilities will be important centers for any neighborhood violence reduction strategy. LAUSD must develop strategies to prevent and interrupt campus violence, as Santee High School has done. LAUSD also must co-pilot the joint efforts of City, County and neighborhood institutions to develop comprehensive neighborhood safety plans. The City and LAUSD must also vastly increase investment in after-school resources, and expand and replicate programs like L.A.s Best.
What the old girl, this vanguard of vacuity and vagueness, is proposing is to cure colds by making prettier hankies. Frankly, if I were Bill Bratton, I would go after Cunning Connie and her Elmer Fudd Army of Feel-Gooders faster than St. Louis is chasing its alleged child molester. Even if the molester is guilty, he only hurt 2 people. Cunning Connie and her Elmer Fudders are committing far worse damage. They are deluding duped and grieving communities into believing they have produced a solution. In fact, Cunning Con and her overblown baloney-slingers have scammed these defenseless people.
I will make Cunning Con and her leeching Elmer Fudders an offer to test their sincerity:
If they sincerely believe their hollow plan is a realistic solution to gang violence, will they agree not to be paid for their efforts until the first sign of meaningful diminution of gang activity?
Look at merely this single solution out of more than 100. For No.12 to work (it will happen the same day an engineer gives us the exact dimensions of the sky), an unknown person must precisely coordinate the responsibilities of 2 million Angelenos. Those 2 million must carry out separate but parallel duties in the same way, the same hour, the same day, for years to come. Far from hollow rhetoric, calling the civil rights attorney Cunning Connie seems to closely describe the phony meaning of her teams work.
You Know What Poor Equals?
The most fascinating populist formulation in American political life since the 1960s is the signature statement of the modern Democratic Party:
The poorer you are, the more noble you are. The richer you are, the more disgusting you are.
Thousands of people in Culver City enthusiastically, sincerely embrace this philosophy as if they were infants ingesting breast milk. The poorer you are, the better you are, the more deserving you are. Dont need proof. An empty wallet will do fine. You dont have to do anything to change your status, least of all get a job. In two of the leading journals in the country, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, you can become rich wagering that neither newspaper will criticize poor slobs anymore than they will praise rich guys and gals, for purely economic reasons. This is crucial to their lifestyle. On page 17 of this mornings New York Times, I quote from a story about neighbors of the January winner of the Hottest Alleged Child Molester of the Month who lives in the St. Louis area. Lifes so hard now, said one neighbor. It takes all your energy just to focus on your own trouble. The people around here are good people. Just another day in the life of Times reporters perpetuating the bogus notion that poor people are inherently noble because they are inherently poor. If the alleged molester is convicted, will that mean that not quite everybody in the complex was good? Being liberal means feeling good about yourself, the dominant principle of this once honorable but now kidnapped political philosophy
The Anniversary Waltz
Last Thursday, on the 5-month anniversary of this newspapers report that the Star Prep Academy was operating without a business license, the Culver City News breathlessly disclosed this information in its lead story: City Says STAR School Lacks Business License. I am mailing them a copy of my August 1945 clipping that World War II, by golly, is over. I expect to read about this report in the News 5 months from now. (Our Aug. 18 story can be found under What Will Happen to the Little Star Prep Academy?)
