Who Needs American Idol?
Who wants to win a baseball contract or American Idol when you don’t have to expend a single teardrop of energy by curing homelessness in Santa Monica? At the moment, the miraculously reborn Mr. Edelman is drawing $80,000 more a year than Dr. Laura McGaughey, the retiring Superintendent of Culver City schools. To create context, if Dr. Laura stepped out the front door of District Headquarters on Irving Place, sat down on the curb, had an ice cream cone in one hand and a lollipop in the other for the next 60 days, she would achieve more good for the community than Mr. Edelman will by brainstorming for the next seven months. Why not hire an Aztec Indian at $200,000 a year to determine how it can be arranged so that fewer people with brown eyes are born in Topeka? Then he and the immensely recycled Mr. Edelman could lead parallel lives.
You Are Kidding, Aren’t You?
Balmy thinking is not confined to indigenous Monicans from Santa. Talk about compounding an elephant-sized gaffe. The new City Manager Lamont Ewell, late of San Diego, is not going to win any Thinker of the Year awards after recommending last month that Mr. Edelman be brought back for a second year. This is like a wigged-out horsefly zooming into a brick wall, bruising his delicate head and tumbling to the ground. The horsefly brushes himself off and vows to make a second try because the brick wall can’t be impenetrable. It is like having a stinker of a first date with a dog of a girl. For laughs, you ask her out again. You are certain she doesn’t have to stinkers in a row in her. Mr. Edelman, meanwhile, held his giggling head close to the ground, hoping no one would notice the extravagance of this daylight holdup. This is like a bank robber being met at the door by a teller with two bulging bags of money. “I know you are low on gas,” says the clerk. “Gas prices being what they are, I don’t want you to have to needlessly burn gas while waiting for us to round up the cash.” Mr. Edelman, it was reported, said that he is happy (no kidding) with his present salary. He promised not to ask for a raise. He also promised not to give his home address so that the members of the City Council can’t find him when they realize what they have done. This is funnier than a Marx brothers movie.
Wrong Dog Is Barking up a Tree
The well-intentioned but wide-open, undisciplined mindset of liberals would be tolerable if only an eventual cure could be found for them. If only there were signs of growth, maturation. A dog learns from his mistakes. Surely a liberal can. Bow-wow. The City Council members in Santa Monica who are excited about Mr. Edelman’s so-called progress are serious members of the community, men who are in at least their second decade of public life. They have made splendid contributions to Santa Monica. In my family, I have encountered the tragedy of homelessness. Many, possibly most, who live on the streets choose and prefer this lifestyle. But liberals are certain they know better than you what is best for you, and by golly they are going to impose it on you no matter how much you resist.
Postscript
During his first five months on the job, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press, Mr. Edelman has been “meeting with those closest to the issue.” This is one of those bureaucratically wonderful phrases meaning “none of your business how I have spent my time.” Did he mean he had been talking to homeless people or do-gooders? Anyway, Mr. Edelman has been delicately soliciting somebody’s ideas for curing homelessness. Don’t you feel better informed now, like homelessness, Santa Monica-style, is not more than one or two editions away?
