Prop. 90’s Defeat Was a Loss for Culver City

This scenario has been played out over and over. It is as if Culver City business owners and landowners formed a long queue. On a signal, they begin walking around a corner, straight into a gloved hand that boffs them hard on the nose. The rest of the queue sees what is happening. But the owners keep walking, straight into the sock on the noses. You may get lucky and be smart enough to beat City Hall, as we have been reporting that Bob Blue of Hollywood did. But that would make you rarer than a dinosaur at rush hour on Culver Boulevard. I remain mystified by the ferocity of the opposition to 90. There was far more sound and fury than reasoning. That always is a warning sign. Beware when a partisan’s ferocity exceeds his ability to rationalize with a semblance of precision. Beware when you remember his pacing and his flailing arms more than his argument. These are sure signs he is weak on content. A politically liberal doctor of my acquaintance is vulnerable to such giveaway tendencies. He gets mad, he sputters, he paces, and he keeps refilling his glass with soda. Last Saturday afternoon after Shabbat services at our little synagogue, when tears filled the eyes of the doctor’s wife she was so angry, I stood and announced that it was time to switch the subject.

Here Comes the Plague

I have been looking over some of the many newspaper editorials that against Prop. 90 that besieged, bewildered — and seduced — voters this autumn. At a glance, you would have suspected a beetle-browed villain just had landed at San Pedro. Wearing an evil looking ground-length black cape, he was darting from town to town advocating a stealthy method for spreading the bubonic plague to all boys and girls in California under the age of 5.

They Showed up Every Time

Every editorial contained two staples, the generic, abstract threat of lawsuits by victims — a dreamed-up scenario designed to scare off lightly informed voters and the assertion that the proposition was poorly worded. What does “poorly worded” mean? If it were beautifully worded, you would support it? Is that the case, pal? I am reminded of the story my wife loves to tell of the journalist who spent a lifetime traveling the world. He came home in the same condition he left, as a bachelor. Why? “Because I was looking for the perfect girl,” he said. “I actually found the perfect girl in Norway.” Why didn’t he marry her? “She,” he said glumly, “was looking for the perfect man.” So you will vote for a proposition as soon as you discover one that is ideally worded? Try, dear reader, to remember the last time a proposition was praised for being admirably worded. I can’t, either. Here is where the hysteria entered. Prop. 90 would forbid government from taking private land for commercial ventures. What in the name of reason is wrong with that? In spite of what you may have read elsewhere, the Constitutionally protected rules for using eminent domain only for traditional public purposes — roads, libraries, police and fire stations, hospitals — would have remained unchanged. All of the other locutional shrubbery surrounding the childish arguments made by opponents of 90 was just fantasized frosting with a single intention. The scare language was a fairy tale meant to seduce your emotions because the opposing arguments lacked the gravitas to intellectually persuade you.