HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Matt Cooper and Harry Shearer

the breakfast table:
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Politics and It's Disconnects

By Harry Shearer
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2000, at 5:01 PM ET

I was watching Miami TV coverage of the INS decision on "the boy"--they called it "Decision Day"--and, man, those local channels don't want to get nasty letters from any Cuban-Americans. I don't know if you can access any tape of this stuff, but the street reporters were moaning over the kid's lost opportunities. I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to note that family values take a backseat to the chance at some stock options in the hearts of a lot of conservatives.

RSS

While on the subject of (as the current lingo has it) disconnects, today's Boston Globe has an interesting story about McCain pressing the FCC to take a speedy vote on an application by a contributor to his campaign to buy a Pittsburgh TV station. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of reform, living in California where half a century of reform has turned our politics into an insider's game. (The one reform that might work is free TV time, were not the broadcast lobby one of the strongest in Washington--for proof, see the Telecommunications Act of 1996.) But I note with glee that conservative defenders of the status quo argue a version of the old Jesse Unruh line about being able to take a man's money (to fully quote Jesse, "and eat his food, and drink his booze, and screw his women") and still vote against him--but, when the Heritage Foundation trots out its tabulation of how countries vote in the U.N. General Assembly, it cross-refs those votes with how much money the U.S. gives each country in foreign aid. So we should only expect votes to be well and truly bought when they're the votes of sovereign nations.

I ascribe DiFi's lack of opposition to two things: assiduous courting of Silicon Valley, where major Republican contributors have lined up behind her, and, more important, the sad state of California's GOP. Grey Davis, the Democratic Governor, is triangulating like a Clinton, and it's giving the Reps fits.

Mayor Riordan is a Republican, although one of those splendid reforms keeps that fact a secret from voters, and he's an amiable enough guy who has used his rhetorical and organizational muscle to force some changes--or at least rumors of changes--at the school board. But, like the Texas Governor, the Los Angeles Mayor is an executive office without a lot of power. He couldn't be a Giuliani if he wanted to. Plus, we have so few trains, and they don't go very far, so it's easy to make them run on time. Actually, the school system is in bad enough shape that there's major support behind breaking up the district, and the police force has a metastasizing scandal in one of its central-city stations (thousands of cases may have to be reopened, due to revelations that, yes, Alan Dershowitz is right, the cops do lie), so, aside from the weather and the economy, it's not all that golden. Riordan's term is up shortly, though, and, if he can lick statewide animosity toward L.A., he might be the Republicans' best hope for beating Davis, or Boxer, or Leno.