What's with all these public servants getting themselves busted for DUI and spousal attack and all those things our leaders, one would think, ought to be able to handle better than us followers? Is it expecting too much to believe they might have the maturity and wits to, you know, think ahead about something other than re-election fundraisers (which are perhaps the most likely places they get plastered)?
Or am I just being picky? Picky, picky, picky...
Candidate Venus Velasquez, practically on election eve, was caught driving by a cop after having one too many. At least she has kind things to say about police treatment, unlike lady Jane Hague.
She spoke harshly to the mere minions of the law and belittled them, chided them for letting the town sit open to rape and pillage while she was interrupted in her important labors by some bleeping nobodies, a bunch of bleeps who didn't seem to even realize who she bleeping was! What a bunch of bleep! And even the bleeping judge who got her off on the Q.T., at first, has now been outed because it turns out he's got a criminal record! Bleep, bleep, bleep.
But now Hague has seen the light and made nice. So, let's get on with the business at hand. And put this little, unpleasant, entirely understandable, really uncharacteristic, never-to-be-repeated lapse behind us and vote to continue our journey together into our rich entitlement: the paving of the county so there's room for bikes and cars and condos. Hoo boy, a lady Moses we've got here. Bleeping fantastic.
But Seattle councilmember Richard McGiver - described widely as a really nice guy and a fine fellow and a straight shooter and a lot of laughs and all like that there - who's found for hours most days in the bar of an unpretentious establishment in this Metronatural mess, drove home with nary a hitch. No DUI. No citation, no problemo.
But then there was this call from Mrs. McGiver to the cops asserting that the councilman was not being a nice guy to her.
She also asserted that the councilman was pretty tanked-up, too, but I'm guessing he handled it better than the women did, thanks to keeping regular hours in the bar whereas the women in question tend to be more random in such attendance. Discipline. Consistent behavior. Very important.
So, we got this going on, too, but the bright side here is that McGiver isn't on the ballot this year. Bleeping lucky.
Then there was Judge Bridge, who also had a little, tiny, whatchamacallit, which leaked out, as they usually do, to the raucous, hysterical, holier-than-thou ranting of KIRO AM talk radio. The station's flack Dori Monson is so detestable in nature and delivery that I can't stand him even when he gets something right. He alone must have created sympathy for Bridge in listeners sick of his attacks on her. Monson exemplifies the mission of talk shows, which is selling siding, gutters, investments, impotence pills, dog food or whatever.
At least Bridge, McGiver, Hague and Velasquez aren't in talk radio. May they never sink that low.
Politics, pop music and movie acting seem to combine stress, excess and legal and illegal ingestibles more than other endeavors do. Smoking and boozing inhabit the history of western politics. I note that McGiver still smokes and drinks, and the descriptions of his after hours affability and availability in a darkish barroom seem classic, old political congeniality.
But what next? Do we want politics - weird and exasperating as it already is - to become more so?
With all the publicity and legislation against drunk driving and domestic abuse, why is it still seemingly prevalent in the leading classes?
The speakers against, and the rule-makers themselves, are doing the same idiotic stuff as the masses. May we look forward to some inept Seattle Chappaquiddick incident where, in 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne was killed in a car driven by the intoxicated United States Senator Ted Kennedy when he drove off the island's Dike Bridge.
I can see our South End version involving some politician's post-fundraiser party caravan motoring erratically into Rainier Beach's Mapes Creek, that pathetic, and waterless, symbol of development damage, and the politicians taking 12 hours to walk the 400 feet to Safeway to report it.
As King County Council member Hague might say, "Bet your bleep."
Rainier Beach writer and artist Gordon Anderson may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com[[In-content Ad]]
