Strictly Personal

Ari L. NoonanSports

Since the Middle East war floridly flared to a high flame last week, my keenest disappointment came one recent day when my ears were listening to the radio. Tuned to a political commentator with whom my thinking aligns 95 percent of time, I was jolted by a Jew-hating caller. It is scarcely germane that the caller was granted two minutes for a screed. As a stylish propagandist, the caller laid out a perfectly reasonable sounding condemnation of Israel’s existence and its historical conduct. His mellow tone deftly belied the caller’s insidious motivation. His smoothness could have co-opted a farmer in Nebraska or a scholar in Berkeley. What was crucial was the feeble response by the barely interested commentator. He said calmly he would check out the incendiary charges. I was stunned. Effectively for me as a Jew, the caller had just said my wife was a prostitute. That should have flushed out fire, but it did not. Instead, the commentator, a religious Christian, was disinterested in the case to the point of boredom. Not his fight, he implied. Mom’s wise words from my childhood came volleying back to me: In the end, the only vote you can count on is your own.

The Fate of Park Residents

Ari L. NoonanSports

The easiest victory that City Hall has scored in the past two years was the whuppin’ that the Redevelopment Agency put on the 40 or so residents of the two mobile home parks on Grandview Boulevard. The good news is that not much has happened to the elderly and poor along Grandview since a dreary night last October when, it was said, at least one key member of the Agency privately determined to punish those fearsome 80-year-olds for the intolerable indecision they had displayed. The storyline that evening in Council Chambers was that those sinister senior citizens — who often find it challenging to travel farther than the edge of the grounds — needed to be shown, for keeps, who was boss. The park residents, who are not very unified even though a number have lived there for years, could not decide how to vote. Faced, they were told, with eviction in the short term or the long term as City Hall moved to reshape the neighborhood, they were confronted with a terrible conundrum. It would have rattled a sharp 21-year-old couple. Should residents choose to be included in the City Hall-sponsored renovations of the grounds? This may or may not have guaranteed them a place to live in their even older age, on the park site or elsewhere, location to be decided. This option came with a certain-sized check, valued differently for each resident. The worth of the check would be decided somewhere in the cloudy future, months from now or several years away.

Peril? Peril? What Peril?

Ari L. NoonanSports

With a son and daughter-in-law residing near Jerusalem, and their first child due at any hour, you can imagine the tension in our home this weekend in view of the renewed Mideast war. “How can I relax,” my wife asked this morning, “when I am reading about terrorists?”. Meanwhile, Israel’s reliable enemies busily were reporting for duty. At the very hour my wife was worrying, Reuters was reporting from Rome: “The Vatican strongly deplored Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, saying they were an attack on a free and sovereign nation.” This is the same Vatican where the last Pope hugged and kissed Arafat. As the cadence of war becomes more voluble throughout the Middle East, the drumbeat is increasing in Culver City to bring American troops home from Iraq.

Rohde Sees Impeachment in the Air

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

If it is possible to convey revulsion in an understated manner, this was the seductively palatable path by which the brilliant First Amendment lawyer Stephen Rohde brought his piercing assessment of the Bush White House to the Democratic Club on Wednesday night. Rather than rhetorical ranting, he employed the monthly meeting at the Vets Auditorium as a forum for calmly condemning the Administration’s war performance with assertedly damning evidence. Building his case methodically, one brick at a time, in a serene tone, Mr. Rohde led his aroused audience on a tantalizing torture tour of terrorists allegedly abused by American forces. For his climactic crescendo, Mr. Rohde made the case for impeaching and humiliatingly dismissing every crucial trace of the Bush Administration. The American Civil Liberties Union figure succinctly described “accountability” as the most desirable outcome of November’s mid-term election. This can happen, he suggested, if Democrats can win back both chambers, or at least one. Doomsday is inevitable for the White House, he predicted.

How to Choose a Superintendent

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

With the hunt for a new School District Superintendent scarcely under way, School Board President Saundra Davis has compiled a list of ideas and suggestions that she believes will form an appealing professional profile. “But before talking about the list,” she said, “it would be wonderful; to know what the community is thinking. What kind of person do they think should be hired?”

A Strange Feeling

Ari L. NoonanSports

It was not exactly like entering a burlesque theater and recognizing the back of your father’s head in the front row. But close. There was a bizarre juxtaposition for me on Wednesday night when the First Amendment lawyer Stephen Rohde addressed the Democratic Club. For the last four years, I have been covering businesswoman Lynne Davidson’s free speech case against City Hall. This has led to numerous interviews with Mr. Rohde, who represented Ms. Davidson. Yes, I knew the liberal Mr. Rohde had carved an enviable national reputation as an influential upper tier advocate of free speech. Yes, I knew he had been Southern California president of the American Civil Liberties Union. He frequently speaks around the country on ACLU matters. But since he was Ms. Davidson’s attorney, and since I knew Ms. Davidson, I felt a sense of camaraderie. The camaraderie may have been ephemeral. But there were commonalities. Ever congenial, the first time we spoke was Mr. Rohde called me back as I was driving in Santa Monica. We shared an extended conversation. A few weeks ago, I had occasion to telephone him, off the record, about a Letter to the Editor in a newspaper of our mutual acquaintance. He has appeared in and on The Front Page.

The Mayor Is Eager to Launch

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

Two days after stunning his seatmates on the City Council by announcing that he was forging ahead with a heartfelt initiative that the Council soundly defeated last month, Mayor Gary Silbiger was soaring on Wednesday morning. Two weeks after the Council forcefully rejected the Mayor’s proposal for a Youth Advisory Committee, 4 to 1,he said he would start his own anyway, out from under the city’s aegis. Ever since he was elected four years ago, the Mayor has been determined to formally organize a youth advisory team. He believes fervently that teenagers need and deserve a regular voice in the daily operation of the city. He can’t wait to get started. Even on a stuffy day, Mr. Silbiger said the wind was at his back. He has momentum, and he has no intention of practicing caution. He expects to be under way with his Youth Advisory Committee by the end of August. “I am very excited about my new committee,” he told thefrontpageonline.com. “I am sure youth will be, too, when they find out about it.”

Family Shows for Culver City

Ari L. NoonanA&E

Surf City All-Stars at Thursday night’s Summer Sunset Concert Series (See below).

As a special summertime treat for the family, every Friday and Saturday morning throughout August, Culver City’s resident theater company, The Actors’ Gang, will present an original family show, Pericles on the High Seas, in the great outdoors. Beginning on Friday, Aug. 4, performances, at 11 a.m., will be staged in Media Park, directly in front of the Ivy Station, 9070 Venice Blvd., which has served as the popular indoor home of The Actors’ Gang ever since the company moved to Culver City last year. In an attempt to attract every resident who is even vaguely interested, The Actors’ Gang is re-introducing its popular Pay-What-You-Can policy.

In 14,000 Words

Ari L. NoonanSports

Council Chambers cleared out faster in mid-meeting on Monday night than my family reunions used to when a certain former wife, packing a mere pinch of talent, would announce she was prepared to perform a dramatic reading of Plato. Demonstrating that he retained a measure of good taste two thousand years after dropping dead from smoking unfiltered cigarettes, Plato would cringe, too. The problem, as noted on a thousand previous occasions, is that the members of the City Council act like wind-up yentas every Monday night. Is there anyone among you who doubts that when they die, the most thankless task of the friendly, neighborhood mortician will be closing their mouths? In life, they didn’t have much practice. Our subject today is whether Mayor Gary Silbiger, Vice Mayor Alan Corlin, members Carol Gross, Steve Rose and Scott Malsin are too gassy every time their tushes hit the chairs across the dais. Before you plunk down a wager on the correct answer, it is yes. They have whirled so far out of control with their undisciplined loquacity that they are driving people away. I am reminded of one of my sisters. She begins talking about 5 minutes before she dials my number.

Beach Sounds for Summer Concert Series

Ari L. NoonanA&E

Thursday evening is beach party time for the 7 p.m. performance in the Summer Sunset Concert Series in the Courtyard of City Hall. The Surf City All-Stars, who have been here before, are the attraction. Admission is free, and so is parking, underground, at City Hall for this fourth concert in the weekly series.