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For an amateur politician — amateur only in the sense you couldn’t make a living from the token pay — Mayor Alan Corlin so adroitly mastered the mechanisms of running Culver City government that he looked and acted as if he came with the wallpaper, the lighting fixtures and the flooring in Council Chambers.

He acted and looked like the Mayor from Central Casting, even though at City Hall the position is described as ceremonial.

On the contrary, Mr. Corlin — who loves playing prankster and sprang more puns at his colleagues than anyone on the last five City Councils — took each of his two one-year terms as Mayor with deadly seriousness.

[Editor’s Note: Second in a series about Dep. City Attorney David McCarthy, a U.S. Marine reservist, and the hot national debate over post-traumatic stress disorder for returning military veterans. Having undergone counseling at the end of his latest tour of duty, Mr. McCarthy was ordered to be further checked out when he attempted to return to work. See Part 1, “How Life Changed for a Military Hero When He Came Home to Culver City,” April 24.]


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Second in a series

“Brotman has existed for more than 80 years, and it likely will be around for another 80.” — The hospital’s CEO
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After half a year on the job as the Chief Executive Officer of chronically troubled Brotman Medical Center, which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last autumn, Stan Otake says, euphemistically, that the bleeding has been stanched.

First in a series

Responding rapidly this morning to a galloping employee uprising that was developing over a delayed payroll, Brotman Medical Center officials promised — and appeared to have corrected “the technical glitch” by early this afternoon.

Brotman, in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since last September, explained with emphasis that the error was random, unrelated to the bankruptcy. The Culver City hospital traced the failing to its payroll processing company in Orange County

[Editor’s Note: In view of the exclusive series that the newspaper began yesterday on Dep. City Atty. David McCarthy on post-traumatic stress disorder — especially as it relates to one’s employer — we offer this timely report, released last week by the Rand Corp. of Santa Monica, the non-profit global policy think tank. The McCarthy series (“How Life Changed for a Military Hero When He Came Home to Culver City,” April 24) will resume Monday.]

Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a new Rand Corp. study.

First of 2 parts

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This is the pervasively pathos-enriched story of an authentic latter-day American military hero and the tribulations that even Culver City heroes must endure:

For a fellow who leads a high-speed life, who had just triggered a lightning bolt across the community with an arresting Letter to the Editor, David McCarthy, a deputy attorney in the City Attorney’s office, looked mighty relaxed in the early afternoon sunshine

Despite insinuations that this morning’s bankruptcy hearing for the tottering Brotman Medical Center resembled its death bed, the Culver City hospital gained an undramatic reprieve to operate a few days longer.

In the face of onrushing deadlines that will be difficult for the hospital to meet, Brotman attorney Tom Patterson insisted that “there is no reason to suspect Brotman will not remain open for the foreseeable future.”

You can always tell when it is election season.

Your favorite remote hometown, state or federal politician — whom you have not seen since he had a full head of hair and his children were much younger — suddenly is ubiquitous, everywhere in your life, including seeming to be across the breakfast table from you each morning, sharing your cereal.

State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) is this morning’s illustration of ubiquity, comforting students, buttonholing leaders, trying valiantly to rescue King-Harbor Hospital, now in tatters but once a centerpiece of black community pride.

Say this about Frederick Smith, the radioactive land owner in the more or less family plot, the industry-heavy Hayden Tract:

His strident opponents are more interesting than those of other big-time players in Culver City.

The cymbals clang and the drums go bang when Donald D. Barr, a severely irked property owner in the Hayden Tract, serves up his sweeping opinions about Mr. Smith and about the ongoing saga of Mr. Smith’s controversial, supposedly sub-market acquisition, from City Hall, of the flat-faced Warner Parking Lot and his subsequent stewardship.

Here is a shaggy dog story from inside the beast’s belly about small-town politics:

The familiar room darkens as Mayor Alan Corlin reaches to remove his fedora from the hat rack, and walks out the door for the last time, exiting from the City Council following a century-long run that was passionate and professional, but mainly classy.