Sports Articles

Now what does Mehaul O’Leary do to make himself better known to Culver City voters? For almost three years, ever since the summer day that the 40-year-old Irishman became an American citizen, he has been driven by the notion of winning a City Council seat. On Monday night, though, he was rejected by the City Council for one of the numerous openings that were available on six different city commissions. And so, Mr. O’Leary finds himself standing in a tall jar of pickles this morning. Everywhere he turns, the air smells a little stinkier. When he finished third — one place out of the money — in last April’s City Council election, the explanation was that he had little name recognition. He was advised by presumably well-meaning persons that if he wanted to become a deserving, valid candidate for the City Council, he would have to earn his experience first. Start, said his unsolicited counselors, by serving on one of the city’s several commissions.

What do you suppose happens to numerous men and women who, once elected to office, wear themselves out every day trying to throw a big, old Indian blanket over their professional activities. Not surprisingly, I have in mind the School Board. All five members probably could be re-elected for life, without resistance, if they would stand facing you and me when they make crucial decisions. After Board member Stew Bubar declined to a fulfill a sensitive but sensible request from my occasional colleague George Laase at a meeting last month, I wrote an essay seeking to encourage Mr. Bubar and the Board to provide the answer. Since three weeks have gone into the history books, it seems unlikely that Mr. Laase’s inquiry will be answered.

I have been in the newspaper business long enough to have witnessed paranoid editors refusing to run television listings. This was deemed to be a cursed act of aiding the enemy. The creative reasoning of my editors went this way: We had a limited audience of sports fans. If readers watched a ballgame on television, they would not feel compelled to read our less compelling game report the next morning. If we did not acknowledge a game was being televised, perhaps the reader would forget, and then he would have to consult our newspaper the next day. Newspapers remind me of the Democratic Party: They are constantly searching for enemies whom they can claim are preying on them.

Timmy Rutten, the virulently anti-war media columnist for the Los Angeles Times, opened his essay last Saturday morning with a fib, a gross mischaracterization. This is what some liberal pundits tend to do when facts are inconvenient. This is what he wrote: “When two CBS journalists were killed and a third critically wounded this week, the war in officially became the deadliest ever for combat correspondents.”  Not a bad subject, if you glance at it fast. But it was a phony construction by the angry Mr. Rutten. Pure cabbage. He dreamed up the opening definition. By deliberately mis-labeling two obscure technicians, a television soundman and a television cameraman, as “journalists,” he slyly sought to buttress his jacklegged premise. He had to reshape the facts because there was no room inside the truth to tell the story.

Making an encore visit this week to

Returning yesterday morning to 111 N. Hill St., the pathetic Pathos Playhouse, the scene of the wreckage of my least favorite divorce, was akin to waking up next to my saintly ex-wife — or my favorite onion. (There was no difference, which is why she is known in our house as the Formerly Fetching.) As nearly everyone who is not on beverage overload will assure you, sprinting up the courthouse steps of 111 N. Hill is a lot more fun when you are spectating instead of participating. I stood up straighter. I walked more confidently as I strode from the nearest inexpensive parking lot into the chilly bosom of Legal Los Angeles. (That last part also reminded me of my ex-wife.) This was like drearily spending a free day on the set of something like “Days of Our Lives.” It is the Empire of Ethnicity. This is the new Ellis Island, where most all players are shades of brown or black. Nearly all of their lawyers are white — maybe so the judges can tell them apart. Or maybe because those residents who aren’t white are much more vulnerable?

Whether these are the best of times for Jerry Fulwood, the chief executive of City Hall, only his God and his family know. No one in Culver City does. If anyone else (who is not related) has foolproof knowledge, I would be surprised. Mr. Fulwood, the Prince of Privacy, has turned polished professional discretion into a fine art. This is one solid reason he is starting his second three-year contract with Culver City any edition now. Since gaining a new contract last January, he has weathered several budding threats to his job security. Sometime this month, he will segue into a broader, more powerful, newly created position as a result of the Charter Reform proposition that passed in the April election. He will morph from Chief Administrative Officer into City Manager. In the words of some at City Hall, “For the first time, Jerry will be the real chief executive of the city, not just an administrator.” Unlike the barking by critics over Mr. Fulwood in the late winter and early spring, the transition will be conducted in the low-key Fulwood manner, seamlessly, without a single note of fanfare. His critics, probably only temporarily, have retreated.

Except for a profound misunderstanding of the nature of homelessness, the city of Santa Monica undoubtedly is well-advised to be paying former County Supervisor Ed Edelman $200,000 a year to reduce homelessness. Outside of city retirees, who draw 90 percent of their salaries as they ease into the non-working life in their early 50s, Mr. Edelman must have the best gig going on the Westside. I will wager that Mr. Edelman radically alters his appearance at every Let’s Cure Homelessness This Millenium meeting that he attends so that critics never can find him, never can figure out what he really looks like. This is too good of a gig to blow.

Putting My Secretary to Work

Murgatroyd, take a memo. Send it out to all Los Angeles media: Mamas, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys. Track down Ed Edelman’s telephone number, and teach them how to emulate him. Apply this morning for the lucrative job of Heir Apparent to Ed Edelman. Tell him you always have dreamed of curing homelessness in the world. But you would like to start out modestly, wiping it out in Santa Monica first. Land the job, and you’ll never go hungry — or, heaven forbid, homeless. From your penthouse window overlooking the serene Pacific, you can observe the colorful armies of the colorless homeless. Then jot down impractical, unattainable strategies for ending the homelessness that these men and women genuinely desire. Hand your suggestions in to the City Council. They probably will keep renewing your contract, year after year.

This comes under the heading of Be Glad You and Your Children Live in Culver City, even if you chafe under the feckless leadership of the Noble School Board. With the resignation this week of Ilene Straus, the main principal of Santa Monica High School, so many community leaders have quit this year that you would think a busload of sensible Republicans had arrived to clean up the puddles on the floor that educators and politicians have strewn across Santa Monica.

Terminally optimistic, I cannot be dissuaded from the stubborn notion that the Noble School Board of Culver City — as the members may be known when they reach heaven — will select a new Superintendent by 10 years from Sunday. Be still my heart. Please do not try to convince me that the apparent planet-wide search will take one day longer. Friends, preferring anonymity, report they have seen a couple of School Board members, appearing slightly unmoored, roaming adjacent neighborhoods while cradling their under-sized Toys R Us flashlights. They appeared to be combing the silent, darkened streets for a worthy Super successor to replace the retiring Dr. Laura McGaughey. As my late Uncle Ferdinand used to say when he ambled out of his fiercely burning house, “There’s a rush?”