Eric Garcetti, wobbily elected official, plays the identical role in office that he wobbily filled two years ago as one of the worst candidates in the history of Los Angeles.
Devoid of imagination and self-respect, he is a colors-changing chameleon who will be anything he desires for audiences he addresses.
He was an unfunny joke during his campaign, being a Jew here, a friend of Christians somewhere else, a Valley boy, a friend of business, a friend of the Fad of the Week, partisan toward Hollywood, or partisan for the Westside, or friend of the East Side, or political martyr for the Latino community and, God knows, outsized hero of the gay community, with a red-letter P.S. to the late-arriving transgender community in charge of labeling bathrooms.
The path of this story is embarrassingly threadbare. Born to be the dilettante he was for many years, Young Eric, at 44 years old, knows almost nothing about everything.
He should be operating a shoeshine stand midway across the Mohave Desert, at an Indian reservation where footwear is banned.
Sidetracked yesterday on his way to still another LGBT meeting, Mayor Garcetti blew a trumpet that he has been tooting to the point of nausea.
He found one more group for whom he promised to end homelessness. Heaven knows that Young Eric has enough gelt, and room at home, to accommodate the thousands of homeless whom he has vowed to cure.
Keeping in mind that Young Eric is halfway through hopefully his only term, he has had the same impact on Los Angeles as a nameless child dipping his left thumb into the ocean.
At the risk of sounding godlike, Young Eric appeared, magically, yesterday at the opening of a housing trust complex on Skid Row (“Ah used to be homeless before Ah got to be rich”). He swore on a stack of gum wrappers that that he was going to sharply reduce homelessness in a city marred every hour by it.
Said he would be back in a month with a plan. Tonight at midnight will mark the end of his 25th month in office. What he has been doing for those 759 days probably is not fit for print in a family newspaper.
Early this year, Young Eric promised to end homelessness for military veterans by Dec. 31. Colleague Bob Rosebrock tells us 20,000 homeless veterans clot the streets of Los Angeles every night.
By working diligently every day since that pledge, Young Eric has reduced the number of veterans sleeping on sidewalks to 20,000.
He is safe, though, if he is voted out of office in ’17 for underworking.
He can pad his resume by finding employment in the nearest slum as a receptionist at a Poorly Planned Parenthood center, marketing crunched baby parts.