Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-The end of 2020 is finally here, and aside from investors in Amazon, Tesla and Zoom, few came out significantly ahead.
The year ends in ways that only the Communist Party of China could foresee staying quiet early on about the Coronavirus and blocking efforts to study it. It squandered millions of lives and trillions of dollars and should be held accountable but probably will not. Even those who survived COVID still lost because it stole a year from the remainder of every life. Not bad if you're young, but if you have five healthy years left, the virus stole 20% of it.
As 2020 adjourns, let's embrace a few silver linings of our own.
Love him or hate him, President Donald Trump pulled the right levers of the military, business, and scientific worlds to create multiple vaccines that experts say was unprecedented. These breakthroughs in science and logistics will help pull us through the pandemic and prepare us better for the next one.
Before COVID brutally altered life on earth, one of the most extraordinary stories of the year was going to be the inconceivable death of Kobe Bryant on January 26. The Los Angeles Lakers subsequently winning the NBA championship in the wake of his passing was nice, but COVID made the season mostly irrelevant, with only 5.6 million people watching their Game 6 clincher compared to more than 18 million for last year's finale. It proved that the NBA could have the greatest athletes on the planet do their thing, but there is no there there without us cheering them on. In fact, an NFL game between the Vikings and Seahawks on the same night drew double the viewers, suggesting that an interrupted season and the NBA's struggles with race, perhaps more than other leagues, had people throw in the towel. The silver lining is that it helped nudge our collective Kobe pain further into the past. And yes, the Dodgers finally won the World Series for the first time since 1988, but it too lacked.
COVID and the George Floyd riots helped establish Fox 11's Bill Melugin as the most trustworthy reporter in LA. You brought him one exclusive after another because he told the simple, blunt truth every day. Doing so helped make Governor Gavin Newsom's recall a likely thing as well as the defeat of LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl if she gets a capable challenger when she is up for re-election in 2022 as an octogenarian.
In 2021, watch for Newsom and Kuehl to conflate their hypocrisy of not living by the same rules they created for us as proof that their policies led to defeating COVID locally.
They are entirely separate issues. Don't let them or the LA Times get away with it.
Hideous conditions on the ground in LA further exposed Mayor Eric Garcetti as the city's worst chief executive ever. Sam Yorty was a blatant racist and Antonio Villaraigosa was a ditz who rarely showed up for work. But Garcetti failed in every conceivable way. As a prime target for blackmail, he was publicly rejected for a Joe Biden cabinet position.
As I said, silver linings. . .
Last year City Hall gadfly Patricia McAllister colorfully told stumbling City Council president Nury Martinez to take the job more seriously with this zinger:
“If you want to be with the boys, you got to do your job, okay? You're supposed to be at that podium, ma'am. . . Now you be a woman and stand-up for women and do your job. . . Now you wanna run with the boys, you gotta be like the boys, okay. . . Now you wanna get that kind of respect, you be like the boys. Get that skirt off, put some pants on and do your job."
COVID finally got Mrs. Martinez to do that, as Council meetings are now conducted on Zoom and held on just two rather than three days per week, cutting out much of their self-congratulatory buffoonery. Still, Martinez made it more onerous and random than ever for the public to participate. She can and must do much better in listening to people.
Once one of the most powerful politicians in California, Councilmember Herb Wesson clung to the accurate but insecure and backward-looking title of "LA City Council president emeritus" in his quest to become an LA County Supervisor. It didn't work, as voters pummeled him into retirement 61% to 39%.
Delusional comments were plentiful during Wesson's unattended Zoom send-off. Councilmember Paul Krekorian made the most blatantly false one: that Wesson treated absolutely everyone with dignity and respect, ignoring his vindictiveness toward the public as well as former colleagues Jan Perry, Bernard Parks, and his dressing down of former Mayor Richard Riordan.
Of that incident, the LA Downtown News wrote, "Herb Wesson should apologize, first to Riordan and then to the people of Los Angeles for his juvenile antics. It's not fitting for someone of his position. More than that, it's simply not how someone should act. Wesson's immature behavior is an embarrassment to the city. We, including Mayor Riordan, deserve better."
The video of Wesson’s cringe-worthy, grinning jab is memorialized here.
After just one term, Councilmember David Ryu did the unthinkable by losing the gig to newcomer Nithya Raman, rattling off his "accomplishments" on his final day. That silver lining pales compared to the tumbling dominoes of Wesson's "best friend" Jose Huizar and pals being arrested by the FBI for corruption. Will he spend much of the rest of his life in federal prison or sing like a canary?
But the thing that made many around City Hall shout with glee was the March arrest by the FBI of now prison-bound Councilmember Mitch Englander, a jerk's jerk. Beyond abusing his power and selling his office, Englander took genuine glee tormenting people seeking help from City Hall, with wisecracks like telling mentally ill constituents "don't forget to take your meds" and "take your little dog Toto with you."
Several of them got the last laugh, attending the federal hearing where Englander publicly admitted his crimes and got to skate on other allegations, provided he spills every secret.
This column had its silver linings in 2020. One was being runner-up in the Best Online Political Commentary at the LA Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards for my column celebrating the life of Morsel, a special needs rescue dog who we loved. Another was receiving a five-figure settlement in defeating the LAPD and vindictive LA City Attorney Mike Feuer for their abuses and threats in trying to suppress this column's stories.
If history is any indication, the coming 20s may reflect "The Roaring 20s" of a century ago, as Yascha Mounk wrote for The Atlantic back in May. We could use a few years of debauchery after this.
In the grand scheme of the universe, a year is nothing. We measure distance and time out there in light-years, which is 186,000 miles per second. The light we enjoy each day took 8.3 minutes to reach us from the sun's surface.
Out there, a year is an inconceivably short period of time. But here, the one named 2020 was life-altering for everyone. This is why it is important to embrace any silver lining which helped you get through it.
In 2021, this column will invite you to help proactively hold these politicians and their infrastructure accountable. Details soon, so stay safe and stay warm. Back soon.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Political Commentary and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
