Spill the Wine, Dig That Girl

Well it just goes from bad to worse for poor S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom. First the revelation about his affair with a co-worker and wife of his former campaign manager, and now new revelations that the Mayor will be entering a rehab program for an alcohol problem. Other than that, I'd say he's had a pretty uneventful February.

Now, of course, everywhere the Mayor goes he is pursued by a posse of reporters and cameramen, and he's the hot gossip all around the Bay Area. Such a mess, and you'd think world peace was hanging in the balance, but is it really? Is this what people are really concerned about, or is this just the sort of sensational news that grabs eyeballs and sells newspapers?

Seems to me, on a day-to-day basis, the important Bay Area news stories are high housing costs, crumbling infrastructure, crime, congestion...that sort of thing. I wonder if the people in the Fillmore or the Tenderloin or Bayview/Hunters Point are feeling safer tonight knowing that the Mayor is going into rehab, or if people living paycheck to paycheck feel a little more secure knowing that the Mayor deeply regrets his personal lapse of judgement. Wasn't it only last month the the Bay Area was going through a whole series of double murders? For some reason I think people care more about that then they do about Mayor Newsom's personal problems. Just look at this news clip (this is a deep link so I hope it works).

Which brings me to my point. Namely, I think it's high time we passed a law in this country making it illegal for elected officials to read newspapers, or listen to news reports, or watch the news on TV, because when they watch the news they seem to get a very distorted view of what's really important to the public they're supposed to serve. I mean if you were to believe what you see on the news then the thing most people care about today would be the country's jealous, out-of-control astronaut crisis.

It also works the other way around too. For example, why are they having this big debate in the Congress now over who supports Bush's war strategy and who doesn't. It's completely meaningless, and I think the public realizes that if the Commander-in-Chief is determined to kill that whale, then there's not much the officers and crew can do about it short of mutiny. Any Resolution that either does or doesn't get passed wouldn't have any teeth anyways, and the whole exercise is really about getting your name in the newspapers and on TV and positioning yourself for the next election. It's not going to end the violence or fix Social Security or cover anyone's medical expenses.

So that's why I think we need a law or something. That way the politicians can stop worrying about their press coverage and start talking more to the people. You know we have this Web 2.0 stuff nowadays, and the communication can flow in both directions. You don't need to get it secondhand from the talking heads. At least think about it, ok, 'cause we've got a lot of work to do.