We’ve written before about the shameless hypocrisy of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, whose bully-boy BID patrol agents arrest homeless people on a regular basis for relieving themselves on the public street.

We’ve argued that the HPOA consciously chooses to deprive the homeless of access to bathrooms, and is thus culpable for the broken lives and pain caused by the collateral consequences of these hundreds of arrests over the years. We’ve discussed the fact that the HPOA not only sets these people up for arrest by not having public restrooms available and then compounds their crime by arresting them, but they also mock them for the fact that they’re forced to shit in the streets.

Anyway, this morning, we noticed, strolling through the pleasant environs of Ivar and Selma, that not only are there porta-potties provided for the rich folk who shop at the Market, but there are even portable hand-washing stations, shown in the images above. We expect the porta-potties. That’s an expected level of hypocrisy. And we do appreciate hand-washing, both in ourselves and in others. We expect that the BID Patrol will arrest homeless people for sitting on the sidewalk but not even warn Farmers’ Market patrons for violating the same law.

But somehow we didn’t expect to see these hand-washing fountains out there. Somehow that strikes us as the hot fudge, whipped cream, and cherry of hypocrisy. Someone, somewhere, is sitting around thinking about the needs of these Farmers’ Market patrons in such empathetic detail that they thought of their unclean hands after they piss in the porta-potty. Someone, somewhere (OK, the HPOA and their BID Patrol minions), is sitting around thinking of more ways to bend and twist the law around so that they can arrest more homeless people. Lady Macbeth found out the hard way that an unquenchable thirst for power can lead to sins that can’t be washed away as easily as piss from the hands. The HPOA seems to be slow to learn this lesson.

Image of Hollywood Farmers’ Market is ©2015 MichaelKohlhaas.org. Image of Franz von Lenbach’s Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, as Lady Macbeth is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia.