Tag Archives: Think of the Children

Jocelyn Duarte Wrote A Letter To Mitch O’Farrell Supporting Herb Wesson’s Anti-Gadfly Motion — In Fact It Was Her Kid Whose Ears Famously Got Covered Due To Armando Herman’s Foul Mouth — Duarte Is The Interim Executive Director Of The Salvadoran-American Leadership And Educational Fund — O’Farrell Staffie David Giron Is SALEF’s Vice President — Who Presumably Will Decide If Her Position Is Made Permanent — Astroturfing Much? — Daily Irony Supplement: A Bunch Of Angry Rich White People Disrupt Public Meeting — Scream At David Ryu About Homeless Shelters — Don’t Get Banned From Future Meetings — Let Alone Ejected From That One — Or Even Arrested For Violating §403 PC

Oh man, the whole damn city is buzzing over Herb Wesson’s latest attempt to use the U.S. and the California Constitutions as so much toilet paper just in order to score an ephemeral point or two against his nemeses Armando Herman and Wayne Spindler. Noted civil rights lawyer Stephen Rohde, who’s grown rich and fat from our City Council’s previous transgressions against freedom and decency, even had a piece in City Watch about it.

Kerry Morrison of the Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance, who never met a fascist she didn’t worship the walking-on-ground of,1 predictably wrote an intensely stupid letter to the Times supporting Wesson. And the interim executive of the Salvadoran-American Leadership and Educational Fund, Jocelyn Duarte, famously had to cover her kid’s ears to keep out Armando Herman’s admittedly foul language and then she wrote this letter to Mitch O’Farrell begging him to think of the damn children.2

Herb Wesson famously solicited the letter from Duarte, just as this master of astroturfing famously solicits letters of support for all manner of his crackpot ideas.3 But this letter from Jocelyn Duarte is astroturfed in a whole different dimension. Take another look at the actual letter. See the board of directors on the left. Notice Mitch O’Freaking Farrell’s legislative director David Giron listed there. Note that Jocelyn Duarte is the interim executive director. And who else but David Giron and his board cronies is going to be filling the permanent position? Oh, of course, Mitch O’Farrell, who also never met a fascist he didn’t adore, seconded Wesson’s motion.

In one sense there’s nothing that shocking here. Our City’s council files are, it turns out, just full to the very rim with this kind of stage-managed illusion of popular support for every random whim of every random Council repster, submitted on demand in the hope of currying favor for God knows what sinister purposes. In another sense, it really is shocking, or at least interesting enough for me to keep writing about! Of course there’s a transcription of the letter after the break.

Before that, though, watch this video of a bunch of angry rich white anti-homeless people screaming at David Ryu last night to the point where he could no longer speak. See the cops standing around watching? No one’s getting clubbed, tased, banned from future meetings, arrested, or even ejected, which is amazing because, unlike saying “fuck” at a Council meeting, this kind of thing is actually a freaking crime.4 But of course these rich angry white people don’t bother Herb Wesson and the rest of them at all. No need to pass new laws against them or even to enforce existing ones. These angry rich white people make freaking campaign contributions!
Continue reading Jocelyn Duarte Wrote A Letter To Mitch O’Farrell Supporting Herb Wesson’s Anti-Gadfly Motion — In Fact It Was Her Kid Whose Ears Famously Got Covered Due To Armando Herman’s Foul Mouth — Duarte Is The Interim Executive Director Of The Salvadoran-American Leadership And Educational Fund — O’Farrell Staffie David Giron Is SALEF’s Vice President — Who Presumably Will Decide If Her Position Is Made Permanent — Astroturfing Much? — Daily Irony Supplement: A Bunch Of Angry Rich White People Disrupt Public Meeting — Scream At David Ryu About Homeless Shelters — Don’t Get Banned From Future Meetings — Let Alone Ejected From That One — Or Even Arrested For Violating §403 PC

Share

Mitch O’Farrell Deserves Any Amount Of Bad Press For Sucking Up To Kerry Morrison About Kids And Adults In Playgrounds But The Recent L.A. Times Editorial And Subsequent Internet Freakout Criticizing Him Are Kind Of Off Base

Mitch O’Farrell in a strip-mall somewhere yelling about something.
Our work on Selma Park has been getting a lot of action over the last couple days since the L.A. Times published this editorial criticizing a recent motion of O’Farrell’s. The Times puts it thus:

City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell has proposed barring adults unaccompanied by children from entering playgrounds. It’s an effort, he said, to keep city parks “free of creepy activity.” Who wouldn’t want to ban creepy activity or creepy people from playgrounds?

This editorial prompted a massive ongoing freakout on Reddit, followed by O’Farrell’s feckless denial on Twitter and moving from there to a blog post by the incomparable Lenore Skenazy, then on to Slate, and then everywhere. And the way the Times describes the issue is certainly frightening:

But what O’Farrell is proposing goes far beyond targeting worrisome activities that, in most cases, are already outlawed. It would bar any adult from sitting on a bench, exercising or otherwise enjoying public space near
[a] playground unless he or she brought a child along. Is this really necessary?

One of the legitimate, Recreation and Parks Commission approved, signs at Selma Park stating that use of the playground is restricted to children and caregivers. The sign cites LAMC 83.44 and Penal Code section 653g, neither of which actually exists.
According to the Times, Mitch O’Farrell proposed this motion because Hollywood residents complained about drug dealers in some park. But Mitch O’Farrell is famous for confusing Kerry Morrison and her dimwit BID buddies with residents of Hollywood. He thinks they’re his constituents even though none of them live in Hollywood. He’s made this error with respect to tour bus regulation, and also street characters, and also Hollywood nightclubs. In each of these cases, “Hollywood residents” has turned out to be code for “Kerry Morrison.”

So even though I don’t yet have documentary evidence to back it up, my best guess is that this story about Hollywood residents complaining about a park is O’Farrell-speak for something like the following chain of events: Kerry Morrison and her armed flunky Steve Seyler bitched and moaned about the HPOA’s illegal signs being removed from Selma Park.1 O’Farrell then probably asked the City Attorney how to ban grownups from the park again. Probably the City Attorney told him at that point that it wasn’t possible, because it’s not, and probably it also came up at this point that the City’s official signs banning adults without kids from actual demarcated playgrounds were really outdated, given that neither LAMC 83.44 nor Penal Code section 653g actually exist.

Of course, not only is it certainly illegal to cite people for violating repealed laws, but it’s almost certainly illegal for the City to post signs threatening to cite people for violating them in order to keep them out of places that they legally have the right to be. So Kerry Morrison and Mitch O’Farrell, faced with the possibility of the removal of even the official signs,2 settled, I’m thinking, on the very motion that is currently undergoing two minutes hate from the Internet.

And the motion the Internet is hating on is a scary thing indeed. But it’s not the motion O’Farrell actually made. In its entirety the real motion says:3 Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell Deserves Any Amount Of Bad Press For Sucking Up To Kerry Morrison About Kids And Adults In Playgrounds But The Recent L.A. Times Editorial And Subsequent Internet Freakout Criticizing Him Are Kind Of Off Base

Share

Cap’n John Irigoyen: Think of the Children! But Don’t Worry, Kids Aren’t Frightened by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center

Captain John Irigoyen of Universal Protective Services at the Hollywood Media District BID Board meeting of November 20, 2014
Captain John Irigoyen of Universal Protective Services at the Hollywood Media District BID Board meeting of November 20, 2014
Really, Cap’n John? Why’d you bring it up then, given that no sane person would ever suspect that they would be? Methinks the Cap’n doth protest too much. Our diagnosis is unintentional apophasis in the first degree.

But of course, you don’t know what we’re talking about. Let us explain. At their meeting on November 20, 2014, the Hollywood Media District BID expanded the size of its Board of Directors from 17 to 19 members1 because they had two open spots and four applicants for them and why should they choose when they don’t have to? As the Dodo Bird said, “EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.” One of the candidates involved in this board-packing maneuver was a perfectly nice-seeming fellow who was sent over by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, on Schrader between Hollywood and Selma, about three blocks east of McCadden.
Continue reading Cap’n John Irigoyen: Think of the Children! But Don’t Worry, Kids Aren’t Frightened by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center

Share