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So They Are All…All Honorable Men

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

San Diegans are no dummies. We know what happens to politically independent, outspoken, public-minded individuals who are brash enough to shake things up. They get maligned, noogied, humiliated, sent packing. Open your mouth too wide in this city and… you’re dead meat.

So we’re polite and genteel. Why look for trouble? Yes, the public gets screwed over and over again but we’ve learned to turn the other cheek. Forgive and forget — that’s our MO.

We swoon over the nice guys, especially the ones with agreeable manners. Like our avuncular ex-mayor Jerry Sanders, our puckish council president Todd Gloria, our sunkissed mayor Kevin Faulconer — honorable men beyond public reproach. Even when they’re plotting to pull the rug out from under us.   [Read more…]

Haven’t We Met Before?

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By Norma Damashek

In response to requests I received for the names of people I alluded to in last week’s commentary Too Many Years of Inbreeding I’m providing a list of Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s recent appointees, plus a brief description of who they are.

Many names will be familiar to those of you who have been following city affairs over the years.  For others, the people on this list may not ring a bell; like the city’s water and sewer pipes they tend to operate beneath the surface.  But their organizational interconnectedness and crossovers are readily identifiable by one and all.   [Read more…]

Too Many Years of Inbreeding

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

To misquote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Something is rotten in the state of our Denmark …our city.  Most likely it’s the result of too many years of inbreeding.

Take a look at appointees to San Diego boards, commissions, committees, and political organizations like United Way, the Chamber of Commerce, and Red Cross.  You’ll discover that San Diego is an epicenter of incestuous comings and goings. (Incestuous: repetitive, indiscriminate, unwholesome, unnatural, intimately intertwined, endogamous co-mingling of self-serving individuals)

Look at the staffers roaming City Hall.  They occupy a hermetically-sealed world – punctuated by narrow loyalties, a tendency toward inflated egos, frequent dalliances, and more revolving doors than in an Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein movie. Individuals who recently worked for (we assume it was for) former-mayor Bob Filner are now lodged in the office of Filner’s nemesis, councilman Todd Gloria.  Some have leapfrogged to other council offices or elsewhere in the bureaucracy… marbles in a game of Chinese Checkers.   [Read more…]

A Mindful Walk Down a Dark and Slippery Slope

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By Norma Damashek

Here’s what the Zen manual advises for a stress-free existence: notice… let it go… then smile.

Truth is, I’m not ready for bliss.  And it’s not for lack of trying.  You know how it is once you’ve noticed certain things… how can you let them go?  Maybe tomorrow. 

Right now I can’t help noticing someone’s big bad joke.  Here’s how it goes:

A guy walks into a bar, orders a beer on tap, and announces that the annual advent of Sunshine Week is just around the corner.  That’s the time when good-thinking people (journalists included) spend a few days promoting the public’s right to know what goes on behind the thick curtains of government.  Some call it transparency.   [Read more…]

All the World’s a Stage

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By Norma Damashek

Act I: the State of the City Address

San Diegans are about to witness a full-dress reenactment of our town’s annual civic ritual known as the State of the City Address. Article XV of the City Charter lays it out: On or before the 15th day of January of each year, the Mayor shall communicate by message to the City Council a statement of the conditions and affairs of the City, and make recommendations on such matters as he or she may deem expedient and proper.

You can catch a live performance at 6pm this Wednesday, January 15th at downtown’s historic Balboa Theatre. Alternatively, you can kick back in the comfort of your own living room and watch it on City-TV.

Like most political rituals it’s an occasion for platitudes and cheerleading. San Diego mayors traditionally use the opportunity to bring in the color guard… special lighting… ministers… pomp and circumstance… to showcase their recent accomplishments and bright plans for the city’s future.   [Read more…]

Sex and the City – Special San Diego Mayoral Election Edition

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Let’s ease into this subject with a mindful autumn walk.  Notice the days getting shorter…. morning air chillier… leaves turning gold on liquidamber trees.

Now notice a fact as unwavering as the seasons — the fact that sex plays a dominant role in San Diego public affairs.  Hook it up with other San Diego mainstays (uninspired leadership, stunted civic aspirations, free-floating corruption, overinflated egos, corporate welfare, legal-establishment collusion, Republican Party strategy, dubious fidelity among leading Democrats, to name a few) and it wallops a punch potent enough to knock a new mayor out of the ring and force the city into a costly, rushed election to bring in a replacement.

Of course this is not how the Chamber of Commerce markets our city.   [Read more…]

The Mystery of Why Qualcomm Adopted Nathan Fletcher

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Did you ever suspect you were being taken for a ride but decide to go along with it anyway?  Did you ever ignore that little voice inside your head warning you to watch out! because the guy conning you was so smooth, so really cute,  how could you say no?

You’ve just been introduced to Nathan Fletcher in his rematch race for mayor of San Diego.

Nathan Fletcher is funny, engaging, self-deprecating, and a topnotch storyteller.  He is low-keyed even when boasting, “I interrogated al-Qaeda… I can negotiate a labor deal.”   [Read more…]

The Birds, the Bees and the Wolfpack, Part III

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He was pushed.  And yes, he jumped

 by Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Here’s a quick reminder about our former Mayor: there is no dispute that Bob Filner’s interpersonal habits, short fuse, and juvenile impulse control in the presence of women were blatant failings.  The problem is, these failings were embedded in a unique individual whose political agenda was like long-awaited manna to the voters who elected him.

Tension, arguments, and righteous proclamations have erupted during these past months among San Diegans (mostly Democrats) genuinely torn between condemning a “progressive” political leader for his personal defects and giving up their hopes for a new, more enlightened social and economic agenda for San Diego — a no-win dilemma.   [Read more…]

Part II: The Birds, the Bees, and the Wolf Pack

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Did Bob Filner jump? did he fall? was he pushed?  

By Norma Damashek
 / Numbersrunner

Forget you, Nancy Drew.  You’re being replaced by Perry Mason, super-sleuth defense attorney from the zero hour this guy would laboriously rise up in the middle of the courtroom and pull a rabbit out of a hat.  First he’d say something enigmatic to the judge, then to the jury.  Soon he’d turn to the seated onlookers and dramatically finger the real culprit… swindler… murderer… for a histrionic wrap-up to another solved case.

The case against Bob Filner, however, doesn’t lend itself to cheap theatrics.  The complexity and political fallout of Bob Filner’s ouster bring his political demise closer to classic tragedy than pulp fiction — not merely for him personally but for the future of our city.

So let’s stick with the diligent approach of Ms Drew to arrive at some answers to this mayoral mystery: did Bob Filner jump? fall? or get pushed? and when the curtains are drawn back will we find a master manipulator slinking around in the shadows?   [Read more…]

Part I: A Story About Sex… More or Less

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Once upon a time there was a man with an unquenchable impulse to invite women out to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. He seemed oblivious to a fact most other men understand — there are circumstances when it’s okay to sweet-talk a woman and other circumstances when it’s not.

For a man known to be adept and dynamic at public speaking he was oddly banal and unimaginative at the art and practice of seduction: are you married… you are beautiful… your eyes mesmerize me… I want you to have dinner with me.   [Read more…]

A Mindful Walk Through Treacherous Territory – Sex and Loathing in San Diego

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By Norma Damashek

Today I’m on a mindful jaunt through America’s finest sexiest city.  Not just ordinary sexy but exuberant sexy... in-your-face, over-the-top sexy.  It’s a walk that calls for extra-special noticing (though not much letting go).

I notice that there’s a three-ring circus in town, selling its special merchandise to participants and spectators alike — an exotic brew of beer-soaked hormones, pheromones, secretions, and sundry other exudations.

It’s being peddled on Fiesta Island at the annual beach bacchanal known as the Over-The-Line Tourney — a boozy, raunchy, let-it-all-hang-out display of tantalizing semi-bare bodies engaged in personal pleasures and pursuits and not-necessarily-innocent fun and games.

It was widely available at the LGBT Pride Parade – a comparable extravaganza of raunchy, let-it-all-hang-out semi-bare bodies engaged in the celebration of freedom to be and liberation from the shackles of conventional restraints and taboos.   [Read more…]

A Mindful Walk Down Sunroad Lane

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By Norma Damashek

To tell you the truth, these mindful walks can give me a headache…notice and let it go… notice… let go…

When I started these walks it looked like letting it go would be the hard part.  Turns out the noticing part is worse — because what I’ve been noticing is really screwy.  In fact, it stinks.

I notice that while Republican voters no longer dominate San Diego elections, the city’s entrenched wheeler-dealers (still predominantly Republican) persist in manipulating, controlling, and subverting city government, the news media, and public opinion.   [Read more…]

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