Sparsely, Sage and Timely
By David V. MitchellThe mumsy of the recall
Sunday’s Independent Journal published a gushing interview with Melanie Morgan of Greenbrae, who hosts a conservative talk-show on KSFO. "Some have...dubbed her the ‘mother of the recall,’" The Independent Journal reported glowingly and then quoted the hometown girl as agreeing, "It’s a title that’s certainly been given me."
The radio announcer acknowledged the sobriquet "feels kind of weird when I see it and hear it," but her on-air campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis "will be the thing I’m most proud of having accomplished by being an activist and conservative in California."
The IJ noted that more than two thirds of the voters in her home county voted against the recall but leaves unchallenged her snide comments about the newspaper’s typical readers. The vote here "just shows me that Marin County is so disconnected from the rest of California," she said in her interview.
"Values here are so different from those of ordinary people. Maybe it’s the affluence. Maybe it’s the self-absorption."
Or maybe it’s that Marin County residents are more politically aware than most Americans. An article titled Baghdad Urban Legends in the October/November American Journalism Review notes a series of public opinion polls this year found half the US citizens questioned mistakenly believe one or more of the 9/11 hijackers was an Iraqi; more than half believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11; more than a third believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; more than a fifth believe Iraq used them in the war; and six percent even believe we used such weapons against Iraq.
Ironically, the same polls found that 84 percent of those queried believe they are closely following the news. No wonder entertainers like Morgan and Schwarenegger get a free ride when they spout nonsense. The public doesn’t have enough political background to say, "Hold on a minute!"
AJR quotes Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former White House speechwriter, as saying the United States is "‘simply the most apolitical country in the world.’ Ask people what’s on their mind, says Hess, and they’ll answer family, health, job, religion. Anything but politics or foreign affairs."
Contrary to what mumsy Morgan told The Independent Journal, Marinites are probably less self-absorbed and know more about politics and foreign affairs than do most Americans. Like most of the world, voters in Marin County recognized that recalling a bland governor and replacing him with an action-movie hero was politically absurd.
If last week’s vote showed anything, it demonstrated California’s unhealthy absorption with the entertainment industry where Morgan, like Schwarenegger, earns her living. In recent years, this state has elected two movie actors to the governor’s mansion, with one going on to become president, and has elected one song-and-dance man, George Murphy, to the US Senate.
Sacramento’s embrace of Hollywood is, of course, not limited to conservative Republicans. The liberal Democratic state senator John Burton, who represents West Marin, plays footsy with the entertainment industry as eagerly as the National Rifle Association does.
In the late 1990s, Burton successfully sponsored legislation, Senate Bill 262, that theoretically took away a reporter’s right to photograph celebrities and politicians (like himself) when they were with their families were in public view but didn’t realize it.
Although SB 262 is probably unconstitutional, Burton in 1999 followed it up with SB 290, which he drafted to protect the wealth of a celebrity’s heirs for generations after he dies. The bill, which was somewhat modified by then-Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni before passage, was written to prevent newspapers and television, as well as artistic and literary works, from using or reproducing the names, voices, signatures, photos, or artistic renderings of anyone who had died since World War I.
In theory, Burton’s bill would have made all historical novels and screenplays dealing with people who lived in the last 80 years vulnerable to lawsuits – unless the heirs were paid off.
This alliance between actors and politicians does not primarily result from the actors donating huge sums to political campaigns. Rather, their main contribution is merely to show up at political events to draw a crowd and give a candidate legitimacy by showing that someone with a recognizable name supports him.
In the case of Schwarenegger and KSFO announcer Morgan, they used their celebrity status not merely to help candidates schooled in civic affairs, the entertainers themselves entered campaigns.
Marin voters suffer "a huge disconnect" from the rest of California, Morgan told The Independent Journal, which might have asked her how that could be true when Marin is a Democratic county in a Democratic state. Indeed, the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, much of which is hardly affluent, voted against the recall.
Morgan’s man, by the way, was the rightwing state senator Tom McClintock, whom groping Arnold squeezed into oblivion. If the KSFO announcer is really the "mother of the recall," it would appear she just gave birth to a political Oedipus.