By Steven T. Jones
After watching Mayor Gavin Newsom’s virtual State of the City speeches (delivered on You Tube rather than the traditional venue of City Hall) – and reading the criticism of them today in both the Chronicle and the Examiner, even from Newsom’s two BFF columnists – I’m torn between two metaphors.
In the first few minutes, Newsom seemed like a salesman in a late night infomercial, telling me how I could get a complete set of Ginsu knives for just $19.99. “But wait, there’s more,” Newsom seems to say, if I order now then he’ll throw in a comprehensive climate change plan, absolutely free, the first city in the country to make an offer like this. Operators are standing by.
But then it just went on and on and on (there are almost eight hours of this stuff being rolled out this week) until Newsom seemed to morph into Fidel Castro or some other Soviet Bloc dictator, just droning on endlessly about the glories of the State (or in this case, The City) with the self-assuredness and lack of self-censorship that flow from feeling omnipotent and beloved by subservient subjects.
And to add to the surreal nature of this strange exercise in over-inflated egoism, Newsom flacks Nathan Ballard and Eric Jaye (apparently the brainchildren – so to speak – behind this fiasco) are trying to cast this cyber-lecture as facilitating a dialogue with the community (even though they turned off the comments section on the You Tube posting).
We’ve long argued that Newsom is overdue for some real dialogue, particularly with progressives and the city’s legislative branch, which was why the city charter called for an annual State of the City address in the first place. So if Newsom now prefers the online world to the real one, please use our comments section to place your orders or offer dear leader some healthy feedback.