The Editor-at-Large of the San Francisco Chronicle waded into the WTF, Gavin? fray in his latest blog post, comparing the current Mayor to former Mayor Willie Brown:
It's too painful (and unnecessary) to recount the gubernatorial race disaster, the mystery disappearance, the equally weird and petulant return, the caught-on-camera ducking the press while claiming he wasn't ducking the press, the odd calendar choices, the staff exodus, Gavin having to deny reports of his professional death coming from his own new press secretary and published in the Wall Street Journal.
But let's take Willie Brown's Chronicle column
last Sunday where he essentially called Gavin a wuss. Willie said to a
whining Gavin that he had gotten much more guff from journalists in his
day. And we did hammer the former Mayor far harder than we have the
current one. That's the way it goes, and should go in the natural,
adversarial relationship between the press and public officials.
What Willie was really saying, in his not entirely subtle way, was
that he's known some serious adversity in his life and, as much as he
screamed and claimed press racism whenever a critical story appeared,
he could always handle it because life had made him tough.
Forget about the $500+ million SF budget problem. Gavin has an adversity deficit.
Willie Brown knew how to shut down a reporter. "Yeah, I have a
wife AND a girlfriend. You don't?," he might say. "Yeah, I sired children with my mistress. Say something."
And that would be that. But, as Bronstein notes, Gavin's had it too easy to know how to tell it like it is in the face of hard times. Has the man had any hard times? Besides that whole rehab stint?
Perhaps Mayor Newsom's too slick and of the silver spoon variety to know how to handle things when they sour.
Read Bronstein at Large, and see what you think.
