Who\’s the big winner in Tuesday\’s Los Angeles mayoral election? My bet is real estate developer Steve Soboroff. James Kenneth Hahn may be an old-line Democrat, but he benefited mightily from the silence maintained by the wealthy Republican businessman, who had come in third in the April primary.
Those of us with a sense of Los Angeles history approach the June 5 election with trepidation. No one wants a repeat of the first Sam Yorty/Tom Bradley race in 1969, with its bitter overlay of race-baiting. That\’s one reason why throughout most of the campaign the candidates have wisely lowered their rhetoric, stressing their similarities rather than differences. As Los Angelenos consider picking the first Latino mayor in the modern era, Tuesday\’s election, pitting former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa against City Attorney James Hahn, already has, if anything, too much historic significance.
In my house last Sunday evening Tony Soprano easily defeated Anne Frank as \”must-see TV.\” Yes, even in the home of committed Jews, the rancid affairs of a New Jersey Mafia family beat out the young girl of the Holocaust. The question is, why?
My fireplace mantle is stuffed &\’9;with get-well cards. They come from people I know and many I\’ve never met. One of them might have come from you. In the two months since I started writing about my lung cancer, the cards have been flowing in, plus an equal number or more of e-mails. They touch me deeply.
I am determined to learn nothing from my cancer. Last month, I had lung surgery known as a thoracotomy. A cancerous tumor in my lower left lobe is gone. I\’ll have chemotherapy, and pretty soon I\’ll be bald. That\’s all I care to know about this completely hideous, unprovoked and unpredictable disease until the CT scan says that the cancer on my chest wall is under control.
Just when I thought the whole Jewishcommunity had swung to the right, I visited with lyricists Alan andMarilyn Bergman; it was music to my ears. This songwriting pair movesseamlessly from show business to activism, having won three Oscars,two Grammys and three Emmys for songs such as \”The Way We Were,\”\”Windmills of Your Mind\” and the score for \”Queen of the StardustBallroom\” while playing a strong behind-the-scenes role in nationalDemocratic Party politics. They take nothing for granted — not ahumane political climate, nor even each other. After 39 years ofmarriage, Alan, tall and dapper, instinctively rises to meet hiselegant partner\’s entrance into the room; he regards her kiss as agift, a pleasant surprise.
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