"Eric Garcetti's Final Free Lunch: Crow with Karma" by Daniel Guss
@TheGussReport - There are various types of political comeuppance in Los Angeles.
Former LA City Councilmember Mitch Englander went to federal prison and his peers Jose Huizar and Mark Ridley-Thomas face a boatload of prison as they squander their L.A. Times endorsements and life savings on defense counsel.
Former Council President Herb Wesson, a nattering nabob of nepotism, would likely have won the Mayor's job in the upcoming primary had he chosen to run. Instead, he bizarrely ran for an open County Supervisor seat and got his rump roasted by Holly Mitchell.
Other delusionals, like Councilmembers Joe Buscaino, Kevin Leon (aka Kevin de León) and City Attorney Mike Feuer, will soon discover how unpopular they are in the primary to succeed Mayor Eric Garcetti.
But it is Garcetti, a world-class conniver, who will soon feast on his final free lunch of crow with karma as it is slow-cooked and slow-walked from the kitchen to his smirking pie hole.
In days or weeks, on the grand Washington, D.C., political stage, Garcetti may sheepishly withdraw his nomination to be the next U.S. Ambassador to India, lest President Joe Biden will do it for him.
Look for it to be done on a Friday around 6 pm in true cowardly fashion.
It will be savory and scrumptious for everyone except Garcetti, as L.A. has waited and waded for such a day.
Garcetti's career of lies, his dubious personal story and covid hypocrisy hang in the air like Wile E. Coyote after running off the cliff but before plummeting to the ground.
Splat! on his Wikipedia page, where his unsuitability to be U.S. Ambassador will be his lasting legacy.
At least until his name surfaces in future court filings, perhaps by the missus, wink-wink.
Garcetti's lack of self-awareness was epitomized when he and his gaunt, at-high-risk octogenarian dad, former District Attorney Gil Garcetti, were photographed maskless at the Super Bowl in February, defying his own mask mandates just two weeks after he did the same exact thing at the NFC championship game with maskless elitists Magic Johnson and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, neither of whom was dumb enough to claim, as Garcetti did, "I held my breath" while posing for the photos.
(Eric Garcetti and Gil Garcetti, Maskless @ Super Bowl. Credit: Trevor Keveloh)
(London Breed, Magic Johnson and Eric Garcetti, allegedly holding his breath while maskless at the NFC Championship game. Credit unknown)
Garcetti's excuse was such a rank obscenity, such a middle finger to L.A., that even CNN said his excuse was "ridiculous."
But hey, remember when the drooling L.A. Times floated the idea of Garcetti running for President???
Born in 1971, Garcetti must have spent the late 70s figuring that if he crafted a phony altar boy persona and honed his craft of lying, whether for any reason or no reason, the rules would never apply to him.
But Garcetti must have been absent from Harvard-Westlake the day the kids learned George Washington's advice, "It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."
As chief executive of the City of Los Angeles, Garcetti accomplished what few imagined: he has been even worse as Mayor than his predecessor, Antonio Villaraigosa. Nothing in Los Angeles is better since the Los Angeles Times twice endorsed Garcetti for his job, and L.A. has been vastly worse since he first assumed office on L.A. City Council in July 2001, where he was President from 2006 to 2012.
While Garcetti has failed Los Angeles for 20 years running, if he had been nominated for the Ambassadorship simply as a schnook who was a really bad mayor, he would have already packed his yoga pants and set sail for Bombay.
Except Garcetti developed a habit of lying even when his dishonesty was abundantly obvious. He didn't care because he always had his bases covered.
Until he didn't.
A year ago, his then-chief of staff, Ana Guerrero, was suspended from her nearly $250,000 job for ongoing obnoxious behavior, including mocking labor icon Dolores Huerta. Garcetti covered his bases by stripping her of her title and suspending her but not firing her.
Don't believe Garcetti's claim that he "believes in second chances." He kept Guerrero around, it is logical to assume, because she knew too much.
Guerrero was front and center in the infamous Rick Jacobs sexual harassment incidents, plural, which may soon take down her boss. But it was Naomi Seligman, Garcetti's former spokesperson, who bravely spoke up and challenged Garcetti, who, under penalty of perjury, did his best Sergeant Schultz, claiming, "I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I KNOW NOTH-ING!"
Seligman deserves a park named in her honor, except L.A. politicians greedily tend to name public property after their parents or themselves, as Tony Cardenas, Herb Wesson et al. did.
Maybe that’ll happen when Garcetti's acolytes term out, get voted out or are indicted.
Until then, it's lunchtime for Garcetti. Eat well, mate. As Robert DeNiro said to Sylvester Stallone, "you blew it!"
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary and was a runner-up in 2021 in the Activist Journalism category. He has contributed to Mayor Sam, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and The Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment Sections and Sunday Magazine among other publishers.)