Thursday, September 6, 2012

CM PRESS # 972

WEITZBERG HAS A NASTY SOUNDING LETTER IN THE DAILY PILOT

Writes that he helped shout down a speaker at a City Council meeting and says that he'd do it again.

Be sure to click on the headline above to read Weitzberg's whole letter (it's not very long), to see if you think the tone is appropriate for a City Council candidate.
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LOWLIGHTS FROM THE FEET TO THE FIRE FORUM

Here are a few words to describe last night's Feet to the Fire forum:  irritating and not very informative.

And, here are our speed impressions--from the back of the room:

Flame design clothes, tinny sounding microphones, some newspaper people who don't know how to ask a succinct question and then get out of the way, a Bette Page hairdo...on a man, an audience that was noisy, no coffee or refreshments for the audience.

Steve Mensinger and Sandy Genis.
Genis appears to either be laughing
or braying. 

Oh, and then there was Sandy Genis whose voice often seemed to suddenly and precipitously jump up several octaves on some otherwise unimportant word in the middle of her sentences as though she was walking down a sidewalk and  caught a sudden and unexpected cold updraft through a sewer grate.

For us, the only surprise of the night was hearing Harold Weitzberg  talking about how his wife needs medical marijuana  for pain and how she (and he?) had been involved with a medical marijuana store (or collective)  that had been shut down by the feds. (Did we get that right? If not, let us know.)

John Stephens (he's a business lawyer with offices in Newport Beach), gave rambling, non-responsive answers to most questions, and when finally pressed hard by Mickadeit to say whether he would outsource the jail and payroll services, tried to dance away and remain on both sides of the issue by saying that he's "not sure," and would have to study the issue.  Ho hum. A simple question but a fuzzy answer.

The 3Ms did a pretty good job of giving solid answers with little equivocation, but we think they could have punched them out more forcefully.

Steve Mensinger was the best at this and pointed out how the City was in the red when he was appointed to the Council but now, with the changes made by the good Council Members, it is in the black.

Gary Monahan was asked why voters should elect him since he had been part of some of the old bad Councils that helped get us in the financial crisis, and he deftly replied that part of the problem was that after 911, there was strong public sentiment to give our public safety personnel just about anything they wanted.

Gary also said that he now wants to be part of the solution.

Colin McCarthy handled himself well, but because he's not an incumbent member of the 3Ms--and thus isn't the focus of attacks by the lefties--he had a smaller role on stage. He'll need to raise his profile for a better shot at being elected.

We understand that Venezia and the others behind this forum wanted to present something that wasn't boring and which might be a night in which you could feel crackling excitement in the room, but we don't think this event succeeded in that.  Maybe some minor format changes or tighter stage management might help.

Certainly, the newspaper types could use a little coaching on how to ask questions in this live format that doesn't allow them the luxury of editing and removing surplusage, as would be the case if they were interviewing politicians for a printed column.

And, if, as it was stated (by Venezia, we think)  in the OC Register before the event,  this was an attempt to let the voters see what the candidates were really about, we think it didn't quite get us there.
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Those are our opinions and our impressions.  Thanks for reading them.




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