By Kyle Smith
Thursday, April 01, 2021
Live by looks, die by looks. Gavin Newsom is
governor of the largest state in the Union not because he can point to any
success whatsoever in more than two decades as a professional politician but
because he looks the part. His hair is perfectly gelled, a superb mix of salt
and pepper. His wife, Jennifer Siebel, is so pretty she not only acted in
Hollywood for a time but once dated George Clooney. In California, you may have
noticed, looks can get you far. A reporter for SFGate went on
the campaign trail with Newsom in 2003, when he was running for mayor of San
Francisco, and reported this: “At a campaign stop in Chinatown, merchants and
shoppers clamored to have their photo taken with him. Several said they favor
Newsom because they want a ‘good-looking mayor.’”
You know what doesn’t look so good to Californians?
Telling people to avoid restaurants, then heading out for dinner at The French
Laundry — home of the $850 meal, possessor of the highest rating in the
Michelin guide — to party with a dozen members of the state aristocracy
(lobbyists and CEOs). The wine bill alone for Newsom’s notorious November 6
Napa Valley blowout reportedly came to $12,000. The Gavinocracy violated at
least three California coronavirus prohibitions: They didn’t stay six feet
apart, they came from more than three households, and they didn’t wear masks
while chatting. Newsom defenders initially protested that the gathering was
“outdoors,” but this turned out to mean only that there was a sliding glass
wall near their party. And the dinner was so boisterous that the wall had to be
closed because other diners complained about the noise.
The effort to recall Newsom was already under way when
the Napa No-No happened. But as California stewed under the tightest lockdown
restrictions in the country, the episode cemented views that Newsom isn’t
exactly living up to his rhetoric about being the people’s governor. This
wasn’t just one for the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame, like the time Chris Christie
went to a New Jersey state beach over the Fourth of July weekend during a
government shutdown. Going to a public beach is at least something regular people
can afford. Not even the adultery of a televangelist can compare to Newsom’s
blunder; no televangelist ever presided over anything comparable to California.
Newsom went to America’s ritziest eatery to dine with fat cats while telling
everyone else to stay home and break out the Skippy and Spam. Newsom is the
LeBron James or Tom Brady of hypocrisy: the Greatest of All Time. We may need
to rename the concept after Newsom, the way Cy Young became a pitching award.
During the pandemic, Los Angeles public-school students locked out of their
schools for a year have learned to settle for a union-negotiated three hours
and 45 minutes of staring at their computer screens each day; private-school
students such as Gavin Newsom’s four children returned to school back in
October. Newsom opposes water bottles on principle but drinks bottled water
himself. Last summer he shut down most of the state’s wineries while keeping
his open.
After Newsom’s Laundry excursion, enthusiasts for a
recall went from angry to livid, and easily gathered more than 2 million
signatures against the 1.5 million they need to verify to trigger an election
this fall. California Democrats are denouncing this grassroots effort as the
product of crazy right-wing conspiracy theorists but are at a loss how to
defend their slicked-back Marie Antoinette. A homeless encampment today sits in
front of Exchange L.A., the sleek nightclub where Newsom held his victory party
less than two and a half years ago and that has now been shuttered for a year
as if torn from The Big Book of Ironic Political Symbols. Newsom’s
draconian shutdowns caused state unemployment to reach as high as 16 percent.
As of mid March, 87 percent of the population was classified as living in a
“purple zone” and subject to tight economic restrictions. The Los Angeles
school system, the second-largest in the country, is the only one of the top
ten whose students have not seen the inside of a school for an entire year.
Even New York City’s movie theaters reopened before California’s did. Disneyland
in California isn’t slated to reopen until late April (though theme parks can
return to doing business on April 1), and even then outdoor activity will be
heavily restricted — 15 percent capacity at theme parks, no more than 100
people at an outdoor event. Disney World in Florida, meanwhile, has been up and
functioning since July.
With all of these efforts, Newsom bought himself a COVID
death toll just a bit better than the one in elderly Florida, “God’s waiting
room,” but with the crucial difference that Florida didn’t crush its
businesses. California still has 8.4 percent unemployment as against Florida’s
5.1 percent. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, lifted all business restrictions
six months ago and hasn’t looked back. California looks like it won’t be back
to normal until at least summertime. Despite typical showy Newsomian gestures
like opening Dodger Stadium as a vaccine site, as of mid March more than a
quarter of the vaccine doses distributed to the state were sitting on shelves.
As of March 12, California ranked 42nd in the country in vaccine distribution.
Maybe there is more to governance than jabbing Donald Trump, whom Newsom
targeted in his 2018 victory speech: “It’s time to roll the credits on the
politics of chaos and the politics of cruelty. . . . Now is the time for
decency, for facts, for trust, and now is the time for truth.” Californians
can’t be faulted for wondering when it will be the time for effective
management.
Newsom’s brand is to please his left wing with sweeping
affirmations that he shares their values. He unilaterally suspended the death
penalty in 2019. This was very nearly a meaningless feel-good publicity stunt;
only 13 persons have been executed in the Golden State since 1976, and none
since 2006. Newsom, who made his fortune in a wine business bankrolled by his
billionaire friend Gordon Getty, gives lots of speeches railing against
inequality and inequity and homelessness but utterly failed in two terms as San
Francisco mayor to reverse any alarming trend there. Yet he floated upwards,
elected lieutenant governor under Jerry Brown in 2010, and then moved on to the
governorship against token opposition in 2018.
Though San Francisco had an early outbreak last spring,
California was largely untouched by the virus until the fall. Newsom pulled the
“emergency brake,” as he called it, on November 17, and plunged California into
the harshest lockdown restrictions in the country, then shut down all indoor
and outdoor dining statewide on December 5 for two months. Even New York City,
the hottest hot zone on earth, never took such a severe step. California saw
one of the nation’s worst COVID spikes anyway, and in January suffered 15,000
deaths, by far its worst month. Newsom’s decision in March to give his
state-of-the-state address in a chillingly deserted Dodger Stadium in honor of
California’s COVID dead — roughly one for each seat in the stadium — was a
head-scratcher. Newsom railed against the recall effort in a space that is much
like his leadership: a void.
California’s triple frustration with the business
shutdowns, the school closures, and the slow vaccine rollout would be bad
enough if voters thought Newsom at least cared about such things, but the
French Laundry incident is vivid evidence to the contrary. “Tyrant. Ass. Idiot.
Jerk,” began a story by a Sacramento Bee reporter who set out
to report on what people are saying about Newsom. A San Diego weatherman dolled
up as “King Newsom” mocked the governor in the greatest moment for San Diego
television since Ron Burgundy. “We’re the little people, they’re the big
people,” wrathful West Sacramento voter Jeanie Kayl told the Bee.
“The rules don’t apply to him.” Californians will have to balance that against
his undeniable achievements, a complete list of which follows: He’s still
good-looking.
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