The Charter End Game

Svorinich, however, kept playing Horatius at his conspiratorial bridge. No one — particularly those Washington doofuses — had actually proved to his satisfaction that News Corp.’s previous contributions had been clean. Nor that News Corp. wasn’t party to the vast global conspiracy to give Dick Riordan more control over his fire commission.

Or was the conspiracy really just to make Rudy Svorinich look like San Pedro’s own village idiot?

Councilman Joel Wachs’ resignation as council president pro tem followed the Wednesday News Corp. rhubarb by just 24 hours. Wachs said he could no longer hold a leadership position on a council whose majority was opposed to the charter approved by its own charter commission. Apparently, Svorinich’s bid to concoct a global pro-charter conspiracy was the last straw for Wachs.

Hostile colleagues called the resignation a stunt. And there was indeed the possibility that his fellow council members might not have re-elected Wachs to the pro tem position next month as a punishment for his charter support. But I think Wachs made a smart move. The council members who opposed this charter belong in the dumpster of history. Like the British-sanctioned colonial legislators of 1776, they were too sunk in their own power-grabbing agendas to perceive the desperate need for change. In distancing himself from their detestable consensus, Wachs showed himself a far better politician than they.

Living Wage: The County Continuation

That long-overdue Los Angeles County living-wage proposal is still stuck in simulated melodrama. When it was re-agenda’d last week, for instance, there was an amendment on the table which proposed that the wage be extended to all county contract wage earners, both full- and part-time.

Good news, right? This was just what living-wage proponents have sought all along, knowing as they do that an ordinance covering only full-time workers could result in the replacement of full-timers by underpaid 30-hour-a-week unfortunates. But this is something the board’s liberal majority — more particularly, Supervisors Yvonne Burke and Gloria Molina — has been slow to grasp. Could the scales finally have fallen from their eyes?

Actually, no. The amendment was by none other than conservative Mike Antonovich — not exactly the living wage’s best friend on the board. The measure’s proponents suspected another "love it to death" tactic, since, thus amended, the entire measure might not get the required three votes. But all that transpired, after a two-hour backstage shuffle, was yet another 14-day postponement of the long-overdue law’s consideration.

Frida and Whatsisname

Twelve years ago last March, the late, lamented L.A. Readerpublished a story I wrote slamming the L.A. art-museum establishment, such as it was, for slighting Latin American art in general and Mexican painting in particular. The problem at that time was that if you wanted to see a really good collection of Diego Rivera’s work in this country, you had to book a flight to Detroit. Whose municipal art collection is rich in Rivera’s work.

Now, however, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is mounting what could be one of the great Rivera shows of all time; so it seems appropriate to thank those responsible for finally bringing all those fantastic pictures to town. I can’t wait to stand in line three hours to see them.

But since the ’80s, Rivera’s own star seems to have shifted in the canonical firmament, so that the great muralist’s significance for many has less to do with his painterly virtuosity than with another association. I recently overheard two young Los Angeles women downtown commenting on a poster for the show. "Diego Rivera," one asked: "Wasn’t he Frida Kahlo’s husband?"</P