Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Sep. 30, 2018

• Light Rain
• Little Dog
• Caretaker Arrested
• Retroactive Payments
• Anita Swims
• November Election
• Pets
• Sports Phone
• Sanitation Settlement
• Museum Emporium
• More Beer
• Kavanaugh Memories
• Yesterday's Catch
• Special Flowers
• Ladyvote
• Jian's Essay
• Leading Cause
• Buruma Resignation
• Open Sleazification
• Los Muertos
• Graham Cracks
• Kavanaugh Liability
• Organized Crime
• Moonbeam Satellite

JUST OVER A TENTH OF an inch of rain in Boonville on Saturday, the first of the season, enough to wet everything down and dampen the fire danger for a while at least. Isolated showers are expected on Sunday and Monday with below normal afternoon temps reaching only into the 70s. Showers likely on Tuesday. Clearing and warming up a bit into the 80s toward the end of the week. Apparently the rain is from a remnant of a Pacific Coast hurricane, which — if a real one gets this far north in these days of extreme weather — might make for some excitement that could rival the big fires…

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “It rained here Saturday so I asked these animal abusers for some rain gear. ‘We can throw a tarp over your igloo, LD, but a little rain won't hurt you. Man up!’"

A FORT BRAGG READER WRITES:

“I noticed on social media that Michelle Bailey was arrested and booked on September 20, 2018 for ‘elder abuse resulting in great bodily injury or death.’

Apparently Ms. Bailey, who is listed on her booking sheet as ‘caretaker,’ was arrested because her elderly mother was found dead and had been dead for about month. I have not been able to find any news coverage. NOTHING in the Advocate News. Is the death of an elderly person not newsworthy? We don't hear much discussion about the elderly in Fort Bragg. Remember not too long ago when the body of an elderly woman was found and she had been dead for months?”

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ED NOTE: According this Sheriff’s call log entry for 9/20/18  Ms. Bailey was arrested after a neighbor asked for a welfare check at 381 E. Cypress in Fort Bragg.

The call resulted in “caretaker” Ms. Bailey being arrested for 386(B)(1) (elder abuse resulting in death) and 7050.5 HS (Willfully removing human remains). The arresting officer was Fort Bragg police officer Rafanan. So far neither the Sheriff’s office nor the Fort Bragg police have issued a press release describing the circumstances of the arrest. 381 Cypress St. is across the street from Coast Hospital near the Redwood Health Club.

COUNTY CEO CARMEL ANGELO added a bit of new info to the Kemper contract overrun question at Wednesday’s Measure B Oversight Committee meeting. After pointing out that the Board of Supervisors “frowns on” retroactive contracts, she said that Kemper’s bill actually was for the original $40k, plus $24.5k for some extra work he did (which Kemper generously “waived”). Then CEO Angelo just bumped it up on her own to $28k to cover the additional cost of having Kemper appear before the Supes in the next few weeks to discuss the report. At Wednesday’s Measure B Committee meeting Sheriff Allman asked if the $68k total would cover all of Kemper’s cost through the end of December and Angelo said yes, and that if additional work arose, Kemper would ask for approval before doing it. The Measure B committee somewhat reluctantly agreed to approve the payment with the exception of Fort Bragg electrical contractor Mark Mertle who said the $28k was a “substantial amount of money,” and that normally when contractors overrun it’s on the contractor if they didn’t get authorization first.

THIS IS ALL RATHER MINOR, albeit irregular, and a fait accompli at this point, of course, except for the discussion itself which indicates that the process was badly flawed and it puts the Committee and the Supes on record for at least intending to do it right the next time. Experience shows, however, that they won’t. So now that they all expect the process to be better in the future, we’ll keep track and see if it is.

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NO SOONER had we noticed CEO Angelo’s acknowledgement that the Supes “frown on” retroactive contracts than we saw Item 5b) on next Tuesday’s Supes agenda: “Discussion and Possible Approval of Retroactive Agreement with California Forensic Medical Group (CFMG) in the Amount of $76,692.48 for the Term Ending June 30, 2018, to Pay Outstanding Invoices for Catastrophic Charges for Inmate Medical Care Occurring in 2016 and 2017 (Sponsor: Sheriff-Coroner). Recommended Action: Approve Agreement with CFMG in the amount of $76,692.48 for the term ending June 30, 2018, to pay outstanding invoices for catastrophic charges for inmate medical care occurring in 2016 and 2017; and authorize Chair to sign same.”

THIS PARTICULAR RETROACTIVE CONTRACT goes all the way back to 2016! And here we are in September of 2018 and we’re finally getting around to even considering it? And this, even after the confession by CEO Angelo that the Board “frowns on” retroactive contracts? It’s also not clear what the “catastrophic charges” are. Nor is there any explanation how this $77k problem arose and why it has to be retroactive.

BUT IT IS CLEAR that CEO Angelo and the rest of County staff continue to flout the Board’s dislike for retroactive contracts by not only continuing to bring them forward, but doing it without explanation or a list of options.

IN A NORMAL WORLD the Board would reject this item outright and require staff to resubmit the item at a later meeting with a full explanation of how this happened and what’s being done to prevent it — if they’re going to approve it at all.

BUT THE ODDS of that happening are about the same as the CEO suddenly giving routine monthly departmental reports to the Board of Supervisors.

ANITA SWIMS across Big River in Mendocino

(Photo by Susie de Castro)

A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THE NOVEMBER ELECTION BUT SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Supervisors

Third District: Haschak v. Pinches

Fifth District: Williams v. No one

Pinches because he's frugal, creative, truly independent.

Williams, although so far it's unclear why he wants to be a supervisor beyond the usual lib platitudes

Fort Bragg City Council: Lindy Peters, Ruben Alcala, Tess Albin-Smith, Bobby Burns, Jessica Morsell-Haye, Mary Rose Kaczorowkski, (Three seats up) Incumbents Cimolino and Turner are not running.

We think Peters deserves another term, Alcala and Albin-Smith seem like likely likelies.

Point Arena City Council: Incumbent Barbara Burkey is the only candidate running for two seats.

Ukiah City Council: Jim Brown and Maureen Mulheren (incumbents) plus Chon Travis, Ed Haynes, Matt Froneberger and Juan Orozco running for three seats. Incumbent Kevin Doble is not running.

Haynes for sure, probably Orozco as we hold off on the others because we don't know them, but we do know that Haynes will be an asset for good government on a weak and fiscally irresponsible council second in general dereliction only to the County Board of Supervisors in pathetic ineffectiveness.

Willits City Council: Incumbent Larry Stranske, Greta Kanne and Jeremy Hershman are running for two seats. Incumbent Ron Orenstein is not running.

We're still in research mode re Willits but its city government seems to cook along competently enough.

Coast Hospital Board: Incumbent Kevin Miller, John Redding, Jade Tippett, Amy Beth McColley, and Jessica Grinberg are running for 3 long term seats (Incumbents Kitty Bruning, and Peter Glusker are not running). Also, Karen Arnold and Rex Gressett are running for incumbent Tom Birdsell’s short term seat (appointed incumbent).

People we trust recommend Arnold, Redding and Grinberg. We're of course partial to our ace Coast Correspondent, R. Gressett, but want him to focus on his journalo-responsibilities.

Coast Parks & Rec: Bob Bushansky (incumbent) is the only candidate running for three seats. (Incumbents Cesar Yanez and William Hayes are not running)

Droning conservative liberalism of the Bushansky type — creeping Bushanskyism — should always be resisted but there he is.

County School Board: Incumbents Don Cruser and Mary Misseldine, plus Tarney Sheldon are running for three seats. Incumbent Camille Schaeder is not running.

Fait accompli. We hope the County School Board will not join the gutless wonders already working surreptitiously to undermine newly elected superintendent, Michelle Hutchins.

Mendo College Board 3 seats up. Incumbents Ed Haynes and Janet Chaniot are not running. No incumbents are running. Ed Nickerman, Camille Schraeder, Donald Burgess, Patrick Webb, Giny Chandler, Xochilt Martinez, John Pegan, Larry Lang and Jerry Eaton are running for three seats

We thought Nickerman was dead, a measure of the college's invisibility, and we have no idea of the issues involved here, if any. Also: Robert Pinoli Jr., incumbent is running against William Daniel for one short-term seat. (Nickerman for sure, at least while he remains upright.)

Local Measures

Fort Bragg Measure H - Shall the measure to enact a three-eights (3/8th) of a cent general purpose transactions and use tax to provide the City with an estimated $623,000 per year for a limited period of fifteen years be adopted? YES

Willits Measure I - To fund general municipal expenses such as police, fire, roads and recreation, shall the City of Willits tax cannabis (marijuana) businesses at annual rates not to exceed $10 per canopy square foot for cultivation (adjustable for inflation), 6% of gross receipts for retail cannabis businesses, and 4% for all other cannabis businesses; which is expected to generate an estimated $250,000 to $400,000 annually and will be levied until repealed by the voters or the City Council? YES. (About time the stoners coughed up.)

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November 6, 2018, Statewide Ballot Measures

Proposition 1 — Authorizes Bonds to Fund Specified Housing Assistance Programs. Legislative Statute. YES

Proposition 2 — Authorizes Bonds to Fund Existing Housing Program for Individuals with Mental Illness. Legislative Statute. YES

Proposition 3 — Authorizes Bonds to Fund Projects for Water Supply and Quality, Watershed, Fish, Wildlife, Water Conveyance, and Groundwater Sustainability and Storage. Initiative Statute. YES

Proposition 4 — Authorizes Bonds Funding Construction at Hospitals Providing Children’s Health Care. Initiative Statute.YES

Proposition 5 — Changes Requirements for Certain Property Owners to Transfer their Property Tax Base to Replacement Property. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. NO

Proposition 6 — Eliminates Certain Road Repair and Transportation Funding. Requires Certain Fuel Taxes and Vehicle Fees be Approved by The Electorate. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. NO

Proposition 7 — Conforms California Daylight Saving Time to Federal Law. Allows Legislature to Change Daylight Saving Time Period. Legislative Statute. YES

Proposition 8 — Regulates Amounts Outpatient Kidney Dialysis Clinics Charge for Dialysis Treatment. Initiative Statute. YES

Proposition 9 (On July 18, 2018, Proposition 9 was removed from the ballot by order of the California Supreme Court.)

Proposition 10 — Expands Local Governments’ Authority to Enact Rent Control on Residential Property. Initiative Statute. YES

Proposition 11 — Requires Private-Sector Emergency Ambulance Employees to Remain On-Call During Work Breaks. Eliminates Certain Employer Liability. Initiative Statute. YES

Proposition 12 — Establishes New Standards for Confinement of Specified Farm Animals; Bans Sale of Noncomplying Products. Initiative Statute. YES

PETS OF THE WEEK

Meet Fig--in the running for the cutest little kitten at the Ukiah Shelter. Fig is a 3 month old, spayed female, black and white kitten. She is curious and loves to explore her surroundings. She also likes to cuddle and is purrrrfectly content hanging out on a lap. We think Fig will be a great little friend to a family with children, as she is a social, loving, outgoing kitten.

Jazzy, our red-haired beauty, is an all around great dog. She's easy to leash up and walk and has lovely kennel manners--sitting quietly while waiting to go out. During her photo shoot she was well behaved and lots of fun--she's playful, happy and energetic. Jazzy knows sit--and does so instantly--and wait. Jazzy has herding dog in her DNA, and she has the herding dog "eye" and focus. Jazzy was enamoured of the photographer and gave him lots of kisses--she's a friendly dog. We think Jazzy could be a great dog for folks who enjoy doing training work with their dogs. Jazzy's webpage has lots more about her: http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/jazzy

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah, and adoption hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday from 10 am to 6:30 pm. To see photos and bios of the shelter's adoptable animals, please visit us online at: www.mendoanimalshelter.com or visit the shelter. Join us the second Saturday of every month for our "Empty the Shelter" pack walk and help us get every dog out for socialization and exercise! For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

SPORTS PHONE, every Wednesday afternoon 3-4pm on KZYX. Inaugural program THIS Wednesday, 3pm. Jim Young adds: “We will be featuring the ‘Demise of Football’ in our first show around 3:05-15 and hopefully longer if Bruce Anderson calls in. It is based on his recent Valley People writing.”

CITY OF UKIAH AGREES TO PAY SANITATION DISTRICT $7.5 MILLION TO SETTLE LAWSUIT

A settlement agreement approved by the Ukiah City Council Friday has the City of Ukiah paying the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District $7.5 million to dismiss a lawsuit the agency filed in 2014.

ukiahdailyjournal.com/2018/09/28/city-of-ukiah-agrees-to-pay-sanitation-district-7-5-million-to-settle-lawsuit/

EMPORIUM & SPEAKEASY COCKTAIL PARTY OCTOBER 6 IN MENDOCINO

On Saturday, October 6, for the Kelley House is hosting an Emporium & Speakeasy Cocktail Party, from 5:30-9:30 p.m. at Crown Hall. The evening will feature lavish food, custom cocktails, live and silent auctions, and 1920s era jazz music from the Dorian May Quartet. Optional Speakeasy attire is encouraged.

Tickets are on sale in Mendocino at Out of This World and the Kelley House Museum; in Fort Bragg at Harvest Market; and at BrownPaperTickets.com. Admission is $30 and includes a bidding number. For more information, please call 707-937-5791 or visit kelleyhousemuseum.org/emporium.

Spread the word and share the event with your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/668069063568513

Something special you'd like to donate? Reply to: emporium@kelleyhousemuseum.org

Buy tickets online: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3605181

Kelley House Museum, 707-937-5791, kelleyhousemuseum.org

BRUCE McEWEN WRITES: The part that got me about Brett Kavanaugh was when he said he bought all the tickets for the ball game at Fenway Park. When I was working as editor at Guns Magazine in those days (36 years ago) I could afford to go to exactly three games a year at Jack Murphy Stadium (at San Diego State), which I could see from my office on the second floor of the Security Pacific building in Mission Valley.

I couldn’t get my mind around how somebody still in college could pay for a whole frat house full of guys to go to a game, and all these years later, still be boasting about the “camaraderie” he remembered so fondly, and repeating twice how he paid for everything.

It was probably the only time anyone ever showed him anything resembling camaraderie in his entire life, even though the other guys in the frat house must have had plenty of ready pocket money themselves.

Having all those guys clapping him on the back and telling him what a swell guy he was could have gone to his head enough to make him feel like he really was such a great guy he could hardly go wrong “jumping her bones” (as the popular phrase went in those days) when a 15-year-old girl showed up.

Another point that grated on my sense of resentment was his boasting about his fairness as a judge and how he even found once in favor of defense — once?

Then he said a Federal Public Defender thought him a very fair-minded judge. A lawyer of any kind would be highly unlikely to say anything else about a judge (publicly), but having recently learned how awful federal public defenders are …well, that’s not much of character witness, to my mind.

Now I hear both his parents are judges, and so there you have it: A lifetime spent enjoying the privileges of wealth and prestige, and the resulting tears of rage when accused of something he is used to deciding the outcome of; in other words, for the first time in his life — for at least two generations — now he knows how it feels to be the accused, rather than the judge.

It would be productive of a better judiciary, I think, “adversity being the touchstone of character,” as Balzac says, if all our judges could routinely go through this kind of thing at least once a year.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 29, 2018

RICHARD AULT, Leggett. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MARLA BARRETT, Eureka/Willits. DUI.

JENNA COGGINS, Fort Bragg. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

DORIAN COON, Ukiah. Unspecified violation.

JEREMIAH ECKEL JR., Fort Bragg. Battery, vandalism.

RANDY FRIAS, Eureka/Ukiah. Attempted murder, concealed dirk-dagger, controlled substance.

TYLER GUSTAFSON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JEREMIAH HEILIG, Willits. Under influence, trespassing.

DAKOTA JOHNSON, Willits. Controlled substance for sale and transportation. paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JAMES JOHNSON, Willits. Domestic battery.

JASON JOHNSON, Ukiah. Unspecified violation.

DEBORAH LAWRENCE, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

OTIS MANSFIELD, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, criminal threats, cruelty to animals, resisting.

WILLIAM MORA, Upper Lake/Ukiah. DUI.

JASON SUZENSKI, Ukiah. Under influence, controlled substance, probation revocation.

ROBERT TARBAH, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

PATRICK TCHOUMI, Worchester, Massachusetts/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Dr. Ford comes from the same place of prep school privilege. Her own semi reliable memory is an example of the malleability of recollection. Her timorous demeanor is emblematic of her cosseted life, her early years a series of gentle challenges guaranteed to buttress her ascension into a highly collaborative, verbal, safe position in academia. It’s believable that the lowest point in her life was being dry humped by a couple of stumbling drunk boys in high school. It’s believable that this gentle flowering young woman’s delicate petals were rumpled so rudely. People jumped to defend her honor. She took a polygraph and passed. But I also think people will spring to defend his honor against such an insult. Because Brett is a special flower too. So special… all those lawns he mowed in high school, all the football games, the long hours studying, the Perfect Lawyer rating, all the friends he rented the bus for in high school to travel to a football game, all the parties he threw, his love for the old man and his diaries, his endless clerking for GW Bush… It would be just tragic if he wasn’t entitled to get this job. So on his honor he will refuse, hoping the rest of his life people genuflect to him as “Your Honor.” I find tears to be manipulative, in adults of either sex, in situations like these. Make him take a polygraph.

REFLECTIONS FROM A HASHTAG

Jian Ghomeshi

Not so long ago, I spoke to hundreds of thousands of listeners across North America every day on a public radio show. These days, the closest I come to public performance is at a neighborhood karaoke bar in New York. Even that can have its perils. One night last year, I was waiting my turn to sing when a woman spotted my name on the list. “Jian!” she said to me. “Your name is Jian? Ha! Hey, you know who ruined that name for you?” “No. Who?” I said, bracing myself. For the first time, she looked straight at me—and stopped smiling.

For her, it was like one of those excruciating moments when you accidentally include the butt of a joke in a reply-all e-mail. For me, it was just another day in the life of the notorious Jian. She apologized and said all the right things. And I said all the right things back. (“How could you have known?”) Mostly I felt bad because she felt bad. But then we rallied and sang a duet together. And then we became friends and are regularly in touch. Chalk up one more human being who no longer thinks I’m a creep.

Here’s the thing about being an erstwhile “celebrity” who is now an outcast: You’re not just feeling sorry for yourself. You’re also feeling sorry for everyone around you—sometimes even the strangers. You can see the anxiety in their faces as they stammer out banalities, studiously avoiding the subject of career (or lack thereof), making vague gestures of encouragement that trail off into silence.

In October 2014, I was fired from my job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after allegations circulated online that I’d been abusive with an ex-girlfriend during sex. In the aftermath of my firing, and amid a media storm, several more people accused me of sexual misconduct. I faced criminal charges including hair-pulling, hitting during intimacy in one instance, and—the most serious allegation—nonconsensual choking while making out with a woman on a date in 2002. I pleaded not guilty. Several months later, after a very public trial, I was cleared on all counts. One of the charges was separated and later withdrawn with a peace bond—a pledge to be on good behavior for a year. There was no criminal trial.

My acquittal left my accusers and many observers profoundly unhappy. There was a sentiment among them that, regardless of any legal exoneration, I was almost certainly a world-class prick, probably a sexual bully, and that I needed to be held to account beyond simply losing my career and reputation. Since then, I’ve become a hashtag. One of my female friends quips that I should get some kind of public recognition as a #MeToo pioneer. There are lots of guys more hated than me now. But I was the guy everyone hated first.

I have not spoken publicly about the explosion in my world for four years. Given that my name, at least in Canada, turned into a metonym for everything from male privilege to the need for due process, I’ve been aware that weighing in to reclaim it and inject nuance into my story is fraught, to say the least. In my silence people have tended to suggest what’s become of me. Like that I’m on a beach with martini in hand, having a laugh at “getting away with it” (no). Or that I’m curled up in a dark room, weeping in shame (well, yes, that happened). Or just forever cowed.

There has indeed been enough humiliation for a lifetime. I cannot just move to another town and reboot with a pseudonym. I’m constantly competing with a villainous version of myself online. This is the power of a contemporary mass shaming. Even people who are supportive sometimes have expectations of how I will act based on a singular, sexualized identity that was repeated in media stories. But this period has also been a tremendous education.

My path to public toxicity was a curious one. As a student, I was a doctrinaire activist who was tear-gassed at protests—I once made the evening news for organizing a demonstration about tuition fees at which wet macaroni was thrown at Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. For years after that, I wrote progressive songs and toured in a sometimes-political folk-rock band, Moxy Früvous. I wore T-shirts screaming slogans of equality and liberation, and I believed it all.

At the CBC, I had a Canadian-style reserve when American stars would get obstinate on the air. The necessary image of a liberal public broadcaster can be tediously correct. I wore the right ribbons, used the right hashtags, hosted the right guests. I did interviews with everyone from Toni Morrison to Gloria Steinem, Drake, and Maya Angelou. I attended demonstrations and spoke at progressive fund-raisers. It didn’t occur to me that I could ever be one of the bad men.

I loved Q, the culture show I co-created and hosted for eight years, and I was consumed with finding as wide an audience for it as possible. But I was also consumed by anxiety in my pursuit of success. By 2014, I was telling close friends that I felt I was in a cage of my own making. It didn’t help that my pay increased as my Twitter following skyrocketed, or that agents and publicists touted my appearance on “influential people” lists. I had become a man who derived all of his self-esteem from external validation. In tandem, everything around me seemed to condone the bullish way a successful single guy might act. This is not an excuse; it’s a somber realization.

With each career step, I would leave a trail of disappointed friends or coworkers. I learned to be pushy when I didn’t get my way. And at some point, when it came to women, I began to use my liberal gender studies education as a cover for my own behavior. I was ostensibly so schooled in how sexism works that I would arrogantly give myself a free pass. I was outspoken in public life but tone-deaf in my private affairs.

Before 2014, it was unimaginable to me that I would become a poster boy for men who are assholes. I had not been a network boss or an executive with institutional power; there had been no formal complaints at work that I was aware of over the years; there were no hush-money deals or nondisclosure agreements. As things came crashing down, I became obsessed with the inaccurate stories and the pattern of salacious details taken as truth in the echo chambers of social media outrage. That foreclosed any focus on my own accountability.

Since then, I have spent almost four years reflecting on my relations with women I dated. For some, nothing I say here will be enough or be put the right way. Even as I feel deep remorse about how I treated some people in my life, I cannot confess to the accusations that are inaccurate. What I do confess is that I was emotionally thoughtless in the way I treated those I dated and tried to date. As well, I leveraged my influence and status to try to entice women and lead them on when they were interested. There are all sorts of old-fashioned words to describe men like this: player, creep, cad, Lothario.

But it went deeper than that. I was demanding on dates and in personal affairs. I would keep lobbying for what I wanted. I was critical and dismissive. Some women I cared about went along with things I wanted to avoid my disappointment or moods. I ought to have been more respectful and responsive with the women in my life. To them I say, you deserved much better from me.

I craved the interest of women. Dating and having sex became another measure of status. When a well-known fellow broadcaster saw me with a twenty-something date at a film festival event in Toronto around 2006 (I was then thirty-nine), he left a voicemail saying, “Dude, you are the king!” That memory is mortifying now, but at the time I basked in his praise and wanted more. He’d never called me before and never mentioned my work; the real message was that the women I was with were the true gauge of success.

But if the opinion of others is how you define yourself, what happens when all of the outside props of status—the ratings, the followers, the social media likes—are torn away overnight? Who are you?

I equivocated about writing this essay for many months. I have never responded to media requests. For a while, the silence was a necessary consequence of the legal case I was facing. Since then, it’s been about gaining some certainty about what I would want to say. I also understand that this piece is focused on my experience, which may be seen as not helpful in rendering women’s experiences more visible.

I have spent these years trying to listen, read, and reflect. I did a great deal of talking before my life exploded. While I was a keen listener during interviews I conducted on the air, I didn’t apply that awareness in my personal life. Self-involvement will make you deaf to important things you should be hearing. Humility comes with perspective—and listening is a big part of it. But there is no fast track to the reckoning. Coming to terms with a seismic life interruption and beginning a true process of reflection takes time.

When a man is publicly accused of sexual misconduct in this era, almost invariably the first thing he does is apologize. However heartfelt the remorse, my own experience makes me distrust it. In a maelstrom of confusion, humiliation, resistance, and conflicting feedback from those around you, how much can anyone really inhabit “I’m sorry”?

You want the feeling of genuine contrition to stir within you—because people are telling you it’s the first step to redemption. And you let yourself imagine that some grand mea culpa might actually turn your fate around—regardless of the veracity of any allegations. But what you truly feel in the first days after being publicly accused is fear and anger, in that order.

The fear is easy to explain: your whole future hangs in the balance. But you’re furious, too, at being made fearful by everyone who’s trying to bring you down. You’re confounded at how tales of your alleged behavior from years past are now used as a sledgehammer to destroy the career you’ve built and determine the way you will forever be seen. Even if your lips are speaking words of contrition, your mind is a ferment of petty, selfish fury.

Adding to your shame is the fact that you’re suddenly helpless. Lawyers tell you what you can say (nothing) and to whom you can say it (almost no one). You don’t leave the house because there are cameras outside. You stop looking at the Internet because it’s mostly people telling you to curl up and die. You savor the few messages of support from friends—pathetically so. In your darker moments, you make lists of the ones you haven’t heard from. And that’s pathetic, too.

You realize almost immediately that this is a financial calamity as well: not only have you lost your income, but you’re also hemorrhaging your savings to legal fees. The accusations you face get conflated in social media with horrible things other men have done that are totally unconnected. The details of the allegations seem to become irrelevant, as does any legal decision. The stain of bad actions becomes indelible; a presumption prevails that the worst of what is tweeted is to be believed. You wonder how you can exhibit any contrition about ways you may have behaved badly in the past without validating every crazy thing that is being said about you by people you’ve never met.

Less than a month before my life exploded, I watched my father die. Then I lost almost everything else I thought was important. All the pillars of professional and personal support I had believed to be solid were gone almost overnight. The professional team that I had hired as experts to guide me through the explosion bolted, too—but not before they had cheered on some ill-advised social media postings and threatened lawsuits.

During the first two weeks, I was suicidal. I contemplated the methods by which I could kill myself. I was terrified of being awake and terrified of falling asleep. Evenings were filled with nightmares that inevitably involved my father on his deathbed. It was as though the end of my life as I knew it was somehow conjoined with the actual end of his.

In a crisis like this, you are painfully aware that it is happening not just to you, but also to those closest to you who stick around. I became frantically and helplessly worried about my mother. While I was fuming about media depictions, I questioned my own memories in the face of a barrage of speculation. People on TV expressed “shock” about the allegations of misconduct and my “secret life,” as it was sensationally termed. I was shocked too. For weeks I was used as clickbait and a meal ticket for certain reporters who pumped out whatever stories they could with my name in the headline. One writer questioned my upbringing, using a comparison to the convicted murderer Paul Bernardo. There were few limits to how far some would go.

When the scandal broke, dozens of female friends, some of whom I’d previously dated, reached out in support to say they would speak on behalf of my character. As the storm grew, many backed away, too scared or conflicted or shocked at the headlines to take a public stand. Several friendly artists and celebrities wrote to say they would need to stay silent because it might affect their careers. I was grateful for their candor. Many others, even those I thought to be close friends, simply have not spoken to me since.

The storm also transformed me from being a proud Canadian to being “Iranian-Canadian.” My inbox and social media accounts filled up with noxious allusions to my Middle Eastern background and racist references to Iranians. On my first court appearance, in November 2014, amid the media mêlée outside as I emerged with my lawyers, one man repeatedly shouted, “Go back to Iran!” I was not born in Iran and have never lived there. It would be more accurate to say, “Go back to Thornhill!”—the pleasant Toronto suburb where I grew up. It was not that I was ashamed of my heritage. On the contrary, I abhorred the racist implication that bad behavior would be seen as correlated with my ethnic background—just another Iranian guy channeling some ancestral Middle Eastern brand of Asiatic misogyny; and I was deeply embarrassed that the Iranian-Canadian community, which had been so supportive, now had to endure an association with me—on top of all the other stereotypes out there.

The CBC dutifully passed along all of my hate mail. One anonymous letter was typed in all-caps: “YOUR FATHER HATE FUCKED YOUR MOTHER AND PRODUCED A BROWN BABOON…YOU ARE LUCKY TO BE (VISITING) CANADA…IN I-RAN THE AYATUALLA [sic] WOULD HAVE FUCKED YOU…WATCH YOUR BACK AND YOUR HOUSE.” But even these specific racist responses were not as personally damning as being broadly cast as an outsider because of my heritage—a narrative that spoke to my deepest insecurities. In truth, I had always seen myself as a scrawny brown kid who didn’t fit in—not as the cocky, entitled immigrant my attackers saw. Both images were wrong. But my misperception obscured an awareness of my status. I didn’t accept my own power.

Since the scandal, the reaction of men has perhaps been most striking. Aside from some, including former media colleagues and friends who reported on my downfall with a zeal that was transparent in its efforts to display their own virtue, there was a distinct pattern to the men whom I would encounter in the first year, amid all the headlines and shaming. Many of them—strangers, acquaintances, friends, or people reaching out in social media—would at some point furtively say, “What happened to you could have been me.” That is, in the safety of conversations they were certain would not become public, men would tell me there were things that they, too, could have been accused of at points in their lives.

The disconnect was confusing. Just as my name was trending as the ultimate avatar of bad male behavior, men were confiding in me that, in various ways, they were not much different. I have had countless men contact me in the last four years to tell me their stories or somehow commiserate. It is bizarre to become an unwitting repository for men who are bewildered about gender relations or sexual behaviors. I began to see my own actions as part of a systemic culture of unhealthy masculinity. At the other end of the spectrum, I get messages from women who tell me that they “enjoy the same lifestyle” and want to meet up for sex. I don’t respond, but I suspect that I would disappoint them with the news that I don’t have a “lifestyle” that might facilitate what they’re looking for.

Last year, when I posted a creative project on YouTube, a Toronto weekly declared that I had “slithered out from underneath my rock.” Another observer predicted that I would emerge from self-imposed exile as rabidly right-wing. The truth is more banal. I am not suddenly an antifeminist activist, stage-diving at a Breitbart road show. Neither am I planning to seek public absolution through the embrace of a notion that all men are evil. What I am is someone who has had a crash course in empathy. I have a new unwavering antipathy toward schadenfreude.

Many of those who helped me survive the explosion are people who have been through great difficulties in their lives: addiction, bankruptcy, the loss of dear friends or family, or big mistakes and public humiliation. I now have a different way of seeing anyone who is being attacked in the public sphere, even those with whom I may profoundly disagree.

And with all of this, I am moving toward what might be seen as a trite point: we learn from our mistakes.

A couple of years ago, on a trip to Europe, emancipated by the anonymity of being abroad, I was on a train from London to Paris and found myself sitting next to a single woman in her late thirties. We had both come onto the train wearing earphones and fell into a conversation about music. We learned that we shared the same tastes in New Wave. She was captivating and smart.

As soon as our conversation began, I felt galvanized by an automatic reflex from my days as a Somebody. Tell her about your show. Tell her about your band. Sell your book. It occurred to me that I had been campaigning my whole adult life for the promotion of Jian. The same instinct began tracing out a line of events. She would give me her number. After getting to Paris, I would text her. We’d meet at a bar. I would tell her more about me. Perhaps we would become intimate. I would feel wanted.

There were positive sparks. She mentioned that she had an open schedule in Paris. I listened and smiled. Again, I felt the old urge to use this to my advantage.

But this interesting woman was speaking to me without knowing or caring if I was Somebody. As if maybe I had the ability to be worthy without reciting my résumé. She did the talking for most of the trip, and I listened. I poked some fun and enjoyed making her laugh. There were moments when she would reference events or places or people (“I adore Leonard Cohen”) that would once have been my cue to talk about myself (“you know, I did one of the last interviews with Leonard Cohen, and…”). Instead, I found myself asking her questions.

When the train arrived in Paris, we got up and grabbed our stuff. She smiled at me. We paused. I extended my hand and wished her a good afternoon. “It was really great talking with you,” I said. The words lingered for a moment. Then she shook my hand and uttered something similar. Then we both went off to find our respective ride-shares. Only once I emerged onto the street did I realize that I’d never even told her my name.

NYRB Editor adds: This article, which has provoked much criticism, should have included acknowledgment of the serious nature and number of allegations that had been made against the writer, Jian Ghomeshi. In October 2014, Ghomeshi—about whom multiple women had filed harassment complaints—was fired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after executives saw evidence that he had caused physical harm to a woman. Shortly after, more than twenty women accused him of sexual abuse and harassment, which included hitting, biting, choking, and verbal abuse during sex. Many of these allegations were made in respected publications, including The Toronto Star. That November, Ghomeshi was charged with the sexual assault of three women. (Sexual assault, under Canada’s Criminal Code, can include threats and nonconsensual physical contact. There is no specific legal provision for rape as it is defined in US law.) In January 2015, additional counts of sexual assault were brought against him by three more women. He was acquitted of all charges, and settled a further charge of sexual assault, of a coworker at the CBC, out of court with a peace bond and public apology. Substantial space will be devoted to letters responding to this article in the next issue of The New York Review, dated October 25, 2018.

(New York Review of Books)

HOW ONE ARTICLE CAPSIZED A NEW YORK LITERARY INSTITUTION

A controversial piece by Jian Ghomeshi in the New York Review of Books cost editor Ian Buruma his job and sparked a debate about free speech.

by David Taylor in New York

For decades, the New York Review of Books has enjoyed a reputation as the most important intellectual publication in the US, a home for complex and challenging ideas.

This week, the stately magazine has been capsized after choosing to publish a highly contentious piece by the former broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi, who has been accused of sexual assault by more than 20 women.

Ghomeshi’s article will not be printed until 11 October but it has already cost editor Ian Buruma his job, prompted a detailed apology from the NYRB’s publisher, divided the staff at its West Village office and generated a storm of criticism which has drawn in some of the biggest names in the literary world.

One of the women who accused Ghomeshi of attacking her told the Guardian she was distressed by the article in which, she said, her alleged attacker tried to elicit sympathy and gave a false account of the legal process.

“This is so self-absorbed that I don’t know how this could be published and not cause an outrage,” Linda Redgrave said.

Ghomeshi was fired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2014 after multiple complaints of harassment, which included allegations of hitting, biting and choking during sex. He was acquitted in one criminal trial and a second criminal case did not proceed after he signed a “peace bond” and gave one woman a public apology.

In his article for the NYRB, Ghomeshi attempts to “inject nuance” into his story and says “there has indeed been enough humiliation for a lifetime” before ending his account with a “reformed character” anecdote about meeting a woman on a train. He apparently claims ethical credit by describing how he did not try to seduce her.

Redgrave, who waived her right to anonymity after the first criminal trial, said of Ghomeshi’s article: “I had not seen this coming. I suspected that he wasn’t going to go away disgracefully, but it caught me off stride and I was really upset by it. There really wasn’t any apologizing, it was trying to just evoke sympathy for something he doesn’t deserve.”

After reading the piece online, she contacted Buruma and demanded to write a rebuttal. He agreed and she filed her account the day before he left the NYRB. She has since been assured that her rebuttal will be published in the 25 October edition as part of a pledge by the magazine to devote “substantial space” to responses to the Ghomeshi article.

Asked if she thought Buruma should have lost his job, Redgrave said: “Yes I do. There is an ethical line you don’t cross. I think he crossed the line. This was something he did knowing that it was going to have this result. He knew that this was wrong, he did it anyway, he deserved to be fired.”

The article, published online earlier this month, has attracted little conspicuous public support. But the “enforced resignation” of Buruma has divided observers. The affair has also illuminated some of the most difficult questions of the moment:

• In the #MeToo era, can someone who faces allegations of sexual violence be rehabilitated if criminal allegations do not lead to conviction?
• Does public pressure from the so-called “Twitter mob” have a chilling effect on free speech?
• What is the duty of a publication to challenge, fact-check and counter-balance a writer’s first-person article, particularly when the author is accused of abusive, offensive or criminal behavior?

This week, a letter with 109 signatories, including authors Colm Tóibín, Joyce Carol Oates and Ian McEwan, was sent to the NYRB. It said: “We find it very troubling that the public reaction to a single article, ‘Reflections from a Hashtag’ – repellent though some of us may have found this article – should have been the occasion for Ian Buruma’s forced resignation.

“Given the principles of open intellectual debate on which the NYRB was founded, his dismissal in these circumstances strikes us as an abandonment of the central mission of the Review, which is the free exploration of ideas.”

The letter was coordinated by writer and academic John Ryle and drafted and edited by a core group of 15 contributors. A source with knowledge of how the letter was brought together said it was first distributed via email last Sunday and more than 100 prestigious contributors to the NYRB were given 24 hours to sign or decline.

A second source with knowledge of the letter, who also declined to be named, said: “There was an intense process of revision. I do not know how many of the signatories think that publishing the piece was an error of judgment. The phrasing of the letter embraces those who do think this and those who do not.

“It affirms that, either way, the signatories do not think that there was a justification for summary dismissal … this is a difficult situation, with strong feelings on all sides. But it is clear to me that an injustice has been done to Ian Buruma.”

Buruma, 66 and described to the Guardian by one supporter as “a terrific public intellectual,” claimed in an interview with the Dutch magazine VN he had been “convicted on Twitter, without any due process.” He said he felt compelled to resign, after just over a year in post.

The letter from authors and writers in support of him was made public the day after a detailed statement was released by the NYRB’s publisher, Rea Hederman, rejecting the allegation that public outcry alone was responsible for Buruma’s departure.

“We acknowledge our failures in the presentation and editing of his story,” Hederman said, citing editorial lapses including a failure to bring female members of staff into the editing process. “We surely had a duty to acknowledge the point of view of the women who complained of Mr. Ghomeshi’s behavior.”

The publisher’s statement said many of the editorial staff objected to Buruma’s claim in two interviews that staff came together after initial objections to the piece.

“Finally, it is inaccurate that Ian Buruma’s departure was the result of a ‘Twitter mob’,” the statement said. “In fact before his departure, the mob mostly had moved on.”

The Guardian contacted a number of the signatories to the supportive letter. Joyce Carol Oates said by email she totally agreed with critics of Ghomeshi’s essay, but said: “I thought that terminating Mr. Buruma’s contract so abruptly was not a good, or necessary decision. Mr. Buruma (whom I don’t know) is a distinguished critic, writer, editor who is certainly to be defined by far more than a single misstep. We would all wish to be given a second chance.”

Fintan O’Toole, literary editor of the Irish Times, who signed the letter, said the published piece was very poor and Buruma should not have said that the truth of the allegations was not his concern.

“So the issue for me isn’t whether he was right or wrong – to me he was clearly wrong. It’s whether one bad incident justifies the sacking of an editor who is very widely agreed to have been doing a very fine job. If editors are sacked the first time they make a mistake, we’ll end up with nobody in charge of vitally important publications except ultra-cautious hacks.”

The rights and wrongs of the piece and Buruma’s fate split other commentators.

Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me, said: “There are two things that are really outrageous. The first is to give a platform to somebody who appears to have so violated the rights of others and the rights, the dignity, the safety of the bodies of other human beings.

“And the second is to violate all normal editorial standards not only to publish a piece that’s profoundly dishonest and misleading about what happened but to also, according to reports, deny the longtime women editors the rights to have a look at it.”

She added: “I believe the women who made allegations against Ghomeshi and to lose their voices out of the story and let him tell the stories in ways that contradict what they told us: it treats what he has to say as important and true and treats what they have to say as unimportant and irrelevant.”

Gerald Howard, an executive editor at publisher Doubleday, said the NYRB was “immensely important to American intellectual life, which always feels on the edge of disappearing,” but publishing the article was an editorial misfire.

“It was not adequate to the case. I can see exactly why people are upset about it, I don’t think he [Ghomeshi] remotely came to terms with what he did and why he found himself in the situation that he did. It’s substandard without any question.”

But Howard said of the enforced resignation of Buruma: “I really disapprove. I feel that he was taken down by a mob and did not deserve it.

“The thing that especially upsets me is that apparently there was all this pressure from university presses who said they were going to withdraw their ads from the Review because of publishing this piece, which just makes steam come out of my ears.”

Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU and writes the blog PressThink, said: “A piece that was that provocative and was going to be looked at very closely, because it’s unusual for the New York Review to do something like that, it just needed to be more solid than it was.”

He said it would be a tragedy if the NYRB was to begin shying away from publishing controversial subjects, “but it is not clear that’s what happened. It’s a valid concern about ideas being shouted down on social media and publishers not wanting the cost of that. I’m not saying it’s relevant to this piece but it is something to worry about – it’s good that writers are worried about that.”

Speaking on background because they were not authorized to comment publicly, a member of NYRB staff said most co-workers were relieved the editor had gone, having been concerned about some of his decisions.

In an editorial meeting, objections were raised about the Ghomeshi piece: about its tone and style, about its lack of insight and about the way it misrepresented the allegations against him. After publication, the source said, some staff expressed longstanding concerns to the publisher.

It was distressing Buruma’s departure had become a free-speech issue, the source added, saying it was really about managerial and editorial shortcomings.

(theguardian.com)

TRUMP, KAVANAUGH AND THE SLEAZIFICATION OF THE CONSERVATIVE ELITE

A Reader Writes: re: the death of the planet, did anyone see this coming? The Trump assholes seem to embrace the end of the planet!

rawstory.com/2018/09/trump-kavanaugh-sleazification-conservative-elite/

DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS CELEBRATION

On Friday, October 12th from 3-4:30pm the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting an afternoon to celebrate día de los muertos (day of the dead). Children and their families are invited to stop by for crafts and more. Bring a photograph of a loved one or pet who has passed away to contribute to the library ofrenda. This event is free, open to the public, and sponsored by the Ukiah Library and Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

Brett Kavanaugh has probably become a liability to the Republican Party to the extent that they will be looking to drop him. Even if he should survive his hearing, he would be a still-deeper shadow over the Court--already suffering from loss of esteem so needed by such institutions as courts. He would be the opposite of the added power he was expected to bring to the Right. The capacity of our leaders to be unbelievably ridiculous (observe how helpless they have been for the last ten days because they are confronted with a novel, open-ended situation that's not covered in the congressional playbook; they've acted like headless chickens)--anyway, their capacity for blinding foolishness makes prediction risky, but simple reason watches for a withdrawal of his nomination.

Excuse me. I have to get in front of a rock video and dance. I won't be as fluid as my grandkids, but nobody's around, and I need it!

BEST CARTOON OF THE CENTURY

LOOK DOWN, JERRY

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Governor Jerry Brown has just announced that California is going to launch its own satellite to monitor global warming. He did not say who is going to pay for it. Perhaps he's going to surprise us and pay for it himself to demonstrate his dedication to the environment. Or maybe Dianne Feinstein is going to pick up the tab as a way of "giving back" and saying "thank you" for her many blessings. Then again it could come to us as some new kind of gas tax.

Let's say the satellite goes up. What would happen? If it works it would send back years of data, die, become space junk, and then fall back to Earth. Satellites are just about the most expensive way of getting data there is. Maybe there is some cheaper, down-to-earth way of doing this. Or we could just skip it all together and focus on fixing our roads, dams and bridges instead.

Yours Truly,

Carol Chatham

Ben Lomond