Fool me once shame on you…
An old saying that proves true today. Perhaps more so than any time in recent memory.
Santa Clara residents are not immune. If you have followed this column for the past year or so, you have come to expect a few points of lucidity.
The Screen Actors Guild would be impressed with the orchestration of the hoax being played upon the residents of our City.
Every good story should have a hero or heroine and of course a villain.
The more wicked the villain the better. Like Simon Legree, the villain should be despicable, distasteful and deceitful.
The hero must be righteous, just, upstanding, clever and triumphant.
Our Mayor and her minions have written the script clearly along Hollywood lines making the 49ers the villain and themselves the redeeming stars of the show.
But remember, it is a show, playing now at a City Council or public meeting place near you.
What is fascinating is, the fan club that bought this show as a real-life thing. There is a group of folks in town who belong to Stand Up for Santa Clara that have been enthralled by this movie even though they have seen it a dozen times.
When it comes to that part where the villain gets whipped, they shout and cheer. Well, they used to shout and cheer; now it’s becoming more like polite applause.
It appears that some folks decided they have been deluded long enough and maybe they will Sit Down for Santa Clara and see how the reruns pan out.
Perhaps some of these folks have seriously thought about the plot. The berated villain has been acting more like the hero. Our stadium just keeps pumping more money into our City despite the bad press, the abominable audit, the caustic commentary and the crappy curfew.
However, our heroine continues to discredit the villain as the bad guys who can do no good.
But damn, the villain isn’t sticking to her script. Just imagine; this villain keeps doing good things in our community…so many, it is difficult for even her groupies to hate them.
So, what do you do? How about a quick rewrite and manufacture more villainous activities that can be draped around the stadium and the 49ers?
Now this rewrite comes with a price tag of $250,000. That is what our Stadium Authority approved to conduct citywide meetings to discuss stadium issues with the community.
Can you remember at any time in the past 50 years that our City has conducted “free” community meetings at taxpayers’ expense?
However, as we have discovered, rewrites of the Mayor’s script are costly. Remember the short story we told you about in November last year? The one where the Mayor hired Banner Public Affairs, a $500 an hour consultant to be her personal script writer for her interview with the SF Chronical. Taxpayers paid about $50,000 on that rewrite and there wasn’t even an approved contract in place.
This is beginning to look like a script that is changing rolls.
Who is the real villain in this show?