Lee Heidhues 9.3.2022
Nightcrawler Heather Knight needs to take a look in the Mirror.
She, as much as any columnist, has contributed to the political atmosphere in San Francisco she now piously bemoans.
Her non stop attacks on the The Real DA Chesa Boudin. Columns complete with innuendo, falsehoods, misstatements and exaggeration and, when it fits her bias, slavish toadyism, contributed to the Recall of an ethical honest District Attorney.
The latest example of Heather’s toadyism is the nonsensical fawning column she published after hanging out with the 153K “Volunteer” Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins. Complete with a trip to the ice cream shop.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 9.3.2022
The biggest difference between here and Sacramento, as new Assembly Member Matt Haney tells it, is the political mood. It’s not nasty. It’s not toxic.
People acknowledge each other’s differences in a state Legislature with real, live Republicans. They work to find common ground rather than tear each other apart. And they actually get a fair amount done.
In just the past several weeks, behavior at City Hall seems to have worsened.
Board President Shamann Walton, for example, acknowledged he used racial slurs when a sheriff’s cadet asked him to remove his belt before passing through a City Hall metal detector. The cadet says Walton also threatened to “whoop your ass.” Both men are Black. Walton, who disputed the cadet’s account, didn’t apologize.
Leanna Louie, a candidate for District Four supervisor who was stricken from the ballot in light of evidence she doesn’t live there, referred to a Jewish journalist as a Nazi on social media after he revealed her suspicious residency claims.
The toxicity at City Hall has existed for a long time.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin apologized last year for “the tenor that I have struck in my public relationships” and said he sought alcohol treatment. He and other supervisors have bullied department staff in meetings, driving some to tears, and he’s famously berated people in late-night phone calls.
Mayor London Breed has been known in the past to yell at staffers and freeze out supervisors with whom she doesn’t agree.
There’s the constant thrum of Twitter fights (of which Haney sometimes partakes), mansplaining and personal attacks by many City Hall denizens. Calling fellow liberal Democrats right-wingers advancing a Trumpian agenda has become just part of the landscape. Several meetings in recent months — from the school board to the redistricting committee — have descended into chaos.
Sometimes the nastiness at City Hall spills into the neighborhoods. Supervisor Gordon Mar, who as far as I can tell is one of the nicest people at City Hall, had his reputation smeared with flyers posted around the Sunset calling him a “communist pedophile.” It’s unclear who posted the hateful screeds.
If this was the culture in a city government that was solving San Francisco’s big problems and improving the lives of its residents, that would be one thing. But it’s not.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/San-Francisco-City-hall-17416623.php
Lee's Perspective 