Why isn’t Bob Filner resigning?
It takes a level of arrogance to be a career politician that makes a person unfit to be a politician. The media, with its habit of pretending that Democratic scandals are local news and Republican scandals are national news, only feeds that arrogance to the point where we get someone like San Diego Mayor Bob Filner who thinks he can get away with crimes that would make a sailor blush with shame1. Filner is even claiming that the city is responsible for his behavior, because they didn’t make him take sexual harassment training.
It is blatant arrogance, an assumption that he has nothing to worry about. But the chances aren’t bad that he really can get away with it, and worse. Moves that ought to have the media howling collusion but instead are ignored as local news:
- Congresswoman Lori Saldana reported his behavior to the California Democratic Party; they threatened to cut her funds if she didn’t support Filner. Reporters in DC and in San Diego saw his behavior, but never investigated.
- One of Filner’s supporters filed first to recall Filner—which apparently in San Diego means that he’s the person who signatures go through. He isn’t going to attempt to collect signatures, so there probably won’t be many anyway.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times is trying to pass off Filner as a Republican and nobody in the media is pushing the recall scandal or the Saldana accusations. Democratic operatives conspired to suppress a recall effort, and it’s not news. Democrats themselves threatened a female congresswoman to shut her mouth, and that’s not news either.
As I write this, there have been eleven accusers, some of them from his time in DC, where it should have been national news. It is almost impossible in a city like DC for reporters not to have known about behavior this blatant—they simply chose not to report on it.
This is a concerted effort by the California Democratic Party, local Democratic activists and funders, and national Democrats, to cover up for a serial sexual harasser; but it’s worse that the media is backing their effort. The Democratic Party has created a culture of harassment, an actual war on women, and the media is no longer interested.
I’m reading Thomas Sowell’s• Vision of the Anointed• (review forthcoming) and part of his thesis is that among the anointed, rules don’t apply; eccentricity is required in order to implement the solutions of the anointed. For example, a politician willing to fondle their employees is likely to fondle taxpayers, too. It’s a good trait, not a bad one, among the anointed.
Why isn’t Bob Filner resigning? Because he’s been getting away with it for years, in the open, and he hasn’t had to resign yet.
This is also a good example of why political power ought to be local. At the national level, no one knows each other except politically, and corruption this severe can be ignored by the press. At the local level there are relationships that transcend partisan politics: actual friendships and family ties. In Washington, he got away with this stuff without it even becoming local news. As it is, there is at least a chance he’ll have to face reality.
In response to California 2013: News and Stuff about California and San Diego in 2013.
- August 25, 2013: Bob Filner media post-mortem
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No mention at all of Lori Saldana’s claim on the Los Angeles Times.
Looks like Filner is out. Like the New York Times having to break it to their readers that Donald Manes committed suicide, the press is now having to explain why the mayor of San Diego is resigning when it just wasn’t a big deal until now. And they’re still having a hard time remembering he’s a Democrat. These are the sites I visited from Google News and Memeorandum immediately after the news hit:
- LA Times: mentioned in second-to-last paragraph.
- CNN: not mentioned.
- USA Today: mentioned twice, first in the third paragraph.
- Time Swampland: mentioned once in third paragraph—listing this twenty-five-year politician as a “first-term Democrat”.
- UT San Diego: not mentioned.
- Huffington Post, sourced from AP: not mentioned
- NBC San Diego: not mentioned.
- Politico: not mentioned (a search on Democrat indicates it exists 33 times on the page, but none of them are visible)
What’s interesting is how bad it had to be to fall apart for Filner. It was as if a dam broke, and he was just walking around as the water rose around him. And the media just kept pretending there was no water, and even if there was water, that wasn’t a politician drowning in it, and even if it was a politician, it wasn’t a Democrat, and even if it was a Democrat, the water must have been partisan for rising. Even after all their covering for him, Filner had the gall to complain about a “media lynch mob”.
- August 7, 2013: Gosh, Mr. Filner. Are you a corrupt sleazebag? Why no, Mr. Chairman! Not enough for charges anyway!
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It’s getting crazier and crazier. The Democratic Party here knew about the accusations against San Diego Mayor Bob Filner before he even ran. They covered it up. Their investigation consisted of… asking him about it.
You have to look in the updates of the article for this news.
He assured me there was nothing to be concerned about,” [Jess Durfee, party Chairman] told the U-T. Filner also assured Durfee that no one had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him and that he had many female staffers.
No, says Filner, no one’s filed a complaint, so I’m good. Also, I have a lot of female staffers, so I can spread it around a bit.
Note that they’re still hedging: he says the allegations never rose above rumor, and no one came forward. But the deputy mayor of Escondido did—and to Jess Durfee.
The Democrats and the press are covering up a Democrat’s one-man war on women.
Apologies to Ray Stevens.
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- Group moves forward with effort to recall Mayor Filner
- “Some are accusing him of being a Filner supporter and say he’s undermining the recall effort, even trying to derail it. He says that's not true… ‘If they're organized to do it on Monday they can continue to do it on Monday. The only difference is the signatures come to me,’ he said. Corbin says he won't be hiring signature gatherers, it will solely be up to the people.”
- Mayor McSilkytouch’s Chief of Staff is Bogusly Cliaiming Attorney-Client Privilege To Avoid Turning Over Notes,: Ace at Ace of Spades HQ
- “The article does imply that Filner is a Democrat, chiefly on the second page (after the jump), but strangely, in an article about Republicans’ taking advantage of the situation, they can never quite bite the bullet and explicitly identify Filner as a Democrat.”
- Opinion: San Diego media failed to investigate Filner sooner: Doug Curlee
- “The near universal opinion among us was, ‘Can you believe this guy? Why does he get away with acting like that?’ Then another round of drinks would appear, and talk went on to other things. But we never asked those questions on air or in print. We never really tried to find out what was behind the near-incessant rumors that always floated around Filner. We never tried to confirm any of those rumors, or, if we did, we quickly gave up when presented with the denials, or refusals to talk about it.” (Hat tip to Ace at Ace of Spades HQ)
- Recall Bob Filner
- “We cannot sit by and let him continue to run our city and its reputation into the ground. We need to let Mayor Filner know that he is fired!”
- The Vision of the Anointed•: Thomas Sowell (hardcover)
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“Few have spent their entire lives outside the vision of the anointed, and virtually no one has been unaffected by it. Understanding that vision, its current impact and its future dangers, is the purpose of this book.”
- War on Women: Democrats Covered Up For Filner For Years, Permitting Him Fresh Victims, and Now They’re Doing It Again: Ace at Ace of Spades HQ
- “The local Democratic Party, the State Party, and Nancy Pelosi’s California caucus in DC all knew or must have known about this and chose to cover it up. Even now Democrats seem to be scheming to help Filner, while they supposedly call for his resignation publicly… here’s an actual war on women—with a Democratic city councilwoman serving a chief witness—and they, as usual, embargo the story, just like they did with Kermit Gosnell.”
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- Filner’s out, but the media’s war on women continues.
- Gosh, Mr. Filner. Are you a corrupt sleazebag? Why no, Mr. Chairman! Not enough for charges anyway!
- It’s getting crazier and crazier. The Democratic Party here knew about the accusations against Filner before he even ran. They covered it up. Their investigation consisted of… asking him about it.
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- For examples of what Ace is talking about, consider “Judge dismisses Stevens’ conviction, orders probe” vs. “Spitzer May Yet Face Ethics Inquiry” from the Associated Press. The protagonist of the story in the first headline is the judge; the protagonist of the story in the second is Spitzer. Spitzer acts, Stevens is acted upon.
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