Read The Paper With Huntington

[Emailed today:]

Editor:

I applaud San Francisco's plan to issue ID cards to residents who haven't been able to thread their way through the racist, Byzantine maze the United States calls its immigration system. These people contribute greatly to the city's economy and culture. It's past time that we recognize that, while they may not yet be Americans, they emphatically already are San Franciscans.

Sincerely,
Huntington

[The last one I wrote was too long. I'm hoping this one gets in.]

[The Comical is full of fun other than ID cards today. As the AYM noted yesterday, a sizable Bay Area city elected an openly gay mayor for the first time this month, with the extremely close results only announced last night. San Francisco, you say? Bohemian Berkeley, maybe? No, it was the off-most-people's radar City of Vallejo, the town that those of us who grew up in the North Bay knew as the poor part of the region. Vallejo has been ripe for a renaissance for some time now, as the many middle-class queers who moved there during the worst of the dot-com housing crunch already knew.]

[I'm not sure if a blue-collar city like Vallejo electing A Gay as mayor underscores the obnoxious "End of Gay Culture Watch" or not. If Cloutier fulfilled a big ol' stereotype by dealing with the tension of the vote count by going to homo mecca Palm Springs and getting arrested for being drunk in public, I think traditional gay life still has some spark left to it.]

[Also, I have to laugh at the the 10-1 loss for my dear ex-Supervisor Chris Daly's attempted slam at Mayor Newsom's interoffice affair. While it should be no secret by now that, if I'm forced to pick sides in what I think is ultimately a daffy and distracting rivalry, I'd pick Daly, I think this time he jumped the shark. Of course sex between employees of the same agency or company should be against the rules, especially if one of the parties is in a supervisory position over the other. (Oooh, "the supervisory position" ... one of my favorites.) I can only assume there's a sentence about that already in whatever manual city employees get when they're hired on.]

[Daly's measure, however, was frivolous. He's done better even when engaged in a full scream. Let's let this one die a quiet death. Now that he's got another four years in which to embarrass himself while getting essentially nothing done, I'm sure Newsom will give us all plenty to enliven our morning coffee and donuts without Daly forcing the spring.]

[Thanks for joining me for this edition of Newspaper Digest. I'm off to Sonoma in a few short hours. I've been drafted to help my parents win the trivia contest the local Irish pub holds every other week. Bring it on? It's already been broughten!]

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