Month: February 2015

Better?

(Adapted from a recent Facebook rant about this essay.)

San Francisco in 1992, when I moved there, was a deeply dysfunctional city. San Francisco in 2015, ten years after I departed, is still a deeply dysfunctional city, albeit in a very different way. I personally found the (early) 1990s dysfunction much more entertaining and inclusive than the current very expensive and corporate version. That’s probably because “pot truffles and hashish ginger snaps”, $4000/month studios, and hand-forged artisanal turnips from Bernal Heights are not really my thing.

While the author of seems only to remember the “sadness” that enveloped the Castro in the 1990s, the gay San Francisco I moved to in 1992 was actually a pretty happy place, one that was finally emerging from the darkness and paranoia of the 1980s and beginning to enjoy itself again.

I get that the author is trying to put a positive spin on change and question people’s assumptions about “the good old days” and how they were always “better” but the problem with this essay is that it mostly cites examples that say more about how much more sanitized and pretentious and wealthy the city has become in the past twenty years than about how much “better” it is. It may be a better place for many people, but not for me…not based on this essay, anyway.

I lived in San Francisco long enough that I’m allowed to have an opinion, but I’ve been gone long enough that no one has to pay any attention to it.

Roy Moore’s Facebook whitewashing

When you visit the Facebook page of a controversial and divisive news figure, would you be surprised (and maybe a little suspicious) to find that everyone who’s made a comment on the page agrees with him completely and seems to think he pretty much walks on water?

Welcome to the world of Judge Roy Moore, whose social media minions are engaging in an ongoing campaign to keep his Facebook presence devoid of any trace of dissent whatsoever.

I have no doubt that rude and inappropriate comments have been posted by some of Moore’s opponents. If these were the only things being deleted, I might  question the wisdom of the decision but I could still probably acknowledge a valid reason for doing so. But Moore’s people are deleting any dissenting comments, no matter how reasonably and politely phrased. A couple of examples:

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Even his supporters are having trouble following the threads with all the deletions.

Ultimately, this is Facebook and this sort of whitewashing is common from a certain subset of both the right and the left. I don’t really question Moore’s right to do it (or, more specifically, his right to have his staff to do it) but I think that people expect one of a state’s highest ranking elected officials to have a slightly higher ethical standard, and to at least pay lip service to the concept of open public discourse.

With Roy Moore, this would obviously be expecting too much.

No surprise there.