ALL the Bay Area “newspapers” are like that.
Every weekly handout, tabloid, whatever...the local pols get a column. As long as they’re Rats. Never seen a Republican doing one.
And they are recurring: no “guest” editorial crap. Nonstop, never ending Rat spewing party line propaganda.
The idea that the Chronicle is some kind of bastion of journalistic integrity and excellence that was sullied by the presence of Willie Brown’s column is absurdly laughable. I get the paper for the obits, local sports and an occasionally interesting story from Carl Nolte or the guy who writes the Portals of the Past columns. Overall, though, the Chron has been a thin, boring, biased left-wing propaganda rag since at least the time of its sale by the DeYoung heirs to the Hearst Company. Brown’s Sunday column was actually one of the few interesting reads. His gossip was occasionally interesting and he was unafraid of expressing contrarian opinions on the issues of the day. Everyone knows the man is a shill, but so what? He’s a career politicians
Intelligence can be similar to electricity, meaning that the end use determines if this was for good or for evil.
Said another way, if Willie Brown had been born in a later era, and had slightly different professional goals, it could have been him being named as Vice President of the United States of America, vs Kamala Harris.
Even more the point, he could have made it happen with far less Voter Fraud, harvesting and manipulation than what turned out to be needed. Willie is a sneaky, openly racist, self centered politician, bordering on meglomania at times, but no one ever said he was stupid.
I have met Willie, and he will not let the Gay Rhonicle silence him re Joe's Hoe.
This will become obvious in months to come!
The most infamous pay-to-play politician in state history and “San Francisco’s legendary Juice Mayor” should never have been allowed to casually write his own unchallenged history of this city.
He should not have been allowed to soft-pedal government officials’ rank dishonesty and billion-dollar lowballing schemes as just one of those things. He should never have been allowed to gleefully plug his clients and/or private businesses and/or political creations and savage their competitors. He should not have been allowed to issue coded advice or threats to members of the political class via a column in the newspaper.
He should never have been allowed to elude Chronicle reporters Monday through Saturday before generating his own take on the issues for Sunday — and write articles that must have induced pinball machine noises in Chronicle staffers’ heads as they checked off violation after violation of the paper’s ethics code.
A real paper would have caught this sooner.
Sad. Willie Brown’s column was the best thing in the Chronicle since Herb Caen died.
bump