his may be a good time to ask the children to go and play outside, for in today's visit we'll be referring to a somewhat vulgar word, one you won't want to hear the little ones bantering around the dinner table . . .
Okay, are they gone? The word is "bitch," and for reasons I'll attempt to make clear, it has cropped up in the debate over the future of Los Angeles police chief Bernard Parks, who, you may recall, has asked to be reappointed for a second five-year term as head of the department. In February, Mayor James Hahn publicly announced his opposition to Parks's reappointment, but it falls to the civilian police commission — all of whose members were appointed by Hahn — to make the decision. What has followed has been a minor but lively spectacle of racial politics, the most recent episode of which involved the alleged use of the "b- word."
No, it was not Chief Parks himself to whom the term was applied, but rather one of his most ardent and vocal backers, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Democrat of Los Angeles. The reader is understandably aghast that a woman of such grace, such refinement, such unparalleled gentility should be spoken of in such terms, but that is the accusation leveled against Rick Caruso, a Los Angeles-real estate developer and president of the police commission. On Feb. 28, Caruso attended a private meeting with several high-ranking members of the LAPD. According to an anonymous letter sent to city officials, purportedly by a police official who attended the meeting, Caruso referred to the congresswoman as "the bitch Waters." Neither Caruso nor any of the others present at the meeting has confirmed the accuracy of the letter, but that hasn't prevented Parks's supporters from calling for Caruso's head. Last week about 100 protesters gathered outside city hall to demand Caruso's removal from the police commission. City councilman Nate Holden, who backs Parks's bid for reappointment, was typically indignant. "If a police officer made a statement like that to any citizen, they would be dismissed," Holden said ungrammatically. "Why should we have a double standard?"
How odd that someone from the Maxine Waters camp should complain about a double standard. Recall that it was Waters who in 1992 led the no-justice-no-peace chorus and excused the behavior of L.A.'s rioters, and who euphemized the riot itself as an "uprising" and a "rebellion." (Take it from one who was there: It was a riot.) Clicking around on Waters's own website will offer further glimpses into her character. On the welcome page, she claims to be investigating "the CIA's possible involvement in the proliferation of crack cocaine in our inner cities," a phantasm thoroughly debunked years ago. Elsewhere on the site is a press release regarding her call for the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases. Apparently Ms. Waters thinks it unfair for drug dealers to do hard time when those evil meanies at the CIA put the drugs there in the first place.
And the fun doesn't stop there. Check out the site's photo album, where, incredibly, Bill Clinton is not the most loathsome person featured. There's Waters mugging for the camera in the company of Winnie Mandela, who's been implicated in all sorts of thuggery in post-apartheid South Africa, up to and including the kidnap and murder of a 14-year-old boy. Indeed, Congresswoman Waters seems untroubled by murder or murderers. In 1998 she wrote to Fidel Castro, that stalwart of freedom off our southern shore, to recommend that he not return an escaped cop killer to the United States.
From accounts I've heard, Rick Caruso is a gentleman of the first order, a man highly regarded by peers and subordinates alike. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that in a fit of pique he was a bit unguarded in his reference to Ms. Waters. The OED offers one definition of "bitch" as a "malicious or treacherous woman." In any action for slander, the truth is an absolute defense. Let the reader decide.