A Question of Class, Ethics, Homophobia, and Defending the Established Order
Summary: The Desert Sun has been guilty of classism and homophobia in its obsessive pursuit of Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun seeks to impose a precondition of private wealth for public service, a precondition that is both undemocratic and un-American. The Desert Sun editorial board has never forgiven Greg Pettis for being a highly effective queer Democrat in public office, and has actively sought to interfere with his political campaigning and to fabricate the appearance of wrongdoing at every opportunity. If Mr. Pettis had been an affluent Republican, the Desert Sun would have been curiously silent. But, because the Desert Sun believes politics should be the pursuit of the white, the well-off, and the straight, it will eagerly attempt to discredit and defame any office holder who does not meet its own criteria. Its apparent obsession with doing whatever harm it can to Greg Pettis has led it into tawdry political alliances with the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, and its carrying of her water, and its unashamed willingness to traffic in verifiable lies on her behalf, has been unethical and unacceptable. If anyone should be run out of office, is the mayor of Cathedral city.
By: Paul S. Marchand
My friend and sometime colleague Greg Pettis recently became president of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Having served on SCAG policy committees, I can attest that being president of SCAG is no easy job. It represents real achievement, and is a testament to the regard in which Mr. Pettis is held by his peers and colleagues, and I congratulate him on his achievement.
Over at the Desert Sun, our local Gannett organ, institutional hatred of Greg Pettis seems to have blinded that newspaper to the value added Greg brings the Coachella Valley. In a series of slanted articles and sanctimonious, self-righteous editorials, the Desert Sun has sought --- with, at best, limited success --- to minimize his achievements, and worse, to fabricate some sort of scandal out of Mr. Pettis’s travel expenses, by which it hopes to see him driven from office.
Of course, this is par for the course for the Desert Sun. In past campaigns, Desert Sun resources and personnel were made available under the table to Mr. Pettis’s political opponents, and the Desert Sun unblushingly sought to paint Mr. Pettis in the worst possible light. Indeed, to borrow an old phrase from Lyndon Johnson: if Greg Pettis were seen walking on the waters of the Salton Sea, the Desert Sun would rush to print with a hyperventilating editorial lambasting Greg for his inability to swim, and talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly would no doubt echo such sentiments.
Of course, the gravamen of the Desert Sun’s monomaniacal, nay, rabid, years-long pursuit of Mr. Pettis is that public service ought to be the preserve of white, wealthy, heterosexual Republicans, to which no middle or working class queer person, especially not queer Democrats, should apply.
Indeed, the Desert Sun’s conduct raises disturbing questions about class, ethics, homophobia, and what the Sun apparently sees as its mission to defend established conservative political dispensations in the Coachella Valley.
For many years, there has existed a view, prevalent in politically conservative circles, that persons in public office should subsidize their public service from private means. While such a view might have been unexceptionable in 18th century England, where members of Parliament were not compensated, and where public service or public office were accompanied by a de facto means test, the emergent democracy of the United States soon rejected at the federal level the idea that private wealth should be a prerequisite to public service.
Now, the Desert Sun impliedly calls, with dog whistles and code phrases, for the reimposition of just such a de facto means test for local elective office. The Desert Sun has been careful to avoid specifically accusing Greg Pettis of any crime, but its nudge-nudge, wink-wink suggestion has been that because Mr. Pettis has done public work and been compensated from the public fisc, he must necessarily be guilty of some kind of nameless transgression. Presumably, had Mr. Pettis applied private personal wealth to public service, the classist Desert Sun would have had no trouble with such a thing.
The Desert Sun’s suggestion in this matter is unacceptable, unethical, and un-American. If the Desert Sun believes Mr. Pettis has been guilty of a crime, then its editors ought to have the testicular fortitude --the balls-- to come right out with their suggestion. If the Desert Sun does not believe Mr. Pettis has been guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, then they need to acknowledge that reality forthrightly and concurrently acknowledge that they are in effect trying to act as a de facto legislator, seeking to impose their own particular rules and norms upon local public office holders.
Given the Desert Sun’s reputation for trying to play kingmaker, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that the newspaper has succumbed to the arrogance of influence in trying to dictate what is and is not appropriate behavior on the part of our public officials. Unfortunately for the Desert Sun, we already have a legislature; it sits in Sacramento, and is not answerable to Greg Burton or any of the other self-important dependable conservative water carriers at the Desert Sun.
If anyone has been guilty of anything, it has been Desert Sun. Not only has the Desert Sun been guilty of classism, it has also been guilty of political homophobia. Greg Pettis makes no secret of being an out gay man. He was the first out gay man to have run and won as an out gay men in the Coachella Valley. I was the second. I know that the Desert Sun has always had a preferential option for non-queer candidates and officeholders, and has always been very ready to condemn and attack queerfolk in public office for the slightest transgressions, whether real or existing only in the hyperventilated minds of the Desert Sun’s editorial staff.
Let us remember that as recently as the end of the last century, the Desert Sun still got its editorial knickers in a swivet over a drag queen night at the local minor-league ballpark, wringing its metaphorical hands over whether the impressionable children of our Valley should be “exposed to such conduct.” (While comparisons are always odious, it should be noted that the L.A. Times of 1997 would not even have thought drag queens at a local ballpark newsworthy, and would certainly not have wasted print or bandwidth obsessing over whether children should be “exposed to such conduct.”)
A newspaper that could get itself so wrought up over drag queens in 1997 still has much work to do in 2013 if the idea of queerfolk serving in public office seems to excite in its personnel such a sense of panic that Desert Sun reporters and administrative personnel gave their time and effort to Mr. Pettis’s opponents in the primary campaign of 2008, when one reporter actually boosted confidential information from the Pettis campaign and provided it to Pettis’s opponents, and when other personnel of the Desert Sun were deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of an anti-Pettis political website.
Clearly, in the eyes of the Desert Sun and the conservative fellow travelers who call the shots there, Greg Pettis has been guilty of the unpardonable sin of being a highly effective queer Democrat in local public office. Apparently the Desert Sun has no problem with queerfolk as long as we are nothing more than harmless, affluent exotics, tastefully redecorating midcentury houses and giving fabulous benefit functions for worthy causes, but when a middle-class homosexual has the temerity to undertake public service, and to undertake it well, being held in sufficient esteem by his peers to be made president of SCAG, then the Desert Sun’s amour propre has been offended, and its sense of offense leads it into tawdry political alliances with Kathleen Joan DeRosa, the most dangerously sociopathic mayor in the corporate history of Cathedral City.
Indeed, so blatant has been the Desert Sun’s obvious bias, prejudice, corruption, and interest in its slanted reporting and hatchet piece editorializing that thread comments supporting Greg Pettis have heavily outnumbered those condemning him, and the wave of outrage both DeRosa and the Desert Sun evidently hope will sweep him from office does not seem to be materializing. Instead, the Desert Sun’s pursuit of Greg Pettis seems to have accomplished nothing more than a hardening, extension, and escalation of community contempt for both it and the power-hungry mayor who so evidently set this latest pursuit in train. If anyone deserves to be run out of public office for this latest nonsense, it is Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as member of the city Council. He is familiar with the workings of such regional bodies as SCAG and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
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