Believe it or not, I actually like it when the San Francisco Chronicle publishes Cat Brooks’ op-eds, because they’re so filled with ridiculousness and untruths that they give me plenty of opportunity to utilize my skills as a writer to refute.
Her latest is headlined “Movement stalls in ‘progressive’ S.F.” but it actually should be called “I’m in the dustbin of History, and I resent it.” Brooks’ grievances are hardly new; she’s been whining about the same stuff for years. But this time, she’s particularly aggrieved. The “movement” for so-called police reform that she believes she helped usher in—with Boudin’s election and early support for defunding the police—is now “exploding,” by which she means the public has turned radically against anti-cop wokeism. That same public, outraged by the crime wave that Brooks and her cohorts provide political and ideological cover for, is insisting that thugs be arrested and thrown in jail, not re-routed through revolving doors that let them return to the streets to prey upon us over and over.
We see this shift in public sentiment in several ways.
• Scott, who has the support of most San Franciscans, broke off relations with Boudin’s office after concluding the D.A. wasn’t treating cops fairly.
• Boudin is likely to be recalled.
• S.F. has increased funding for cops.
• Three ultra-woke members of the School Board were just recalled.
• The public, from Chinatown to Union Square businesses all the way out to the Avenues, is insisting on greater public safety.
All this is anathema to Brooks. “What the hell is happening in San Francisco?” she asks. Here’s the answer: You, and people like you, are being repudiated. Let me be blunter: You’ve lost this battle, Cat Brooks. The public doesn’t like you. Your supporters have shrunk down to a small, pitiful, irrelevant base. Nobody cares about your Anti Police-Terror Project. And you can’t deal with it. The Chronicle, by which I single out Matt Fleischer, the editorial page editor, only publishes you because he thinks by doing so he’s being “diverse” when, in reality, he’s offending what few readers the Chronicle has left.
The funniest part of Brooks’ op-ed was when she insulted the jury that found a San Francisco cop, Terrance Stangel, not guilty of assault and battery after he hit a man with his baton. The jury might have been “tainted by media coverage,” Brooks wrote, an odd observation given that Brooks is the ultimate media creature. This is an old tactic—denigrating a jury when it doesn’t go your way—but once again, this just proves how desperate Brooks is. She’s throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to see if anything sticks. But nothing is.
Brooks ends her tirade with another howler: “If ‘progressive’ San Francisco can’t get it right, the forecast for the nation is grim.” Wrong again. Your forecast is grim, Cat Brooks. As for the nation, we’ll do just fine, thank you, now that we’ve rejected wokeism.
Steve Heimoff