BREAKING NEWS: Last night it was announced that Price has reversed her decision to ban independent journalist Emilie Raguso from her press conferences. Raguso will now be admitted, as she should have been from the start. I wrote the below column yesterday, before the news broke. Following the original column, I offer updated remarks on Price’s backtracking.
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There’s a Yiddish word, chutzpah,“the willingness to take risks in a highly shameless and confident manner, that’s often seen as disrespectful or rude.” One example of chutzpah is a person who goes to a job interview and says “I don’t have any of the necessary qualifications, but you should hire me anyway, because I’m smart and I’ll find a way to do the job better than any of the other candidates.” Think of Michael Ross, the lawyer character played by Patrick J. Adams on the T.V. legal drama, Suits. He had chutzpah.
There’s an aspect of chutzpah you have to admire: its boldness and audacity. But there’s also a negative aspect of chutzpah, namely, that there’s something phony about it. The job interviewee, for instance, is gambling on his charm to appeal to the credulity of the interviewer, whom he hopes to bamboozle into hiring him. Here’s another old Yiddish proverb: “Chutzpah is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”
Pamela Price is revealing incredible chutzpah in blocking the journalist Emilie Raguso from Price’s press conferences. It’s clear to anyone with half a brain that Price is doing so out of two qualities she is known to possess in spades: rage and vindictiveness. Raguso’s reporting at The Berkeley Scanner is fair and judicious, which means that Raguso’s even-handed treatment of Price reveals Madame D.A. as she truly is, warts and all. And this is something Price doesn’t like. As hostile to the press as is Trump (unless it’s a worshipful press), Price has carefully avoided press conferences and has often resorted to opaqueness, such as privatizing her Twitter account so that only her friends can access it. (I can think of no other public official whose Twitter account isn’t public, but Price’s isn’t.) Price enjoys operating behind a cloak of secrecy, and banning Raguso is one instance of that fear of transparency.
I was a journalist by profession for more than 30 years and I know a thing or two about how journalism works. It’s protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”. Granted, Price is not Congress; she’s only a county District Attorney. But the spirit of the Constitution holds, or should hold, and Price is violating the spirit of the Constitution. And she’s doing so, not out of patriotic or religious or moral or ethical or intellectual motives, but for the simple expedient of protecting herself. Price is notoriously thin-skinned; she hates being criticized and believes that people who don’t recognize her righteousness are—yes, racists. Just as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel (Samuel Johnson, 1775), so cries of racism are the last refuge of modern scoundrels such as Price, who offers nothing but ad hominem attacks on individuals she believes to be her political enemies. In fact, we can impute to Price an “enemies list” of exactly the same sort as Richard Nixon’s. Emilie Raguso is on it, Butch Ford is on it, and so am I.
You know what I see in photos of Pamela Price? Beneath her colorful wig, masked by an affable smile, is a boiling cauldron of anger and resentment and vengeance. Convinced that America has mistreated her since birth due to the color of her skin, she’s declared war on America and its values, and is determined to destroy what she thinks is a rotting racist structure of White supremacy. People like Price make good criminals because they’re fundamentally amoral and believe that the end justifies the means. If lies have to be told, if murderers have to be released into the community, if hard-working Assistant D.A.s like Butch Ford have to be fired in the name of “equity,” if the First Amendment has to be trashed, then so be it. Price’s philosophy is that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few [White] eggs. And this is why we’re recalling her.
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In announcing her retreat, Price’s office said that blocking Raguso had been due to staff updating the media list. This makes it sound like an innocent mistake. It wasn’t. Price censored Raguso when she thought she could get away with it, and rescinded the block when she realized she couldn’t. The blowback was just too fierce. Once again, Price has been caught in a lie, which only adds to voters’ doubts about her integrity.
Speaking of the Recall, there’s an impression out there that the Recall already has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, so we can relax our efforts to get more. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH! The Recall is in danger, because the unscrupulous Price—desperate to keep her cushy job—is threatening to sue us so she can drag out the process in the courts for months if not years, in a truly Trumpian process of cynicism, delay and nullification. This, too, is chutzpah. What we need to do is present the Alameda County Registrar of Voters with so many signatures that there can be no doubt that we’re in compliance with California constitutional law, and that, even if the courts throw out 50,000 signatures, we’ll still have more than enough to qualify for the ballot (the legally required number is about 74,000).
So I’m issuing another call for volunteers to gather signatures. If you’ve already volunteered, thank you, and please do so again! If you haven’t volunteered, what are you waiting for? If you’re reading this, it probably means you want Price gone. But we need your active help to do it. This is the hard work of democracy. So, please, let me know, and I’ll get you the blank petitions and explain the details of how to do everything legally.
Thank you. In solidarity,
Steve Heimoff