The more I think about it, the more unhinged Thao’s Monday performance seems. She was insane during those moments—let us hope, only temporarily deranged, for she’s still mayor and has a lot on her plate. But her paranoia, self-pity, hysteria and vengeful anger were really unseemly, and more: frightening. This is the leader of Oakland?

It’s interesting that corporations that used to brag about their commitment to diversity “are now tiptoeing away” from woke DEI practices, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal last week. Two, three, four years ago DEI was all the rage. Almost every business in the country was embracing it, including some of the most marquis brands in America: Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Cisco and Marriott. The latter’s mission statement was typical: “At Marriott, we create an inclusive environment that supports the recruitment, retention, and advancement of all employees, and actively engage in efforts to develop a diverse and inclusive workforce, owner, guest, and supplier base.”

You may recall that during the 2008 Presidential campaign, John McCain was stumping at a town hall, talking to an audience, when a crazy old lady told him she couldn’t trust Obama because he was “an Arab.”

At the Coalition for a Better Oakland, we’ve worked hard to get rid of the likes of Sheng Thao, who we correctly perceived as a crass, manipulative politician, entirely owned by private interests, and with no particular moral beliefs or intellectual skills. She was one of those grifters who went along with whoever gave her the most money, especially corporations and labor unions. The result, as we’ve seen, has been disastrous for Oakland.

I’m not even going to try to out-report other media outlets on this major scandal because I can’t. I don’t have the resources of, say, Steven Tavares or KTVU or Oaklandside. What I can write is that it looks really bad for Thao, and maybe Kaplan and Kalb too; and the spillover effect could impact the entire City Council, not to mention the Pamela Price recall.