Larry Miller, contributing humorist
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THIS IS LARRY MILLER, your Special Man On The Street, Self-Appointed Hollywood Recall Election Correspondent, reporting live from the rooftops of Universal City. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. I can see the lights of the explosions below me in Encino. Oh, the humanity! No, wait, that's just the premiere of "T3." Where was I? Ah, yes, the state is ablaze on the left and the right, and I feel like Raymond Burr leaning out a window in Tokyo narrating the carnage before being knocked through the uprights by Godzilla.
Or someone with a better build. Now, from the very beginning of this madcap adventure I have been against, against, against, and against the recall, and it seems every day I add another "against." Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I'll see the light in the next seven weeks, but I can't help thinking that even if the Republicans (whoever they are at this point) manage to beat Davis and put someone in office, they'd just be sliding over and taking the wheel of a truck that's already gone off the cliff.
What news, Horatio? Here's what: Cruz Bustamante (which I still think sounds like the junior officers' nickname for an Italian honeymoon ship) is essentially neck and neck with Schwarzenegger in the polls. Cruz has become a nationally known figure because of all this, which is significant given that until last week his parents weren't even sure who he was. They know now. He's tied with Arnold,
who is apparently not über alles anymore. And how dumb can I possibly be about all this? I still think Gray Davis is going to foil them all and win.
First, a tiny bit of history. The California state constitution, which, as every schoolchild knows, begins its preamble with the stirring phrase, "We, The Idiots," added its recall provision around 1911. To place that moment a little better in the story of the Golden State, this was two years before a young director named Cecil B. DeMille had bad weather filming in Arizona and sent a cable to his bosses in New York saying, "FLAGSTAFF NO GOOD FOR OUR PURPOSE. HAVE PROCEEDED TO CALIFORNIA. WANT AUTHORITY TO RENT A BARN IN PLACE CALLED HOLLYWOOD FOR SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH. CECIL." (True story.) Anyway, after the recall law, there followed several other additions, like direct voting on propositions and referenda. These were all progressive measures designed to return a decibel or two of the vox populi to a government that was, apparently, in unrelenting thrall to railroads, shipping, and maybe even cattlemen. Remember also, these were the days when newspapers large and small regularly held forth against things like Chinese immigration, a stance that began to evaporate as more and more of my ancestors read DeMille's telegram and headed west to (a) make movies, and (b) get decent take-out.
The recall amendment was tinked in 1974, but just a hair. (I still had hair in 1974, but I don't believe the two are related.) The point is, any of you who think the current dust-up is a perversion of democracy should know that recalls have been tried here before, dozens of times in fact, and Ronald Reagan (R) and Jerry Brown (D) were both targets.
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