When the National is Really Local

I love how everyone in Brentwood, California loves to go to your house or Larry David's house or my house and meet Howard Dean or Al Gore and talk about saving the world from global warming but then nobody even notices or says anything or DOES anything when there is a CLEARLY WRONGHEADED construction project creating traffic, pollution, and delays to thousands of people right in Brentwood. This is exactly the type of 'quality of life' issue that the Clinton administration focused on to great effect, ways that government can make people's day to day lives better --precisely the kinds of things most politicians (and Brentwood liberals) find too small or boring to get into.

And then, when I call my councilman, Bill Rosendahl, whose NAME is on the sign at the site of the badly organized, pocket-lining, six-month long, one lane of traffic construction project. And of course I got some little aide who didn't know shit and this is the project and blah blah blah. And THIS makes me reflect the sentiments of others I've met who say, 'They're all bad (politicians), fuck them all, and the system is corrupt and grotesque and, above all, STUPID and BADLY MANAGED.'

Who do I call now? Laurie David? Al Gore? Ari Emanuel, my agent? No. Why? Because there is NOTHING GLAMOROUS about a pork barrel, traffic-causing, stupid local problem. After all, this is Hollywood, and people only work on the 'issues' that are as sexy as a movie star.