People’s Republic of Berkeley a Republican State
by Steed Dropout
Mar. 21, 2014
After Rand Paul’s Don’t Spy on Me Tour in the belly of Berkeley’s radical beast, Wednesday …. Let’s sort this out together.
Paul, leading polls as the Republican presidential candidate, spoke a half-mile from Ho-Chi-Minh park. Next-door to a million dollar tree-sit demo that lasted more than two years. Nestled in the lower Berkeley hills, which were under FBI surveillance 55 years ago. A stone’s throw from Berkeley’s People’s Park.
Two blocks from Sproul Plaza, with its plaque commemorating Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement. Is this belly of the beast enough?
Rand Paul, right. Photo by Ted Friedman.
The 500, presumably Republicans and Libertarians, who gave Paul a standing ovation in Berkeley comprise, at best, five percent of Berkeley’s voters–according to voting records. If these ovators even were Berkeley voters and not shills.
Liberal Democratic Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom was on hand, just to be on hand. Newsom heard Paul call Bill Clinton “a sex-predator” to guffaws and wild applause. Newsom was not guffawing.
RADICAL BEASTS BUMMED
There is not one Berkeley office-holder whom Berkeley Reporter dare ask about Paul. Here in the people’s republic of Berkeley it is not o.k for Paul to oppose gay-marriage and abortion. Okay already about spy-planes and guns for all.
Yet there’s something about Paul that makes him Berzerkeley material. Paul’s main berzerkeley qualification: he’s that brother from another planet you meet on Telegraph. If he would care to stay here, he might be mayor.
Newsom, left. Photo by Ted Friedman.Linguistic analysis (influenced by deconstructionism) shows that Berkeley’s People’s Republic, an anachronism, is by definition a republican state.
Kriss Worthington, Berkeley’s three-term South Side council-man, called his moderate city council adversaries “reactionaries,” during Berkeley’s recent elections but stopped short of the R word. According to Worthington, Berkeley isn’t even as progressive as nearby Richmond.
Progressive Berzerkeley political observers believe that city government has sold out to developers and that Berkeley of yore is gone with Gore. The people I write about complain about the new Berslickerley, flooded with Berkeley-style foodies, and view-blocking up-scale apartments.
Maybe that’s why Rand Paul’s appearance was not featured in the local press. The New York Times ran Paul’s podium shot, like a flag. Berkeley yawned. Paul who?
Just some neo-Republican Nemo out of water in a town known as a Republican state.
These views do not reflect those of the publications in which my work appears.
