Political Junkie

We're only getting to this story now because it takes four days for magazines to travel across our great lands to us yokels out here in the Western hinterlands -- the New Yorker deigns to focus its little monocle on the far end of Democrat-Blue America and presents a rather one-sided hagiography of our boy wonder mayor, Gavin Newsom. The New Yorker doesn't provide a link to the article, but the hard-working wonks at Usual Suspects have thoughtfully scanned the article in .pdf format for those of you unwilling to shell out $50+ a year for a subscription to a magazine whose contents you will never read more than 60% of. (Does anyone remember that Onion article, "Stack of Unread New Yorkers Celebrates First Anniversary?")

The article, by the New Yorker's Hollywood correspondent (and Mr. Amanda Hesser) Tad Friend, focuses mainly on Newsom's anti-crime initiatives, along with heartwarming anecdotes about his wacky voice imitations, his adoring staff, and homilies about his childhood. Curiously, Tad skips the part of the story most of us remember, the mayoral runoff, and the only person willing to go on the record and talk about the progressives' love-hate relationship with Newsom is (of course) Supervisor Chris Daly. (Bless him.) All Tad says on any of this is, in a shocked tone, that "Some people in San Francisco believe that Newsom might have approved gay marriage as a sop to the progressives." (No way! People think that? They are so cynical out there in the city with the fog and the sunshine!) Everyone else, it's all "Newsom loves us the gay people!" and "Gavin, he just loves to play basketball with the kids in the housing projects, even though his shoes are inappropriate for sports!" (Though SFist must confess that we did not know that Newsom had been approached to play for the Texas Rangers! Maybe the Buenos could come over and heckle Gavin too.)

And playing the role of Teresa Heinz Kerry in this article -- our own lovely Kimberly G-N! Kimberly now says she's tired of being called a lingerie model, and that she'd been thinking about running for DA all along, but decided not to because there would be "too much power on one mattress." (Ew.) Huh. Guess she wasn't fired by Kamala Harris after all. Kimberly also says that she and the Gav are San Francisco's Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. Yeah, US Weekly is here all the time taking "First Ladies! They're Just Like US!" photos, you can't even get across the street anymore in Pacific Heights.

Friend does, however, note, in a puzzled tone, that people seem to be mocking the Newsoms' Harpers' photo. Which gives us another excuse to run it here!