Joltin' Joe O'Donaghue
That whole debacle over the Building Inspector Commission? Total gift that keeps on giving. Yesterday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution that bars discriminatory language in public hearings. The resolution, of course, stemmed from comments made during hearings of the BIC in which members of the powerful Residential Builders Association attacked the nomination of Amy Lee because of her pregnancy. It also stems from poetry O'Donoghue wrote earlier this year which questioned the sexuality of Gavin.
And how did O'Donoghue take it? Afterwards, he dismissed the resolution and referred to Board President Aaron Peskin as both an "angry dwarf" and Heinrich Peskin. We're not sure which probably got under Aaron's skin more, being height-challenged and called a dwarf or being Jewish and called a Nazi. Either way, total class, that Joe. Joe also said he's busy crafting another poem in response to all of the controversy and SFist is now cowering in fear that we might have nasty rhymes written about us.
Last week, another little fight broke out over O'Donoghue's comments, this time in the alternative media. Pat Murphy of the San Francisco Sentinel posted a story saying that ex-Supervisor Matt Gonzalez was quietly lobbying against the resolution at the behest of O'Donoghue. Besides being against the rules, it made Mr. Integrity look bad in siding with someone who was behind attacks on pregnant women. Gonzalez sent a letter back to Murphy, which was posted on Chris Daly's blog. Later, Betsey Culp of the SF Call attacked Murphy for slandering Gonzalez, spreading false rumors over the internet (isn't that what the internet is for?) and spread the rumor posted by H. Rap Brown that one of Gonzalez's rivals, Robert Haaland, was spreading the rumor. Got all that? Murphy later admitted he was wrong and later apologized to Matt. Wow, imagine that, a member of the media admitting they were wrong and apologizing. Better hope nobody in the MSM hears about this or there might be trouble ahead for Pat. Peace has since been restored.
Oh, by the way, Amy Lee, the woman behind all this hasn't started working yet. She's out on disability due to stress. And possibly working on a lawsuit too. Oh, and for those of you who actually want to see the video of the event on all this, you can't. It's been taken down from the SFGov site at the behest of the Mayor himself supposedly at the request of Julie. This got the open government folks in a snit and they have since called for hearings.
Anyways, there's an obvious lesson to all of this and that is this: don't mess with pregnant women.