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The video is damning.
A stone-faced Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stood silently as a British reporter asked whether she had anything to tell Angelenos as the most destructive fire in the city’s history raged. She was on her way back from Africa, half a world away, attending the inauguration of Ghana’s president.
“Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?” Sky News correspondent David Blevins asked Bass on Wednesday afternoon as she waited to deplane at Los Angeles International Airport. He kept lobbing questions as she and an aide walked away, including, “Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?”
Bass mostly avoided eye contact and didn’t utter a word — not even a “no comment.”
The first-term mayor would have much to say hours later at a news conference, flanked by fellow L.A. County political leaders — council members, supervisors, the sheriff, police chief and school superintendent. Reading a speech, Bass described the conflagrations happening around the city and neighboring suburbs — in Pacific Palisades, out in Sylmar and around Pasadena and Altadena — as “the Big One” and urged everyone to rally around one another.
“This is a big moment,” she said. “It’s a big moment for all of us to come together, for Angelenos to be united, for Angelenos to be prepared to help each other. This is who we are.”
Her positive pablum came too late to stop critics from casting her as a modern-day Nero, the emperor who supposedly fiddled away as Rome burned.
The attacks came from conservatives like Elon Musk, who called her “utterly incompetent” on social media. They came from progressives, who pointed out that her most recent city budget called for cutting expenses at the Fire Department while increasing spending at the Police Department.
They came from the political center via billionaire developer Rick Caruso, a Republican-turned-Democrat whom Bass defeated in the 2022 mayoral race and whose daughter lost a house in the Palisades fire. Attacks came too from CNN anchors, who repeatedly pressed L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson on whether it was smart for his longtime ally to be out of town when the blaze started.
L.A. is scared, seething and looking for a scapegoat — and who better, it seems, than a mayor who jetted to another continent despite warnings from weather forecasters that devastating winds were about to blast through a region that hasn’t seen substantial rainfall in months?
Never mind that she inherited a city with creaking infrastructure, gaping budget deficits and voters who demanded she address homelessness and crime more than fire mitigation. Or that few questioned her Ghana trip when she left on Saturday, before the wind warnings turned completely dire. A 20-year political career in Sacramento, Capitol Hill and City Hall — and before that, decades of community activism in South L.A. — is in danger of going up in smoke.
Accountability is essential, and many questions will be put to city, county, state and federal officials once the fires calm down, which sadly doesn’t seem to be anytime soon. When calamities happen, the person at top — whether mayor, governor or president — usually gets the first barbs thrown at them, fairly or not. Bass, of all people, should know it’s never a good look for an elected official to ignore a reporter, no matter how impolite or inopportune the queries may be.
But playing the blame game in a city like Los Angeles, ever at the edge of destruction, is a pendejo‘s errand. Because if we’re going to point fingers at Bass for this once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe, we might as well do the same to others.
Let’s blame the residents who chose to live in areas that were an inferno waiting to happen.
Let’s blame the people who went on with their lives as kindling formed through L.A.’s hills and urban greenery dried up.
Let’s blame the fire officials who knew this day would come and should have had firefighters already deployed instead of sending them after the fact, because of the hell that was inevitably going to erupt.
Let’s blame Angelenos whose houses aren’t on fire but keep overusing water when every drop is needed to put out embers from Malibu to Hollywood to the foothills.
Let’s blame incoming President Donald Trump, who went on social media to blame the fires on Gov. Gavin “Newscum.”
Let’s blame Caruso, the sorest political loser in L.A. since former Mayor Sam Yorty, who has spent most of this week of woe blasting Bass to any media outlet that’ll let him while employing a private firefighting crew to protect his Pacific Palisades shopping plaza.
Let’s blame ourselves collectively, above all. We’ve long known our paradise can disappear in an instant, yet act surprised, again and again, when it does. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.
See how foolish the blame game is? It can never stop and only distracts at the worst possible moment, which is right now.
Bass’ news conference remarks were hardly soaring, but they were right. Unity and mutual assistance are the messages the city should take to heart, not throwing stones at the easiest target while she, and all of us, still have a job to do.
It’s easy to say in hindsight that Bass — who once chaired a congressional subcommittee on Africa — should have never gone to Ghana, or should have returned the moment the National Weather Service ratcheted up its forecast to announce that an epochal windstorm was coming. But is Bass never to leave city limits just because a disaster can flare up at any second? Is L.A.’s mayor supposed to act as if the megalopolis is a Mayberry, with no foreign relations to foster?
It’s an unrealistic standard — but one that Bass will have to answer to for the rest of her time at City Hall.
The mayor’s biggest miscalculation was assuming the public would grant her grace the way other elected officials have. At the Wednesday news conference, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger (whose district includes Pasadena and Altadena) revealed that she was in constant contact with Bass the moment the fires hit, praising her as a “true leader.”
Bass severely underestimated the public’s demand for leaders to be at the front lines instead of working the phones. And that just might be politically fatal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Westside residents who lost everything try to recall the mayor for her supposed abrogation of duty. And you know opponents will flash photos of her Africa travels on campaign literature when she runs for reelection.
Bass won her race two years ago in part by boasting that her state and federal connections would help L.A. tap into funds and resources. That’s the only thing that can save her career and reputation now, as the city seeks help on its long road to recovery.
She doesn’t deserve the Nero smear, but she does need to step up. What Bass does from this point forward is how history should judge her — not based on where she was when there were no fires to worry about, when we all hoped things wouldn’t get too bad and foolishly assumed everything would turn out all right.
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