Will L.A. Ever Hit Rock Bottom?
The rejection of Spencer Pratt suggests the city has further to fall.
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Today in Free Expression, Kate B. Odell praises remote work; Spencer Klavan argues the God-fearing needn’t fear aliens; and Mary Julia Koch wants tennis to stay old-fashioned.
But first, a trip under the bridge . . .
Fallen Angeles
—Jack Butler
How low do you have to get before you accept something has to change? Addicts of various kinds—gambling, alcohol, drugs—often answer this question with their own actions. They’ll hit “rock bottom” when the consequences of their self-destructive behavior become too stark to downplay or ignore.
Cities aren’t people, but the dispiriting results of the Los Angeles mayoral primary make you wonder when that city and others will realize they’ve hit rock bottom.
Former reality-TV star Spencer Pratt waged a spirited, creative and buzzy campaign against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman. Yet the righteous anger he summoned against a government that let his house burn down in last year’s fires, and led the city into decrepitude, has come to naught. Mr. Pratt won’t make it to this fall’s general election. Angelenos will instead choose between left (Ms. Bass) and further-left (Ms. Raman).
You can attribute much of the uproar over Mr. Pratt’s reversal of fortune to the fact that, on Election Night, he looked set to advance, only to be pushed to third as more votes tallied under California’s embarrassing election system came in. But don’t overlook the unique form of despair that comes from the shattering of a hope. In this case, the hope that Mr. Pratt’s bluntness could persuade voters of the dire state of L.A. And things are dire. Profiling Mr. Pratt for the Journal, Tunku Varadarajan provided a glimpse of the city’s famous MacArthur Park:
I saw hundreds of addicts, many hunched over while standing up, like waxwork men melting in the sun. Men and women injected themselves in plain view. A group were piled onto a prone body, fists flailing, beating the victim to a pulp. A man tried to wrestle a Canada goose, while a woman defecated at the edge of the park’s lake. On a corner, a charity-operated food truck doled out lunches to a long, shuffling line. The squalor was breathtaking.
Maybe Mr. Pratt wasn’t the ideal candidate, and 2026 not the right moment, for change. But it didn’t happen in 2022, either. Businessman Rick Caruso lost to Ms. Bass when she first ran for mayor. Her record since hasn’t exactly been stellar, as Mr. Caruso experienced when he lost properties during the fires for which Ms. Bass was initially out of the country.
Sometimes cities do come to their senses. New York reversed its long decline by electing Rudy Giuliani—though only after Mr. Giuliani lost his first race for mayor against incumbent David Dinkins, a steward of decline. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina essentially compelled Louisiana to clean house of its political leadership. Even in California, some amount of sense-recovery is possible. The pro-business, clean-streets agenda of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has begun to save the infamously liberal city from itself.
Not all places are so lucky, however. Chicagoans had the chance to replace the shambolic governance of Lori Lightfoot with competent centrist Paul Vallas in 2023. They picked teachers union stooge Brandon Johnson instead, with predictable results. Voters can also have short memories. New York’s revival was so complete it inspired a collective amnesia. In November, New Yorkers elected Zohran Mamdani, who moved to the city in 1999, and so has no memory of the squalor of the pre-Giuliani era.
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are great cities. They ought to be governed by people who want them to be great, not decaying playgrounds for far-left interest groups and policies. But if they’re ever going to change, the people who live there have to want them to change.
None of the Above: Speaking of civic apathy: There are no options for mayor in the well-heeled Long Island village of Bayville. In a first, not a single person filed to run for the election, which is still being held on June 16, per the New York Post. Up to eight people have now said they’re interested in being considered. The job will go to whatever name gets the most write-in votes. This could lead to a baffling result in a municipality of 7,000 people. The incumbent mayor, who declined to run for re-election, says he’ll keep serving if he wins the all write-in contest. Every vote counts. — J.B.
Holy Dissatisfied: After nearly a century and a half of work, Barcelona’s Sagrada Família Cathedral is nearing completion. However, not everyone is happy. The Journal reports that while the private foundation that manages the cathedral limits the number of ticketed visitors, unticketed tourists crowd around the building. As one local dismissively put it: “We have a theme park called Sagrada Família, and it is dedicated uniquely and exclusively to tourism.” On the one hand, having this ruckus around constantly sounds annoying. But the cathedral didn’t spring up overnight. Surely dealing with crowds is part of the package of living nearby? — Emma Camp
“Talafreako”: Viral AI videos made Spencer Pratt competitive in his campaign for Los Angeles mayor. Now this strategy is showing up in Texas’ Senate race. A conservative PAC, Citizens for Sanity, is dropping a 15-second attack ad in which an AI-generated James Talarico is dressed as Maria in “The Sound of Music” and sings a transgender-themed rendition of “My Favorite Things.” The clip takes aim at the Democratic candidate’s past support of child sex changes, with lines like, “Boys in white dresses with blue satin sashes. Girls dosed with hormones til they grow mustaches.” Time will tell if this tactic helps Republican candidate Ken Paxton in the polls. It didn’t get Mr. Pratt over the line, but it did earn him lots of clicks. — Mary Julia Koch
Remote Work Lets Moms ‘Have It All’
Kate B. Odell
Remote work is the biggest innovation for ambitious women with children since the dishwasher. Today’s opportunities to blend work and family would be unrecognizable to a young career woman in shoulder pads in the 1980s.
Read Kate’s Article ⧁
Are You There God? It’s Me, Spielberg
Spencer Klavan
The director believes the revelation of alien life would destroy most people’s comfortable assumptions about the universe—including those supplied by religion. But most major religions are actually well-equipped to handle the possibility of life in outer space.
Read Spencer’s Article ⧁
Kick the Machine Off the Court
Mary Julia Koch
In the AI era, it’s easy to imagine replacing tennis umpires with perfectly egalitarian, emotionless robots. But it would also rob the sport of personality.
Read Mary Julia’s Article ⧁
Update Your Assumptions
The norms of my childhood are long gone.
By Meghan Cox Gurdon
AI in Schools Makes Students Fools
The best path to AI mastery is total abstinence for as long as possible.
By Thomas Fickley and Mark Perkins
Atlanta Feels Like It’s Falling Apart
A series of shocking and violent incidents has residents like me on edge.
By John McMillian
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Rock bottom? I hope so. Until then, more of the same, I think. The friends I left behind (after I thought I was smart by moving to Seattle, ha) just turn up their radios in the bumper-to-bumper traffic and reminisce about Vin Scully.
I think paying junkies to vote commie also helped. Seems like fraud. But the media/ leftist/islamocommie democrats/ media say that never happens because where’s the evidence even though the junkies say they got paid so I guess it’s not fraud.