What do Alberto Gonzales and Antonio Villaraigosa have in common, besides being Latinos?
They're both on the hot seat.
For the attorney general, it's obvious. In his first day of hearings Thursday, he was grilled mercilessly -- and that was by the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee -- for his role and early attempt to diminish it in the debacle over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
For the mayor, the hot seat is a little more subtle but just as brutal. He's taking a beating. On his failure to land the Olympics. On his costly and poorly conceived plan to take over the city's public schools. Zev Yaroslavky has stolen the mayor's thunder on coming up with a possible solution to the Westside traffic nightmare. And all that is with a friendly news media that hasn't yet started all the doubting and Monday Morning quarterbacking, as it ultimately will, and as it ultimately will have to ask what Jimmy Hahn was saying in 2005 -- that Los Angeles was getting style but no substance, a smile, a wink, charisma and celebrity but little more than a Jell-O Mayor.
Interestingly, it's been about 10 months since Daniel Hernandez's op-ed in the Times took the paper to task on its adoring coverage of Antonio:
"We want him to succeed. We want him to keep us safe, keep us excited about living in L.A. We want him to snag the Olympics, an NFL team and a bigger subway system. We want synchronized stoplights and racial harmony. We want him to make it to the governor's mansion in one squeaky-clean piece. We believe in the man. I mean, he's from East L.A.! How cool is that?
"The reality is that Villaraigosa is a politician, and politicians are, first and foremost, concerned about getting, holding and expanding power."
But then hasn't this been the tale of Latinos in power -- Latinos who raise expectations with their own heightened ambitions. Henry Cisneros, Art Torres and Richard Alatorre come to mind as recent examples. Going back to the height of the Chicano movement, there were Reies Lopez Tijerina, Ramsey Muniz, Corky Gonzales and Jose Angel Gutierrez.
The American news media and the non-Latino Establishment are forever romanticizing the fresh young Latino leader, helping create these legends in their own minds, and all we ever really get is political sopapillas: Rising Latino political stars that look good and say all the right things, but ultimately nothing more than a lot of empty political calories.
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