I haven’t liked it much here lately. It took me 10 years to realize I was wrong: OC is just as conservative as the stereotype, which I’d denied up and down to anyone listening. Hell, I was surrounded by right-thinking folks at the Weekly and consorted only with museum types, punks and drunkards. John Birch is dead. Long live la raza!
It took Arnold’s propositions, overwhelmingly denied through the rest of the state and overwhelmingly approved here, to make me see just how willingly I’d blinded myself. But it’s not the conservatism that bothers me: principled stands of any kind are a-okay with me. It’s the nastiness. The nattering classes I’d thought were fringy were in fact the opinion makers. The Scrooges on the local blogs went to war lest the OC Board of Supes approve LouCorrea’s motion to insure 20,000 of the county’s poorest kids with an outlay of just $2.1 million. It would, they fumed, create an entitlement. Now, how many millions do you think the supes spend on mailings?
When I lived in Irvine-then-Laguna Beach I always wanted to hang out with Commie Girl because the Orange County she wrote about was always much much cooler than anything I ever saw and always eluded me. That isn't to say there's nothing good about the place, but she always seemed to live in an OC that was just off limits to me.
Oh well, hopefully she comes back in the New Year and keeps defending the OC's honor as despite its flaws it isn't *that* bad.