In the last few months, a good many people have written me asking why I no longer write about national and international events in this column. It is a question of the function of the column in relation to the magazine as a whole. San Francisco is now much more locally and community oriented, and so is this column. There has not been a serious investigation of the hidden political life of the City since the Atherton Investigation, long before the Second World War, and that was not precipitated by the newspapers.
San Francisco is an inordinately smug city. The editors of the local papers would deny that there was anything to investigate in our political life. What they mean is that the owners are part of the elaborately interlocking Establishment, and besides, are too tight to spend any money.
What the current contretemps in Washington demonstrates is the total collapse of political morality. The use of the FBI dossiers for purposes of political intimidation dates back to Franklin Roosevelt, who as every old-time political journalist knows, began it with the exhaustive investigation of Huey Long, and of all people, Paul McNutt. He had a quite irrational fear of both men.
So it goes. The only president since Teddy Roosevelt not to be accused of some kind of skullduggery was Eisenhower. He had a very simple recipe for avoiding accusations of crooked activities: avoid activity.
The evidence is all to the contrary. The red light district swarms with male and female prostitutes, most of them on drugs and most of whom roll their tricks. Yet the Mayor and the Chief of Police say there is no organized crime in San Francisco, and San Francisco policemen never accept payoffs. If evidence you require, look about you. Furthermore, such statements raise serious suspicions of complicity. Who is making money and how, out of the Manhattanization of the City?
