City Proved Too Peaceful to Merit Inclusion in Riot Reaction TV Talk

The home front.

* Television adage: When it bleeds, it leads.

“The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour” on Monday decided to do a round-table talk with big-city mayors to ask about the reaction in their locales after the Rodney King case verdict. Screening calls went out.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor told MacNeil-Lehrer reporter Shannon Bradley that San Diego had managed to avoid major problems through the efforts of local officials, cops and community leaders, as well as an overall improvement in police-community relations in recent years.

At first, Bradley, a former San Diegan, was enthusiastic. Later, she called back with the letdown.

Co-anchor Robert MacNeil thought it would be “unfair” to include O’Connor on the same panel with mayors whose cities suffered violence and looting after the verdict.

Hey, isn’t that what critics say about the media: that they only want to report bad news?

“There’s a certain amount of truth to that,” Bradley says. “Sad to say, but true.”

* T-shirt being sold at London Underground clothing store in Fashion Valley: “NOT GUILTY? B.S.”

Done up graffiti style. Black lettering on white.

Store owner Dean Mostofi says he sold 300 over the weekend, nearly all to affluent white kids.

* So far, the $5,000 reward has not brought a single tip about the identity of the sniper(s) who shot at (but missed) two San Diego cops on Thursday night.

* One of the calls to the San Diego hot line established to let people sound off about the verdict was collect from Los Angeles: A distraught woman asking why L.A. doesn’t have a similar hot line.

* Venting the venters.

San Diegans who manned the hot line will gather May 13 to compare notes on what they heard.

* San Diego hotels and motels report a slight uptick in occupancy from tourists and others fleeing Los Angeles.

The flip side: Some Angelenos with reservations canceled because they needed to protect their homes.

* T-shirt being hawked on street corners in Los Angeles: “My Parents Looted Ralphs and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

Robbed of a Protest

Other stuff.

* A thief has stolen the bedsheet cross that Hugh and Elaine Willner draped down the canyon hillside behind their Clairemont home.

The Willners’ cross, meant to show solidarity with the City Council’s fight to save the Mt. Soledad cross, was highly visible from Interstate 5.

The thief is thought to have scaled the steep hill from Morena Boulevard under cover of darkness.

* Yes, the Tinker Bell impersonator on page T10 of the Disneyland supplement included in The Times on Sunday did seem to have a mustache. Nice legs, though.

* Sticker on the toilet-paper dispenser in the men’s room at Bazaar del Mundo: “Recycle Congress.”

* A joint fund-raiser is planned for tonight at Rumors Cafe in Ocean Beach for former Gov. Jerry Brown and congressional hopeful Bill Winston.

Interesting since both of Winston’s major opponents in the Democratic primary, Byron Georgiou and Lynn Schenk, worked for the Brown Administration.

* A San Diego audience will help choose the $100,000 winner for television’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on May 17. Also audiences in L.A., Orlando, Fla., and Hartford-New Haven.

* Political activism by the ton.

A Save the Rhino Walk is set for 8 a.m. Saturday in Balboa Park.

* Newly formed in San Diego: A social group for former New Yorkers.

No, they do not sit around and compare mugging stories. I checked.

In the Eye of the Beholder

As you know, the hottest political issue in Carlsbad is the beachfront sculpture done by a New York artist.

Some see art. Others see a bunch of bars.

And now an untitled limerick by Charles Nordin in a mobile home park’s newsletter:

A Carlsbad artist, enraged

At an Easterner’s being engaged

To design a new park

Said, “She misses the mark

For she, not an ape, should be caged.”