How soon is now?

Here’s what I really liked about  Michele Ellson’s article Monday about Michael Colantuono’s latest letter to the Alameda County District Attorney.   This was a great example of journalism.  Somewhere along the years  journalism morphed from reporting the important facts into the need to report what “all sides” think.   Even if the “other side” is one cranky person sitting with a tin foil hat on and takes that contrary position on all issues.   It’s a journalist’s job to call bullshit when there is bullshit present and that’s exactly what Michele E. did in her article.

So the lead up to the letter Michele discusses in her article is that during Michael Colantuono’s performance at the “Special Meeting” to decide whether or not the City Council was going to authorize the City to file a civil lawsuit against Councilwoman Lena Tam, Michael Colantuono mentioned several times that he didn’t get one letter from John Keker, Lena Tam’s attorney.  And despite not having received it yet, but having received the letter from the District Attorney declining to move forward with the fruits of his investigation, he intended to spend more City money to send a response letter to John Keker’s final letter.

Michele posted that letter here.

At first the letter starts out fairly normally, Michael Colantuono essentially writes that he is disappointed by the District Attorney’s decision and there’s some legalese thrown around that suggests that the DA simply doesn’t understand the law and that she (and her staff) are too stupid to understand the complexities of the Brown Act.  (Clearly I’m paraphrasing here)

But then the letter takes a really weird turn where it stop being about the law and starts being about the District Attorney’s biases in favor of Lena Tam because Lena Tam (and other Lena Tam supporters) all endorsed District Attorney Nancy O’Malley in her completely uncontested election in June.  Because I’m sure that Nancy O’Malley was sweating that election out of fear that she might not have enough endorsements to pull her through her uncontested race.   And have you seen the list of her endorsements? It’s a mile long.  You know I bet I could find some connections between Nancy O’Malley and Kevin Bacon based on her endorsement list too.

The best part of the letter was the “gotcha” moment that Michael Colantuono triumphantly writes about proving, without a doubt, that Nancy O’Malley and Lena Tam are BFF and, therefore, she should have “recused” herself from making this determination because, of course, being someone’s BFF would make you biased:

I understand that some months ago, before my investigation began, Ms. Tam told other City officials that she and Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker had car trouble while driving in the City and that you personally came to pick them up. That she felt comfortable sharing this story suggests that Ms. Tam feels a degree of personal familiarity with you.

Aha! He “nailed ‘em.”

Except the fact that the car ride never happened.  Both Lena Tam and Nancy O’Malley both denied that Nancy O’Malley acted as AAA for the two ladies.

I think that whoever the “City Official(s)” that were “told” by Lena Tam this story need to come forward.   Then we can have a lot of finger pointing and they can call both Lena Tam and Nancy O’Malley liars over the whole car ride story.

At this point, the efforts of Michael Colantuono are just embarrassing.     I mean, he might has well have just written: “Hey, both Nancy O’Malley and Lena Tam are both female.   They both have lady bits.   Nancy O’Malley is clearly biased in favor of Lena Tam!”

But this quote is great though from Michele’s article:

“In my 26 years in the district attorney’s office, I really have never seen a situation where someone makes something so personal and puts it in the media,” O’Malley said. “I think that’s just his style.”

Here’s hoping that Michael Colantuono will agree to make the District Attorney response to him public.  I can’t wait to read it!

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