READ IT AND WEEP: No media allowed. I didn’t like it. But I got it. Political fundraising, after all, is a lot like masturbation. By that I mean it’s best done in private and absolutely not in front of the press. So when former president Bill Clinton rolled into town this week for a big-ticket flesh-press at the Hope Ranch manse of former county supervisor Susan Rose, I presumed I would not be welcome. Who would want to be seen shelling out $2,700 just to have one’s photo taken with a former president? But when I was likewise informed no media would be allowed at Clinton’s meet ’n’ greet with a list of “community leaders” — culled and curated by dynastic Democratic dynamo Laura Burton Capps — at the Canary Hotel in downtown Santa Barbara, my angry leg syndrome kicked into overdrive.
To be truthful, I didn’t really care. But I felt duty bound to at least act as if I did. Don’t get me wrong; I’d have loved to see Clinton. Yeah, I know his bill deregulating the finance industry greased the slippery slope that led to the Great Collapse. And who can forget how his omnibus crime bill contributed to our monstrous prison-industrial complex? On the flip side, how many ex-presidents ever could hope to riff with Clinton’s omnivorous knowledge and enthusiasm about such saxophone colossuses as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Ornette Coleman? How many ex-presidents know anything about Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra? (Imagine Duke Ellington abducted by space aliens, and you’re in the ballpark.) Or who can speak with authority about Sleepy LaBeef, the onetime rockabilly legend from Smackover, Arkansas? The answer to all these questions can be answered with just one finger. Clinton, it turns out, only decided to become president after concluding he’d never play sax half as good as these guys. In other words, the White House was his Plan B.
When I showed up at the Canary, a security dude sporting the bald, bad, and bearded look so de rigueur among insecure macho types notified members of media assembled under the Canary’s porte cochere that we were trespassing on private property and needed to vacate posthaste, ipso facto, pronto tonto. Maybe this was his version of a “command and control” voice. When the choir of black-suited security personnel by the entrance became otherwise occupied whispering sweet nothings into their lapels, I slipped in the front door and headed for the basement ballroom. Sensing a presence behind me, I ducked into the men’s room. The presence followed me in but maintained a discreet professional distance. When I concluded my facilitations, the presence politely inquired whether I was a guest. When I answered in the negative, he informed me — again most graciously — I should be someplace else. Conspicuously, he was neither bald nor bearded. It turns out he was part of the McGrew clan — which, like the Clintons and the Capps, ranks as yet another political dynasty of note and influence — whose footprints and fingerprints remain all over the city’s police and fire departments.