Sacramento County DA debate + Fire scars run deep in Paradise + Twitter’s ‘imaginary country’
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Happy Sunday! Gosh, last week felt like Friday would never come.
Of course, we’re wrapping up our endorsement interview season here on the editorial board, meeting with candidates from all over the Sacramento area. We’ll be rolling out nearly 20 candidate endorsements over the course of the week, with the first three publishing Monday exclusively for Bee subscribers.
In the meantime, though, we’ve been releasing edited transcripts of our interviews with candidates in interesting races, such as the Sacramento City Council race in District 3 between Karina Talamantes and Michael Lynch; and the battle for the 7th District Assembly seat between Ken Cooley and Josh Hoover.
We also had our second and last live debate for the season this week, between Sacramento County District Attorney candidates Alana Mathews and Thien Ho. You can watch that video live on any of the Sacramento Bee’s social media platforms, or click here. They’re both incredibly well-informed candidates and it was a great conversation, moderated by California Opinion Editor Marcos Breton.
I know midterm elections tend to have depressingly low voter turnout, but hey, if you’re here reading this newsletter, then it’s more than likely you’re already a well-informed voter, so please check out the transcripts and the endorsements. I think some of what the candidates had to say was very surprising…
Now let’s move on to the best columns of the week:
They Say You Can’t Go Home Again
When a wildfire scars a community, there’s only two options: Rebuild your life somewhere else, or return to the scene of your greatest trauma. For many in Paradise — which experienced the devastating Camp Fire in 2018 — returning home was the only way to begin healing.
But what does it mean to live in a community that’s been burned once, and could get burned again? What responsibility do developers and homeowners have to curtail intrusion into the so-called Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) where the vast majority of wildfire destruction and death occurs?
I examined those questions in a column that accompanied our Sunday cover story, drawing on my experience living in Butte County in the days and months after California’s deadliest wildfire.
“Housing is cheap in the WUI, which is why it has attracted so many residents seeking to escape California’s high-priced cities. The adrenaline after a traumatic event will often lead survivors down a path of choices — including rebuilding — that years later, they may come to regret.”
Musk Schmusk
In case you somehow missed it, Tesla owner and billionaire Elon Musk is purchasing Twitter. Deputy Opinion Editor Josh Gohlke wrote a column calling the social media platform “an imaginary country crowded with people prone to overestimate their own importance.” As an active resident of that imaginary country, I have to say I agree.
“Granted, Musk, whose acolytes insist he is a genius, is indeed ingenious at drawing disproportionate attention to himself,” Gohlke wrote. “His $44 billion purchase of Twitter seems like a very expensive extension of his trollish use of the platform — the mother of all virulent tweets.”
It seems what Musk really wants is not the freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment, but rather, a public presence free from moderation.
“From Hearst to hedge funds, media companies have always been vulnerable to dubious ownership. The difference is that old media are subject to legal, regulatory and normative constraints,” Gohlke wrote.
Methinks it reeks of “rules for thee, but not for me”...
Opinion of the Week
“By the way, you shouldn’t smile. I see a cross between Joe Biden and the Joker.” — an angry reader’s comment to Bee Cartoonist Jack Ohman, who took on the insult in his own unique way… and resulted in some artwork that will forever haunt my nightmares.
Got thoughts? What would you like to see in this newsletter every week? Got a story tip or an opinion to tell the world? Let us know what you think about this email and our work in general by emailing us at any time via opinion@sacbee.com.
(By the way, I have neither gotten my fresh kugel from Hannah Holzer nor my beret from Yousef Baig’s recent foray to France, and I’m starting to think that holding people accountable via a newsletter is not particularly binding.)
C’est la vie and all that jazz,
