There are 150 different ways to be mad about the Donald Trump tape.
But the particular mad I’m feeling as I write this is like a Hulk-ified version of how I feel when my husband says, “We should try this new restaurant my coworker told me about” even though I too have told him about that same restaurant a million times.
We knew Donald Trump was inappropriate with women already because we heard it from the women themselves. We heard it from Jane Doe, who was 13 when she said she was raped by Trump. We heard it from Ivana Trump. We heard it from Jill Hearth, who accused him of the exact behavior he’s heard admitting to on tape this week. And we heard it from dozens of women who’ve worked with him over the years.
So on top of feeling outraged by Trump’s words themselves, I’m mad because we’re only just now getting this mad.
I’ve recounted countless incidents like the ones Trump described in that tape to friends over the years, and have had friends describe countless incidents to me. There was the time I was out for a training run near USC and came across a group of ROTC soldiers who were out for a run too. As we passed each other one of them stuck his arm straight out in front of me so that I hit it with my chest. He yelled, “Good job, you crossed the finish line!” His friends — all in uniform — all laughed. That’s one of maybe a dozen times I could rattle off the top of my head in which a man who was a stranger thought he had a right to touch me.
Generally, whenever I tentatively recount a creepy instance or feeling I had involving a man who made me uncomfortable, it’s often met with “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”
Sure, maybe he didn’t. Or maybe you’d think about it differently if you heard it straight from him.
What VOSD Learned This Week
So long, Faulconer Watch. That was our running check-in on whether Mayor Kevin Faulconer had weighed in yet on one of the biggest issues facing the city, the Chargers’ plan to build a new stadium.
He did, and now, as they say, our watch has ended.
Scott Lewis examined Faulconer’s endorsement of Measure C from many angles. He talked with the mayor himself about whether he really wants to see it happen. (He said yes.)
Lewis also wondered why the non-binding “promises” Faulconer extracted from the team were good enough to win the mayor over now, when non-binding agreements weren’t good enough for him to support a tax hike in 2010.
So what does this all mean for the plan to expand the convention center at its current location? Well, it’s not good.
And despite the Faulc endorsement, architect Rob Quigley is still strongly opposed to Measure C, and laid out his case against the plan here.
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The sudden closure of Toussaint Academy, Father Joe’s program that housed and educated vulnerable students, has some worried that kids will be forced to return to dangerous living situations.
Meanwhile, at San Diego Unified, the district appears to have scrapped its blueprint to help black students and replaced it with … a new task force.
And if you’re a San Diego Unified parent who is interested in the school choice program – where you send your kids to a school other than the neighborhood school – here’s what you need to know about the shorter time window to apply and more.
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On the latest San Diego Decides podcast, we break down all 17 state ballot measures. The VOSD podcast, meanwhile, has all the best hits from Polititest.
Andrew Keatts wrote about an internet ad that slammed city attorney candidate Robert Hickey for failing to win the endorsement of his own boss, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. (Here’s more on their fraught history.) Soon after, Dumanis endorsed Hickey.
Regardless of whether California voters pass Prop. 64, the measure to legalize recreational marijuana, the state will still set up its new system for licensing medical marijuana. We checked in on how that long process is going. And Andrew Keatts explained more about Prop. 64, and the local effort to tax pot shops if it passes.
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Dept. of Big Plans:
These big developments might throw a wrench in the county’s plan to fight climate change before the plan even passes.
The San Diego Theatres nonprofit is supposed to be raising $30 million for a big remodel of the Civic Theatre. But two of its top leaders have left, the group doesn’t have anyone to fundraise and money from redevelopment is no longer on the table.
What I’m Reading
• The Cincinnati Enquirer has a stunning 10-part investigation into an unsolved 1978 murder of a young woman. Police focused early and intensely on the woman’s boyfriend – even after lots of evidence pointed to other suspects and two juries found the boyfriend not guilty.
• THIS is the appropriate reaction to someone exercising his or her freedom of speech, even if you don’t like what they’re saying. (New York Times)
• Shot: Eight years under President Obama. Chaser: Biden reflects. (New York)
• Guess I can never move back home to Portland. (The Guardian)
• A Holocaust survivor is on a mission to get her family’s stolen painting back – right now the University of Oklahoma owns the painting, and is fighting to keep from returning it. (Newsweek)
Line of the Week
“The ability to move people through words is a gift like nothing else.” – From a handwritten note rapper Kendrick Lamar tacked up in his garage before he made it big.