Honolulu Lite
Getting a phone call from Mayor Frank Fasi was one of the weirder things to happen this week, but not the only weird thing. The politicians go
around and around"Hello young man!" hiz-former-honor said cheerily and I thought, wow, this guy really doesn't read my column.
I've never actually called Fasi a psychopath, although I did say that anyone who goes on television to gloat over the death of a 100-year-old Hawaii institution -- as Fasi did in 1999 when it was announced the Star-Bulletin would be closed -- is exhibiting psychopathic behavior. I then declared Honolulu Lite a Fasi-free Zone which lasted all of about 45 minutes.
He called the other day to talk to about round-abouts, of all things. Round-abouts are those intersection thingies where people go in circles instead of stopping at stop signs. Fasi's against them, which is not much of a surprise, seeing how they are the brain child of his arch-enemy Mayor Jeremy Harris. Fasi, who is running again for mayor, is compiling some sort of testimonial record against round-abouts and assumed that I thought they were as dopey as he did.
I found this extremely insulting, coming from someone who clearly doesn't read this column. Insulting, yet pretty much on the mark. Although I haven't written anything about round-abouts, I've been meaning to and actually do think they are pretty dopey. I mean, in Hawaii you are dealing with drivers who can't figure out the complexities of a four-way-stop intersection and suddenly you're going to spring an intersection on them where they could end up going around in circles in perpetuity?
By kissing up to a highly uninfluential humor columnist who works for a newspaper he has always despised, Fasi is taking the gloves off in his fight for mayor. By showing that he can "hate the journal, but love the journalist" Fasi may be building bridges instead of burning them in front of him, as has been his modus operandi. Yet, while bullish on bridges, he seems a little pathologically consumed with certain types of intersections.
It must be Old Politician Week because no sooner had I heard from Fasi than I got an angry e-mail from Democratic gubernatorial candidate D.G. Andy Anderson. All I had done is joke that former Republican Anderson may be a Trojan horse sent into the Dems camp by Republicans. I might also have insinuated that his idea that the state should take over gas distribution was Fidel Castro-esque.
"Your logic, or lack of logic scares me" he wrote. (Yeah, like you're the only one.)
"If we do nothing, you bitch. If we attempt to do something, you find fault. 'Tis no wonder the State is in trouble," he said.
He has a point on the bitch thing, although at first, I thought he was using it as a noun. And while you can blame a lot of mayhem on Honolulu Lite, I'm pretty sure it is not responsible for all the state's troubles, although the concept is strangely flattering.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com