By now Santa’s long finished with making and double-checking his naughty and nice list, and though the Big Guy and I go way back, I don’t have access to those confidential papers. So, I’m making my own list. The not-nice list. Complete with North County’s naughtiest naysayers and nincompoops.
This biggest bad boy isn’t confined to Santa Barbara County, but it’s sure wreaked havoc in these parts, and not just physical havoc. That’s right, the COVID-19 pandemic gets the county’s top spot—more like the top 14,817 and counting spots.
While COVID-19 has been the naughtiest of viruses, and it’s brought out some serious nastiness in too many people in too many positions of power, some of those naughty ones have been on Santa’s, um, guano list for a long time. I’m talking about President Donald Trump. I know this is an understatement, but he’s made a mess of our politics on every level, doing nothing to bring the country together in this unprecedented time.
A little closer to home, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been rather naughty this year as well. All you Newsom recallers out there, don’t get too excited. Our governor’s only getting a mention on my not-nice list because the state’s shutdown orders and colored tiers and restaurant-salon-bars-gyms-closed lists have been confusing and contradictory at times.
Locally and across the state, the people who don’t believe the pandemic is real, aren’t wearing masks for the good of their fellow community members, and are hating on the people who do mask up, they’re definitely on the not-nice list.
Elected officials who have used their positions to ridicule and demean health experts urging caution and sharing statistics: They’re extra naughty. County Supervisor Peter Adam, I’m talking about you. You got enough of my energy last week (“Ridiculous ridicule,” Dec. 17), so nuff said.
Rounding out the list is our favorite little Danish drama capital of the Central Coast: Solvang. Well, not everyone and everything in Solvang was naughty, but it had more than its fair share of shenanigans, right up to the end of the year. Just last week, the incoming City Council publicly reversed course over the outgoing elected majority. Solvang was all but revolting against the Southern California region’s shutdown orders from the governor, asserting it would only enforce the previous purple tier restrictions. But the new council said no freakin’ way and asserted that the city was going to stay above board.
That move right there was enough to keep the city from being on the not-nice list wholesale. But both now-recalled City Councilmember Chris Djernaes and the people who recalled him are on the naughty list, with Lammy Johnstone as a special mention. You got what you wanted, recallers, but you continued to threaten the other City Council members to keep the city open in defiance of the state’s orders. If the city didn’t get itself out of the SoCal region, “your legacy will have a black spot on our history,” Johnstone told the council on Dec. 7. Definitely a naughty thing to say.
The new year is around the corner; let’s start it off on a nice foot
The Canary needs more guano paper. Send sheets to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2020.