I had hunch that the Kansas City Chiefs were going to lose Super Bowl LIX to the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday when its two biggest stars, Pat Mahomes and Travis Kelce, stepped off the team bus that took them from their hotel to the Superdome in New Orleans.
Headlines: NY Post. Images: Getty Images and AP
Too much swagger and too much Swift, referring to Kelce’s gal, Taylor, whose presence at NFL games has become as big a football buzzkill as the League’s game-killing rule changes. Too much thought had been placed on the image of their short walk from their bus to the locker room instead of winning their unprecedented third Super Bowl championship in a row.
The Chiefs never had a chance, falling behind early and often. They didn’t cross midfield until 42 minutes and 27 seconds into the game. And when they finally scored a touchdown late in the third quarter, they were already down by 34.
The point: Focus on winning for your bosses and customers.
Two years into her term as Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass has spent more time promoting her goofy catchphrase (“I’m locking arms with ___ to ___) instead of listening to constituents who knew better than her under-qualified, sometimes un-qualified, hires and appointees.
Instead of transparency.
Instead of changing course when necessary.
Instead of admitting mistakes.
Instead of lying.
Now, we learned over the weekend, that Bass had schemed to lay $500,000 on Steve Soboroff, a wealthy and controversial City Hall operative for many years, to serve as her “Chief Recovery Officer” for just three months, plus another $250,000 for real estate guy Randy Johnson to assist him. That’s $2 million and $1 million, respectively, if continued for a year. And you can be sure it would have.
Would have, as in:
The money, her office insists, would come from “philanthropic groups” whose money would have been squandered, considering that Soboroff and Johnson agree to “help” the city for free once media (from outside of Los Angeles) exposed it.
We are truly on our own, neighbors.
Nobody is looking out for us.
Bass came into office understanding that the local news media would never challenge anything she does or says. So she keeps squandering time and resources to promote herself fixing the many things that she, and she alone, killed, broke or made worse.
Simultaneously, City Hall further isolates itself from criticism with Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Council president, censoring the public worse than ever in order to dodge his own culpability as Acting Mayor when Bass went MIA once the nation’s costliest fire ever, according to ABC News, had sparked.
Soboroff, who last I checked, owed the LA Animal Services thousands of dollars — perhaps many thousands of dollars — for years and years of unpaid intact dog licenses, requiring pricey breeder permits, and late fees.
His son, MSNBC reporter Jake Soboroff, sent me a series of testy messages a few years back after I shined a light on pop’s pups, but quickly went quiet when I challenged him to declare the story untrue.
Because the story WAS true.
Embarassed, the City allowed eventually Soboroff to pay only the current license fees he owed, without proof that his dogs were spayed or neutered. Those rules, like most rules, are only for the rest of us.
Which leads into the latest Bass-Soboroff sideshow…
John Kobylt, whose talk show on KFI-AM 640 airs from 1pm to 4pm Monday thru Friday, is one of LA media’s last remaining truth-tellers.
Last week, he did a segment on Soboroff allegedly holding private Zoom meetings with his monied pals, in which he dispensed advice like discouraging them from trusting the LADWP on things like water safety, while simultaneously arranging his lucrative gig with Bass to help all of Los Angeles. (If the link doesn’t start cleanly, jump to the 10 minute 58 second mark.)
Why isn’t Soboroff, who now represents Bass on behalf of the entire city, front and center for all of us to hear about why we shouldn’t trust the LADWP? What else is Soboroff saving for the wealthy instead of for the entirety?
Is this a Karen Bass public safety paywall?
Don’t brown and black people deserve information about safe, potable water (to leverage one of City Hall’s favorite points of reference)?
Don’t LGBTQ folks deserve it, too, to lean into another?
Don’t we all?
The scam, the sham and the whole flim-flam is unsavory as ever.
And just wait until you see the next few stories on DanielGuss.Substack.com, so you can ask once again, where is the LA news media instead of running interference for their government masters in exchange for their inside scoops??? Where are they???
The point: the whole lot of them should focus on winning for their bosses — and that’s us — lest they wind-up like the Kansas City Chiefs this post-Super Bowl morning.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to the Daily Mail, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)
If LA was serious about resolving anything, bass, the lesbo FD leadership, and all top tier cronies would have been gone weeks ago.
It's truly a fantasyland where every narrative is written and Angelinos pay to watch it unfold.