STEVE MARBLE -- Notebook

“Dear Mr. Marble,” the message begins. “Why do you print such babble

...?”

And then another.

“I can’t believe you don’t see what’s going on. Are you blind as well as

stupid?”

And still more.

“You are the environmental terrorist ...”

And, my personal favorite of the week:

“Sleep well, Steve, you --------.” (A $5 piece of profanity there that,

alas, I am prohibited from sharing with you.)

How do you respond to such fanfare?

I suppose you confess that, yeah, when it comes to “babble,” I am the

king. I majored in babble, thank you very much.

Oh, sure, my eyesight’s slipped a bit and, OK, I’m as stupid as a log.

But take me by the hand and lead me to the nearest Lenscrafters and I’m

good to go.

“Environmental terrorist”? Hmm, maybe a reference to my continuing

indecision on paper or plastic. Dunno.

The vitriol (i.e., hate mail) followed a recent column on Allan Beek, one

of Newport Beach’s leading environmentalists and an author of the

Greenlight initiative.

Beek, who does not remind you of someone you’d initially cast in “Fight

Club,” was accused of pushing around a woman who was collecting

signatures for a countermeasure to the Greenlight initiative.

This took place outside Gelson’s Market in Newport Beach, a beacon of

tranquillity itself.

According to police reports, Beek “fled the scene,” presumably headed for

a safe house where he could hunker down with his fellow environmentalists

and plot out his next vicious move.

The whole thing struck me as a lazy wisp of comedy, given Beek’s fairly

lofty reputation and the fact that those campaigning for the

countermeasure are likewise seen as pillars of the community (ex-mayors,

former city manager -- you know, people who would rather discuss the fine

points of an environmental impact report than watch a football game.

Like, can you imagine?).

The subtext to all this, of course, is politics.

The Greenlight initiative, which will appear on the city’s November

ballot, would give voters the right to decide the fate of certain

development projects. The countermeasure would protect the city’s

existing laws and guarantee they could not be weakened by some future

council.

But in politics, the first thing to go, generally, is humor. Poof! It’s

vaporized, replaced by anger and an unwavering certainty that, quite

suddenly, you are the only person in the world who can clearly see what’s

right and what’s wrong. This is why nobody laughs in Santa Monica.

This is why, I guess, you get letters from someone named Captain Nemo

that go like this: “Can you not wait until Mr. Beek is convicted before

you label him ‘urban terrorist’? You are the environmental terrorist just

by printing that ridiculing article, and deaths from pollution in our

oceans will be partly your fault.”

Now believe me, that’s a pretty heavy load of blame to carry around. Rest

assured, I shall atone.

Thankfully, Beek found the column to be funny. Bless him.

He also tipped me off that -- and this is going to startle Capt. Nemo and

others -- he is not the first person in his family to be accused of

assault. You heard it here, folks. Not the first.

Turns out that Beek’s father, Joseph Beek, was accused of throwing a man

out of his office. This was back in the early stretches of the century,

when throwing someone out of your office might well mean just that. The

district attorney went ahead and took him to court, where he was promptly

found innocent.

Beek draws comfort in the story.

“So as you can see,” Beek explains, “I’m just following family

tradition.”

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News and can be

reached at o7 [email protected] .