Mangled Language of County Supervisors : Up a Tree Without the Other Shoe

The next time you put your foot in your mouth, mix your metaphors or otherwise mangle the English language, remember Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Or Supervisors Pete Schabarum, Ed Edelman, Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana. At least two of them have received professional coaching--but they’ve still managed to produce some examples of public speaking at its most confusing.

Hahn once said the county was headed “up a tree without a paddle.”

During the height of political tensions with the state over funding in 1982, Schabarum told board members he was “just scared to death that somebody’s going to drop the other foot out of Sacramento.”

“Listening to Pete Schabarum is like listening to a foreign language,” said Clay Hage, a former deputy to the supervisor. “I never did understand some of the things he said.”

Misplaced Squeeze

Aides for Edelman apparently suffer the same difficulty at times. Edelman, complaining about the county’s reliance on the state for funding, one time warned: “The squeeze has come home to roost.”

His staff could only guess what that meant.

“It sounds faintly erotic,” said John Stodder, an Edelman aide. “But he was probably talking about the budget.”

Schabarum and Dana have both worked with speech coaches to improve their delivery. Schabarum--whose speech is sometimes so confusing it has earned the nickname of “Schabarum-speak”--attended only a one-day session.

But his No. 2 man thinks it helped.

“His problems come when his mind is one step ahead of what he’s saying,” said Mike Lewis, Schabarum’s chief deputy.

That might have been Dana’s problem two years ago when he cautioned the supervisors against spending money “only to have it all thrown down the window in a couple of months.”

Sometimes the supervisors trip over their words and mangle their sentences, but still get their message across loud and clear. Hahn is a good example of such skill.

Complimentary Criticism

“I am totally amazed at your total lack of ignorance,” he once told Schabarum, one of his bitterest political enemies. “I hope his (Schabarum’s) words will be so listened to that nobody will pay attention to them.”

He also told Schabarum: “Please don’t put words in your mouth.” Despite such frequent goofs, supervisorial aides don’t feel it’s necessary for their bosses to polish their speaking styles.

“Kenny knows what he means,” Dan Wolf, a Hahn aide, said. “People come away from talking to the supervisor with the impression of him as being very sincere.

“You can overcoach someone and they’ll speak more correctly, but they might not sound as sincere. Sincerity is a big factor.”