Through a Lens Brightly

I was sitting across from a kid in Larry Parker’s famous 24-hour diner watching him drink a banana milkshake when I began to wonder whether he might not be too innocent to play with great white sharks.

This was on my mind because of a comment my wife made when I told her I was going to interview an 18-year-old candidate for the Beverly Hills City Council. She shook her head and said, “Poor dear, they’ll eat him alive.”

That’s a possibility.

The killer fish that guard the moat around one of the world’s ritziest cities are known to go into a feeding frenzy at the slightest sign of blood, whether it is spilled in a fight over smoking in restaurants or over a neighborhood fence that is three inches too high.

Put a tasty kid in the path of their frenzy and all that will remain when the sharks leave will be his beanie and his pimple medicine.

But I don’t care, I like Steven Foonberg.

He’s what a lot of us were before winter froze our hearts, full of the notion that youth’s energy alone can make the difference in a messy world.

Maybe it’s time one of them got a chance to prove it, and maybe that one should be the Foonberg kid.

I didn’t reach this conclusion right away, because at first glance he really does seem too young to tangle with anything bloodthirsty.

Dressed in white shirt, blue blazer and gray slacks, and wearing a smile that is faintly reminiscent of Howdy Doody, Foonberg looks more like he ought to be working at Disneyland than running for City Council.

He’s heard all this before, of course, and explains that for four years he was a camera operator for the city crew that broadcasts council proceedings over cable television and, as such, has attended more of the meetings than anyone else in Beverly Hills.

I asked what it was he saw through that camera lens that made him want to be a part of it, and he put it this way:

“When I walked into the council chambers that first time, a chill went through me. The council table, the gavel coming down, the aura of government. It was like, This is the place, this is where it’s happening! “

Foonberg was only 14 when he set his sights on two goals: to be a member of the council and to make a future of film production. He attends USC in pursuit of the second goal.

“I don’t see why I can’t combine politics and show biz,” he said with that Howdy Doody smile. “Ronald Reagan did.”

Then he added that being in politics was just like being in entertainment. “They’re both afraid of anything new,” he said. “God forbid that anyone should be creative, he’d be kicked out.”

When Foonberg told his parents he wanted to run for City Council, they responded in such perfect harmony that it sounded like a doo-wop tune: “Are you suuure? “

He convinced them that he was by filing. When a story appeared in the paper, mothers of his friends clipped it and sent it to their sons and daughters away at college.

“I had a mom clipping service,” Foonberg says, grinning. His campaign did not exactly start a fire in Beverly Hills. Proof of that is the fact that he has managed to raise only $5,800. Other candidates will spend up to $100,000 by next Tuesday.

The hundred grand figures out, by the way, to about $28 a vote for the person who wins. If Foonberg should win, he will have paid only $1.65 a vote which, alas, does not live up to the standards in a city where cost is everything.

I pointed out to him that only two other teen-agers have ever run in Beverly Hills council races, and both lost badly.

“They didn’t run a serious campaign,” he said. “I have.” Then he added, “If I don’t win this time, I won’t give up. They haven’t heard the last of Steven Foonberg.”

When he campaigns, he talks about increased awareness of the AIDS crisis, increased financial support for schools, increased services for the elderly and an increased number of toilets for women.

What?

Yeah, well, he believes women should have as many stalls in their bathrooms as men, and they should not have to wait in long lines to go tinkle, as we used to say. That may not sweep the kid to victory, but I bet he gets a big hug from mom.

I don’t mean to imply by the aforementioned, however, that just because Foonberg is young, he isn’t serious.

When I asked why he really wanted to win, hinting that it might be more of a lark than a mission, he replied: “I’m not thinking what’s in it for me, if that’s what you mean, but what’s in it for the people.”

I wished him luck on that, and I meant it, because the kid has something going for him that half the adult population in America will never have, and age has nothing to do with that.

As we left Larry Parker’s, the cashier pointed to a basket of bubble gum and, in an obvious reference to Foonberg’s youth, said he could have one if he liked.

A lesser person might have huffed on by. Foonberg glanced at me, flashed the Howdy Doody smile and took one. I liked that.

DR