When Accusations Fill the Air, It Must Be Close to Election Day

We’re down to the eye-gouging, resume-rewriting stage of the political season.

Stand by, it promises to get even more woolly before Election Day on Tuesday. Incumbents in trouble tend to do oddball things.

Take Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer’s retort Thursday during a radio debate when challenger Bob Trettin said that, despite Wolfsheimer’s no-growth rhetoric, she is developing her own property in Valley Center.

“I am not a developer,” she snapped. “Mr. Trettin, you’re an idiot.”

Take Councilman Ed Struiksma’s announcement that he opposes a plan to open a sports bar and strip joint called Pure Platinum in Mission Valley.

A sports bar “would only lead to bookmaking” and a strip joint is downright “revolting,” he said. Just when the valley is becoming “a truly nice business and vacation location.”

Bob Glaser, political consultant to the Dump Anyone Named Ed Committee, said the anti-flesh stand is Struiksma’s last-ditch bid to find a land-use project that he can oppose, after eight years of filling up Mission Valley with hotels, office buildings and condos.

“Ed is looking for something safe to oppose, like flag-burning,” Glaser said. “Environmentalists wrote off Mission Valley when Ed got his Master Plan approved by the council a few years back.”

Which is not to say that the campaign of Struiksma’s opponent, Linda Bernhardt, is without quirks.

As she did in the primary, she baited Struiksma for his support of the “Russian arts festival.” So voters don’t miss the point, the brochure is printed in bright red.

Another of Bernhardt’s brochures says of her: “She can’t be bought, and she won’t back down.”

Won’t back down ?

Gee, what a wonderful trait for someone who wants to join a nine-member legislative body where civility and compromise were once seen as virtues.

Just Who Were Those Guys?

Four items, no waiting.

- Yes, those joyous young men with jet-black hair and trim mustaches who stayed at The Lamplighter pub in Mission Hills until closing time were dancers from the Soviet arts festival.

They’ve developed a liking for tequila, Bud Lite, Mexican food and American ladies.

- Nobody ever said grandma was heartless.

Bingo players at the Sycuan Gaming Center in El Cajon donated $8,178 to the American Red Cross Relief Fund to help victims of the Bay Area earthquake.

- Nothing new on Jean, the overdue Asian elephant at the Wild Animal Park.

An endoscopy failed to determine the condition of her 200-pound fetus. The 5 feet of plastic tubing, with a tiny camera on the end, proved too short.

Veterinarians are scouring the country for a longer tube for another try Monday.

- The Museum of Modern Art in New York issued a statement explaining why it won’t carry San Diego historian Alice Marquis’ book on museum founder Alfred H. Barr Jr.

MOMA archivists allegedly were troubled by inaccuracies and “conjecture” about Barr’s sex life.

Translation: the book discusses rumors that Barr was homosexual. Marquis concludes that he was not but also notes that, when he traveled with his wife, he insisted on separate bedrooms.

You Are What You Read

By thy magazines, thou shalt be known.

Young & Rubicam, the giant ad agency, has studied the reading tastes of 51 cities and developed a master list of which cities like which magazines (“circulation concentration relative to population size”).

In Salt Lake City, it’s Scouting and Boy’s Life. In Hartford, Conn., Gourmet. In Kansas City, Weight Watchers is big.

Make your own inferences.

The big reads in San Diego, in order, are: Navy Times, Sunset, Sea Magazine, Army/Air Force Times, Bicycling, Omni, Skin Diver, International Combat, Runner’s World/Backpacker and Connoisseur.

Presumably, the average magazine reader hereabouts is a former sailor with a taste for chic food, outdoor exercise, lightweight science and guerrilla warfare. Sounds about right to me.