Seeing the Light and Saying So Long to All That Negativity

Monday was a bright and sunny day in beautiful Los Angeles, where all the children are good-looking and the bougainvillea is forever in bloom.

Tuesday was sent from heaven as well, and the forecast for today is more of the same -- perhaps a bit breezy, but otherwise sunsational.

I feel good enough to cry.

Better yet, maybe I’ll call the ex-mayor, Dick Riordan, and tell him what a wonderful man he is. And then I can ask him for a job.

Riordan, you may recall, is itching to start his own newspaper.

“The Times has a death wish for Los Angeles,” the ex-mayor explained earlier this year, saying the city ought to have a newspaper that wants its readers to fall in love with the place. The Times “would like to see the city destroyed, and 99% of the local news it prints is negative, and that hurts the city.”

To the extent that I’m guilty, I have but one thing to say:

You gotta sin to get saved.

I’m a new man, Dick. Put me to work on the Brentwood Bugle, or whatever it’s going to be called. Rescue me from my own dark urges, not to mention this gang of negative nabobs I work with.

Less than two weeks ago, I took my first step on the road to salvation. When the doomsaying Times reported that billionaire Eli Broad tried to purchase the portion of the L.A. school board he and Riordan don’t already own, did I criticize?

Not on your life. I offered a deal.

Ted Mitchell, president of Occidental College, told his trustees that Broad would write a $10-million check for an Occidental program to train school principals if Mitchell ran for the city school board. Broad and Riordan are gunning for trustee David Tokofsky, who refuses to be their lackey.

Broad denied there was any such deal. But just to let him know I’m in play, I offered to run for school board for only $5 million.

Now my colleagues Peter Hong and Solomon Moore report that Riordan offered Occidental a deal of his own. If Mitchell ran for the city school board, Riordan would pony up the cash for a provost-type position at the college.

Did Mr. Riordan miss my first column on this subject?

Come on, chief. I’m available, and I live in the district.

Make it $7 million and I’ll train principals, run for school board and write for the Brentwood Bugle, penning sunny stories about the selfless work of certain millionaires and billionaires. For $7 million, I’ll shine your wingtips and chew your steak, and you and Eli will still be up $3 million.

Riordan has denied recruiting Mitchell to run for school board. And, at the risk of lapsing into negativity, I think that means someone is lying.

Is it Mitchell? The Occidental trustees? Broad and Riordan?

Or is it the smear squad at the L.A. Times?

The old me would have had no doubt. And I would have suggested that although Broad and Riordan have done a few good things for L.A. and its schools, and spent millions of their own money, this is not their kingdom and we are not their subjects.

But the new me has this to say:

Even if Broad and Riordan are lying -- and I’m not saying they are -- you have to admire their chutzpah. They believe so strongly they know better than us rubes what’s in our best interest, they’re willing to trample democracy to have their way.

God bless them.

God bless the children.

And God bless a city I can better serve writing columns dictated by Riordan, if not Broad.

I think I may have completely misunderstood Riordan until now.

When he took a profit of $74 million in the 1980s through leveraged buyouts and other deals that temporarily cost thousands of people their jobs, I believe he was teaching them the value of starting over. It must have been an epiphany that prompted him to say he was “learning how to wave to the poor people.”

When Riordan called a weaselly in-house report on the LAPD’s Rampart police scandal the best “in the history of mankind,” and then admitted he hadn’t finished reading it, I believe it was part of his campaign to get the whole city reading more.

I might have made a wisecrack or two about Riordan helping to buy Church Chopper 1 for Cardinal Roger Mahony so His Eminence wouldn’t be stuck in traffic, or the annulment Riordan managed to finagle from the church. And maybe I suggested that a rubber mallet might have beaten Bill Simon in the Republican primary for governor, even though Riordan couldn’t.

But that’s because I was blinded by negativity.

For $7 million, I’ll see nothing but sunshine.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.