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THE ONCE-OVER: Now that the county sheriff and district attorney both are pursuing investigations into The Great Pepper Spray Caper at would-be congresswoman Francine Busby’s political fund-raiser, Wendy Fowler steps up to lend some perspective to the scene. “I feel sorry for the innocent bystanders,” she says, “but I do believe politicians should be pepper-sprayed on a regular basis.”
THE POKING NOSE: This was probably inevitable: The American Civil Liberties Union has waded into the Busby affair, suggesting the San Diego sheriff’s deputy who used the pepper spray exercised excessive force and violated the civil rights of the hostess and guests at the fund-raiser ... Meanwhile, over the Fourth of July weekend, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann bought national media attention to the Busby brouhaha. He gave the sheriff’s deputy his “Worst Person in the World” award, earned, Olbermann says, “because it sure looks like he arrested two people and pepper-sprayed a party of mostly women in their 60s for political reasons.” Oh, well then, never mind the investigations.
ITEMS INFINITUM: The bad news: The Oceanaire Seafood Room parent company filed for bankruptcy this week and closed four of its 16 restaurants. The good news: The San Diego Oceanaire is still going strong. But a bankruptcy filing by the parent does make it hard for the kids to reassure the vendors who deliver food supplies ... Longtime San Diego entertainment reporter Fred Saxon, who taped more than 750 celebrity interviews during his broadcast career, had a piece of the Michael Jackson action last week. His interview of Jackson and Diana Ross on the red carpet at the 1981 Oscars—culled from Saxon’s video library and posted on sdnn.com and fredsaxon.com—was picked up by Entertainment Tonight and The Insider and aired last week. For a nice fee, presumably.
SO THEY SAY: The San Diego real estate market may be improving, but not as much as we’ve been told. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the California Association of Realtors expects to make sharp downward revisions to its recent reports of soaring home sales here. In May, for example, San Diego sales were reportedly up 89 percent; that will be revised to 6.5 percent. The culprit: a glitch in data from a multiple-listing service in San Diego ... A survivor of several rounds of layoffs at the Union-Tribune says more cuts are imminent—perhaps another 200 employees to be laid off ... The fourth in the local chain of Burger Lounge restaurants—winner of Best Hamburger in San Diego Magazine’s Best Restaurants” issue last month, has its media party in Little Italy July 14. A&E host and longtime CBS anchorman Bill Kurtis is expected to attend ... Longtime equal-rights activist Midge Costanza, the first woman appointed assistant to a U.S. president (Jimmy Carter, 1977), has been named “Friend of the Year” for San Diego’s LGBT Gay Pride Festival (July 18 and 19).
REMEMBRANCE: The funeral for Herb Klein, the former Nixon press secretary, San Diego Union-Tribune editor-in-chief and longtime civic conscience who died Friday, is set for next Tuesday at 10 a.m. aboard the USS Midway. “Herb had such an impact on so many people,” says Manpower’s Trevor Blair, “it will indeed require an aircraft carrier to hold all his friends and admirers.”
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