Wanna see a picture of Ruby Rippey-Tourk? Click here.
No, wait. Don’t touch that clicker. Fall back for a moment to an age long past for a little context.
Cyclopic is a ghost town in Arizona. I use it as a code word for the ghosts that haunt us.
A long time ago, when His Gabness first revealed his affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, I referred to her as his Cyclopic. She would always haunt him, her image a constant reminder of a political career flushed away in hidden moments of lust.
In my mind, the affair certainly wasn’t a romantic interlude, on his part at least. It was a complete failure to keep his zipper zipped, even when it came to his best friend’s wife. He failed the first test of political success: loose zippers sink careers.
Now fast forward to the modern era.
Hoo Boy, was I wrong. Not about lust and loose zippers but about the Cyclopic metaphor applied to el Gavirino. The affair, rather than haunting him, has “refocused” him and catapulted him onto the national political stage. He’s a comer, a future star of the Democratic Party, a 21st Century John F. Kennedy.
You don’t believe me? Check this article in today’s Chronicle. Cecelia Vega is a suspected Gabness devotee just slightly less infatuated with her reportorial target than Telemundo’s former anchor Mirthala Salinas was and is with LA’s Mayor Tony. Vega writes a piece about Herr Gabermeister roughly reminiscent of an ode to kings.
Holy Smoke! Gabo has single-handedly saved San Francisco from the ills of inept government. Oh, sure, Vega throws in a couple of obligatory sentences about his failure to communicate with anyone but (apparently) her. And, yes, she covers his affair.
But she quickly returns to her predominant theme: Here is the savior of the United States! Here is the…oh, my God, he’s so handsome, so debonair, so self-assured! Far be it from me to dampen her enthusiasm, but in one of the many photos accompanying her story, His Gavness is definitely expanding around the belt.
How could San Francisco’s Premier Playboy suddenly, out of nowhere, achieve Royal Family adoration? What’s going on here? From this modern tale of the Phoenix rising from the ashes, I’ve developed a whole new theory of power politics.
Have an affair to relax your facial muscles. A dreamy look does wonders for a candidate’s photographic appeal. Looks are paramount today, and a quick romp is a better wrinkle terminator than Botox.
As for Ruby, somehow the affair has become not el Gavo’s Cyclopic (apparently he has none) but poor old Ruby’s. I mean, he isn’t her demon (I don’t think so at any rate). The Chron is. They continue to toss her name out just when we think it’s fading from public memory.
To illustrate, yesterday as I Googled around, something odd happened. Google’s News Results didn’t return a single new reference to her name for the past month. Good News?
Momentarily, perhaps. This morning the Chron ran Vega’s story, complete with a picture of Ruby.
Pretend for a moment that I am Ruby. I’d call those suckers and threaten to sue for running a lousy picture of me. Since everyone says I am beautiful, stunning, amazing, hot, and since the truth is the truth, do not portray me as an aging matron in an ugly black suit. If you have to run a picture, call me, boys. I may have a more appealing photo, if you get what I mean.
When you think about it, this really isn’t a joking matter. But the gap between Zorro’s record and his sky rocketing popularity is so amazing that my mind is busy coping with its own Cyclopic.
Ruby is doing a wonderful job dealing with her life in the unforgiving public eye. We have all made mistakes, haven’t we? I know I have made my share and cannot imagine everyone reading and forming opinions of me based on the latest gossip column. Where’s the compassion? I know there are other people out there who remember who Ruby was before all of the Gavin drama, before college, way back in Napa before life had sent us all in different directions. I remember how genuine,sweet and giving she was and probably still is. Robert, if you are going to have a blog about her please remember who she really is, not who people want her to be. We didn’t like being kicked when we were down did we?
Hi, Wendie. Thanks for your comments. Not sure I get your point. My post was about the Chronicle and other media outlets and their continued insistence on throwing Ruby’s name in a story when there is little or no connection. Throughout this matter, I have been one of the few who has supported her efforts to rebuild her life. From the beginning, I recognized that Newsom was going to come out smelling like a rose and she would be the loser in the public arena. I consider that patently unfair and have consistently said so.