Freedom Bites

Now he’s nonpartisan? So, our good ol’ Schwarzenegger-appointed Secretary of State Bruce McPherson made a trip back to Washington, D.C., this week for a gathering Bites would like to ignore harder than a county Renaissance fair: the annual meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

But then, McPherson went and held a press conference to declare and even sign a pledge that he—get this—plans to do his job.

McPherson oversees all elections in the state—everything from ushering initiatives onto the ballot to registering voters and ensuring accurate vote tallies. So, yeah, kinda important in that whole scheme of democracy.

McPherson, in what can only be explained as a news-free attempt at gaining some earned media (yes, he plans to run for re-election this year), sat next to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and pledged “to remain independent and neutral in our oversight of elections.”

That’s kind of like Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck holding a Monday-morning press conference to tell the world that, you know what, he’s going to try to throw some touchdown passes. OK, that’s not such a good example.

But what about McPherson’s handling of the Peace and Freedom Party last week? The third party’s registration totals dropped below 77,387, which equals 1 percent of the votes cast in the last regular gubernatorial election, and so, last week, McPherson dropped both the peace and the freedom from the official June primary ballot. Only he put them back on two days later after a lawsuit was threatened. Only he says he was still correct in dropping the party in the first place.

Bites wasn’t too concerned about your independence and neutrality before, Bruce. But, now that you mention it …

The body politic: In case you missed it, Sacramento recently was named one of “America’s fittest cities” by Men’s Health magazine. In fact, the River City came in 11th, just behind other hard-body towns like Milwaukee, Boston and Colorado Springs.

So, let’s celebrate by getting drunk on cloyingly sweet but surprisingly low-calorie liquor.

That’s the message from the marketing geniuses over at Bacardi, who last week sent Mayor Heather Fargo a bunch of free hooch in recognition of Sacramento’s fine civic physique.

The mayor got one bottle each of key lime, coconut and wild berry Island Breeze along with a stack of recipe cards for mixing up tasty cocktails.

“A lot of times, people think you have to give up alcohol to be fit,” said the Baddish Group’s Dustin Sveum.

Sveum said the company hadn’t yet received a thank-you card. But, now that Bites thinks about it, heronner did seem to have a certain healthy rosiness in the cheeks during Tuesday’s council meeting. She might even have forgotten to turn her mic off while humming, “If you like piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain …”

So many fascists, so little time: Bites has been getting a lot of e-mails from persecuted Christians in the last few days. Folks from Rocklin, El Dorado Hills and Vacaville, all saying that—if SN&R truly loves freedom—this paper ought to reprint some cartoons from Danish newspapers that make fun of the prophet Muhammad. You’re probably familiar with the story by now: Danish newspapers printed the images, causing some Muslims to freak out and riot. That in turn gave the American right a chance to smugly proclaim the superiority of our own (kind of) Christian and (more or less) democratic society.

Weirdly enough, all of the free-press-loving letter writers around here sent in exactly identical messages (which are also strangely identical to a copy on a Web site called RightMarch.com) demanding that “as a member of the media in free society, you have a RESPONSIBILITY to publish the controversial cartoon on Islamofascism.”

Um, yeah. Bites is going to pass—figuring there are plenty of regular old fascists to fight right here at home. You know, people who join groups with the word “march” in the name and let other people write their letters to the editor for them.