Burned in a smoking war

Much negative political hay has been made of a story that the Weekly published recently about a proposed smoking ban in Glendale in which one of the characters was misidentified by one of our reporters.

That person, Mayor John Drayman, is opposed to smoking, just like the person the paper actually quoted, Councilman Dave Weaver, the only one of five council members to return calls for comment on the proposed ordinance, which if enacted will be one of the toughest prohibitions of its kind in Southern California.

Although it took him more than a month after the publication of the June 26 story to complain, Drayman called the paper to do just that late on the morning of July 30 — a Wednesday, a few hours before that week’s edition went to press. Drayman told Publisher Jon Guynn that he had not seen the story until it was pointed out to him the previous night by City Hall gadfly Barry Allen, and that he took particular exception to a part in which he — not Weaver — was quoted saying “there will be a lot of opposition from one segment of the population that loves to smoke.”

But now it appears that from the end of June until today we’ve been the only ones to own up to myriad mistakes made in figuring out exactly who said what and why in the ongoing debate over smoking in Glendale: from the overly talkative Weaver to the inattentive reporter to his lazy editor to the apparently always unreachable Drayman to those who claimed to be offended by Weaver’s ethnically insensitive remarks, and all of it finally set in stone by competing newspapers, one of which apparently didn’t know who it was looking at during one council meeting, and another that misspelled the name of at least one person intimately involved in all of this — me.

I say all that not to bust the chops of any of my overworked and underpaid news brethren but to point out that sometimes things we could never imagine happening actually do happen, even to the best of us, including the usually spot-on reporter in this case, Carl Kozlowski.

But back to Weaver’s remarks: Who was he really talking about when referring to “one segment of the population?” Latinos? Women? African Americans? Asians? The Knights of Columbus?

Or could Weaver have been referring to the city’s Armenian community, which amounts to roughly 70,000 people, or 40 percent of Glendale’s population?

“You know who I’m talking about,” Weaver told Carl.

“No, I don’t. Are you talking about Armenians?” Carl pressed.

To that Weaver emitted a noise, what Carl described as a growl, yet he still did not give a straight answer. Not a yes or a no or an in between — just a growl.

Carl then asked a third time: “Are you talking about Armenians?” to which Weaver stood silent. As he confirmed in a subsequent conversation, Weaver was, in fact, referring to the city’s substantial and politically influential Armenian community, where, Carl wrote, “smoking tobacco — both in cigarette form and from hookahs — is a widely enjoyed after-dinner cultural tradition,” something for which the paper also took a little bit of heat.

Now stop me if this is untrue, but is smoking after meals not also widely enjoyed in many Irish families, as well as Italian families, as well as Polish families, and so on? Is that really a racial slur, as some have posited?

Maybe, and we’re sorry if anyone took it that way. But here’s something that others knew and we didn’t until recently: The Armenian National Committee, which is complaining the loudest about us and Weaver’s insensitive comments, just conducted a survey of 740 people around the city which found that even though most people do not smoke (61 percent), 51 percent also do not support prohibiting smoking on sidewalks, 50 percent do not want smoking banned on outdoor patios, 50 percent do not support a smoking ban in apartment units, 63 percent believe such bans infringe on their “individual freedoms,” and — get this — 70 percent would take the issue out of the council’s hands and put it on the ballot for a vote.

Why have we not seen this information in the papers? Does all this not show that Glendalians — even though most do not smoke — are ready to go to the polls in force to maintain the “rights” of others to light up in public places?
Or maybe a better question is why have other ethnic advocacy groups not done similar polls on the smoking issue? Doesn’t this group have better things to do, or could smoking really be more important to Armenians than to others, as Weaver suggested?

Which brings us to the last statement made by Weaver, most of which he confirmed for Carl after being identified as the actual source, and then, after facing calls for his resignation or censure, publicly called Carl a liar upon being forgiven by his fellow council members, two of whom are Armenian and both of them running for re-election.

Incidentally, neither Council members Bob Yousefian nor Ara Najarian complained about the story until Allen brought it to Drayman’s attention — five weeks after the piece was published. Actually, Yousefian never complained, as far as we know.

Of course, Weaver knows just how political this issue really is, and, being the only one to call us back, said as much.

“One segment of the population shouldn’t be able to control the lives and health of everyone. But this will be turned into an election issue,” Weaver — not Drayman — told Carl. “If you want to keep a horrible habit going, vote for the three guys up for re-election this year [Councilmen Najarian, Yousefian and Frank Quintero]. And if you think I’m wrong, then vote me out next time. But I’m not letting this go.”

In the final analysis, it appears that although the Weekly goofed, it was the only one involved in this ethnically and politically charged mess to own up to its mistake, which we corrected in the paper and on the Web the very day it was pointed out.

Isn’t it time some of these other players — Weaver, the ANC and the other local papers — did the same? n