THE BELL CURVE:

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor is one up on Mel Gibson. Gibson had to be high on the juice to share his anti-Semitic bile with the world. Mansoor was apparently dead sober when he laid a shooting in Costa Mesa on “job centers, soup kitchens and a high concentration of downscale rental units.” Oh, yes, and on “social workers holding the hand of a hardened gang member.”

That’s where Mansoor’s bile is located. And he doesn’t have to get high on booze to share it with us because he’s absolutely convinced of its rightness — which makes him a little more dangerous than the Gibsons of this world who have to backpedal furiously to try to prevent collateral damage every time they lose control of their mouths.

This is a familiar process with tough guys in control — and Mansoor qualifies on both counts. They twist whatever they are handed into support for their biases.

The Bush people did this with 9/11. They used the tragedy of the twin towers to justify an attack on Iraq when there was no connection between the two. Mansoor used a tragic local shooting to trash people who give of their time and skills and effort to offer food and counsel and healthcare to those who sorely need it. And to demean people who live in sub-standard housing and seek menial work.

He had no evidence that this laundry list of his biases was in any way connected with the shooting. He saw only that the shooting offered him a chance for a cheap shot at activities he would like to run out of town.

Given a chance to backpedal, Mansoor got in deeper. In a follow-up story in the Pilot, Mansoor made the routine expression of sympathy for the victims, then used that as a launching pad to say: “My comments were directed at the criminals that were involved in this incident…. Families in the community clearly want us to remove the welcome mat for the gang members and other criminals.”

I wonder how many families in “downscale rental units” he talked to before he made this sweeping statement? Or if he read the comments of a 17-year-old boy wounded in the attack who told a Pilot reporter: “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If he lived here … he would see that there are a lot of hardworking people and no gang members.”

Or the neighbor of the victims who said: “He’s talking about soup kitchens. What does that have to do with what happened here?”

What, indeed?

If nothing else, Mansoor’s views are clear and provide a rallying place and legitimacy for people who share them. For those of us who don’t, we can only hope that this kind of exposure will remove Mansoor from elected office in November.

An Associated Press story that I ran across on the Internet last week and never spotted in any of our local newspapers depressed me deeply, since the people who were polled may well be voting in November. A national Harris Poll taken on July 21 found that 50% of the respondents said they still believe that Iraq did, indeed, have weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in March of 2003.

This, in spite of the facts that:

A poll administrator, trying to explain why half the country can still believe in mythical weapons of mass destruction in the face of such specific and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, said, “As perception grows of worsening conditions in Iraq, it may be that Americans are just hoping for more of a solid basis for being in Iraq to begin with.”

Or, more broadly, that we choose our positions first and then look for evidence to support them while we deny any and all evidence to the contrary. A recent example is the commentary by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher denying the powerful scientific evidence of global warming.

An electorate, at every level, that is into denial rather than critical examination of the source and substance of existing evidence can be moved much too easily by emotional appeals that denigrate real issues. We can only hope that flag-burning and gay marriage don’t drive the national election in November. Or “removing the welcome mat” of humanitarianism in Costa Mesa.

I have a lot of empathy for the Reuben E. Lee. Even though it has been around our water for 40 years, it’s a lot younger than I am, so I feel a little threatened to learn that there is talk of scuttling it if a new owner doesn’t show up or the Irvine Co. doesn’t relent about renewing a lease on its docking space.

In its 40 years, it has metamorphosed into several different ways of being useful and warming to its neighbors and visitors. I remember it best as a restaurant where the food and decor were equally satisfying. But most of all to me, it stands as an icon of change. When one persona ran its course, the graying riverboat adapted to a new role.

Somehow, I find that comforting.

I’ll be cheering for yet another resurrection. But meanwhile, I find some solace in knowing that even if the shell of the Reuben E. Lee is stripped, its skeleton and structure are of high-grade steel plates and sturdy timber that offer a frame for a new image. I find that comforting too.