What do PR flack-turned-journalist Gil Duran and San Francisco's streets have in common?

No prizes for guessing.

San Francisco, for all its wealth, ranks as one of the most homeless burdened cities in the US, and has, infamously, less delicately described, streets full of shit.

This is a quality of life issue you either accept or reject. There’s no possible middle ground. Once there is any poop anywhere besides a toilet bowl (and even then, uh, please flush) or sewage treatment plant, you are either a person who tolerates (or even enjoys) the poop, or it upsets you very much. Let’s go ahead and mark down Michelle in the “Not a fan of public poop” column. Gil? Well.

Michelle Tandler @michelletandler

Do not read this if you are easily grossed out. Last night at a party I met a woman who left San Francisco after her dog walker told her the dogs were getting addicted to meth-laced feces. Apparently they were running around the parks looking for it and then getting high.

This is one of those things you read and just stare at in bewilderment and horror. How could this be the state of one of the US’s most preeminent cities, filled with architecture and history and talent and wealth? Are we really so incapable? Sad!

But not if you’re Gil Duran. If you’re Gil Duran, you get so, so MAD at Michelle. How dare she? How dare she spread misinformation? Here’s a message this reporter-extraordinaire sent to Michelle, which she posted along with many examples of exactly the problem she’s talking about happening in the rest of the world (you can just do a search for them in incognito mode yourself.) If you’re Gil Duran, it’s off to UC Berkeley to talk to “misinformation experts” (not a real thing.)

Now, I’m not saying Gil Duran has a scatological fetish and really loves poop. I’m not saying that at all. I definitely don’t think that sentence is necessarily true or has any explanatory value for Gil’s motivations as a person on the left-wing.

Here’s what I think is more likely, since it’s easier to ascertain as a fact of record.

Gil Duran is a lowly servant of incumbent political interests. Now, these days it’s clear the line between the typical journalist and the Democratic party operative is thin, but in Gil’s case, it’s non-existent. Carrying water for the people and running cover for the ideological commitments which are in charge of the SFBA (and NYC, and LA, and Detroit, and Baltimore, and..) is his whole life. He’s the waterboy for the All Star team that’s made San Francisco a literal shithole.

Here’s a DM he posted, haranguing Michelle Tandler for being irresponsible.

And again, it bears repeating that this phenomenon is real, Michelle has posted copious updates, and it’s an actual quality of life problem in San Francisco. So what’s Gil’s justification for being so shitty about it? Dawg, you can’t make it up;

One wonders about the chances to clean up the streets Gil’s masters have had.
From Wikipedia we learn that:

Gil Duran was the California opinion editor for The Sacramento Bee and the former press secretary for California governor Jerry Brown.[1]

Duran was previously communications director for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, from 2008 to 2010. He was also press secretary to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa from 2007 to 2008.

This is why (well, at least one reason why, maybe there are others, maybe linked above) Gil, now at the San Francisco Examiner attacks Michelle with venom. It’s why he’s spoken to—frankly, likely a real, similarly delusional—social media “misinformation” expert at UC Berkeley describing Michelle as “sociopathic” for daring to talk about the (again, real) poop all over San Francisco’s streets.

If you question how well government serves you, you question its legitimacy.

Governments all require a political formula which justifies them. Sometimes that’s Tianming, the Mandate of Heaven in China, or the Divine Right of Kings, in the Western tradition. Sometimes it’s liberation of the workers, sometimes it’s liberty and justice for all, etc. You get the idea.

Gil himself acknowledges San Francisco is a one-party town. In the New York Times, he writes:

But…It’s very hard to fit “poop on the streets” into a political formula. Maybe there’s a desire to do it if someone is secretly a coprophiliac—not that I’m saying that’s what Gil Duran ever, ever does, I’m definitely not saying that he’s ever done that, I have no idea—but it seems like a pretty tough row to hoe. So if it happens, you have to deny that it’s happening, and you have to viciously attack people who talk about it. Thus the summum bonum of journalism for people like Gil.