Loutish self-celebration: the annual A**hole Parade

Early this afternoon, the OC Reg’s Teri Sforza reminded us of the annual motorcycle ride from Cook’s Corner (in the Santa Ana Mountains) to Long Beach, commemorating the 9-11 attack. (Bitter fight erupts between 9/11 bikers and Laguna Woods city manager.)

This (absurd) event has grown larger with each year; last month’s event comprised 600 riders. So when the mob-o’-bikes got to the intersection of Moulton and El Toro (in the middle of sleepy Laguna Woods), one of the bikers “held” the light for bikers to clear the intersection.

This upset Laguna Woods’ city manager, Leslie Keane, who is very serious about public safety and who (probably rightly) viewed the action as dangerous.

Naturally, the bikers don't see it that way. One of them wrote to Sforza, explaining that:

“Last week on Oct. 7 I was contacted by the O.C. Sheriff who had launched a investigation into the 9-11 ride at the incessant urging of Leslie Keane. She has been screaming mad for the last month at the fact that one of the 9-11 riders held her street light for the bikes to clear the intersection at Moulton and El Toro. That light is monitored by a red light camera. Oddly enough the camera images were blurry thanks to the handy work of a patriotic bird (probably a bald eagle) clouding the lens. Not one single license plate number could be recovered and NO tickets will be issued. Ms. Keane is infuriated and wants to know the name of the rider who held her light. Since I have no idea who that was, she has launched a smear campaign against me and the entire 9-11 event in an effort to prevent it next year.

Sforza herself experienced the bikers on 9-11:

Traffic ground to a near-halt as a wave of rumbling thunder rolled over us, shaking our little car and rattling our little eardrums. Our 5-year-old cowered in her booster seat as hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of motorcycles roared by on their sojourn from Cook’s Corner to Long Beach….

She had a similar experience last year:

Last year on 9/11, The Watchdog was unnerved to find herself driving south in a sea of flag-flapping motorcycles on Laguna Canyon Road. The bikes didn’t want us there, and we didn’t want to be there, but there we were, bikes drving around us, sort of like water tumbling past rocks in a stream. Pulling over didn’t seem like a good idea.

These bikers are not the sharpest tools in the shed; nevertheless, they've figured out that  Keane is likely hoping to “stop the ride by forbidding it to come through her city.”

Gosh, it’s “un-American.”

The Laguna Woods city council was to meet this afternoon, and some of these bikers were expected to show up, all pissed off. Don’t know what happened. Evidently, TV’s Channel 9 covered it.

Dissent readers may be surprised by my perspective on all this. I think these bikers are assholes. They’re rude and stupid. I am unsympathetic to their perspective and to their need to impose their noisy parade on a mostly civil public.

Part of my problem here is the bikers’ brand of patriotism, which combines ignorance and an intolerance of those who will not stand aside for their loutish and noisy self-celebration.

They are, in short, deluded, self-righteous bullies. As far as I'm concerned, they can pound sand. I don't know this Leslie Keane, but I do hope she prevails.

VIDEO UPDATE:

Good Lord! Keane decided to lower the temperature, apologizing for some of her harsher remarks (in emails). Looks like the bikers will return next year with a bigger group than ever. No doubt they will be accompanied by police.