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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30074 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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I think the big difference is that Newsom is handsome and - provided his remarkably low intelligence (and I mean that in a non-political way, he really does seem stupid) is kept away from the public - relatively charming. DeSantis is none of those things. Newsom could 100% make it to the White House; he might well not, each generation has many also-rans that never quite do it. But he isn't as handicapped as DeSantis is by the fact that the GOP base seems to just not like him.

he really does seem stupid

He does have a talent for brown-nosing the wealthy which would certainly stand him in good stead with the Democratic Party donors (unlike Hillary at the dinner for the wealthy gays, I don't think Gavin would make a faux-pas about the baskets of deplorables and less deplorable, he knows how to be less direct in his flattery):

Newsom and his investors created the company PlumpJack Associates L.P. on May 14, 1991. The group started the PlumpJack Winery in 1992 with the financial help of his family friend Gordon Getty. PlumpJack was the name of an opera written by Getty, who invested in 10 of Newsom's 11 businesses.

See? Stroke the ego of potential patrons about their artistic talents, let them play Medici lord to your grateful client self.

He may not be very stupid, allegedly he has severe dyslexia:

Newsom has said he did not have an easy childhood, partly due to dyslexia. He attended kindergarten and first grade at Ecole Notre Dame Des Victoires, a French-American bilingual school in San Francisco, but eventually transferred out, due to the severe dyslexia that still affects him. It has challenged his abilities to write, spell, read, and work with numbers. Throughout his schooling, Newsom had to rely on a combination of audiobooks, digests, and informal verbal instruction. To this day, he prefers to interpret documents and reports through audio.

Newsom attended third through fifth grades at Notre Dame des Victoires, where he was placed in remedial reading classes.

His father was a childhood friend of Getty and (as I understand it) since Gordon's sons are all failures (two have already died of drug overdoses, another had an acrimonious divorce and did nothing with his life etc) Gavin became more of an adopted son to Gordon. At least that seems to be the perception in California. He's essentially a Getty heir, just not biologically.

I know about the father being a Getty staff member, and I have a lot of doubts about the potted bio in Wikipedia (either dear old dad was a son of a bitch of the first water who neglected his ex-wife and kids leaving them in what passed for genteel poverty, or there's some gilding the lily going on about Gavin's tough upbringing with not even a present at Christmas while his mother was also taking in foster kids).

I doubt Getty Patriarch sees him as an heir (certainly not for inheritance purposes anyway) but as a loyal retainer in succession to his father, and one has a certain noblesse oblige to the son of the old servant. While he may be happier with Gavin trotting around as a substitute for his, er, interesting biological family, make no douibt that he sees him as anything more than a client.

Why do you think so many of the recent aristocratic scions have been utter failures?

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