Former California State Assembly Speaker of the House, FABIAN NUNEZ, who was termed out of office in last few months has family concerns in news. His son was arrested the other day in Sacramento on murder charges for a killing that happened in San Diego in October.
Well, it wasn't the typical gang member, or the typical drive-by shooting, but something of an attack by Esteban Nunez, and his 3 friends, bringing out some knives and attacking some others after a party. They were all arraigned and entered "not guilty" pleas yesterday in San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-nunez5-2008dec05,0,3458565.story
So now we have some parenting issues in the news, namely, how did things come to this? There is a lot that is leading to the conclusion that the son was not the clean-cut straight-arrow type, but was into anti-social and criminal conduct. A web page shows some non-flattering images of the defendant in his relaxed state. From Latino Politics blog http://latinopoliticsblog.com/?p=392 you can see what we are talking about.
Although not the hardcore gangster type, he and his friends wear the same tatoos and talk of hurting people casually as part of the routine topics for attention. The reports in the news were that Nunez said that his father would be able to get them to apply a self-defense claim to get off, which would show the the younger Nunez is already aware of what influence a politician has or thinks he has, from a son's view. Not a good picture.
The story is on talk radio and blogs so there's a lot coming out on this but parents of supposedly civilized levels of society still don't escape having children that wind up doing some of the most uncivilized behavior possible.
"Who is to blame for things coming to this?" is really the big question. That's the big question. I don't fault Fabian Nunez completely as others do, although his particular brand of politics is shady and he is a sleezemaster in my opinion. But for a man with numerous resources, financial and otherwise, you would think he would show his boy what is the difference between right and wrong.
Maybe therein lies the problem. Politicians really have their hands full when it comes to determining right from wrong in life since they usually don't pay much attention to that in their decisional making routines. "What pays off best" has a much higher standing in their personal priorities column, all part of their political makeup. Honesty, too, is one of the rarely considered qualities for personal conduct, so how would you expect much to rub off on their children?
Maybe this is not universal, since national political figures don't seem to have as many dramatic instances of anti-social actions. I feel a little bad for Nunez since I was defending the father's position in another blog against simple claims of bad parenting, and I didn't imagine then that the kid was as much of a "dark side" fellow as he is turning out to be with every new report.
I also wrote in that blog posting that the Mayor is "wise" to keep his mouth shut on a personal matter- and then Villaraigosa blows it by saying, "He's a great boy", as reported in that same blog. I thought the mayor was getting to be more thougthful in his choice for comments- maybe at least some tact in his personal friendships, and keeping them personal. But I was dead wrong and Tony is still the same foolish ego-driven deceiver of the public trust that he ever was, using any opportunity to get his name and face in the news. All of my "benefit of the doubt" that I allowed Fabian Nunez and Tony were undeserved, it appears, and maybe there should have been some more attention given by Mom and Dad to Esteban in growing up regarding who his friends were, and what were their activities that engaged their attention.
http://latinopoliticsblog.com/2008/12/04/mayor-villaraigosa-says-that-esteban-nunez-is-a-great-kid-a-good-boy-do-you-agree/#comments
You may have gathered that I am no fan of Villaraigosa, and you would be right. I hope he's a one-termer as mayor and a disasterous one, as well (see LA WEEKLY's "All About Me Mayor" http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/news/the-all-about-me-mayor ) but we will cover that later.
For now, we all know or even have personal examples of ourselves, family and friends whose kids have a problem with life, drugs, the law, people or all of it. It is a tough question of who is to blame or what should have been done to come up with a better result. Think about it. I would like to hear what opinions are, even if they are different from mine. r.g. at lhs90031@earthlink.net
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