The recurring question that I just can’t quite shake remains: Is West Hollywood fast becoming a “Stepford Wife” cookie cutter community where all the resident’s lives are controlled by five City Council members with a need to dominate everything people do, say, wear, buy and think?

Just last week Jeffery Prang, a West Hollywood City Council Member, was overheard in Council saying that he wanted to end the use of any farm raised animals in West Hollywood. Let’s break that statement down a little further. Bye-bye hamburger joints. Bye-bye mid-priced eateries, because someone has to pay for the added expenses of going free-range. Hello grocery stores; are you ready to convert to strictly free-range and organic thereby cutting your profits in half to remain compliant with the rules of the city in which you invest your tax dollars?

This is the same councilman who commented that, “The world will be 50% vegan in about ten years so we should all get on board.”

This reeks of fascism not democracy. What is going on in West Hollywood?  It seems like the adults have left the building and the children are running around inflicting their own governance much like the classic Stephan King horror flick “Children of the Corn”. Is Jeffrey Prang Malachi incarnate?

“While Mr. Prang certainly has the right to his opinion, his personal preferences and choices have no place in city government. His personal views and agendas certainly have no place in my life and certainly not on my plate,” said John Cashman, West Hollywood resident.

Cary Fetman, Hollywood stylist, commented,

“I spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in West Hollywood shopping for clients, some of whom wear fur and others who don’t, and I am appalled that the City would put these restrictions on boutiques. This potential ban will cause small fashion shops, the same ones that have made the city a viable resource for stylists and earned the city the image of a fashion destination, to loose longstanding clients and the associated revenues.  I am deeply opposed to the City Council’s puppeteering our livelihoods and I refuse to spend money in a city that doesn’t respect my freedom to choose for myself as an American.”

In another bit of lunacy, you have self-proclaimed model, celebrity, tv “star”, and animal rights activist Katie Cleary holding charity fundraisers in West Hollywood proclaiming that we should all choose diamonds over fur. Hmm, that’s disturbing. Isn’t the legacy of the diamond industry one of the cruelest and most inhumane legacies there is of any product for profit? Perhaps Katie has been too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other in order to walk down the stairs carrying that briefcase without falling. It seems she may not have had any time left over to open a newspaper or watch news coverage of the blood diamond issue so she, like most of the rest of us, would be clear that her cause is not the right cause for any city hoping to call itself “cruelty-free”.

It seems like in all of the scrambling and readjusting that City Council is doing, they are running the risk of not only being reactionary, but, more importantly, out of control. As they’ve carried the message of keeping government and the moral positions of others out of the lives of the citizens of West Hollywood when it comes to issues of gay marriage and hate crimes, for example, we’ve supported and applauded them. But we cannot understand how they now seek to control what we sell and buy…especially when it has absolutely no bearing on the health or well being of our citizens…or even our animals, for that matter. If that’s not overarching and unnecessary government control  in our lives, what is?

Where and when does it all end? We are in America where personal freedom is still upheld as a sacred right.

Get on the bandwagon West Hollywood, and get back to the business of what the people have elected you to do; keep them safe, keep their streets clean, fulfill their needs through your social programs and protect our right to choose. Nothing more, nothing less.

West Hollywood R.I.P. | Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | Vol. 7 | Vol. 8 | Vol. 9