Keeping a Bird in Its Cage

I was sitting around talking ethics with Sam Yorty the other day, and he was saying if you don’t know what ethics are you don’t have any.

We were in his house on a hill overlooking North Hollywood. It’s a comfortable, tree-shaded enclave once owned by Mickey Rooney.

Yorty, who is 81 and pink-faced, was telling me L.A.’s new Ethics Commission is a joke.

“An ethical person doesn’t have to be told what ethics are,” he said, “and an unethical person can always find a way around them.”

You remember Yorty.

He was mayor of L.A. from 1961 until he was booted out of office by Tom Bradley in 1973.

Johnny Carson used to call him Travelin’ Sam because he visited so many foreign countries during his tenure, mementos of which are neatly displayed on a wall near the doorway.

There’s the Great Silver Insignia from Austria, the ornate Order of the Homayoun from “old Iran,” the Finnish Lion from Finland and the Order of the Sun from Peru.

Some say Yorty didn’t have to violate any ethics because his numerous trips at city expense proved he knew how to beat the system from within.

“I got those medals turning Los Angeles into a world city,” Yorty said proudly. He is as bombastic as ever, though a little slower getting out of a chair than he used to be.

“What about ethics?” I asked, steering the conversation back to the point from which it frequently strayed.

“What about them?” Yorty demanded.

“Were you ever tempted?”

“You don’t get offers,” Yorty said, “unless you have your hand out. I never had my hand out.”

I was interested in what Travelin’ Sam had to say about ethics because of the short life span of L.A.’s first ethics czar, Walter Zelman.

You remember Walt. He was our ethics chief for about 17 minutes recently.

Hired by the new Ethics Commission for $90,742, he quit when the City Council reset his salary at $76,240, barely a spit above the poverty level.

While the commission has the power to appoint an ethics czar, the council has the power to say how much money he gets. Buy what you want, but I’ll decide if it gets paid for.

It works this way:

If you figure an appointee is going to take the whole ethics thing too seriously, you offer him $5 an hour and lunch. But if he’s a play-along kind of Joe, you give him what he wants and let the good times roll.

Zelman didn’t get what he wanted and responded to the pay cut by telling the city to take its job and shove it.

I’m with him, but not for the obvious reasons.

If you don’t pay a man enough in his regular job, he’s going to go out looking for ways to make extra money, right? That’s why I write for television on weekends. It’s not unethical, but it’s close.

An ethics czar is no different. He’s going to want to get a little something on the side, so to speak, to help pay for the ecrevisse de mer at L’Ermitage.

This, of course, will require an ethics cop to keep tabs on the ethics czar, and possibly an ethics adviser to watch the ethics cop. And so ad honorarium.

Kahlil Gibran said, “He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his songbird in a cage.” The council figures that’s what we’re trying to do, imprison their songbirds.

“Ethics is just right or wrong,” Yorty was saying. “You don’t need a damned commission to tell you that.”

We were walking through the room he calls his Rogue’s Gallery. Pictures cover the wall.

Sam Yorty with Jawaharlal Nehru, creator of the famous Nehru jacket. Sam Yorty with Chiang Kai-shek, creator of the famous Second China. Sam Yorty with Zsa Zsa Gabor, who has created nothing.

“Too many people run for office for the easy money,” he was saying. “You don’t know they’re unethical until it’s too late.” Pause. “That’s me with the Shah of Iran. Hell of a nice guy.”

Yorty is proud of the fact that he was investigated for months by a team of reporters who came up empty-handed.

“The most they could do was nail a harbor commissioner,” he said. “They didn’t get a thing on Yorty. Me with Golda Meir. A fine woman.”

Everyone gets ethical when caught. While no one on the City Council has been caught lately, they got ethical as hell when Tom Bradley’s finances were being looked at closely.

Travelin’ Sam (that’s him with Princess Margaret, a damned sweet lady) managed to make it through without an ethics commission. A moving target is always hard to hit.

That’s probably why his songbird is still singing.