JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

When I was growing up in Northern Indiana in the 1920s and ‘30s, there

was never a moment when I wasn’t very clear on who were the Good Guys and

who were the Bad Guys.

Tom Mix and Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy were Good Guys, and anyone

opposing them was Bad. To make sure there was no confusion on this point,

the Good Guys always wore white hats and the Bad Guys wore black.

In other areas of American life, the Chicago Tribune -- which now pays

me for writing this sort of thing -- kept Midwesterners straight on such

matters. Daddy Warbucks and Orphan Annie were Good. Rich people were Good

because they got rich by working hard and saving their money and

investing in Standard Oil. Union leaders were Bad because they took money

away from rich people. Everyone who voted for Calvin Coolidge and Herbert

Hoover were Good. Those who didn’t were probably Socialists and maybe

anarchists. And so it went.

I’ve tried all my life to live by these precepts I learned in my

Indiana youth. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve got to say that it

has never been more difficult than it is right now in Newport Beach and

Costa Mesa. A bewildering confusion of events in the past year has made

it almost impossible to tell the White Hats from the Black Hats -- thus

threatening the mental health of the entire community.

The current confusion started with the multiple elections on the

proposed El Toro airport. George Argyros and Bruce Nestande and the

Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce and their pals were the Good Guys.

Thinking only of the continued prosperity and welfare of local residents

-- as they pointed out to us repeatedly -- they contributed both serious

time and great gobs of money toward getting that airport built.

Although I sometimes found it uncomfortable to be in bed with these

people who normally aren’t my soul mates, I found it even more

uncomfortable to contemplate more airplanes flying over my backyard from

John Wayne Airport. It has always seemed reasonable to me to share this

discomfort with the South County folks.

But after our neighbors in Irvine -- Really Bad Guys -- blew away the

El Toro supporters with a campaign made up in equal parts of copious

amounts of money and baloney, some of our El Toro Good Guys changed hats

and took another jolt. They poured new gobs of money into a scam called

Measure T that would have negated the Greenlight Initiative, Measure S.

So the Measure T proponents were 0 and 2 when T lost big and Greenlight

passed big.

Then the hat-shifting moved to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Throughout the El Toro dispute, there had been three Good supervisors and

two Bad ones. But when Measure F won, the tone began to change. We must

accept the El Toro defeat graciously, we were told, and turn all our

efforts toward maintaining the cap on flights out of John Wayne. And

those Really Bad Guys in Irvine -- out of their profound sense of justice

and the goodness of their hearts -- would be delighted to help us in this

effort and thus become Good Guys.

There were, however, some strings attached. When the Newport Beach

City Council asked the Board of Supervisors, with considerable urgency,

to start the process of protecting the cap, three members chose to drag

their feet. One of the foot-draggers was Todd Spitzer, who explained to

the Daily Pilot, with more candor than we usually get from politicians,

that he would switch his vote if his Irvine constituents were assured

that Newport Beach would drop its fight for an airport at El Toro. Quid

pro quo, he called it.

Further complicating this picture is that the Ultimate Bad Guy,

Supervisor Tom Wilson -- who outraged his Newport Beach constituents by

voting against the El Toro airport -- voted with the Good Guys on the

John Wayne cap proposal. And two of the pro-El Toro Supervisors joined

the foot-draggers.

Almost as a sidelight while we were trying to sort all this out, a

majority on the Board of Supervisors, made up of all three El Toro Good

Guys, decided that two-thirds of Orange County voters had it wrong in

recently passing Measure H. So these three supervisors filed suit to try

and overturn a clear public mandate to use the great bulk of Orange

County funds from the tobacco settlement for public health measures --

proving that one-time Good Guys can be both stupid and arrogant. (Don’t

throw it up to me that Measure F won by a similar margin as Measure H.

There are substantial differences, one of them being that I like Measure

H and detest Measure F.)

Now I have to sweat out another possible hat change. It is quite clear

that the pressure to expand airport facilities in Orange County is going

to increase. It is also clear that the heavily funded, intransigent

anti-El Toro faction isn’t going to relax its chokehold easily, even

after the Superior Court decision that Measure F is unconstitutional.

That decision will be appealed and probably followed by yet another vote

on this issue. And all those overblown, fear-mongering fliers will be in

our mailboxes again.

If the anti-airport forces prevail in a new election or are able to

tie-up the issue in endless litigation, the tip-off is going to come from

the people who are funding the fight for El Toro. They need much greater

airport capacity to pursue their business goals. If they ever become

convinced that El Toro is not going to fly, they may very well support

the expansion of John Wayne. When and if that happens, the black and

white hats are going to be irrevocably confused -- and I’ll be checking

out real estate in Topeka, Kan.

All this gives me a headache. Where are Tom Mix and Daddy Warbucks

when we need them?

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.