Weave of a tangled Web

There’s nothing about last week’s rather abrupt flame out of the

colorful and often edgy Concerned Costa Mesa Citizens Web site that

would spark any fretting that the great cosmic continuum may have

been interrupted. After all, the place had just a tick more than 100

members when it went dark and only a small handful of those were

regular lurkers.

But I’m nonetheless disappointed the co-founders of the usually

stimulating cyber klatch -- Janice Davidson and Jerry Vanus -- yanked

the plug on it in the wake of the kindergarten dust-up that enveloped

the site in recent weeks.

The place was a decent trove of insight for a journalist. I’d

often drop in to lurk, swap banter and generally take the pulse of

some of the leading activists in the city who have real concerns

about the compass point that Costa Mesa’s following.

For the most part, the site -- launched in October 2000 --

generally troubled itself with perspectives and debates centering on

the fundamental structural problems that plague most cities that are

nearly a half-century old. The blemishes often kicked around included

the obsolescence of Costa Mesa’s slap-dash zoning and land uses,

substandard housing, crumbling roads, the encroachment of urban crime

and under-performing schools.

Its inhabitants were a diverse lot with no shortage of opinions

and fixes (some level-headed, others not so much) for changing the

municipality’s heading. And most of its members weren’t wilting

daisies afraid of a good and heated scrap. Least of all Davidson, who

routinely scolded site visitors for boneheaded posts or for straying

off topic.

Which is why the logic doesn’t pencil that she and Vanus would

shutter the thing in the wake of a brief but blistering personal

offensive launched by outside gay and other civil rights advocates

against Davidson and others who regularly posted opinions on the

site.

And so we’re left stewing in the question: What sparked this train

wreck in cyberspace? A few things, I think.

On one front, the Concerned Costa Mesa Citizens site became

increasingly dominated in its posts and tone by the city’s irascible

gadfly Martin Millard. Millard, a prolific writer and idea factory,

often tacked up a dozen posts a day railing against the city’s urban

sores caused by an eroding “demographic” and growing population of

illegal immigrants drawn here by the city’s bounty of charitable

organizations. Most of the site’s visitors and regular posters often

agreed with his theories, including founder Davidson.

Now Millard’s musings might not have registered on the radar

screens of county civil rights advocates given the site’s small

membership and relative obscurity outside Costa Mesa’s city limits.

Except that when Millard’s numerous essays for the anti-immigration

American Patrol Web site, and also New Nation and the Council of

Conservative Citizens -- the latter two organizations often

associated with white supremacy -- came to light, alarm bells began

going off in human relations circles. Indeed, many of Millard’s

essays are complex hand wringings over the dilution of the white race

at the hands of massive illegal immigration and interracial breeding.

Also, Costa Mesa resident and City Council candidate Allan Mansoor

touched off a heated controversy when he began posting Family

Research Council articles linking homosexuality with pedophilia.

All of which sparked the now-famous conflagration at a June

meeting of the Costa Mesa Human Relations Committee, in which gay

rights advocate Mira Ingram blasted committee members Mansoor and

Davidson, among others, for posting what she called bigoted and

homophobic opinions and information on the CCMC Web site.

That prompted Orange County Human Relations Commission members

Barbara Hunt and Robert Cerince to begin monitoring the site. Indeed,

Cerince engaged in lengthy and often heated debates with Web site

members about homosexuality, hate crime and other topics far afield

of the Concern Costa Mesa Citizen Web site’s original stated mission.

The entire harangue was too much for Davidson. Millard -- the

principal content contributor to the site -- simply disappeared.

Mansoor continued to defend his positions. And the rest of the site’s

members -- hoping for a return to the issues confronting Costa Mesa

-- seemed to simply give up.

Which is too bad, really. But it’s nonetheless symptomatic of how

difficult it’s becoming in this land to have debates and share ideas

without having our sensibilities bruised or getting our undergarments

in a bunch.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a freelance writer and communications

consultant. He lives in Costa Mesa. Readers can reach him with news

tips and comments via e-mail at byronwriter@msn.com.