Comedian Craig Ferguson pretty much got it right Friday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, when he told the folks at the Jane Goodall Institute’s global leadership awards:

"It’s nice to be here with people who actually do things rather than just tell jokes on television."

Or who just throw dinners congratulating one another for being so darned swell.

I’ve been to a few dinners at the BW that fit the latter description; the Goodall event fell  into the "do things" category, certainly when it came to two particular honorees. They were sitting at my table, and they’re so young that they drank juice while everyone else drank wine.

Shadrach Meshach lives in Tanzania, where Goodall began her seminal work with chimpanzees. In grade school, he joined up with Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program, grassroots work for animals and the environment. Eventually he began bicycling to Tanzania’s refugee camps for Congolese, persuading hunters to stop killing endangered chimpanzees for meat and showing them how to raise chickens and vegetables instead. He has been breaking other cultural norms, too – he’s an African young man, a teenager, trying to improve women’s lot in life in the belief that that that will improve the world.

He sat quietly on my right, taking in the plush ballroom and the lavish table settings. He has been out of Tanzania twice, once to Orlando, Fla.,last year, for a Jane Goodall young people’s summit, and now here, to Beverly Hills -- not the average visitor’s experience of the United States.

Erica Fernandez came here from Michoacan with her farmworker family when she was a child. Now she’s a full-scholarship sophomore at Stanford; her family still works the fields in Oxnard, she told me, where, as a high school student, she campaigned to keep an LNG facility from being built there. She’s studying matters related to her commitment, environmental justice, and hopes to go to Harvard Law.

Among the grownups honored by Goodall was John Zavalney, already an award-winning LAUSD teacher and science advisor who became a kind of "stand and deliver" hands-on instructor, teaching biology, ecology and environmental science at Foshay Learning Center.

Working with wild creatures rescued by animal welfare workers or confiscated as they were being smuggled into the U.S., Zavalney introduced inner-city students who had never even visited the beach to the wider world of forests and jungles and tidelands and savannas, using these living classroom lessons.

Of course, such awards have to feature some celeb names among the winners – in this case, actress and animal lover Betty White and super-green guy and actor Ed Begley Jr., both of whom delivered the kind of funny remarks that everyone counts on to provide a bit of leavening to other speakers'  serious stuff. 

The public policy award went to mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, "the greenest mayor" L.A. has ever had, announced Begley, who is a big public transit user. Villaraigosa’s was to have been the evening’s first award, but the mayor evidently arrived late, and it was pushed down to later in the program. [Small-world department: The terrific waiter at my table had been a Cathedral High School classmate of Villaraigosa’s.]

The mayor, as I reported in July, met Goodall on his trip to Africa, accompanied by Lu Parker, his girlfriend, KTLA-TV anchor and former teacher and Miss USA pageant winner. On Friday evening, he arrived solo to accept his award. Parker, he said, wasn’t there because she was working.

If you’ve never been to one of these dinners, the silent auction is a regular pre-dinner fundraiser and curtain-raiser. This time, along with the usual wine and hit-DVD and spa packages being offered, guests bid for artwork by chimpanzees.

Later, once people had been softened up by the wine and the vegetarian meal – Goodall told me a few months ago that cutting back on meat eating is one of the most significant things humans can do to improve the globe’s health and survivability -- bidding opened on a one-off item.

For a bid of $25,000, Goodall Institute board member Addison Fischer won the right to name the next primate refugee to arrive at Goodall’s chimpanzee rehab center in Congo. He wasn’t spilling the beans on his choice, but the buzz in the ballroom was weighted heavily in favor of "Jane."

-- Patt Morrison

 

Departing Police Chief William Bratton prods immigration culture warriors today with an op-ed explaining why the LAPD doesn't, and shouldn't, participate in the controversial 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement officers the powers of federal immigration agents. Turning police into de facto Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents harms community policing and discourages witnesses who might be illegal immigrants from coming forward.

Also on the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that trying to limit carbon emissions to fight global warming is a pointless waste of money because it can't solve the problem; better to invest in technological solutions and adjusting to a warmer world. And think tank scholars Leo Michel and Robert Hunter argue that U.S. allies are already doing plenty of heavy lifting as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, so American officials should do less lecturing and more listening if they want more cooperation.

Speaking of Afghanistan, the Editorial page says the country can't be pacified simply by sending more troops. That has become abundantly clear in the face of increased suicide bombings in Iraq, which like Afghanistan has been slow to build a credible government.

We also send a rare love note to the California Legislature, pointing out two genuinely worthwhile bills that will help cities make better use of water, an increasingly precious resource in this dry and crowded state. And we weigh in on Operation Gatekeeper, the federal effort started in 1994 to tighten border security in a five-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean to San Ysidro. Though the program has been successful in reducing crossings in that area, it has had an unintended consequence that must be addressed: Deaths of people trying to cross the desert farther to the east have skyrocketed.

Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

What's not to like about a proposed fee on California hospitals? The hospitals themselves support it, because it would bring in billions of dollars in federal funding to repay the hospitals and other health care providers for the medical care they give to poor people. The Times editorial board urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to see the logic and sign the bill to make it happen.

They call it overdraft protection, but there's little to protect the consumer from the multibillion-dollar flow of money to banks that charge a fee over and over and over again to debit-card users whose accounts can't cover their purchases. Often the fee is bigger than the purchase, but the customer simply doesn't realize the account is overdrawn. The Times calls on the Federal Reserve to fix this with rules that require better consumer information, a choice for customers who don't want the so-called protection and notification for the customer before that costly but unaffordable purchase is made.

And the board calls on Honduras to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya -- with limited powers -- until the Nov. 29 election, though it also calls on the international community to make sure Zelaya understands he should not attempt to stay in power.

Let's admit this openly: Tuna aren't as awe-inspiring as whales. They don't spout in the middle of the ocean or do a slow dive that ends with the farewell wave of a giant tail. Nonetheless, they need protection after drastic overfishing, writes Joshua Reichert of the Pew Environment Group. On the Times Op-Ed page, Reichert argues that fishing caps haven't worked and that nothing but endangered-species status will save the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Finally, energy journalist Richard Nemec writes that Los Angeles has been playing political musical chairs in determining leadership for the Department of Water and Power instead of hiring the experts it so desperately needs.

Photo: Gavin Newman / Greenpeace International / EPA

-- Karin Klein

Not for use with small animals. (EPA/Peter Foley)

Credit Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the takeaway quote from the Supreme Court's oral argument Tuesday about a law punishing the possession or sale of depictions of animal cruelty. Questioning a lawyer for Robert Stevens, a pit-bull enthusiast sentenced to 37 months for selling dog-fighting videos, Alito asked if her First Amendment theory would protect people who wanted to watch the "Human Sacrifice Channel?" Other justices then riffed on the concept in the hypothetical-mongering for which the court is notorious.

Alito's hypo seems a bit less far-fetched when one considers the popularity of WWE, televised hockey games and even The History Channel (which one of my peacenik relatives calls The War Channel). Violence sells, But censors, with support from the courts, usually have  focused on sex instead. What puts obscenity outside the protection of the First Amendment is that it appeals to "prurient interest" -- that is, it's sexually arousing.

Patricia Millett, the lawyer for video vendor Stevens, ratified the "violence OK, sex bad" rationale. She conceded that the law might have survived a First Amendment challenge if it  had been narrowly drawn to punish only the phenomenon that provoked the legislation -- so-called "crush videos" catering to fetishists who are turned on by seeing a woman crush dogs with her high heels. A non-erotic, aesthetic appreciation of dog-fighting, however, is protected.

The sex/violence dichotomy has inspired the familiar joke about the differences between conservatives and liberals when it comes to censorship: Conservatives want to ban depictions of sex, liberals want to ban descriptions of violence. But it's rooted in the traditional justification for laws against obscenity: society's interest in preventing debauchery. As a 19th century British judge put it: "I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall." In other words, keep reading this and you'll go blind.

That rationale arguably applies to "crush videos," but it's hard to see how it justifies prosecution of the sale of dogfighting videos, which means that Stevens likely will go free. Watching violence against animals is constitutionally protected as long as you don't enjoy it too much. If a Cable TV producer greenlights Alito's idea of a Human Sacrifice Channel, he should be careful to market it to anthropologists, not sadists.

-- Michael McGough

 

I'm no coyote hugger, but it's hard to avoid thinking that USDA trappers went too far by killing seven coyotes in Griffith Park.

There had been a couple of biting incidents, though not serious attacks. In one case, a coyote reportedly bit the toe of a man who was sleeping in the park. But the bites were weeks apart, and because neither was reported promptly, USDA staff had no way to take swabs to tell whether any of these coyotes were the aggressive animals. This much we know: At least five of them were not.

This follows Yorba Linda's decision to hire a trapper after coyotes were snatching some small pets from people's yards. The best way to prevent that sort of thing is to not leave small pets -- or food or water -- in the yard. Coyotes are among the most adaptable of animals. They'll eat just about anything, animal or vegetable. And when their numbers are reduced by hunting, the females give birth to bigger litters.

Shoot aggressive coyotes that attack or threaten people in the park? I have no problem, and some of the coyotes in Yorba Linda showed no fear of people -- a bad sign. They'd be a lot less likely to do that sort of thing if people learned how to behave around them: make awful, loud noises if they approach, spray water if available, throw rocks, make the coyotes associate human contact with unpleasant and scary experiences. Instead, communities build artificial lakes, like one in Yorba Linda, and then complain when in the driest months of a dry year, the coyotes are attracted to it. We tend to like the appearance of nature a lot more than we like nature.

In any case, the hunting of entire populations in an area is another matter, especially after the Angeles National Forest fire. We can't start calling the trappers every time a coyote that's lost its habitat comes wandering into neighborhoods. Better to be very uninviting -- actually, downright rude -- hosts. But not killers of every wild creature around.

Photo credit: Spencer Ainsley / AP

--Karin Klein

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

Seventy dolphins' lives spared--nice, but barely a start in a town that slaughters more than 2,000 of the marine mammals each year.

The Japanese town of Taiji released 70 dolphins from its first wave of hunting, which isn't really even what most people would call hunting. The townspeople corral the dolphins and then spear them, then sell the meat.

It's unlikely any dolphins would have been spared had it not been for Ric O'Barry, who once trained dolphins for the TV series "Flipper," and the filmmakers of "The Cove," a new documentary that details O'Barry's 15-year-old crusade against the dolphin slaughter. The decision to release the dolphins came two days after the Times published a story about the killings and the extraordinary efforts by the filmmakers to catch footage of the carnage. The people of Taiki don't care enough about the ugliness of their commercial enterprise to end it, but they do care enough to hide it zealously from the outside world.

Japan has been a problematic member of the International Whaling Commission, continuing its killing of whales for what it calls "scientific" purposes only, though somehow the whale meat keeps ending up in eateries that bear no relationship to a laboratory.

This isn't the ancient subsistence whaling still practiced by some Inuit, but large-scale commercial whaling, Town leaders say they're uncertain whether the hunt will continue. Chances are their own country will do little or nothing to stop them. Sometimes, it takes world outrage to get a village to save a dolphin.

Photo of aquarium dolphins. Credit: Rob Carr / AP

--Karin Klein

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Michael Vick was conditionally reinstated on Monday by the National Football League, allowing the star quarterback and convicted dog-fight promoter to participate in practices and preseason games but not play in regular-season contests. NFL Police Chief, err, Commissioner Roger Goodell said he will re-evaluate Vick’s situation and may give him full reinstatement by Oct. 19, six weeks into the coming NFL season. 

Not surprisingly, PETA is against the reinstatement. PETA blogger Shawna Flavell writes, “The law says that he is entitled to walk free. But that doesn't mean it is acceptable to put him in the position in which children will look up to him as a role model and wear any new jersey that bears his number.” The battle lines are more clear-cut than the NFL trenches, with animal rights playing defense, Vick supporters playing offense and the all-powerful Goodall standing in the neutral zone.   

Vick’s actions were horrifying; no one denies this. But should his crimes keep him from pursuing work as a professional football player, provided he can find a team that wants him? Whether or not you believe his 23 month-prison term was a sufficient punishment, the law says it was. Of course, professional athletes being the demigods they are, there is the “role model” issue. But consider what USC sociologist Karen Sternheimer recently told me about the influence of steroid use in baseball on young kids: “If you ask kids who they trust most, it’s parents and teachers, but you’re not going to have a poster of your parent or teacher up in your room.”  In other words, the influence of good parents and teachers easily overshadows the behavior of bad athletes.  

Simply put, we overestimate the influence of athletes. Does anyone really believe that young boys will be encouraged by Vick's 23 months in jail and post-conviction NFL comeback to to start their own illegal dog-fighting rings? And it's not as if the NFL has had much of an aversion in the past to letting convicted felons back into the fold. In fact, this whole episode may very well have shed some needed light on cruel practices going on in damp corners. 

At great risk of receiving highly critical comments from PETA members, I'll put myself on record as believing that Vick, in a legal sense, has paid the price for his wrongs and should be allowed to pursue a career in any field his talents allow. It’s not as if he were running for public office. The NFL is not a democracy, and if there is an owner willing to pay and if Vick can still play an elite level, no one should stop him from playing. 

Fire away, PETA.

--Kevin Patra

Photo: Steve Helber / AP

I've met Dame Jane Goodall a few times, but it's still hard to match up this quiet slip of a woman with her monumental identity and nearly half-century body of work. So it was a treat to be able to enjoy again in that persona of "Jane Goodall" as I talked to her for last weekend's Q and A.

A sidelight: She met with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his companion, Lu Parker, in South Africa, and said of the meeting that they both "expressed a desire" to work with her Jane Goodall Institute back here in Los Angeles.

But did they perform the chimp pant-hoot with Dame Jane?

They aren't the infamous Tango's dads (we'll get to that later) but the forces opposing same-sex marriage see vindication in nature--or at least in the San Francisco Zoo, where a couple of male penguins who formed a long partnership have split.

Harry and Pepper shared a burrow together for six years, even hatching a surrogate chick, until Linda the widow came along, newly bereaved by her (male) partner Fig's death and Harry decided to, uh, chase some tail. The two burrowed in together and Linda laid two eggs.

A sign that gay couples are doomed, as the Proposition 8 supporters claim? Let's check 3,000 miles acorss the continent where a much more famous pair of male penguins live at the Central Park Zoo. Roy and Silo not only hatched an egg together, and raised baby Tango, but they all became characters, alternately celebrated and maligned, in the children's book "And Tango Makes Three." The zoo never got back to me with official word about the ornithological literary figures, but an employee told me informally that the two are still alive and well and together. But their book has been banned in numerous schools.

So this makes what of the whole argument about same-sex marriage for humans? Perhaps only a reminder that penguins do not seem as inclined to judge their peers' preferences as humans are.

Photo of two king penguins who are cute but not Harry, Pepper, Roy or Silo by Martin Meissner/AP