Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is a major dweeb, the kinda guy who probably got his lunch money stolen from him when he was in grade school, who now desperately curries favor with anyone and everyone to get them to like him. Whenever you complain about the guy being a dork to native Phoenicians or people who've been in the Valley for a while, they always respond with, "Yeah, but compared with those who came before him..." I guess in the PHX, if you're not a corrupt asshole, people give you a free pass, even if you're a political munchkin like Phil.
Someone recently sent me a link to Phil's MySpace account, where one learns that Phil only has four friends! One of those is "Tom," the guy who's everyone's first friend on MySpace. Another is "Derek," who has no photo and only two friends of his own, one of whom is Phil. And there are two 20-something chicks, who I'm guessing must be related to him because as you can see from the pic above, Mayor Goober is no George Clooney.
Under his "general interests," Phil touts his "tremendous record of success," which according to him includes "reduced crime through law-and-order initiatives." Anyone who lives in this city knows that's a major sack of horse hockey. The murder rate has stayed very consistent in the past few years, as I pointed out in a December Bird column ("Murder City," December 14, 2006 ), and Gordon's done precious little to alter the fact that PHX scores nearly 240 killings per annum. He has not made crime a priority during his tenure as mayor. And his only real crime-fighting program, if you can call it that, has been his laughable front porch initiative, which has distributed front porches to residents in hopes they'll report suspicious activity to the po-po while cooling their keisters. Judging from the murder rate, this dumb-ass Mayberry-esque idea isn't working.
But back to the number of Phil's MySpace pals. Compare it for a moment to the MySpace of another Phil Gordon, the professional poker player of the same name who's hosted Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown and written about poker for ESPN.com. This Phil Gordon has 7,749 friends and is studly to boot! Hey, why don't we run this guy against Mayor Goober this year? Phil Gordon the card shark lives in Vegas, but maybe we could entice him to work weeks and let him go back to Sin City for weekends. Sounds like it's worth a gamble to me, particularly if we don't have to see Mayor Dillweed's goofy grin for the next four years.
