The rumor that you, the mayor of my adopted hometown, Los Angeles, will be President Biden’s next ambassador to my native country, India, is picking up steam. And so I wanted to be the first person to give you the lay of the land in Delhi, where I grew up and have close family members and childhood friends. I last visited Delhi in fall 2019, and my mother is currently in Dehradun (a bit less than 250 kilometers or 150 miles northeast) while the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic unfold around her. Los Angeles has been among the cities hardest hit by the pandemic, not just with the high death toll among lower income communities but also vaccine inequities. A similar scene is playing out in Delhi right now.

But the Delhi I want to transport you to is the city you would encounter if you were to rewind to a time before this reality-altering pandemic. Just like Los Angeles, Delhi is a vast, vibrant, cosmopolitan place groaning under the weight of aging infrastructure and jolted by frequent tremors. Picture this: a city roughly similar in geographic size to Los Angeles, but with almost five times the number of people. If you include the neighboring regions that make up Delhi state, the population is larger than the entire state of California.

You and I, Mr. Mayor, are roughly the same age—I’m 15 months your junior—though you probably had a more promising beginning to your life. I was birthed unresponsive by nurses who didn’t want to revive me, my parents’ third daughter. My feisty mother snatched me from the jaws of death and raised me to be a bit of a daredevil. It’s those youthful adventures that I want to share as you consider the possibility of taking your own daughter to Delhi.

I envy you and your family moving there, though 21st-century Delhi can confound Americans, even as it offers compelling lessons for American cities.

Take transportation. You’ll find that many buses heading to Delhi University are designated “Ladies Special,” so you’re not going to be able to board those. You will be attacked with safety pins and umbrellas if you try. The Delhi Metro, too, has entire cars just for ladies, which are an olfactory haven in the long, sweaty summer months. You haven’t been able to truly move the needle on ridership on the L.A. Metro. The excuse that Southern California is too car-centric and sprawling for transit is a poor one, as Delhi will teach you: The city has cars, auto rickshaws, buses, and a Metro… all of which are crowded to capacity.

You will see that what L.A. lacks are the connectors from neighborhoods to public transportation hubs that make Delhi’s options more used by its populace. While the Marines guarding you may dissuade this, you should try some of them. Go to the local market in a “scootie,” a compact three-wheeled rickshaw meant to seat two but routinely carrying an entire family, all bouncing along happily. For longer rides, try a bus, and if it’s too crowded, just hang onto the ladder that connects to the rear bumper. You save a couple of bucks if the conductor can’t grab you and demand that you pay for a ticket. Though if the Delhi Police spot you, be prepared to make a running jump.

Whatever transportation options you choose, you should take advantage of all the food choices that Delhi offers its people. I’m sure you will receive many elegant dinner invitations from Delhi’s power brokers. I went to university with many of them (riding the aforementioned Ladies Specials), and you can be assured of impeccable manners, guest lists full of Rhodes Scholars like yourself, lavish meals catering to every dietary need (including veganism), and live music to boot.

Samosas from Old Famous Jalebi Wala. Photo by Moira Shourie.

Had you gone to Delhi in the early ’90s, I might have been the crooner softly singing jazz standards in the corner (much to the horror of my friends’ parents). After such engagements, my band would usually head to local restaurants: Chicken Inn on Pandara Road for a non-veg platter, Sagar in Defence Colony Market for dosas, or to Old Famous Jalebi Wala in Chandni Chowk for samosas and jalebis.

When you need a break from endless meetings, head on out to Bhimsain’s Bengali Sweet House. It’s pretty close to the embassy and perfect for an afternoon cup of chai with chaat and panipuri—a dish once made even tastier by the owner, who sat in lotus pose with his right foot protruding so that he could punch a hole in the round pastry with his interestingly long big toe nail. For fast food, don’t bother with any of the American chains like McDonald’s or KFC; opt for the many street food stalls called dhabas or reydiwalas. They serve their food in packets made from old newspapers and plates fashioned from dry leaves, with tea filling earthen cups that you just smash to pieces when you’re done. It’s the original recycling—no loading the dishwasher required!

You also should be aware that Delhi has its own housing problems, though the crisis there is very different than L.A.’s.

You’ll be among the fortunate to have a roof over your head. The ambassador’s residence is tucked inside the fortress-like U.S. Embassy on Shanti Path, which means the street of peace. Your neighbors will be your fellow diplomats. Each embassy is a tribute to its culture. The blue dome of the Pakistan embassy, the regal emblem of the British High Commission, the Soviet-style architecture of the Russian embassy, the sandstone arches of the Saudi embassy… all now sadly hidden behind impenetrable walls and electrified fences.

This was the vista I passed in the 1980s en route to the Delhi School of Music, where my parents dragged me and my sisters to piano lessons. You, a concert pianist, will find the school to be a treasure trove of lovingly well-maintained concert grands to bang away on. My older sisters were pretty good pianists, but I remember the director, Hosi Palamkote, shaking his head at my disappointed mother, “She should stick to singing.” That was good advice. Sticking to singing got me into the prestigious St. Stephen’s College, where the principal, Dr. Varghese, remembers to this day my rendition of “O Holy Night” at the Christmas Mass, to which the U.S. ambassador is often invited.

Multi-family apartments in Old Delhi. Photo by Moira Shourie.

But let’s get real—this is not how 99.9 percent of Delhi, or India, or California, for that matter, lives. Delhi’s big solution to housing is public. A large section of the middle class resides in apartments built by the DDA (Delhi Development Authority), allotted to them via an opaque method that no supercomputer can comprehend. After my parents retired from their teaching jobs, we were able to rent one of these boxy, poorly ventilated units thanks to the extra income from my singing gigs and my sister’s job at the British High Commission on Shanti Path. When I took a job in Mumbai, my parents moved to Noida, a vast development built on the old Yamuna River bed. This was a huge upgrade, but got off to a bumpy start with a power outage that took local authorities three years to restore.

Yes, you will see a heartbreaking level of poverty, but there is a huge difference between the street dwellers you will encounter in Delhi and the homeless population of Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, by and large, the unhoused are individuals struggling to navigate the systems of an unequal society plagued by decades of racist housing policies. Delhi’s homeless, by contrast, are mostly entire families, including grandparents and infants, who have traveled to the big city in the hopes of earning a living just to survive. When India started down the path of development and modernization, construction in cities boomed, drawing able-bodied young men from far-flung villages. Entire communities sprung up at construction sites, where you will see the skeletons of high-rise buildings populated with laborers and their children living in tenements. When these buildings are finally completed, the entire community usually moves to the next construction site, but several end up on sidewalks and under flyovers. Many children get access to education through American-supported NGOs and upskill to jobs as drivers, household staff, and shop attendants.

Life on the streets of Delhi is brutal and crushing. My childhood ayah was one such person—her husband was the watchman at the school where my parents worked, and sadly she took her own life by jumping off a building. My parents later adopted another family living on the sidewalk near our home and paid for their youngest son’s education while his mother, Maya, was a cleaner at the school. Sadly, Maya also took her own life by jumping in front of a train. You will pass by these people as you are chauffeured around the city in an armored car, so I wanted you to know some of their stories.

There is more to say about Delhi, and more for you to see. But the tenures of American ambassadors are short. My hope is that you will stay in Delhi long enough to be transformed in unexpected ways. And that if there’s one thing you take away from your time there, it’s the capacity for cities to change themselves, and reckon with problems in unexpected ways.

Delhi, after all, is an ancient place. The walls of the city have risen and been felled at least eight times since 1400 BCE. Los Angeles will also have to adjust and evolve—perhaps faster than it has recently—if it wants to live as long. Perhaps you can bring both ideas and some of Delhi’s enduring and adventurous spirit back to L.A., and tell us all about them, as you ride around town on the ladder attached to the exterior of a Metro bus.

The post Mayor Garcetti, Delhi Is Waiting to Transform You—And the Future of L.A. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

America, I offer myself today to our country so that we might restore a sense of decency, kindness, propriety, perspective, respect, groundedness, community, morality, and—yes—a fear of God.

I can lead this righteous crusade of restoration for one reason:

I come from Los Angeles.

I hear you laughing, but I am not trying to be funny—not even in a darkly ironic Big Lebowski way.

But I can understand you thinking of such a candidacy as a joke. I’m a mayor, not a governor or senator (though my city has more people than 22 states). And I know that Los Angeles is a city that people love to hate—a modern Sodom, fake, superficial, and cynical.

Now, L.A. can be all of those things. (On the cynicism charge, our guilty plea includes having greenlighted 10 The Fast and the Furious films.)

But fundamentally, L.A. is grounded in something else, something that America needs more than ever. All of today’s American crises—around Trump, democracy, environment, economy, social mobility, immigration—are really part of one larger crisis of faith.

And, believe it or not, Los Angeles is the American capital of faith.

I hear the howls—aren’t you just a bunch of godless liberals? Well, liberal, mostly (though L.A. did produce a number of Trump’s most hateful aides). But godless? Hell, no. God may live in heaven, but he has a second home in the City of Angels.

I’m talking about more than Cecil B. DeMille’s, The Ten Commandments. For a century, Southern California has been our country’s cradle of new religions. In the early decades of the 20th century, L.A. provided a platform for the preaching of Charles Fuller, Bob Shuler, and Aimee Semple McPherson. We birthed Pentecostalism during the Azusa Street Revival, and established the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. And that’s the just the Christian side of the story.

The 1940 Works Progress Administration’s guide to the city reported: “The multiplicity and diversity of faiths that flourish in the aptly named City of Angels probably cannot be duplicated in any other city on earth.”

It still can’t. After the Second World War, Los Angeles was the site of Billy Graham’s first great evangelistic crusade. Then Southern Californians pioneered the megachurch movement, with the Crystal Cathedral and Calvary Chapel, and eventually Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church—all in Orange County. Today, the religious revival continues with big churches like super-diverse Oasis and millennial-friendly Mosaic. And we are home to major houses of worship for every significant world religion—and dozens of lesser-known faiths.

No one does God bigger than us.

Why all this fervor? Because, even though Angelenos might look like life’s winners, with our pretty faces and whitened teeth, our region is the world’s biggest collection of losers.

We are people, or descendants of people, who lost at politics, commerce, love, family, or religion someplace else. Indeed, my own diverse ancestry—I’m Jewish, Italian, and Mexican—is really just different flavors of loss. L.A. has grown more through busts than booms —we’re the people who stuck around after the collapses of railroads, agriculture, oil, and aerospace.

We would never have made it through terrible times without Job’s faith that, somehow, everything will turn out all right. Heck, the traffic is so bad that we can’t make it to work without saying “Hail Marys” or “Allāhu akbar!”

There are three strong L.A. faiths—a welcoming spirit, a can-do spirit, and a fear of God’s judgment—that have grown weak in the rest of the country. A Los Angeles presidency would seek to restore all three. Here is a religious text for each.

“When the alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19:33

Through riots, serial killers, and Prop. 13, L.A. has retained its first faith—a welcoming spirit. We love visitors, and we’ve learned to appreciate immigrants, who make our neighborhoods safer and more vital, buy our homes when we retire and die, invent new things, make new art, and join our families. We know that when we protect immigrants we are protecting ourselves.

This country needs more of what immigrants bring. When I go and see Midwestern towns that are shrinking, my first instinct as an Angeleno is to say, “You folks could sure use more immigration.”

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Phillippians 4:13

I don’t often quote St. Paul, but that’s one famous expression of the can-do spirit. And it can be hard to do anything in California, between the expense and the regulation (I would add the unions and the environmentalists to the list of obstacles, but I need their endorsements).

Still, our city does. You may think we’re just a car culture, but we are investing billions over the next 50 years—through multiple sales taxes that our people themselves overwhelmingly approved—to build a new transit system with new rail lines. We’ve made our city dramatically safer, reviving South L.A., rebuilding our schools, transforming downtown, and bringing huge new resources to one of our most stubborn problems, homelessness.

And if L.A. can do all this, there’s no earthly or divine reason that the United States should be unable to tackle its big problems.

“His judgment cometh, and that right soon.”

OK, that’s not from the Bible, the Torah or the Koran. It’s from The Shawshank Redemption. But it’s fitting. We Angelenos profoundly fear God’s power to destroy us.

The apocalypse is nigh here. We know that we are one great fire, one mudslide, one earthquake away from the end. The English writer and Angeleno Christopher Isherwood once described the message our dangerous natural landscape sends us: “You are perfectly welcome during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong … don’t cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.”

That is the spirit our country needs. Don’t deny climate change—fight it and mitigate it, as we do. As mayor, I promised to reduce the temperature by three degrees. Seriously.

I know we elect people, not spirits, as presidents. And I have as many faults as the ground beneath L.A. Angelenos will tell you that I’m way too cautious, and afraid of conflict. They may have a point. But when you look at President Trump, caution and conflict-aversion don’t sound so bad, do they?

And I’m not as cool as California’s other presidential wannabe, Kamala Harris. But you know something? She’s from San Francisco, but a couple of years ago, she got married and moved to L.A. I appreciate her showing such faith in our city—and in me.

L.A. is all about faith—a faith in the brighter future that the U.S. is losing. As Aimee Semple McPherson once preached at the Angelus Temple in Echo Park: “With God, I can do all things! But with God and you, and the people who you can interest, by the grace of God, we’re gonna cover the world!”

My fellow Americans, let’s get this country back to that spirit! Let’s get this country back to God! And let’s get this country back to Los Angeles!

The post O Ye of Little Faith in Los Angeles! Eric Garcetti Has a Message For You. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In introducing the movie, Garcetti said that Airplane! appeals to his “goofy sensibility,” the ability “to laugh at yourself, laugh at the world.” Garcetti also chose the movie because it broke new comedic ground and because “for a 9-year-old it was an exciting movie on all sorts of levels.” And, putting back on his mayoral hat, because “it’s a metaphor for what happens when you decide to leave L.A. for Chicago.”

After a screening of Airplane! KCRW Press Play host Madeleine Brand interviewed Garcetti, as well as the movie’s writing-directing-producing trio, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker.

Brand opened the discussion by referring to one of the movie’s most famous jokes—the fact that the stewardess can’t understand what two black passengers are saying—and asked the mayor, “Do you speak jive?”

“It doesn’t seem incomprehensible anymore,” said Garcetti. He added, “There’s so many things you probably couldn’t get away with doing now” in Airplane! Yet the movie still feels fresh, he said. Garcetti said that he loves how the humor of Abrahams and the Zuckers “always seems well-intentioned” and comes from a good place.

Garcetti said that when it came time to choose his favorite movie, there was some debate in his office; people thought he needed to choose a classic Los Angeles movie like L.A. Confidential or Chinatown. But Airplane! is also an L.A. movie, he said. And it gets at some important issues of contemporary L.A. as well: “LAX hasn’t been improved since the movie,” said Garcetti.

Brand asked the filmmakers if, when they made the movie, they had any idea it would become so iconic.

No, said Jerry Zucker. “We were just excited that it did well when it opened, but never ever thought it would have this long a life.”

Jim Abrahams recalled that VHS machines were new at the time of Airplane!’s release in 1980. They won an award for the world’s top-selling VHS—with around 25,000 copies sold.

Brand asked why the filmmakers decided to cast against type, with leading men who were not known as comedians.

“It was the only way we could do the movie,” said David Zucker. “We thought comedians would ruin it.” The idea was that it would look and feel like an old movie—but with voices that had been redubbed without the actors knowing it.

The studio, Paramount, was a bit perplexed about the intentions of its three young filmmakers. But after executives watched dailies from the first day of shooting—which featured Leslie Nielsen’s most famous line in the movie, “I am serious … and don’t call me Shirley”—they finally got in on the joke.

Brand asked how Lakers basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ended up in the movie.

“That role was originally written for Pete Rose,” said Abrahams. But the movie was shot in the summer, and Rose was playing baseball, so they rewrote the part for Abdul-Jabbar.

The movie was shot on a shoestring budget of $3 million and made $80 million domestically and $80 million internationally. This was very unusual at the time, said Jerry Zucker. But Airplane! traveled well because people around the world had seen the disaster movies it spoofed.

The Zuckers and Abrahams love the very movies they make fun of in Airplane! “When we’re picking something to satirize, not only do we need to find something that we think is kind of laughable but also something that we have affection for,” said Jerry Zucker.

Turning to Garcetti, Brand asked him how L.A. has changed from the city presented in the movie.

“It was a wild time, clearly, in the ’70s,” said Garcetti. But joking aside, Airplane! reminds him of a more “free-spirited” and innocent time in L.A. Since 1980, Los Angeles has gone through “some really deep things as a city,” he said—riots, earthquakes. But before all that, “we were kind of the center of the universe, but we were also humble and anonymous.”

Garcetti said that watching the movie, and recognizing how it changed humor—creating a deadpan, fast-paced rhythm that didn’t exist before—also reminded him of the more unformed Los Angeles of his childhood.

Before turning the discussion over to the audience question-and-answer session, the moviemakers gave Garcetti a signed poster, and asked him to read the inscription to the audience.

“To Eric Garcetti, or Current Mayor of Los Angeles: We’re thrilled that Airplane! is your favorite film. On the other hand, we’re terrified that someone of that mindset is running the city.”

In the question-and-answer session, Garcetti was asked about his plans for LAX.

When people arrive at LAX, they should know they’re in L.A., said Garcetti. At the Austin airport, they have bands playing. Why doesn’t L.A. have movies playing, and local bands performing, and food trucks at the airport?

Another audience member remarked that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the best part of the movie—far better than Pete Rose would have been.

Abrahams agreed. He said that when he and the Zuckers talk about the movie’s success, they feel like everything fell into place. They got wonderful actors. The studio was in the right frame of mind. Released in the summer of 1980, the movie was going up against the Summer Olympics—until Jimmy Carter canceled the games.

The post Eric Garcetti Gets Goofy with <em>Airplane!</em> appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Garcetti has had a great first year in office, Osborn told a large audience at MOCA Grand Avenue. He’s aligning other city officials and politicians with his causes. He’s bringing in money from Washington, D.C. to revitalize the L.A. River and transform transportation. And he’s generating “ a sense of regionalism”—convening the cities of L.A. County, showing up for election night in Long Beach—that’s bringing cohesion to Southern California.

Gilliam agreed that Garcetti’s back-to-basics platform addresses L.A.’s broken administrative structure. But, he asked, does Garcetti have what business strategists call “a big hairy audacious goal” for the city? Los Angeles has “very large problems,” and we need to have some vision about how we solve them, said Gilliam. “Small ball” might not be an attractive answer to the populace.

Newton expressed admiration for Garcetti’s patience. However, he said, “once you have a functioning bureaucracy, it’s helpful to point it in a particular direction.” Even if they didn’t achieve them, Garcetti’s predecessors had audacious goals at the outset of their terms—hiring thousands of police officers (Mayor Richard Riordan), planting a million trees (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa). “Maybe it makes sense to have a city that can achieve goals before rolling out goals,” said Newton. “But I don’t know what those goals are.”

Osborn contended that Garcetti is rebranding Los Angeles as a capital of innovation and inspiring an “explosion of civic engagement by young people.”

Gilliam said that might be true for young people in certain parts of the city, but not in South and East L.A., where education and affordable housing remain big issues.

KCRW news producer and the evening’s moderator, Saul Gonzalez, asked the panelists to speak to an oft-heard (though perhaps unfair) comparison between the first year performance of Garcetti and that of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Newton said that these mayors are different people with different predecessors. De Blasio is a “big idea, big ticket” mayor—and Garcetti’s never advertised himself as such. “There is a certain amount of Villaraigosa fatigue in this city,” said Newton. Our last mayor “was a very good starter and a very bad finisher.” It’s possible that Garcetti is a better finisher than a starter, he said.

Perhaps it’s too early to tell what Garcetti’s going to accomplish in every arena. But, said Gilliam, it’s fair to ask what he intends to do about the big issues citizens care about: combining economic development and affordable housing, increasing equity between the haves and have-nots, and preparing young people for the 21st-century job market. Having the Los Angeles River is better than not having a river, said Gilliam—but what big problem does it solve?

You have to look at this administration in context and in terms of timing, said Osborn. Although they don’t sound sexy, Garcetti’s back-to-basics accomplishments, his quest for transparency in government, and the work he’s done to align himself with the city council, controller, and attorney are all hugely important in this particular moment.

But, asked Gonzalez, has the “hipster stuff” that Garcetti has accomplished dealt with the fundamental challenges facing L.A.?

Osborn pointed to Garcetti’s work on veterans’ issues and immigration as evidence of his efforts to take on big challenges. But she also said that he has been “unbelievably disciplined and restrained” as he bides his time before making a big move.

Gilliam counseled against the mayor keeping his strategy a secret from the people of L.A., who are facing extraordinary economic challenges. “Where’s the sense of urgency?” he asked.

The sense of urgency for this mayor is perhaps different, said Gonzalez, than it was for mayors in the 1980s and 1990s, when more than 1,000 people were murdered in Los Angeles each year. “We haven’t even talked about public safety, which is kind of extraordinary,” said Gonzalez.

L.A.’s gains in public safety are the city’s most impressive achievement of the past few decades, said Newton. But the crises of the past “really focused the mind[s]” of the city’s leaders and forced them to articulate big ideas. Richard Riordan, for instance, was elected mayor in 1993 on a “tough enough to turn L.A. around” platform, just after the riots and the LAPD’s subsequent failure to respond.

How much of what Garcetti can accomplish is constrained by the structure of L.A. government?

The power vested in the mayor of New York City or San Francisco is “phenomenally different” than in L.A., where the mayor is constrained in part by the county government, said Osborn.

However, said Newton, some of it is personality. No one referred to Mayor Tom Bradley as weak; he “found ways to be powerful.”

L.A., added Gilliam, is a complex place. People in the West Valley don’t want the same things as people in Mid-Wilshire or Westchester. Which is why Garcetti could use a master narrative—“a big picture umbrella under which lots of things can fit.”

Osborn said that big vision is coming, and described Garcetti as a “rock star” waiting to put forward his big ideas.

“Rock stars are rock stars because they’re oversized,” said Gilliam. “Given the great tears in the civic fabric of this city, the mayor has to be someone who steps into the breach.”

In the audience question-and-answer session, the panelists were asked to articulate what they think Garcetti’s “moonshot” goal should be.

Education, said Gilliam—even if the mayor doesn’t control the schools, he has a “bully pulpit” from which to make a statement.

Osborn said: “It definitely has to do with the opportunity agenda: economic justice, economic equity.”

Economic development, said Newton.

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There are real data now to help answer such a question. Relatively recent technologies—cable television, satellite radio, and social media—provide us with a not-too-unrealistic picture of how often people swear in public and what they say when they do. People now are capable of recording and being recorded at any time. Before these new forms of reporting, the media provided a fairly sanitized view of spoken English. Newspapers today still report swearing euphemistically, as in “N-word,” “F-bomb,” or “an eight-letter word for animal excrement,” instead of telling us what was really said. Fortunately, YouTube now offers people like me, who study language and profanity, a more accurate picture. By all accounts, those in public places were swearing in the past; we just weren’t able or equipped to record it.

Are widely reported acts of swearing by public figures like Garcetti’s typical or not? And are the rest of us any different—how frequently do regular people swear and what do we say?

Language scientists actually attempt to answer these questions. In one study reported in the journal Science, less than one percent of the words used by participants (who were outfitted with voice recorders over a period of time) were swear words. That doesn’t sound like very much, but if a person says 15,000 words per day, that’s about 80 to 90 fucks and shits during that time. (Of course, there’s considerable variability—some people don’t say any swear words and some say hundreds more).

When I was a visiting scholar in the psychology department at UCLA in the 1990s, my research team counted how frequently people used swear words in and around Los Angeles. I reported these data in Why We Curse and compared them to previous swearing estimates. It came as no surprise to me that fuck was the most frequently recorded swear word. Fuck and shit, which first entered the English lexicon in the 15th century, usually end up first and second in our observational research, having long ago surpassed more religious profanities such as damn and hell in popular usage.

More recently, we reported in The American Journal of Psychology that fuck and shit appeared consistently in the vocabularies of children between 1 and 12 years of age. Yes, preschoolers say fuck—most parents already know this, of course. And we shouldn’t worry about it. There is no social science evidence to suggest a swearword would harm a youngster physically or psychologically—even if she were watching a newscast of a respected politician swearing in public. The idea that children are harmed by hearing swearwords rests on the assumption that children are naïve about profanity, and our study suggests they are not.

So please, don’t be shocked by these swearword statistics, or by public people like professional athletes and politicians swearing in public. Politicians get caught swearing all the time. This was obvious in the 1970s when we read all those “expletive deleted” references in the transcripts of President Richard Nixon’s Oval Office tapes. In 2000, we caught then-candidate George W. Bush referring to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a “major league asshole.” In 2004, we heard Vice President Dick Cheney tell Vermont Senator Pat Leahy to “go fuck” himself on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called the passage of President Obama’s healthcare legislation “a big fucking deal.” From Canada, transcripts reveal Toronto Mayor Rob Ford saying, “I’m so fucking sick of politics, dude.” I could go on with these gaffes. If you want more, take a look at Steve Anderson’s documentary, FUCK, which offers plenty of swearing by politicians (I appear toward the end of the film to describe children’s swearing).

I put Mayor Garcetti’s profane celebration of the Kings’ Stanley Cup in the Biden category. Whatever else you say about the mayor’s use of the term, it is not creative or original. In fact, Garcetti’s overt enthusiasm in this sports-centric context is oddly reminiscent of what happened in Quebec this March. Justin Trudeau, a liberal leader in Canada’s House of Commons, was speaking before a boxing match for a charity fund. Trudeau, who had boxed before, noted that one’s past and fortunes were not important in boxing: “None of that fucking matters,” he said.

If you haven’t seen the clips of Trudeau and Garcetti on YouTube, watch them. It’s obvious that these politicians (who are also both the sons of politicians) are talking to arena-filled, sports-minded audiences, but not to you and me sitting at home. In both cases the audiences at the arenas react enthusiastically with mirth; they laugh and applaud. Why not? These men were talking to predominantly male audiences about two wildly aggressive, testosterone-filled and adrenaline-soaked sports.

To sportsmen and sports enthusiasts, fuck is not a foreign word. Profanity in sports goes back a long time. In 1995, I was invited on NBC’s Today show to comment on what it meant when NBC Sports went in the locker room and recorded the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Greg Lloyd saying, “Let’s bring this damn thing [the conference trophy] back here next year along with the fucking Super Bowl.” By my count, the professional athletes who’ve been in trouble for swearing widely outnumber our politicians.

Yes, I swear when I play sports. Many years ago, I played hockey at Miami University (the same school attended by Alec Martinez, scorer of the Kings’ championship-winning goal). I still play hockey, and today I also play golf. When I play sports (especially golf) I say fuck because I make so many stupid mistakes. I also hear my mates yelling out a few shits, hells, and goddammits. Ours isn’t trash talking to put others down. Ours is emphatic emotional speech that accompanies moments of frustration, anger, surprise, and joy. So was Garcetti’s joyful, “This is a fuckin’ big day.”

But what happens when the viewer at home encounters these expletive-laced speeches on their TVs or the Internet? Some viewers take it personally, calling these guys degraders of morals and classless because they’re only thinking of the historically sexual meaning of the word fuck. Notice that both Garcetti and Trudeau (along with Bono at the Golden Globes) used fucking as an intensifier, not as a sexual obscenity. Most swear words are used connotatively (to convey emotion), not for their literal meaning, as in these examples. In the past, the Federal Communications Commission viewed every use of fuck as sexual. But the examples I’ve cited and others have nothing to do with sex—a point I’ve made as an expert witness in court.

The FCC waffles back and forth about what to do about Garcetti- and Trudeau-type “fleeting expletives,” which are spontaneous and difficult for broadcasters to control. Fox Sports apologized for Garcetti’s “inappropriate” speech, but it’s not clear if Fox will be fined by the FCC. (My best guess: probably not, since Obama’s commissioners are dovish on profanity). The FCC ruled less liberally during the Bush years when conservatives had more sway and swearing incidents were demonized by media watchdog groups such as the Parents Television Council. It’s interesting that these groups don’t complain similarly about alcohol ads in professional sports. Alcohol can kill you, but swearing won’t; swearing might even help you cope with life’s stressors, according to some recent research.

Of course, the offended will always be watching. Their exact numbers and characteristics are not entirely known, but media research reveals them as exhibiting personality characteristics that are conservative, religious, and sensitive to overt sexuality. They want to see broadcast standards made less lax. Older generations who are less understanding of technology may see more profanity and perceive that there is a change in language or societal habits, even when that is not the case or not the whole story. Swearing by people in positions of power has always been there; it just used to be better hidden. We have to learn to accept that we are now going to see, and hear, more Garcettis.

But there is good news. The day after any swearing incident—maybe you’ve noticed—nothing happens. No children have been harmed. No one has to be hospitalized, medicated, or admitted to a mental health facility or trauma center. Yes, some sensibilities may get joggled a little bit—but coping with slight deviations from the expected or moments of minor discomfort is part of life (and even a “teachable moment” if you’re a parent). No one, not even your mother, dies from hearing the word fuck.

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No, he didn’t suddenly convert. Garcetti never hid that he contained multitudes. His father, Gil Garcetti, is Mexican-American with Spanish, American Indian, and Italian ancestry. His mother, Sukey Roth, is the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants.

In this town, that makes Garcetti a pretty common blend of many ethno-religious flavors—an L.A. Smoothie. But by Jewish law, which is matrilineal, Garcetti is a full-on Jew. To those of us who tracked Garcetti’s career, none of this is new. But to that ever-shrinking demographic known as the L.A. city voter, it seems to have come as a surprise. “Most people didn’t know that during the election,” Councilman Paul Koretz told a reporter on election night. “I tried to get that word out.”

Part of the fault is in our own preconceptions. The most obvious way we assess a candidate’s identity is by his or her name and face. Yaroslavsky and Villaraigosa and Wesson are easy—Jew, Latino, black. But Jews are also a religion and a culture, and the big trend in Jewish life is just how much the old phrase “Funny, you don’t look Jewish” reflects the new reality of Ethiopian Jews, “Jewtino” conversos, and Chinese-born adoptees, not to mention Persian and Middle Eastern Jews. The garden-variety white Ashkenazic Jew is becoming as hard to find as a great Westside deli.

How many times this year did I have to remind people that Jan Perry, the black 9th District councilwoman who also ran for mayor, is also Jewish? When we sat together on a panel at the Autry National Museum in May, I inelegantly described Perry as “not a typical Jew.” She took offense. “Maybe not to you,” she said. Point taken.

But the other reason people assumed Garcetti isn’t Jewish is that as a candidate he spoke little about that side of his heritage.

“I always felt myself to be Jewish and Latino very comfortably,” Garcetti told Jewish Journal columnist Bill Boyarsky in a rare candidate profile that delved into his religious identity. “Weekends were both filled with bowls of menudo and lots of bagels.”

Garcetti told Boyarsky that growing up he celebrated Passover and Chanukah, and attended Jewish camp. In college he connected more seriously to his Judaism. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University from 1993 to 1996, Garcetti befriended the charismatic rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who would go on to write the book Kosher Sex, minister to Michael Jackson, and star in his own reality show, Shalom in the Home.

While “Rabbi Shmuley” veers politically right—he ran unsuccessfully for a Republican Congress seat in New Jersey last year—the two remain close. It was Boteach who wrote a column in the Jewish Journal on Garcetti’s behalf just prior to the election, calling him “pleasant, humble, wise, sincere, and serious.”

Garcetti’s religious affiliations, like his political ones, are liberal. He is a member of IKAR, a mid-City congregation with a famously liberal rabbi, Sharon Brous. He attends High Holy Days and occasional Shabbat services—what we in the trade call a twice-a-year Jew. Garcetti’s wife, Amy Wakeland, is not Jewish.

By these measures, Garcetti is like a great many modern American Jews—the offspring of an interfaith couple, intermarried, liberal, and more culturally than religiously Jewish.

Contrast that with two of Garcetti’s opponents in the mayoral race, Perry and Wendy Greuel. Perry, a convert, identifies strongly with her religion. Greuel, Garcetti’s opponent in the runoff, is married to a Jewish man, Dean Schramm. She makes it clear that they are raising their child as a Jew, and people are genuinely surprised —maybe it’s the name— to hear she is not in fact Jewish.

It’s not fair to say Perry and Greuel played the Jewish card harder, if that’s what you do with a Jewish card. It just seemed to come more naturally for them both.

After the election, a small dispute arose among journalists over whether Garcetti was, in fact, the first Jewish mayor of L.A. It turns out that from November 21 to December 5, 1878 a businessman named Bernard Cohn was appointed interim mayor by the city council, the equivalent of a mayor pro tempore, a position Garcetti and other Jews have held. But it’s certain that Garcetti is the first elected Jewish mayor in L.A. history.

Cohn represented what the UCLA historian David Myers called the first phase of Jewish political life in Los Angeles, when, during the city’s pioneer days, Jews faced little prejudice. After 1900, the city’s influx of East Coast and Midwestern WASPs brought with them a dour anti-Semitism that nudged Jews away from the power structure, even as the Jewish population increased from 136 in 1881 to 315,000 in 1951. This second phase was spent in the political wilderness.

The 1953 election of Rosalind Wiener Wyman, a Jewish woman, to the city council heralded the third phase—complete acceptance. The coalition of African-American and Jewish communities that combined to elect Tom Bradley as mayor in 1973 created a liberal Jewish Westside power base that spawned politicians like Zev Yaroslavsky, Howard Berman, Henry Waxman, Joel Wachs, and one of Bradley’s young aides—Wendy Greuel.

Even as L.A.’s Jewish community grew to 600,000, though, Jews never held the highest offices. The last election changed that in a big, sweeping way, bringing into office a Jewish city controller, Ron Galperin; a Jewish city attorney, Michael Feuer; and a Jewish mayor, Garcetti.

Jews have finally reached the top job at a time when the idea of a pure ethnic voting bloc seems as timely as Tammany Hall. It’s not that Jews don’t vote—they do, disproportionately to their numbers. (Past Los Angeles Times exit polls have shown that Jews, who make up just 6 percent of the city population, constitute about 16 percent of the vote.) But if in the past that vote automatically defaulted to the Jewish candidate, that’s no longer the case. The Jewish vote tends to go to the candidate who best articulates and can best deliver on a socially progressive, fiscally prudent, pro- (or at least not anti-) Israel agenda.

Ethnicity alone doesn’t buy you votes or campaign donations—but familiarity and loyalty help loads. That’s why it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the first Jewish mayor of L.A. might have been a man who was a native of Boyle Heights, who counted a Jewish teacher as his first mentor, and who spent more time in Israel than most Jews: Antonio Villaraigosa. Love him or hate him, the man knew his way around a shul.

The election of Garcetti doesn’t even come with that swell of (often self-congratulatory) Jewish pride that accompanied, say, hearing that Sandy Koufax refused to play on Yom Kippur or that the flash drive was invented in Tel Aviv or that—best of all—Scarlett Johansson is a Member of the Tribe.

Maybe that’s because, in a city that has seen so many Jewish pols and powerbrokers, one more isn’t kvell-worthy. Or perhaps it’s because we want to see how he does before we embrace him.

After all, that early interim Jewish mayor, Bernard Cohn, was a dubious character. He pulled a fast deal on Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, which resulted in Pico spending his final years destitute. Cohn was married to Hulda Myer and had three children with her. But after Cohn died, a Catholic woman came forward and proved she was also his wife and had seven children and a house in Los Angeles Plaza with him.

“Claim them and blame them,” Stephen Sass, the historian of Jewish Los Angeles, once told me was his motto when it came to Jewish politicians who fell short of expectations. But if Garcetti does a great job, you can be sure the Jewish community will be bursting with pride.

Whether you take the position that Garcetti’s being Jewish doesn’t matter, or that it only does if he makes his People proud, there’s a deeper question underlying all of this: What, in a post-modern, post-ethnic age, does it mean to be a Jew?

Does it mean that your faith calls you to behave a certain way, to stand for certain things? Does it mean there are certain values and principles that you are charged to uphold? Is there a Jewish vision of social justice or of environmental and communal stewardship? What does it mean not just to choose to be labeled as a Jew, but to choose to act as one? This, of course, is a question that faces every Jew in the modern age, and it now faces Eric Garcetti, who, on July 1, 2013, became the first Jewish mayor of Los Angeles.

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