City Hall fight club

Pow! whap! thunk! kraaak! Sounds serious, doesn't it?

It sounds fierce, unslick and messy. Eli Broad whacks Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a testy letter trashing the mayor's school reform deal. The mayor disdainfully replies to the fourth-richest

man in Los Angeles with a two-sentence form letter: "Thank you for your letter of June 30, 2006. I look forward to a conversation wherein we can discuss your concerns." THUMP!

The mayor then wallops L.A. Unified School District Supt. Roy Romer for defending the district's academic performance. Romer unleashes the other "N word" (think Nazi) and calls the mayor a propagandist. CRASH! And the mayor comes back with a roundhouse swing about getting rid of Romer, and he rallies with parents he calls "the silent majority" (the N word here is Nixon). THUD!

The board of the influential Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. counterpunches and votes its opposition to legislation embodying a deal with the teachers union that would give the mayor substantial new authority over the school district. CLANG! And the union local's governing body just barely passes a resolution in support of the mayor's shaky deal. CRUNCH! Said one teacher when the booing and catcalls were done: "I'm not going to tell you I trust Antonio Villaraigosa. I'm not going to tell you I'm going to vote for Antonio again. But as far as I can see from this bill, he has been defanged." OUCH!

In other combat news, City Council members Dennis Zine and Bernard Parks dis Police Chief William J. Bratton, who tartly orders them "to mind their own business." So they and other council members angrily demand that the Police Commission investigate Bratton for his "unprofessional" conduct. BANG! Parks also questions the chief's mental health, and, by the way, he hates the color scheme for the new light-rail line down Exposition Boulevard. SLAP!

Something is heating up the political climate of Los Angeles, and you can't blame global warming. An outbreak of official crankiness on so grand a scale has but one diagnosis: This city is finally growing up.

Uncivil politics and a mature civic culture often go hand in hand. In Britain, just as in New York or Chicago or Boston, the seriousness of the invective is one measure of the importance of the issues, a mark of how real the prizes are to be won or lost. When politicians travel within a bodyguard of mirrors, they cheapen their office and diminish the scope of democracy, which requires conflict. Standing for election -- that quadrennial ritual of stylized self-display -- isn't enough. Popular government is suitably rude every day.