OK. Maybe their coverage of potholes is fantastic, but this article is a terrible, obviously partisan hack job. Both things can be true.
It's the easiest thing in the world to report this in a neutral, factual way. You don't need to focus on Gary's money, his association to tech, his liquor cabinet, or anything else. That the reporter(s) could not do this speaks volumes about their motivations.
Aside from that, I have no dog in this particular fight. I haven't lived in SF in years, and if you're insinuating that I'm on a particular side of the political spectrum, you're way over your skis. Partisan doesn't have to mean "left" or "right", by the way...you can just be partisan against tech.
> During his online tirade, Tan posted photos of his private liquor stash, and indicated to a fellow Twitter-user that he was inebriated.
Describing the tweets adjacent to the offensive one gives useful context. This is not the reporter dredging up some irrelevant trivia from deep in Tan's past or something.
Readers might not know who Tan is. It is even more essential context to explain that:
> Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator and a heavy campaign donor to efforts to oust progressive politicians [...]
> Tan is a well-heeled donor for San Francisco’s moderate causes and candidates. He sits on the board of Grow SF, a political pressure group favoring moderate causes and candidates and targeting progressives. Tan gave more than $100,000 to the 2022 campaign to recall then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin. He gave at least $20,000 to the 2021 school board recall, too.
If Tan was just some random person with no influence and no relation to SF politics this would probably not be much of a story. That he is one of the major donors to the political rivals of these supervisors is the reason this is a political shitstorm. Tan's tweet damages the reputation of his "Grow SF" group and the candidates they support, and has possible further political implications:
> Peskin today asked the City Attorney’s Office to look into requiring public disclosures from recipients of political donations from “purveyors of hate and violence.”
For my part, I hope Trump dies painfully, as well as every other living American president (with the sole exception of Jimmy Carter who was a terrible president but a good man nevertheless.) If you live in America, I know you frequently hear people saying they wish X Y or Z politician would die. Such harsh sentiments are commonly expressed in American society. It's a free country and lots of people exercise that freedom with inflammatory but legal hot takes like that.
It is not normal and should not be normal for major political donors to make public death threats to local officials in the city where they live, even as a joke. It's toxic and corrosive to society and politics, and makes him seem unhinged. Tan is rightly getting excoriated, and he deserves scorn from his own political allies for significantly damaging their common causes.
Tan keeps complaining about SF politics being frustrating, but in my opinion, as someone who supports a significant portion of his policy platform, local politics would be improved if Tan would just move somewhere else or shut up and keep his money to himself and leave political discussions to the grown ups.
This article is anything but neutral (not that I don’t think Tan screwed up here).