Tucson Weekly: The Devil's Disciple (December 4

A Former Woodstock Flower Child And An Ex-Young Republican Are Swapping Roles In The Body Politic.
By Emil Franzi
GEORGE BERNARD Shaw's play The Devil's Disciple involves two lead characters who reverse roles. One is a minister, the other a rogue. During the American Revolution, they are forced to change identities and end up liking it, with the rogue becoming the minister and the minister becoming a soldier. They were admirably played by Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in a late '50s movie also starring Sir Lawrence Olivier as a wonderful General Burgoyne. Unlike today's flicks, they left Shaw's text intact.
I'm reminded of that play and movie now whenever I read or hear my old friend, Arizona Daily Star editorial page columnist Tom Beal, the once long-haired, left-wing hippie who pens periodic reminiscences of his presence at Woodstock. His liberal credentials are undisputed.
Back when Beal was running with the anti-establishment pack, I was running the California Young Republicans, carrying a Nixon placard, and hoping J. Edgar's guys were taking the names of people like Beal. My right-wing credits run as deep as Beal's on the other side. But now a funny thing is happening.
Currents Like the two Shaw characters, we seem to be reversing roles.
Tom jabbed me earlier this year for being on the same side as guys like Don Diamond in opposing charter government for Pima County. Since then, he's either acquiesced to or supported Diamond and the Growth Lobby on a range of issues, from the failed water initiative to the incorporation of Tortolita. The anti-establishment guy is morphing into an establishment apologist.
Tom, like some other Tucson-centric types who profess a concern with the environment, has become a prisoner of some weird of ideology which simply refuses to admit that the incorporation of Tortolita is the only hope to preserve about 20 square miles of lush desert. In fact, it appears that Tom has given up on preserving anything besides the hollow shell of legality that allows the City of Tucson to dominate this valley, a classic case of defending form over substance.
Never mind that Beal's anti-incorporation dogma has consigned all those saguaros and ironwoods to the bulldozers now churning in Marana and Oro Valley. Hey, so what? As a Star editorial recently said, annexation is just something that happens to people who choose to live in unincorporated areas. Gee, Tom, wildlife and plants are part of that equation, too. When did you quit caring about them? Don't unique living creatures like pygmy owls matter to you anymore?
But perhaps the ultimate turn came from Beal on the KUAT-TV news show Arizona Illustrated, where he now regularly agrees with the Tucson Citizen's Mark Kimble and that yahoo from Inside Tucson Business. In discussing the 1961 law which set up the six-mile, no-incorporation zones, Beal cavalierly dismissed the argument that the law is unconstitutional by saying it was a law that had been on the books for some time and the Supreme Court should leave it alone.
Excuse me, Tom: I'm the guy who used to hang with the folks who wanted to impeach Earl Warren and attacked the courts for too much activity. You're the guy who believes that liberal judges have done much to bring about change by throwing out bad laws, regardless of their vintage, remember?
Tom Beal has always been a mellow guy, but he used to have a deep sense of justice, and he could become righteously indignant when necessary. Apparently mellow now dominates, because he can't find anything wrong anymore with the way a gaggle of corrupt local governments behave. Amphi Schools? Town of Marana? Oro Valley? So what? It's easier to zing Tortolita, the only people who are actually trying to do something about all that rampant growth Beal now finds inevitable.
So, Tom, who do you think ought to play us in the movie?

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