San Francisco Citizen

[UPDATE: Matier and Ross have more on this case - the prior suspicious behavior may have come a week earlier.]

Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley is having trouble lately, in case you hadn’t noticed.

This look is called (by SF Weekly writer Joe Eskenazi, who deserves a Thanksgiving break more than most after birthing this week’s five-page monster) a scowl? All right.

Via Tom Abate

Here’s story number one:

“Hayashi spokesman Sam Singer called the assemblywoman’s arrest a mistake, saying she had walked out of the store with the items unintentionally and intended to go back.”

First of all, the arrest was proper, since it’s not the job of responding officers to conduct a mini-trial on the sidewalks of Union Square over whether Mary Hayashi knew she was shoplifting or not. Leaving that aside, let’s work out the timeline.

1. Hayashi puts the lotion in the basket clothes in a bag.

2. Hayashi walks out of the store.

3. Hayashi at some point forms the intention to go back to the store. 

All right, that’s story number one.

Here’s number two:

“Through spokesman Sam Singer, Hayashi has said she was distracted by using a cellphone while shopping inside Neiman Marcus and mistakenly stepped outside, where she was stopped before she could correct her error.”

To sum up:

1. Hayashi puts the clothes in a bag.

2. Hayashi walks out of the store.

3. Hayashi gets busted.

So, in order for this all to make sense, in order for this tall tale to be wrong but at least internally consistant, it would have to go like this:

1. Hayashi puts the clothes in a bag.

2. Hayashi walks out of the store.

3. Hayashi at some point forms the intention to go back to the store. 

4. But, just at after that moment when she formed the intent to return but before she actually began to return, she got busted.

Does that make sense?

(Oh, your spokesman misspoke maybe? How convenient. Hey should the Bill of Rights should be reinterpreted to afford all whose “liberty interests” are threatened not only the Right to Counsel but also the Right to Flackmeister? I mean, why should only the 1% of the accused be able to benefit from the beneficial services of a spokesperson?)

Oh, now about this, from Matier and Rossi Asti Spumante:

“A source tells us that store employees thought Hayashi was acting suspiciously Oct. 24 before she entered a dressing room to try on some clothes. Those suspicions were reinforced when she came out with a Neiman bag in her hand, but not all the merchandise she had carried in, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. A surveillance camera later filmed Hayashi leaving the store with the bag, at which point security guards detained her.”

I see. So under this scenario, Hayashi:

1. Acted suspiciously, attracting attention to herself from the get-go.

2. Then, she put the clothes in a bag inside a dressing room and then walked out, apparently with fewer articles than when she walked in, reinforcing the original suspicions.

3. And then, due to her talking on a cell-phone or texting or something, she “forgot” to pay for her stuff at the very same time that she was getting a load of attention from store security. Darn the luck!

Isn’t it curious about how Mary Hayashi has done work on the “Asian-American culture of silence surrounding mental illness” and yet, with her own case of mental dysfunction, she offers… silence, keeping the “Asian-American culture of silence” chugging right along. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to explore the subject of why you wanted an obscenely-overpriced pair of useless leather pants so much that you were willing to commit a felony to get them? Are $1000 pairs of leather pants marked up 400% really going to make you happy? 

Wouldn’t paying money for therapy be a better idea than paying money for Sam Singer? One choice would get you a  professional who would try to help you while the other would get you someone who would try to profit as an enabler. Your pick, MH.

(And hey, speaking of options, what about this, what about going back and buying the exact same set of clothes you got caught with? I mean, you wanted them anyway and, as a bonus, that couldn’t hurt your case, right? And, being a bit blunt here, you have a mental health issue, so why not seek treatment? Why not let that be the upshot of this whole thing? Personally, I don’t think you should worry about being a role model for anybody or any group or anything. But to the extent that you are, what’s wrong with trying to get help and then telling people about it. I don’t think that would be TMI at all. And what if you get convicted of or plead guilty to a misdemeanor? Life goes on, right. You’d get probation (and, be sure to ask your mouthpiece about this, after you’re on probation you can petition the judge to have it end early) and then that would be it. You won’t become a state Senator under this scenario, but most people don’t get that chance and they don’t worry about it. Why stress out over politics? There are other things in Life.)

And then there’s this:

“…she believes this will be cleared up in the near future.”

Really? But all those phone calls to Needless Markup World HQ in Texas, which could have possibly cleared things up, haven’t done the trick yet, have they?

Oh well.

And hey would this incident explain why she ran through five Chiefs of Staff in five years? Take your pick – those firings could relate to the unbelievable I’m-a-zombie-I-didn’t-realize-I-was-shoplifting explanation or the I’m-so-Special-I-don’t-need-to-pay explanation.

On It Goes…