The Joke's on Us

Xavier Alvar

Former Three Valleys Municipal Water District board member Xavier Alvarez seems to find his way into the news with great regularity, the latest instance having to do with the U.S. Supreme Court deciding to hear an appeal of the dismissal of the federal criminal charges against Alvarez by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

That last story made the New York Times, so it wasn't surprising to see it also pop up in the November, 2011, edition of the California State Bar's California Bar Journal.

What was surprising, however, was the rather outlandish photo that accompanied the article by writer Diane Curtis.   The photo displayed a mustachioed Alvarez grinning and in full military dress, complete with rows of medals and ribbons.

November 2011 California Bar Journal
(Click to Enlarge)

The photo first appeared in a Claremont Insider post and was a Photoshop graphic that superimposed an Army Ranger dress uniform over a photo of Alvarez.  If the Bar's writer had emailed us to check on the graphic, we'd gladly have told her it was a joke.

Alas, we didn't receive any inquiry on the photo and just happened to learn of it after a reader did a double-take after reading the Bar Journal article.  We plan on letting Curtis and the Bar Journal in on the joke.  In hindsight, we suppose it could have been worse:

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