It’s gone forever now, but once there was a residential complex as close to paradise as such a place could ever be. Not far from the ocean and adjoining undeveloped hillsides, it had great views, cheap rents, funky old wooden units, lots of trees and shrubs, and a cooperative spirit in which most tenants became friends. So seductive was this place that just living there seemed more fulfilling than career success itself. The atmosphere was more than laid-back. It was flat-supine.Then the old manager retired, and a tenant named Wanda replaced him. An attractive and intelligent woman, Wanda was the most popular resident, known for her unending hospitality and generosity. But the small empowerment transmuted her. Soon, she was telling tenants to take down their curtains so she could monitor their lives. She ordered one renter to lose 20 pounds on pain of eviction. Then she started screening visitors. You get the idea. It took just one speck of authority to turn the even-tempered Wanda into a New Age Nazi. And to make that laid-back paradise into a tropical purgatory.Authority evokes ugliness in many otherwise decent people. I thought of Wanda when I read the latest about Episcopal priest Alice Callaghan in Saturday’s Times. Callaghan’s original turf was the far-from-paradisiacal Skid Row. For more than a decade, she helped Skid Row’s children, doing the Lord’s work against all the odds. She was then, correctly, I think, deemed one of the Southland’s livingsaints.But she’s since become a force behind multimillionaire moon-rock Ron Unz’s Proposition 227. It was the efforts of Callaghan, after all, that largely inspired the recently approved voter initiative ending most bilingual-education programs. It was Callaghan who organized a parent boycott of L.A.’s Ninth Street School over the difficulty of getting all-English classes for students who did not speak English fluently. Although the school district deserves much criticism for its mismanagement of bilingual education, the administration at Ninth Street makes a strong case that it was vilified out of all proportion. And that it continued to be vilified no matter how it responded or reformed. This attention-getting dispute caught the eye of tech-whiz Unz, whose career experience with language disputes better suited him to discuss the merits of Unix vs. Cobol.Never mind that Callaghan, a clergywoman, has only the most limited concept of the overall educational needs of the state. She’s become as weird as my old pal Wanda when it comes to promoting and enforcing 227. Whose passage, she early declared, was the desire of most Latino parents.But according to exit polls, it turned out not to be the wish of many such parents. So to hell with them. Last week, she announced, in the Times, her intention “to hold everyone’s feet to the fire” and that “we may have to sue everyone who is out of compliance” with her extreme interpretation of 227. This would include any schools that offered nearly any form of native-language instruction, even if parents wanted it, even though the initiative’s language itself grudgingly allows such exemptions. Speaking to the Weekly, she said, “We have replaced bilingual ed.” Of course, the initiative also allows lawsuits over its enforcement, opening the door to the meddlesome and not-so-publicity-shy Callaghan.Recommended videosPowered by AnyClip NOW PLAYINGGiuliani Calls Trump’s Former Lawyer Of 11 Years A ‘Pathological Liar’Trump’s Re-Election Campaign Has Already Spent About $1.2 Million On Legal FeesTrump’s Response To Cohen Audio Recording ReleaseTrump Says ‘Perhaps Illegal’ Lawyers Recording ClientsFormer New York City Congressman, Guy Molinari, Dies At 89NK diplomacy won’t “drag out to no end”: PompeoMichael Cohen Is Ready To Spill The Beans‘The Hunt for the Trump Tapes with Tom Arnold’ Gets Premiere DateTrump Tweets On Cohen, FBIAG Sessions: ‘Perhaps’ It Was Wrong To Laugh Along With ‘Lock Her Up’ ChantSuch are the transformative aspects of sudden authority – and sudden fame – on flawed egos. Before Alice Callaghan, Wanda, or even Mayor Rudy Giuliani, there was that revolutionary dictator in Woody Allen’s Bananas, who, on seizing power, ordered everyone to wear his underwear outside his pants.Alice Callaghan is coming on the same way. Except that Callaghan is, unfortunately, real. And what’s at stake is parents’ choice about their children’s future.Tedzilla ReturnsIt was a sad little vote of 11-3. And due to its shamefulness, no one on the L.A. City Council said much, except Rita Walters, who was eloquent as she spoke against appointing Ted Stein to the Harbor Commission. Walters pointed out, in essence, that Stein had transgressed important city regulations the last time he served on a city commission.For those of you who’ve forgotten – please listen, 11 members of the City Council – Stein surreptitiously hired Clinton crony Webb Hubbell, and saw to it that Hubbell was paid improperly, all in an attempt to curry favor in Washington ov