IN ADDITION to all the other character flaws David Dilworth displayed in his attempt to blackmail Pacific Grove Mayor Dan Cort, the most prominent was arrogance.

It’s no surprise, of course, that Dilworth has a high opinion of himself. Anybody who’s sat through one of his performances at a public hearing already knows he thinks he’s an expert on every subject.

But Dilworth’s now-famous threatening email (which the mayor wisely released to the media and which you can read in full at the end of our story about the recall incident) showed that Dilworth actually believes he has become some kind of local political colossus, instead of being merely a joke.

To understand this, consider the numerous presumptions that underlie the extortion attempt, including:

- Dilworth’s belief that threatening Cort with a recall might actually result in him being recalled (not a chance).

- That Cort’s reputation would be ruined by the recall effort (whereas, being attacked by Dilworth is actually something to be proud of).

- And that, so serious were Dilworth’s complaints against the mayor, and so powerful his recall threat, that Cort’s immediate resignation could be demanded (which Dilworth got, but not in the way he intended).

This sorry episode is now over, with Dilworth’s scheming and conceit fully exposed in front of the whole community. But it’s worth asking: How did Dilworth come to believe he was such an important person? And the answer is because he’s gotten years of fawning attention in the media — attention which invariably began with guileless coverage of Dilworth’s antics in the Herald, and then spread around the world. It’s something we explained two years ago in an editorial called “The Dilworth Phenomenon.”

But another episode is worth recalling in the context of Dilworth’s latest arrogant attempt to humiliate a local elected official.

Several years ago, the California Coastal Commission was meeting at a hotel in Monterey. Suddenly, just before the public comment period began, a well known reporter for the Monterey County Herald arrived and took a seat in the audience. A few minutes later, the chairman of the coastal commission, who was giving members of the public their turn to address the mighty assembly, called Dilworth’s name, at which point Dilworth went to the lectern and shamelessly announced he was there to give Monterey County Supervisor and coastal commissioner Dave Potter the “Liar Liar Pants on Fire Award” because of something Potter had done which Dilworth didn’t agree with.

While Dilworth spoke, the reporter from the Herald took notes. When he finished, the reporter left.

A few days later, the embarrassing episode was reported in the Herald without a hint of skepticism, thus elevating it from a brief farce played out in front of an audience of perhaps 100 people to something that was embellished with the Herald’s credibility even as it was delivered into the hands of tens of thousand of local news consumers, and which now lives forever in the Herald’s archives.

For Dilworth, the coverage once again validated his fantasy that he’s a legitimate news figure — someone so important he could summon a Herald reporter at will and have even his most outraegous publicity stunts treated as though they actually mattered.

Now, even the Herald has apparently decided Dilworth has gone too far. Though its news coverage continues to refer to him as executive director of HOPE, in an editorial Monday the paper wrung its hands over Dilworth’s attempted blackmail of Cort, and wished Dilworth would “leave the arena.” But it was the Herald that put him there in the first place. And this is also the case with quite a few of the Monterey Peninsula’s other crackpot activists.

If you want them to go away, all you have to do is stop paying attention to them.