Media: October 2007 Archives

I now feel the elation Jonathan felt at being quoted in the Wiktionary and Steve Martin's "Jerk" felt at being included in the phone book: Check out my Wikimmortality.

Many thanks to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for inviting me to speak (twice) at the Congress of Neighborhood Councils today at the Convention Center. I had a great time meeting everyone and discussing how councils can work with the media, and enjoyed hanging with my co-presenter Javier Angulo from NALEO. For those of you looking for the pages I showed on the laptop projector -- how to write a guest column, get your letter to the editor noticed, do press releases, etc. -- I've listed them here. Remember to watch out for the upcoming Neighborhood Councils blog, and keep contributing stories to ValleyNews.com.

Geraldo Rivera is now down in San Diego County, and was just on Fox News in a tight black T-shirt standing in the middle of dry brush (crackling it between his fingers to show us how dry it is), dropping the ubiquitous phrase "tinder-dry," and hollering as the smoke coming over the ridge behind him turned to flame. All the while pontificating about how Californians are doomed to live with flames as a tradeoff for getting sun and fun.

It's just not a disaster until Geraldo's on the scene! You know he's just salivating at the thought of nice n' peaceful Qualcomm Stadium turning into Superdome Part Deux.

UPDATE: Geraldo just called the Santa Anas the "hair-dryer winds." Cool.

http://www.insidesocal.com/friendlyfire/2007/10/glen_beck_accidentally_hates_c.htmlChris scolded me in a recent comment for what he thinks is an unfair characterization of Northern San Diego County in my Glen Beck post in which I say the area is super conservative. I respond, what planet is he on? It's not a secret. In fact, it's something the area's residents are proud of. To assure him that it's not a random assessment (and in fact something I'm intimately familiar with as I'm from San Diego) I bring you these factoids about the area that is getting the heck burnt out of it right now.

= Fallbrook, one of the city's in No,. SD was for decades the home base of Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance. He picked Fallbrook as a base for his racist movement because of the sympathy he found in the region which even then was engaging in anti-Mexican events.

= In 2006, the city council of Escondido, in northern San Diego County enacted an ordinance barring landlords from renting to illegal immigrants. It was extremely contentious debate that brought out a lot of immigrant bashing in the name of Americanism.

= Indeed, the area has gotten even more conservative in recent decades. The 50th congressional district, which includes alot fo the north county coast, used to be strongly democratic. Btu in 1992, this district elected Randy "Duke" Cunningham and even gave him a victory shrotly before the scandal the brought him down unfolded. The disgraced congressman resigned after admitting to taking millions in bribe from defense contractors.

In the last election, George Bush got 55 percent of the vote even though the district had been gerrymandered to include the more liberal parts of La Jolla.

= Lawrence Welk Village, a resort near Escondido, doesn't in and of itself signify conservativeness, unless you equate golf and affluence with conservatism. But I love the name and wanted to mention it.

= A big part of this region is the Marine base at Camp Pendelton. As such many current and former military families have settled in the surrounding communities which are adjacent to the base and was pretty affordable up until the last few years.

The point is that this is a region and a group of people that Beck would never accuse of hating America except by accident.

This clip is from Carlin's HBO Special "Life is worth losing." The finale is a riff on a small crisis that turns into a mega monster fire that consumes the Earth. Considering what's going on in the world outside, it's been resonating in my mind since Sunday.

"thounsands of identical homes burn in identical fires.."

I had never heard of conservative radio host and CNN talk show dude Glen Beck before he generated a minor firestorm himself by uttering nasty things about the people who've lost their homes. His Ann Coulterish comment was clearly calculated to get him some press, which it did. Sad that conservatives think you have to say something mean about people to get attention. This is the line:

I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today. There are a few people that hate America. But I don't think the Democrats are those. I think there are those posing as Democrats that are like that.

No. SD is a heavily ex-military area and republicans which includes a city that was one of the first in the nation to enact strong anti-immigrant laws (info about it in this NY times story. This is a place white supremacists call home, where Laurence Welk village still stands, that elected Congressman Duke Cunningham, where Reagan is, and will always be, the best president ever.

Just goes to show what uniformed and nasty comments will get you -- an unintended slam of your target audience. Oopsie.

However, Bbck's not the only journalist to be geographically challenged when it comes to California. This morning, I 've heard CNN news announcers and reporters say in various ways no less than three times about how Lake Arrowhead is either close to or part of San Diego. I guess it all seems the same on the big map.

And now for some shameless self promotion...

My Sunday column on why I feel bad for Ann Coulter was sent out on the NY Times wire and picked up in at least three papers across the country that I know of (I rely on mail from readers of those pubs or if a paper sticks it on their web site, which they are not supposed to do), the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Sun-Herald in southern Mississippi and the Aspen Times.

I'm sure the headline, thought up by my colleague Chris Weinkopf, "Sympathy for the She-Devil," had something to do with its popularity.

As I listen to the news station (Channel 7) drone on about all the many fires, I have to give credit to the TV people. It's not easy to have to yak for hours as happens during these periodic crises when at times you don't have much news but non-stop coverage. As such, you get the inevitable platitudes like "we all hope everyone gets out of there," and "This is really something to watch," and "The firefighters really have their work cut out for them."

Then there are the empty and sometimes amusing cliches such as this I just heard as I was writing this: " A double edge sword that cuts both ways."

But what I do want to complain about is how editorial objectivity seems to get pre-empted along with regular programming. In the service of filling time with meaningless talking, so often TV news people turn to their own opinions and words that imply subjectivity "unfortunately" "terrible" "horrible" "devastating." As someone who has covered many fires first hand, I understand they often cause strong feelings. But their jobs is to deliver reports, not reviews, nor lecture people about what they should and should not do, which I find offensive coming from a talking head. We should be getting the facts, not their insincere sympathy.

Just caught FF's own Earl Ofari Hutchinson doing a great job on "The O'Reilly Factor," speaking about Bill Cosby's latest comments/book on parenting and the African-American community. You can catch O'Reilly again at 8 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Earl's take on Don Imus' likely return to the radio airwaves seem very fair and reasonable to me. Although the disgraced radio host hasn't been on in Los Angeles for years, and likely won't be any time soon, I still say: Welcome back, I-Man.

Unlike many of the people who called for Imus' scalp, I've actually listened to him quite a bit -- almost daily back when I lived in New York and he hosted the morning show on The Fan (WFAN, New York's sports-radio station, never mind that Imus wasn't a sports guy). To be sure, Imus had a soft spot for ribald, politically incorrect humor, but this was hardly the focus of his show, and he was no Howard Stern. Much of the time on his program was actually spent interviewing big names in the media and in the news -- all the top presidential candidates would appear, as would industry bigwigs like Tim Russert and Margaret Carlson. The show would often spin off into long, thoughtful conversations about current events; kind of like NPR, but not so monotonous, and with a sense of humor. Imus also spent countless hours raising millions for the dude ranch/summer camp he ran for seriously ill children.

None of which is to defend the egregious comment that cost Imus his job. It was a stupid, offensive thing to say. But it was also more the result of an off-the-cuff, terrible attempt at humor than any ingrained sense of racial animus. If you listened to Imus regularly, and you heard him talk about the issues, what he thought about bigots, and the respectful way he treated his guests, it's clear he was no racist. I don't think he ever intended to hurt anybody. He was just in the dangerous business of using shock to elicit a laugh -- a business that, especially when unscripted, can lead to awful mistakes. Play with fire, and you're likely to get burned. Surely Imus gets that by now.

As Earl notes, Imus has paid dearly for that mistake, which is only appropriate. But he shouldn't have to pay with his career. He's taken his lumps, he's expressed contrition, and he's sincerely sought to make amends. That, and his talent, ought to be enough to earn him another chance.

GOP Thompson's TV debate debut falls flat
--Headline, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 10, 2007

Late entry Thompson mostly holds his own in debate
--Headline, L.A. Daily News, Oct. 10, 2007

Die hard Don Imus dissers will lose round two with the shock jock. Round two is a renewed battle to keep him off the air. He will be back on the air possibly as early as December. And he should be. It has nothing to do with him, his talent, his marketing draw, or the legions of fans that have shouted for his return since the nappy head ho dumping episode. His return has everything to do with the blacks that screamed for his hide back in April. The top Imus scalp hunters have mellowed, softened, or proclaimed disinterest in and toward keeping him off the air. The list includes Al Sharpton, the Rutgers women’s head basketball coach, some of the Rutgers players (one dropped her lawsuit against him), and a few prominent black columnists. Their silence or indifference on an Imus return should not be mistaken for any ringing declaration of support for him. It’s simply recognition that continuing the vendetta against Imus serves no real purpose.

The hard reality is that Imus did pay a steep price for his mouth, and he deserved to pay that price. Now that he will and should return to the broadcast studio, he has a chance for redemption. His return is no cause for cheers and popping the champagne corks. But it’s certainly no cause for jeers and tossing those bottles at him either when he returns.

My apologies for not mentioning this earlier, but I was on KPCC radio with Patt Morrison (and Bernie Parks) yesterday, discussing L.A. City Hall's stealth utility tax and this editorial. You can listen to the show here; I come in at about the 12:45 mark.

I always joke about how I "broke the Internet" when I freeze my computer by trying to open too many sites at once while watching old "Happy Days" runs on YouTube. Now, apparently, some hapless Santa Monica professor really did break the Internet -- in Myanmar! Well, kinda. According to this Reuters Canada story, one Santa Monica College porfessor's actions caused the government junta to shut down Internet access there. Here's an excerpt:

A Los Angeles academic may have been a driving force behind the move by Myanmar's 19-year-old dictatorship to shut down Internet access after bloggers posted images of soldiers killing civilians.

The images included footage of a Japanese photographer for the Agence France Presse shot dead at point-blank range by a soldier chasing demonstrators.

Civilians and Buddhist monks began peaceful protests in August against a steep surprise fuel price hike in Yangon, also known as Rangoon, the capital of the country formerly known as Burma.

The government has since admitted responsibility for the death of the journalist Kenji Nagai.

A video of Nagai's killing on September 27 was sent to Ryan McMillen, a professor of history at Santa Monica College, who then uploaded it to the I-Reporter service on CNN.com.

For the atrocious headline of the day, look no further than the L.A. Times' Mayor seeks to cut phone tax 10%.

This is pure spin -- spin crafted by the mayor's office to dupe L.A. voters into passing a tax hike next February. And the Times' headline writers are all too happy to pass it along as fact to gullible readers.

Here's the deal: The mayor has no interest in cutting anything. The phone tax is likely to soon disappear because it is illegal. Villaraigosa realizes this, and so he wants to put a new phone tax on the ballot to replace the old one. But because the old tax was 10 percent, the mayor realizes that if he sets the new one at 9 percent, he can -- with the help of the L.A. Times -- fool the clueless among the electorate into thinking they're voting for a tax cut when, in reality, they'd be opting for a tax they otherwise wouldn't have to pay at all. (Click here for the Daily News story.)

The Times story, although less than perfectly clear in the beginning, is more honest than its headline. It includes this damning quote from Democratic consultant Darry Sragow:

"This is a strategy that relies on deliberately keeping important information from voters.... It works so long as there's not funded, viable opposition. The minute that there's funded, viable opposition, the strategy falls of its own weight."

Of course, as with Measure R -- the anti-term limits initiative designed to appear pro-term limits -- it's hard to put together a well-funded, viable opposition because the moneyed interests are all in cahoots with City Hall.

And, by all indications, so is the Times.

In the battle of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors v. Michael Savage, it's hard to know whom to root for.

Michael Savage, for the uninitiated, is the living, breathing embodiment of all liberals' worst nightmares about AM talk radio. While most of liberals' denunciations of the genre strike me as uninformed and overblown, in the case of Savage, they're spot-on. The guy is a vitriolic bomb-thrower, mean-spirited and vicious. It hurts one's ears and sensibilities just to listen to him. That he said some pro-immigration activists on a hunger strike should "fast until they starve to death" may be outrageous, but it's pretty much par for the course in the Savage Nation.

So it's curious that this particular comment -- which is truly just one culled from millions that are equally noxious -- should arouse such consternation. And one wonders whether the San Fran supes, who are considering a resolution that condemns Savage's comments, really have nothing better to do with their time than denounce a talk-radio host.

Worse, though, is the language of the supervisors' pious resolution, which boasts of how San Francisco "values the dignity of all its residents," and brags of its "tolerance." Oh please. This is the same city that subsidizes the grotesque Folsom Street Fair -- a grandiose insult to human dignity -- with its anti-Christian advertisements. And in a smear worthy of Michael Savage himself, just 18 months ago these same self-righteous politicians condemned a Christian youth rally in their city as "fascist."

Savage deserves the condemnation, but then, the San Francisco supervisors deserve one, too. Truth be told, Savage and the supes really deserve each other -- both are poster children, right and left, of savage intolerance.

* UPDATE: The SF supes have voted unanimously to condemn Michael Savage.