No Man's Land: February 2008 Archives

The magic of video.

Only a few days ago I was discussing with Dolores Hickambottom how many years ago, the Star-News would publish quotes from Elbie Hickambottom with every phonetic detail of his stutter intact. I told her how we endeavor to not polish the grammar and speech of some sources by quoting them with the same accuracy as everyone else.

After describing recent reprisal killings in his city as "pretty bad," Monrovia Mayor Rob Hammond's quote, as per Friday's story, "The bugle call went out and the cavalry is here," didn't make it into our video from the morning press conference.

I suspected that quote may have been incorrect after viewing the footage from the grassroots conference -- featuring the two parents of the rampage's most recent teen victims -- on the rough, grass lawn where Brandon Lee was shot Tuesday.

In that video, Rob in fact says the "Calvary" has been called. Bizarre Biblical reference ftw?

Politicians are uniformly strange creatures to observe, and reporters take a certain fascination with their idiosyncrasies. Rob showed up after the parents' conference had started, lingering to the side. But once the television cameras began rolling, he not-so-subtly inserted himself into the front row by shaking the hand of Khalid Shah, then turned around to take up a grim-faced, camera-framed position next to Jeanette Chavez, mother of 16-y-o murder victim Sammantha Salas.

Not to say his sentiments weren't sincere. But whether they were or weren't seemed secondary, at best.