Here Is What I Believe
Mr. Barabak could not resist sharing with readers his concurrence with the view of San Franciscans. Ethically, this is as odious as bringing a spittoon to the dinner table. Shame on him. Instead of illustrating the far left views and the flame-throwing rhetoric of the shamelessly self-promoting Ms. Pelosi, comparing it with the views of even farther left constituents who label her a centrist, Mr. Barabak lazily contents himself himself with a surface gloss of his thesis. Just a hack piece that could have been meaningful. But that was not his purpose. His laziness betrayed him. Mr. Barabak is not a kid. He knows better. But this kind of one-handed effort is endemic at the Times under the year-long editorship of Deanie Baquet, who is facing separate problems of his own. Mr. Baquet comes to work every day thinking he may be fired by the Chicago owner of the Times. For being under that kind of pressure, Mr. Baquet deserves sympathy. For the way he has run the newspaper into the ethical gutter, though, Mr. Baquet deserves our strongest scorn.
Dreadful News for the Times
Like many newspapers, the Times is shedding readers as fast as a fat man would like to shed pounds. Along with their increasingly pronounced political partisanship, and their notorious intimidation by Muslims, the internet is also killing them. By the latest accounting, daily sales of the Los Angeles Times are down a worrisome 5 percent. The Sunday edition is off 6 percent. Stacked atop earlier financial setbacks, the collective effect is devastating. This explains entirely why the Times, desperate to stanch the bleeding, adopted the circus appearance of the USA Today last week. But the issue today is the newspapers final surrender, its overt abandonment of objectivity in news stories. For a veteran reporter such as Mr. Barabak to give in to base tendencies is reprehensible. He sprayed his story language with his political beliefs, as if he were back home watering his thirsty plants. Mr. Barabak and his employer, in these times of hysterical political rhetoric, are no more capable of presenting a balanced portrait of a woman liberal any more than they are of a black liberal. Women and blacks have occupied the prime rungs on the Times endangered species list for years. With smoking guns in both hands, liberal women and liberals blacks, in Times reporting, consistently are judged irreversibly innocent.
Ah, Its Nothing, Pal
Below the Pelosi story in this mornings edition is the report of another humiliating pratfall by the hopelessly incompetent Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. For stiffing vendors for $300,000, his office had cell phones shut off, lost copy machine service and lived with a threat of having credit cards canceled. For good reason, the term scandal was cleverly avoided in the reporter Dan Morains story. Mr. Bustamante, you see, is in triplicate on the Times protected list. He not only is a liberal and a Democrat, he earns extra brownie points for his Mexican heritage. The carefully worded report, buried in a corner, skillfully avoids faulting Mr. Bustamante. He didnt know. How could he? An obscure aide did the dirty deed. Besides, it was 2 years ago. You would have thought Mr. Morain was relating a story about his favorite girlfriend, so gingerly, so softly and forgivingly did he contort his body and use aw-shucks language. Declining to quote Mr. Bustamante, Mr. Morain wrote that a dirty, lyin, cheatin, rootin, tootin sonofagun, an obscure chap, did the crime, and last year was sentenced to jail. Only aides were available to talk to the Times, it seems, while the chubby Mr. Bustamante was perspiring while hiding out under a big, fat desk, a stunt made famous by You Know What Legendary Former Culver City Police Chief. Mr. Bustamante was judged utterly blameless. Wow. You may recall the Times hysterical reporting early this month on the former Florida Congressman Mark Foley, a Republican, who did nothing criminal so far as I know. But he was described daily, for weeks, as disgraced, as were all other living Americans who ever have voted Republican. Another journalistic pie in the face by the Times to its readers. Since honestly inquiring readers no longer can depend on the newspaper for a reasonable accounting of events, this will help explain why its reputation and its sales are deservedly sagging.