An interesting day yesterday, Debra Bowen won her primary – which is great news – and an interesting mix of election results otherwise. <\/p>\n
I biffed my election-day post favoring Bowen, but will try and make up for that in the next few months.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a LA Times sidenote.<\/p>\n
Steve Lopez – who is, I have to admit, frustratingly good sometimes, and frustratingly thick others – has one of his thick columns up today<\/a>.<\/p>\n He’s lauding the LA Times coverage of the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls:<\/p>\n Whatever the results of Tuesday’s hold-your-nose primary for governor, this much is true:<\/p>\n \nDemocrats Steve Westly and Phil Angelides were both gutted and fileted by this newspaper over the past several weeks. I mean that in a good way.<\/p>\n \nReaders learned, primarily from reporters Dan Morain and Evan Halper, that Westly and Angelides were anything but the upstanding, straight-talking crusaders they claimed to be. It was this newspaper, let’s remember, that pointed out the absurdity of an Angelides TV ad blasting Westly for donations from “a corrupt Chicago businessman.” As Morain and Halper discovered, Angelides himself had tried to tap the same guy.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Times deserves the attaboy. But then, S-Lo steps off the cliff:<\/p>\n I almost hesitate to mention any of this, because there’s nothing surprising or unusual about the way Westly and Angelides were knocked around by The Times. That’s a newspaper’s job: Hold candidates up to public inspection, study the viability of their promises and slap them around as needed.<\/p>\n \nI’m just wondering why the paper hasn’t gotten huzzahs from the professional gas bags who worked themselves into a frenzy three years ago over our equally tough reporting on a candidate named Arnold Schwarzenegger. As that doddering shill Hugh Hewitt put it back then, The Times was “an organ of the Democratic Party” with no interest other than “agenda journalism.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n