Saturday Flash Focus Group: LA, Literacy, Media
I put five quick questions about Los Angeles, media, and local literacy to seven respondents: included in the mix are three noted authors, a magazine editor, a college professor, a mayoral candidate, a local teacher, and two mothers of school children. Their political opinions and religious beliefs run the gamut. They all either live in the City of Los Angeles now or have lived most of their lives in or around the City.
Two of the respondents chose to go by their online identities. I think most of their answers will intrigue you. And Matt Welch's rant at the end about TV/print/Internet may even be worth bookmarking.
1) What is the biggest problem Los Angeles faces today?
John Shannon (author of the Jack Liffey mysteries, and other novels): Probably undertaxation, so the only alternative in hard times is cut-cut-cut.
Valley Doll: Besides our crappy Mayor and his cronies? Housing, or the lack thereof; especially of the "affordable" flavor; and at the same time, the most hideous sardine housing in areas where the infrastructure can't possibly support the mammoth growth.
Mystical Professor: Traffic and lousy drivers---I was in a(nother) fender bender today!!!
Walter Moore: Rhymes with "Rillavaigosa." He's the public policy equivalent of channel-surfing: an endless series of meaningless photo-ops, pretending to be progress.
R. Van Dyke: If you look long enough at the high school drop out rate, you will see the threads of poverty, gangs, crime, vandalism, drugs, and homelessness. You will see the masses of people who will never be able to afford one of the luxury condos going up on every corner. You will see a stubborn refusal to adopt the values of the middle class that stabilize neighborhoods. You will see a glorification of gun culture. You will see an epidemic failure of imagination.
Heather King (author of nonfiction books, most recently Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding): Affordable housing.
Matt Welch (www.mattwelch.com/warblog), Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine (www.reason.com), and author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick (www.mccainbio.com):
A public school system that A) not only sucks, but sucks hard; B) wastes money in ways that are impossible to fathom; and C) has violently dislodged literally thousands of mostly working-class residents, in the misguided, money-driven, eminent domain-enabled drive to destroy the village in order to educate it. All while enrollments are just plummeting. It's the biggest public policy and individual-justice story of the past decade, complete with the corruption that automatically attaches to the country's biggest public works project west of The Big Dig, and yet it's gone virtually unscrutinized in any meaningful way.
2) Who is LA's best active writer?
John Shannon: Myself and friends excluded, I don't like to tie writers to locations like that. I'd be hard-pressed to say who America's best writer is. There are damn few I eagerly anticipate any more. Maybe Kent Anderson, author of the great Viet Nam novel Sympathy for the Devil, if he ever publishes again. Mostly I read dead people.
Valley Doll: ::sigh:: Joseph Mailander [ed.: I shouldn't have asked]
Mystical Professor: Joseph Mailander [ed.: indeed, it was an unfair question]
Walter Moore: David Zahniser. He is the Upton Sinclair / Woodward / Bernstein of L.A. in the 21st Century. He should be put in charge of the L.A. Times and at least three TV channels immediately. He actually investigates, instead of merely re-printing career politicians' press releases. If this town had a dozen David Zahnisers running the media, we could clean up City Hall in two election cycles. Someone give that man a raise. And I'm not just saying that because he's my brother-in-law. [ed.: he's kidding about the b-i-l]
R. Van Dyke: I don't know. You? I miss the weekly LA Times Magazine because I loved reading Dan Neil's 800 Words column in the back.
Heather King: DJ Waldie.
Matt Welch: I don't know.
3) Who looks over your shoulder when you write or edit?
John Shannon: Probably some interior simulation of the "intelligent reader." That's a fairly dumb answer.
Valley Doll: Caroline
Mystical Professor: Angels and Ancestors
Walter Moore: Betty, the chihuahua-pug mix. She's got an uncanny knack for irony, as do most small dogs.
R. Van Dyke: No one.
Heather King: The omniscient reader and harsh critic who is me, with a dash of the (immortal, fantasy) guy I want to sleep with, both of us possessing, of course, a deep and black sense of humor.
Matt Welch: My conscience, some ghosts that will go unmentioned, and my readers.
4) What has been the single most transformational book you've read in the past ten years?
John Shannon: It'd have to be more than ten. John Berger's A Fortunate Man.
Mystical Professor: I read lots of books that might fit that category and can't pick just one (like potato chips, M&Ms and other addictions)
Valley Doll: Factotum, Charles Bukowski. It was just about ten years ago I started reading some of the Old School L.A. Writers, and Buk is where I started; he seemed a natural extension of Beat, but with a definite LA vibe. Inside that particular book, it felt familiar; I knew all those characters; all those places; and I had at times, lived that life in L.A. and I finally felt okay about it.
Walter Moore: The L.A. City budget. Seriously, it's like when Neo takes the red pill. Or the blue pill. No, not THAT blue pill. The pill that shows him reality. That one. I miss the days when I didn't realize what a horrific rip-off our local government is. Ignorance is bliss.
R. Van Dyke: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Heather King: The Holy Longing, by Ronald Rolheiser.
Matt Welch: Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, by Julian Rubinstein.
5) Is TV or print media more impacted by the Internet?
John Shannon: Print probably. It seems to be in a death spiral.
Valley Doll: Print. I rarely bother with print media anymore; and I know many people who are through with it, too. Even a few seniors I know who had been more resistant to giving up print and dealing with newfangled technology, I find are now ditching print in favor of the cnn dot coms and the like.
Mystical Professor: Okay, you already said this (so I'm cheating)...did I remember correctly, you said TV? [ed.: indeed I did, at a talk last Wednesday]
Walter Moore: Print. Why buy the cow you can get the milk -- and get it without walking out into your front yard during rush hour in your jammies to retrieve words printed on dead trees?
R. Van Dyke: Print media would be my first response. But then, I still subscribe to and read the LA Times and The New Yorker, although I let my Newsweek subscription lapse when they hired Karl Rove. However, I can say that how I spend my time in the evenings is almost never in front of the TV. I'm on the internet, reading and answering email on a Friday night.
Heather King: I don't watch TV so I couldn't really say, though I was shocked recently to hear a couple of people say they no longer subscribed to the newspaper because they get all their news online. This struck me as an ominous development if for no other reason than that we need to touch things and smell things and hold things in our hands. Especially the things we read.
Matt Welch: Interesting question. I'd guess print media, for the simple reason of price point. Broadcast media already knows it must be free to consume, unless it adds the kind of differentiating value (i.e., cussing and Adult Situations and hyper-specialization) that can graduate it to pay-cable or satellite radio. Newspapers, though, have institutionalized a half-century's worth of inaccurate, monopoly-driven belief that they must cost money to be somehow credible. Even while (with a few exceptions) degrading their own physical beauty & failing to take advantage of the things that only tactile products can offer. Partly as a result of both, their print circulations continue to plummet, and even at this late date ink-stained curmudgeons openly ponder the insanely idiotic idea of throwing more content behind paid firewalls.
This kind of fat-headed mindset created an Original Sin that all newspapers save the UK Guardian and SF Chronicle have committed -- fucking up their archives. Some time in the not-so-distant future, news organizations will make serious money out of the mere fact of having cajillions of individual Web pages of super-credible/interesting information, alongside which targeted ads can be sold. Besides leaving that advertising money off the table through the pound-foolish idea of selling archives, these news organizations -- whose very selling point is their comprehensive intelligence -- have willfully made themselves underrepresented on the place that matters most -- Google. That's a whole generation of brand-building just washed down the drain. Incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I'll point to one other way that print media is more impacted -- competitive mindset. TV is competitive across most markets and platforms. City newspapers are mostly uncompetitive, except for the global share of eyeballs. The bottom-up Internet, by definition, is hyper-competitive, even though the business stakes are usually much lower. On one side you've got "amateurs" happily toiling for free in the drive for more respectability and page views; on the other side you've got a bunch of morose monopolistic lifers who don't try harder and who see the word "competition" as being roughly equivalent to "child pornography" -- a degrading, definitionally harmful phenomenon. I am generalizing for effect, but only just. Read the woe-is-media criticism from any Legacy Media lifer -- your Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, Len Downie, whoever. Competition is a dirty word, causing job-loss and degradation in quality. Almost nowhere do you see big-city newsrooms taking responsibility for their own failures. Compare that to the happy-warrior, individual-responsibility mindset of bloggers, and the phrases "irresistible force" and "immovable object" come to mind.
What most newspaper execs fail to realize is that they've got a gigantic built-in advantage in this new world. Leverage the things only newspapers can do -- quality, ubiquity, depth, physical beauty/interest -- set the product at 21st century prices (free), give each story a URL that lasts forever, embrace competition with the zeal of a convert ... and you'll run the table. But the mindset is the obstacle, and after having been on the inside even of a forward-looking section of a newspaper that's trying hard right now to change cultures, I'm pessimistic.
Two of the respondents chose to go by their online identities. I think most of their answers will intrigue you. And Matt Welch's rant at the end about TV/print/Internet may even be worth bookmarking.
1) What is the biggest problem Los Angeles faces today?
John Shannon (author of the Jack Liffey mysteries, and other novels): Probably undertaxation, so the only alternative in hard times is cut-cut-cut.
Valley Doll: Besides our crappy Mayor and his cronies? Housing, or the lack thereof; especially of the "affordable" flavor; and at the same time, the most hideous sardine housing in areas where the infrastructure can't possibly support the mammoth growth.
Mystical Professor: Traffic and lousy drivers---I was in a(nother) fender bender today!!!
Walter Moore: Rhymes with "Rillavaigosa." He's the public policy equivalent of channel-surfing: an endless series of meaningless photo-ops, pretending to be progress.
R. Van Dyke: If you look long enough at the high school drop out rate, you will see the threads of poverty, gangs, crime, vandalism, drugs, and homelessness. You will see the masses of people who will never be able to afford one of the luxury condos going up on every corner. You will see a stubborn refusal to adopt the values of the middle class that stabilize neighborhoods. You will see a glorification of gun culture. You will see an epidemic failure of imagination.
Heather King (author of nonfiction books, most recently Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding): Affordable housing.
Matt Welch (www.mattwelch.com/warblog), Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine (www.reason.com), and author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick (www.mccainbio.com):
A public school system that A) not only sucks, but sucks hard; B) wastes money in ways that are impossible to fathom; and C) has violently dislodged literally thousands of mostly working-class residents, in the misguided, money-driven, eminent domain-enabled drive to destroy the village in order to educate it. All while enrollments are just plummeting. It's the biggest public policy and individual-justice story of the past decade, complete with the corruption that automatically attaches to the country's biggest public works project west of The Big Dig, and yet it's gone virtually unscrutinized in any meaningful way.
2) Who is LA's best active writer?
John Shannon: Myself and friends excluded, I don't like to tie writers to locations like that. I'd be hard-pressed to say who America's best writer is. There are damn few I eagerly anticipate any more. Maybe Kent Anderson, author of the great Viet Nam novel Sympathy for the Devil, if he ever publishes again. Mostly I read dead people.
Valley Doll: ::sigh:: Joseph Mailander [ed.: I shouldn't have asked]
Mystical Professor: Joseph Mailander [ed.: indeed, it was an unfair question]
Walter Moore: David Zahniser. He is the Upton Sinclair / Woodward / Bernstein of L.A. in the 21st Century. He should be put in charge of the L.A. Times and at least three TV channels immediately. He actually investigates, instead of merely re-printing career politicians' press releases. If this town had a dozen David Zahnisers running the media, we could clean up City Hall in two election cycles. Someone give that man a raise. And I'm not just saying that because he's my brother-in-law. [ed.: he's kidding about the b-i-l]
R. Van Dyke: I don't know. You? I miss the weekly LA Times Magazine because I loved reading Dan Neil's 800 Words column in the back.
Heather King: DJ Waldie.
Matt Welch: I don't know.
3) Who looks over your shoulder when you write or edit?
John Shannon: Probably some interior simulation of the "intelligent reader." That's a fairly dumb answer.
Valley Doll: Caroline
Mystical Professor: Angels and Ancestors
Walter Moore: Betty, the chihuahua-pug mix. She's got an uncanny knack for irony, as do most small dogs.
R. Van Dyke: No one.
Heather King: The omniscient reader and harsh critic who is me, with a dash of the (immortal, fantasy) guy I want to sleep with, both of us possessing, of course, a deep and black sense of humor.
Matt Welch: My conscience, some ghosts that will go unmentioned, and my readers.
4) What has been the single most transformational book you've read in the past ten years?
John Shannon: It'd have to be more than ten. John Berger's A Fortunate Man.
Mystical Professor: I read lots of books that might fit that category and can't pick just one (like potato chips, M&Ms and other addictions)
Valley Doll: Factotum, Charles Bukowski. It was just about ten years ago I started reading some of the Old School L.A. Writers, and Buk is where I started; he seemed a natural extension of Beat, but with a definite LA vibe. Inside that particular book, it felt familiar; I knew all those characters; all those places; and I had at times, lived that life in L.A. and I finally felt okay about it.
Walter Moore: The L.A. City budget. Seriously, it's like when Neo takes the red pill. Or the blue pill. No, not THAT blue pill. The pill that shows him reality. That one. I miss the days when I didn't realize what a horrific rip-off our local government is. Ignorance is bliss.
R. Van Dyke: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Heather King: The Holy Longing, by Ronald Rolheiser.
Matt Welch: Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, by Julian Rubinstein.
5) Is TV or print media more impacted by the Internet?
John Shannon: Print probably. It seems to be in a death spiral.
Valley Doll: Print. I rarely bother with print media anymore; and I know many people who are through with it, too. Even a few seniors I know who had been more resistant to giving up print and dealing with newfangled technology, I find are now ditching print in favor of the cnn dot coms and the like.
Mystical Professor: Okay, you already said this (so I'm cheating)...did I remember correctly, you said TV? [ed.: indeed I did, at a talk last Wednesday]
Walter Moore: Print. Why buy the cow you can get the milk -- and get it without walking out into your front yard during rush hour in your jammies to retrieve words printed on dead trees?
R. Van Dyke: Print media would be my first response. But then, I still subscribe to and read the LA Times and The New Yorker, although I let my Newsweek subscription lapse when they hired Karl Rove. However, I can say that how I spend my time in the evenings is almost never in front of the TV. I'm on the internet, reading and answering email on a Friday night.
Heather King: I don't watch TV so I couldn't really say, though I was shocked recently to hear a couple of people say they no longer subscribed to the newspaper because they get all their news online. This struck me as an ominous development if for no other reason than that we need to touch things and smell things and hold things in our hands. Especially the things we read.
Matt Welch: Interesting question. I'd guess print media, for the simple reason of price point. Broadcast media already knows it must be free to consume, unless it adds the kind of differentiating value (i.e., cussing and Adult Situations and hyper-specialization) that can graduate it to pay-cable or satellite radio. Newspapers, though, have institutionalized a half-century's worth of inaccurate, monopoly-driven belief that they must cost money to be somehow credible. Even while (with a few exceptions) degrading their own physical beauty & failing to take advantage of the things that only tactile products can offer. Partly as a result of both, their print circulations continue to plummet, and even at this late date ink-stained curmudgeons openly ponder the insanely idiotic idea of throwing more content behind paid firewalls.
This kind of fat-headed mindset created an Original Sin that all newspapers save the UK Guardian and SF Chronicle have committed -- fucking up their archives. Some time in the not-so-distant future, news organizations will make serious money out of the mere fact of having cajillions of individual Web pages of super-credible/interesting information, alongside which targeted ads can be sold. Besides leaving that advertising money off the table through the pound-foolish idea of selling archives, these news organizations -- whose very selling point is their comprehensive intelligence -- have willfully made themselves underrepresented on the place that matters most -- Google. That's a whole generation of brand-building just washed down the drain. Incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I'll point to one other way that print media is more impacted -- competitive mindset. TV is competitive across most markets and platforms. City newspapers are mostly uncompetitive, except for the global share of eyeballs. The bottom-up Internet, by definition, is hyper-competitive, even though the business stakes are usually much lower. On one side you've got "amateurs" happily toiling for free in the drive for more respectability and page views; on the other side you've got a bunch of morose monopolistic lifers who don't try harder and who see the word "competition" as being roughly equivalent to "child pornography" -- a degrading, definitionally harmful phenomenon. I am generalizing for effect, but only just. Read the woe-is-media criticism from any Legacy Media lifer -- your Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, Len Downie, whoever. Competition is a dirty word, causing job-loss and degradation in quality. Almost nowhere do you see big-city newsrooms taking responsibility for their own failures. Compare that to the happy-warrior, individual-responsibility mindset of bloggers, and the phrases "irresistible force" and "immovable object" come to mind.
What most newspaper execs fail to realize is that they've got a gigantic built-in advantage in this new world. Leverage the things only newspapers can do -- quality, ubiquity, depth, physical beauty/interest -- set the product at 21st century prices (free), give each story a URL that lasts forever, embrace competition with the zeal of a convert ... and you'll run the table. But the mindset is the obstacle, and after having been on the inside even of a forward-looking section of a newspaper that's trying hard right now to change cultures, I'm pessimistic.
Labels: a guy in la, flash focus group
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 3/22/2008 05:20:00 AM
27 Comments:
Let's guess which one is the "mother of two." Hmmm. I guess it's not Walter Moore.
Listen, you screwed up the entire credibility of this post by putting Valley Doll as someone whose opinion is particularly noteworthy. At best, she's a mother who's squandering time on MS that should be spent on her children.
That doesn't exactly make her a civics scholar. And this blows much of the credibility of this post.
Suspect in Football Player Murder in U.S. Illegally
FOX 11 News has learned that the teenage gangmember charged with murdering high school football star Jamiel Shaw is illegally in the U.S. It's been more then a week since the LAPD announced the arrest of Pedro Espinoza, a member of the notorious 18th Street Gang... Now immigration and customs enforcement officials confirm Espinoza's illegal status. John Schwada brings us the story
Is there an echo in here?
Is there an echo in here?
I believe this called a circle jerk. Who cares what Valley Doll thinks about anything? Please try returning to inside shit on City Hall.
Right on 9:30! What in the WORLD does Valley Doll have to do with City Hall?
Just another soccer mom who seems bored with taking care of her kids, and using MS as an attention getter.
It is a surprise that many mexican gang members are illegal aliens?
That low life loser Pedro Espinoza was in and out of jail for most of his life. Pedro Espinoza and his family should have been deported, I wonder how many of his brothers and sisters are also gang members?
This shows how screwed up our immigration system is. He is a career criminal and yet he was still in this country illegally.
The mexican politicans and police chief will not be telling you about this because the mayor protects illegal aliens. This is what sanctuary city means.
Sanctuary city = hide illegal alien criminals in Los Angeles.
One of the killers of Cheryl Green in Harbor Gateway was also an illegal alien gang member from 204st gang.
Listen, you screwed up the entire credibility of this post by putting Valley Doll as someone whose opinion is particularly noteworthy...And this blows much of the credibility of this post.
This post made no special claim to credibility other than being a representative sampling of friends of mine across some various political and spiritual beliefs. If you'd like someone with opinions as lustrous as your own to be included in the next one, email me.
But beyond that, it's good to see someone piping in from the Mayor's office so early Saturday morning. Must be hard work, trying to figure out a way to wrangle out of the Lara kerfluffle.
As always, a pleasure to respond!
Good morning all,
May I jump in on this?
2. Z-Man, Hector Becerra, and Joe.
1. The coming Density Storm.
3. Spell checker
4. Ghost Grizzlies of Southern Colorado.
5. Print hands down.
BTW, Walter is related to the Z-Man by marriage?? Give us some scoops.
How can valley doll be done with newspapers if she's never READ one?
I don't know her, but it sounds like she is like zuma dogg, but with less wit and schtick.
When did this turn into the, slam Valley Doll post?
Well let me join in the fun.
Valley Doll makes lousy chocolate chip cookies !!!!!!
oh my gawd -- my own "valley doll sucks" thread.
I am honored (bows low with, oh wait, thats someone else's schtick ... nevermind).
Oh my god- its tea time ... gotta fly!
Love you all madly!
xoxo
At first I read the post and agreed that David Z is the best.
I'm not sure I'll be able to get over that part about him being the brother in law of Walter Moore.
Please say it isn't so. It was a joke, right? He didn't have a sister who would marry Walter Moore and David didn't marry Walter's sister. Right?
Dude, it was a joke.
He's not my brother-in-law!
Not since the divorce.
KIDDING. He was never my brother-in-law.
They were just living together.
KIDDING.
So John Shannon thinks one of our main problems is "undertaxation?"
What do you want to bet he either doesn't own a house so loves to hit homeowners with property taxes, and/or lives somewhere out in the sticks where he's untouched by the problems of gangs, traffic and failed schools.
But I'll bet he drives to the "hip" spots which bear the brunt of all those problems to see and be seen, then goes back to write his dumb "mysteries" which are a perfect genre for him. Reality is a mystery to this guy.
Wonder what his generation is? Is he one of those left-over boomers nearing 60, who are hoping that Obama will finally ring in their failed hopes from the 60's?
Nothing like a trillian bucks in more social spending to see if any of those crappy PC ideas work. (Answer: NO.)
Walter please. We have no sense of humor around here.
What were ya thinkin'?
Dear Walter Moore,
Please be my new Mayor. I hate the loser we have now. I'm sooo sooo sorry I ever voted for his stupid shady ass. I promise I will be your biggest supporter and I also promise I won't pull any sexy Mirthala moves on you, because you're not the adulterous douchebag Tony Villar is.
Please, please, please be my new mayor ... with sugar on top?
thanks a bunch
xoxo
valley doll
11:15am HOW DARE YOU!
My chocolate chip cookies have been likened to an orgasm of the mouth!
My battery of attorneys will be in contact with you soon over this libelous comment.
Thank you, and good day.
xoxo
Valley Doll
Zahniser does it again in today's L.A. Times.
Do you want a cushy mayoral appointment, just sign up to run against one of Antonio's buddies. You don't even have to raise money, just get a couple of fake endorsements and you are in.
Zahniser highlights the appointments of Cindy Montanez and Ricardo Lara - isn't this against the law?
Does Ricardo Lara have a college degree or is he a drop out like Cindy? I guess the mayor has to stack his commissions with dumbfucks to make his 1.77 GPA stand out.
Both Cindy and Ricardo talked a good game about community empowerment but they will forever be known now as cheap sell outs.
And all it will take is one fudge packer mailer to tank Antonio's cousin campaign in this district.
JM, Active or do you mean alive? Bukowski is certainly still active and for my money the best
Big Night On The Town.
Charles Bukowski, “The LA Bard”
Drunk on the dark streets of some city,
It’s night, your lost, where’s your room?
You enter a bar to find yourself,
Order scotch and water.
damned bar’s sloppy wet, it soaks one of your shirt sleeves.
it’s a clip joint- the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you wearing a dress.
she sits down , you buy her a beer, she stinks of swamps, presses a leg against you.
the bartender snears.
You’ve got him worried, he doesn’t know if you’re a cop, a killer, a madman or an idiot.
you ask for a vodka.
you pour the vodka into the top of the beer bottle.
it’s one a.m. in a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes like machine oil.
you leave Madame Death there.
you leave the sneering bartender
there.
you have remembered where your room is.
the room with the full bottle of wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the roaches.
Perfection in the Stars
where love died
laughing.
speaking of books...moron with the obsessive screwball illegal gang posting, can we talk about the ice agents who have been taking sex from illegal immigrants at the border? the ice agent who has been charged with sexual assault against immigrants and how immigrants are victims, too? or are all the criminals mexicans in your book?
when you commit crimes (as all illegals do, by definition), then you place yourself in a position to be victimized.
no one should be victimized. but being victimized does not give any illegal a free pass to stay.
both perpetrators (the ice agent and the illegal), should go to prison, and then the illegal should be tossed out on his/her ass the day he/her is released.
valley doll should be tossed out, too, because she spends far too much time on this blog. should be taking care of her kids, me thinks, without ever adding much value to the discourse. just me opinion.
"Zahniser does it again in today's L.A. Times."
Zuma Dogg already did it L.A. Daily Blog, first.
The immigrants are now "victims" of the police, sounds like Don Quackers talking.
Never does Don Quackers talk about the daily victims of mexican gangs in Los Angeles and California.
But the cholo apologist will surely comment about any case of a bad cop.
Blogging Burros,
Can't you squeeze out a few more big threads this week. Zuma's blog keeps outranking you guys, although it's close each week. His blog came in #12 compared to Mayor Sam's Sister City at #14. Please don't let this keep happening.
If any of you clowns knew what it was like to be on the Planning Commission (long, boring meetings; too many detailed staff reports and background documents to read; no pay), you wouldn't call it "cushy."
And what Planning Commissioner has ever gone on to have anything resembling a successful political career after sitting around making controversial decision after controversial decision that community activist voters hate them for?
Yeah, "cushy" my ass. It's more like a booby prize.
Maybe they should try harder to do the right thing and the right thing MORE OFTEN THAN NOT is what those crazy citizen activists are trying to get planning to do but planning goes with the developers every time. So who cares if it's cushy or not. They can leave anytime. Unfortunately all of the area planning commissioners are real estate developers.
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