It’s pretty clear that the Los Angeles Times has a strong dislike of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. During the recall election they posted unflattering pictures of him, covered sexual harassment charges daily on the front page, and constantly referred to him as an “actor” and not “candidate”. The Times positioned the recall as a lunatic right wing plot. Californians, sick of the worst political mismanagement since Rome endured Nero, went ahead crossed party lines and fired Gray Davis–much to the chagrin of the Times which was clearly upset at their inability to influence the election.

Since then, the Times has reported everything that the Governator has done as misguided, misjudged, insincere, and most certainly focused on helping special interests. Even after more than a year in office (1/27/05), the Times refers to him as a “celebrity” politician. The Times myopic zeal to be on the opposite side of any position he takes has led the Times to take some rather curious positions. Among them:

The economy (as an issue for Californians) is a dying horse. This paraphrased quote is from the Times own George Skelton. The Times loves to report job losses (both national and statewide) as failings of Schwarzenegger and Bush. However when the Governor makes the state’s economy as one of his primary areas of focus, the Times attacks him for it. Go figure.

Bush lost California by 10 points which backed Kerry. The Times’ logic has it that Kerry’s success in California is is a black mark on Arnie because he campaigned for Bush at the national convention and in Ohio, both of which they point out before reminding us of Kerry’s California win. I probably don’t have to point out that the candidate that Schwarzenegger campaigned for won at both the national level and in Ohio and that it would take JFK coming back from the dead and running as a Republican for a non-Democratic presidential candidate to carry California (and even then it’d probably be close).

Direct quote from the Times…”The Terminator could meet his match in school teachers–and school kids and parents.” First off, referring to him as the Terminator is like referring to ex-Congressman Fred Gandy as “Gopher”. Second, the Times seems to think that there is zero correlation between monies to fund desired programs on one hand and our economy on the other. Is it a reach to think that improving the economy might be key to funding school improvements even more that the $2.9 billion increases going into education? Third, isn’t the Times aware that the powerful teachers union was never behind Schwarzenegger so their opposition to him is not news. Now if the Times even every once in a while mentioned how it was their favorite son former Governor Gray Davis who got us in this mess with his Democratic-controlled assembly, that would be news.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 19th, 2005 at 3:34 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, California Schemin', Los Angeles Times, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.