Thursday, December 26, 2013

Five Reasons Not to Read the Los Angeles Times


On June 25, 2013, LA Times copy editor Paul Whitefield splashed a hasty invective Five Reasons Not to Move to Texas Right Now.

His reasons ranged from offensive, to immature, laughable, to self-conflicted, to outright mendacious.

His five reasons for not going to Texas would have better fit under the following heading:

Five Reasons not to Read the LA Times

Analyzing the five reasons for avoiding the Lone Star State, one can tease out the specific reasons why LA Times readerships is seeing hard times.

1. With a faux-angelic pose of prayerful tranquility on the LA Times website, liberal state senator Wendy Davis staged an eleventh-hour eleven hour filibuster against a reasonable bill limiting abortions. Whitefield trumpeted the importance of abortion rights, now on full display in California, while the same privileges face serious opposition in Texas. As of 2014, California medical practitioners besides doctors may conduct abortions reverberations of the Kermit Gosnell trial from inner city Philadelphia may become more common in the Golden State because of this reckless law. How such an erroneous policy honors women, let alone preserves their health, will be a feature of medical research in years to come. To better rephrase, the right to life, from conception to resurrection, is receiving an unprecedented resurgence of respect and honor in our country. Even mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post have polled and recorded that a strong majority of women support ending abortion after five months, except in cases of the life of the mother.

2. Paul Whitefield hates Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose bold leadership drastically lowed the tax burden for residents, along with tort reform. Furthermore, Perry represents the conservative Democratic population which has swelled the Republican ranks for the past twenty years. And the biggest reason Whitefield dislikes Perry? The abortion issue.

Not only does the LA Times demonstrate a qualitative lack of intellectual variety or reason in its Opinion pieces, but the personal, gossipy snipping have become the mainstay of these editorials. Shortly after the 2012 election, the Times insisted on brazen, false personal attacks against Missouri US Senate candidate Todd Akin, playing the anti-woman card. At least Weekly World News presented no pretense of seriousness.

Plus the fact that the Times has played reliable cheer-leader for Governor Jerry Brown and every progressive politician in the state. At least recently-installed Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti recognized the folly of allowing the Governor of Texas to court SoCal businesses without facilitating them to contact their own mayor.

3. Keeping in mind the main thrust of the piece, why Americans should not move to Texas right now, Whitefield criticizes the state’s consistent application of the death penalty. Such double-standard double-talk displays an inescapable bias, or profound ignorance, and from a copy editor, no less. California still has the death penalty, in case Whitefield had forgotten, and the execution of Pelican Bay inmates has proceeded apace. The editorializing editor neglected to mention that California prisons are overcrowded and under federal injunction to release or realign dangerous criminals back to California’s streets. Instead of holding local and Sacramento politicians accountable for misplaced priorities and dangerous policies, the editors of the LA Times slam successful states like Texas.

For the record, apart from escaped convicts and mass murders, the death penalty is not a reason to resist moving to Texas, people seeking a better way of life and quality future for their children, free from special interest pandering and over-governance.

4. Of all the offensive, or outrageous reasons, provided by Whitefield for not moving to Texas right now, the weather issue is Whitefield’s most relevant. Then again, the editor chides that Texas experiences two seasons, hot and cold, neglecting to mention that California experiences all four seasons, and sometimes at the same time, just in different parts of the state. The only special exception, my South Bay home particularly and Southern California in general, receives a modest change in temperature from day to day, and the occasional heatwave wafts its way through the region during the winter months.

Still, the weather in Texas has varied in its fashion for decades, if not centuries, and thus weather as a “right now” reason not to move is hardly meaningful. Such tactless hyperboles and generalization have come to character LA Times editorials, with grim effect on its once quality journalism.

5. The title for the last reason should alone discredit the column:


What is this, a children’s book? Not just unserious, but infantile. How much lower can the LA Times go?

And what was Whitefield whining about in the last reason not to move to Texas right now?

A fertilizer plant exploded in Texas, fourteen people. A ship with the same explosive nitrate had exploded in 1947, killing six thousand people. In California, there have been earthquakes, riots, rival gangs warring against each other, constricting taxes, thieving politicians, failings schools, sclerotic unions strangling the life-blood out of the state.

But one plant explodes, and no one should move to Texas.

As of now, an average 1,000 people per day have blissfully ignored Whitefield’s warnings.

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