Mr. Pecker in a Pickle!
Plus--the LAT's wacky wikiness.
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Friday, June 17, 2005, at 4:01 AM PT
NYT's Raymond Hernandez breathlessly reveals that "Republican and conservative activists are behind a vigorous campaign to promote a controversial new biography about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton." Apparently it's advertised on a Web site that once got some money from Richard Mellon Scaife! The real story--too subtle for a paper that has to dispatch a correspondent to cover conservatives the way they'd send a foreign correspondent to India--is that the right-wing reception of the new Hillary book has been wary and remarkably hostile. See, for example, these Web sites--Polipundit, Captain's Quarter's, Ankle-Biting Pundits--some of which may have gotten some money from someone who once got money from someone who knows Tom DeLay! ... P.S.: Lucianne Goldberg, who knows about anti-Clinton conspiracies, hasn't been too friendly to the book either. ... P.P.S.: This is a classic Pinch-era NYT story in that it unabashedly assumes its readers are near-cliched New York City liberals. If you weren't ready to be scared and shocked by the latest right-wing outrage, this story would simply make no sense to you: People who are against Hillary are behind a book against Hillary! ... Except in this case maybe they're not ... P.P.P.S.: Printing the predictable story your readers expect to read instead of the intriguing story that's really out there is more or less the definition of "hack," no? .... 3:07 A.M.
Arnold vs. the Unions: Gov. Schwarzenegger is not dead yet. His three reform initiatives are off to an inauspicious start, but William Bradley has a mole who leaked him "a private Democratic poll" showing that a fourth "paycheck protection" initiative, which could scare public employee unions into cutting a deal, might pass. ... Bradley would apparently like it to be known that his mole was not Paul Maslin. ... He also reports that "Schwarzenegger has said privately for the first time that he will run for re-election." ... P.S.: Is there any distinction between public employee unions and the Democratic Party in California anymore? Just asking! ... Compare and contrast: At the LAT, George Skelton calls for statesmanlike compromise and Michael Hiltzik works himself into the same paroxysm of anti-Arnold rage he worked himself into three weeks ago. Meanwhile, at L.A. Weekly, Bradley delivers the inside goods about what is actually happening. ... Without the MSM, we'd be left with ... the news! ... Update: Is this why the LAT can replace its writers--not with robots, but with something cheaper, namely its customers! [Maybe it's just that Kinsley's sections are experimenting like mad to counter the tedium of the rest of the paper--ed I agree the wikitorial is impressively seat-of-pantsy and un-Timesian. If only I could rewrite Hiltzik.] 9:11 P.M."
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