Opinion: Gregory Rodriguez, Mike Davis, and L.A.

For most of the last generation, L.A.’s public intellectual life has been dominated by editors, thinkers and writers who ran the ideological gamut from A to B — from committed liberal to strident leftist. But in the last few years, as the Labor Left has consolidated its control over City Hall, it has simultaneously lost its firm grip on the small class of writers and thinkers who narrate L.A.’s civic life for the broader public. Remember the early 1990s, after the city had self-destructed and a Republican mayor presided? Back then, Marxist apocalypticist Mike Davis ruled the intellectual roost and attained cult-like status. It’s not that everyone agreed with Davis’ dark millenarian vision, but few challenged him publicly in part because his zealous followers bullied dissenters. Anyone to the right of Friedrich Engels was labeled a fascist and risked personal attacks. The despair in the wake of the riots had made left-wing noir all the rage, and, as historian Kevin Starr once quipped, for a brief moment in L.A., pessimism passed for deep thought.

I don’t really give a shit what lies and innuendo you guys print about me, but you might give some consideration to the Times’ unchanging paternalist policy of allowing only one token (and since the death of Frank del Olmo - conservative) Latino voice to regularly appear on its Op-Ed and Opinion pages.

‘I object to the way he treats Latinos -- they have been fodder for his Marxist fantasies,’ says Gregory Rodriguez, associate editor for the Pacific News Service. ‘I think it’s condescending. I tend to tie Mike Davis into a whole Anglo-apocalyptic school. There’s a generation of whites who are growing older, and they have a sense that the end is near. The era in which their preeminence was unique is over, and Mike Davis feeds into that. At the same time, this is the moment other groups are going to get a piece of the pie, so Davis is dooming our world at the very moment we are taking our place in it.’

Davis’ earlier work was viewed with suspicion, especially by minority groups who saw themselves as the future of the city. His view, said Gregory Rodriguez of the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, was ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘crap.’

Mike Davis does a better job exploring the nuances of Latino identity at the opening of his volume of what are essentially short essays. In an energetic chapter titled ‘Buscando America,’ he tackles the multifaceted and ever-changing nature of what he calls ‘Latinidad.’ He perceptively concludes that ‘to be Latino in the United States ... is to participate in a unique process of cultural syncretism that may be a transformative template for the whole society.’ Davis is most interesting when he explores the ways in which Latin American immigrants are affecting U.S. life and culture. The book’s most illuminating chapter tells of Latinos reinventing and re-configuring the urban landscape. But most of the book is a sensationalist polemic in which the lives of powerless Latinos are directed by Anglo bosses making ‘Orwellian threats,’ INS officials who sound like ‘Slobodan Milosevic’ and Orange County teenagers who act like ‘haughty Beverly Hills 90210 wannabes.’ Davis is surprisingly careless on key facts. For example, he misidentifies former California State Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) as a representative of the San Gabriel Valley, cites the wrong year for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and claims that Mexico recently passed a law allowing dual citizenship. (The Mexican government was careful to allow only naturalized U.S. citizens to reclaim the more limited rights that come with dual ‘nationality.’)

Rodriguez made some valid points about the media’s coverage of so-called leftist leaders and causes, but I wish to dispute his central thesis that demeans the work and reputation of the news staff and freelancers at the L.A. Weekly. The paper’s focus on hard-hitting, investigative work challenging liberal sacred cows did not begin with the recent takeover by New Times. An era when the paper served as the left’s unwavering mouthpiece ended long ago.