Opinion: In today’s pages: “Love and Consequences,” the sequel
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Cartoonist Clay Jones takes a look at the media’s latest ‘smear campaign’ against John McCain, and Rosa Brooks calls up Hillary Clinton at 3 a.m. to give her some hard advice. American University professor Robert A. Pastor defends NAFTA against the Democrats’ barrage, and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns stands up for public television even as Bush proposes to slash more than half of its federal funding. Patt Morrison draws parallels between pseudo-gang-memoir ‘Love and Consequences’ and Los Angeles’ discombobulated anti-gang programs:
Former creative writing student Margaret Seltzer -- I know, very creative -- has been judged and dispatched to literary Siberia. But what has the city done about gang programs that may be less than they seem?As you’d expect, not what it should. City Controller Laura Chick’s recent report spanking the city’s mishmash mess of gang prevention and intervention efforts follows other studies stretching back into the mists of bureaucratic time, all saying the same thing: There’s too little money, spread piecemeal among too many disjointed operations. A boy is killed in the Valley; the city finds dough for an anti-gang program there. A baby is murdered in South L.A.; another wad of money for a different program.
The editorial board picks apart the convoluted primary elections process, and urges Congress to give real powers to a proposed independent ethics office. The board also analyzes the aftermath of ‘Love and Consequences’:
Those who believed in Margaret Jones and were inspired by her courage are justified in feeling angry and betrayed. So are the residents of South Los Angeles, whose real stories, and real pain, were appropriated and repackaged for the purpose of selling books to a largely white audience. Yet Seltzer’s unmasking is more sad than infuriating. Her fictional self was so inspirational because hers was a tale so seldom told.
Readers react to Clinton’s comeback in Tuesday’s primaries. Tim Paine writes:
Karl Rove must be taking comfort today that his philosophy has been vindicated: The politics of cynicism, innuendo and fear still triumph over the politics of hope. Rove has apt pupils in the Hillary Clinton campaign.