Opinion: In today’s pages: Race to the finish
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In today’s Los Angeles Times editorial pages, race. Aren’t we past all that? No. Even if the U.S. Supreme Court wants us to be.
But it’s not clear how long this conservative court will hold off. In the Austin case, the court noted ominously that ‘we are now a very different Nation’ and hinted that a new look at the constitutional issues surrounding race might be coming. In the New Haven case, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the court ‘merely postpones the evil day’ when these issues will be taken up.
Your editorial writers also find themselves wondering what the folks at the Orange County Museum of Art were thinking when they flouted art-world protocol and did a quickie and quasi-secret sale of California Impressionist works.
Though OCMA officials may have meant well -- and Szakacs is a respected director who deserves credit for returning more than 3,000 works to the Laguna museum -- they have done their institution few favors with the sale. At least one museum in addition to Laguna’s is miffed at not being offered a chance to outbid the mysterious buyer.
Lots to think about on the Op-Ed side today. Start with Times columnist Meghan Daum’s look at Sarah Palin’s resigna... -- no, wait! Come back! This is new and different! There’s some good stuff here -- Daum checks out Palin through the lens of her Christian conservative Palin-fan friend, and offers some insight:
Palin doesn’t just line people up on different sides of an issue; she turns them against each other. It’s not enough to hate her; you also have to hate those who don’t. Or, if you like her, the attacks on her make it difficult to imagine having any use at all for her enemies. Palin somehow makes the culture wars personal; she’s their ultimate symbol. And war is hell, no matter what form it takes.
Check out more Meghan Daum here and here.
Former Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. president (and Jarvis’ driver, back in the day) Joel Fox takes on the people who try to take on Proposition 13, and says that -- no, wait! Come back! Fox is not your typical anti-tax zealot; his arguments are cogent and fact-based, and Prop. 13 opponents have to take them seriously. If you like the way he lays out an argument, check out his site, Fox & Hounds Daily. It’s more of a magazine than a blog, with articulate columnists and news updates on California.
Also on the page, writer Jaime O’Neill walks us through his personal struggle to quit smoking, and Ben Donenberg -- founder and artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/LA -- puts in a plea to save funding for the arts. Donenberg has been in The Times pages before, as news rather than as writer. Check it out here. This probably isn’t the right place to mention that Saturday is opening night for this year’s festival, featuring As You Like It, or that Donenberg will be leading a discussion of the play. So I won’t mention it.
* Photo: Karen Bleier / AFP / Getty Images