This One’s Waaaaay Outside the Tent

Outside the Tent is an experimental column in which the Los Angeles Times invites critics to give it a spanking for its shortcomings, real or imagined. Recently, KFI talk-show host John Ziegler submitted a column in which he discussed the post-trial appearance of a Robert Blake juror on his show (and the juror’s alleged misbehavior during commercial breaks), mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg’s purported refusal to be interviewed by Ziegler after learning that he’d be grilled about his support of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and Mayor James K. Hahn’s supposedly tearful election day interview on another KFI show.

As it happens, I heard Hahn and I don’t buy Ziegler’s contention that the mayor was “in tears.” Hahn sounded like he had a cold and simply lost patience with the hosts’ spoiled-brat browbeating. And the juror’s side of what happened differs considerably from Ziegler’s. But those weren’t my reasons for rejecting the column. I spurned it because it reads more like a self-infatuated valentine to KFI than the sort of pointed, specific criticism of The Times that we demand in Outside the Tent.

Ziegler disagreed with my assessment. Vehemently. How, he wondered, could I be so dense as to miss the important point he was making -- that on matters such as these, The Times gets facts right but misses “the truth”?

Just for the fun of it, we’re giving readers a chance to decide for themselves: Did I spare you from several hundred words of pointless blather or deprive you of the opportunity to read a trenchant critique of a Southern California newspaper that sometimes hits the driveway with a thud so heavy as to set car alarms wailing? Read the piece and register your vote at latimes.com/rejected.

-- Bob Sipchen,

Sunday Opinion Editor