Patt Morrison chat transcript

Moderator1: Hi everybody, this is Tim Cavanaugh. We’re here for the hourwith Patt Morrison, L.A. Times columnist and KPCC radio host.

willydeleon: hello

Patt Morrison: Hello, good to hear from you again.

Moderator1: Patt, we were all disappointed to hear that you’ve decided not to run for president today. What was the main factor in that decision?

Patt Morrison: Actually I would be glad to run for president on the “First Me, Then You” platform. This is an aspirational society -- just as all of us are brought up to believe we can be millionaires, so can we think we canall become president. But nowadays for different reasons -- the only way wecan assure our health care and retirement is by becoming one of the electedofficials who get all those cushy lifetime perks. So once I run, and win,everyone else should too!

Moderator1: You know, everybody bellyaches about politicians’ perks, but I suspect the life of an elected official is a lot more mean and pathetic thanpeople suspect.

Moderator1: Did you see this article in the WSJ a while back about theSenate candy dish?

Patt Morrison: I thought that in the Senate it was all gravy, not candy.

Moderator1: No, this was strictly candy: Since Rick Santorum lost his seat, which was right by the door everybody uses to enter and leave the chamber, they’ve lost the donations that Hershey and other candymakers were allowed to donate -- under a special dispensation because they were HQ’d in theSenator’s home state.

Moderator1: Stories like that really stun me with this idea that thesepeople really dwell in a culture of incredible scarcity -- of their ownmaking.

Patt Morrison: I think the Senate should steer clear of candies that imperil their health and thus cost the taxpayers more to take care of them in their dotage, whenever that is -- in some cases, right now.

Moderator1: Here’s a question from email:

Moderator1: I heard you started at the LA Times as a copy editor. How did you work your way up the ranks to where you are now?

Patt Morrison: Naah, I don’t have the attention span to be a copy editor. I started as an intern before there was any formal internship program. The 6 am shift, being sent hither and thither for an early-afternoon edition that no longer exists, but which is remembered fondly for headlines like “Shot,Stabbed, Run Over -- She Lives!”

Moderator1: What was your first story?

Patt Morrison: It was a brief -- at that time, the first few words of news briefs ran in boldface, and the idea was to make those words zingy. Minebegan: “A cut-rate crematorium...”

Moderator1: What do you make of early-primary fever? Is it catching?

Patt Morrison: Catching, and probably incurable, though not -- I hope --fatal. It’s not just about California -- it’s about a nomination processthat can’t seem to find a middle ground between power brokers insmoke-filled rooms and a Buy-a-Nominee process. Neither New Hampshire’s norIowa’s population is exactly a cross-section of the nation’s voters. PuttingCalifornia in the recipe early on should help amend that.

Moderator1: If you were handicapping the Dem hopefuls, which would you say should be put out to stud already?

Patt Morrison: Well, Tom Vilsack is at home in rolling fields already ...

Moderator1: What’s your take on what’s going on with Tribune?

Patt Morrison: Anyone who’s been through the corporate mill of takeover and divesting knows the roller-coaster reactions. For us, it’s been like livingunder the Pencil of Damocles.

Moderator1: Here’s another one from email:

Moderator1: Compared to previous LA mayors, how do you think Antonio’stenure will go down in history?

Patt Morrison: There’s a theory that each chief exec has qualities opposite from his/her predecessor. Jim Hahn was a dot-the-i-and-cross-the-t kind of guy who didn’t put a premium on visibility as part of the job. AV thinks pressing the flesh is in the job description, and given that the powers of the mayor are relatively weak compared to those of, say, New York City, hemay be right. But then the problem becomes one of personality -- not policy--- as the driving force of an administration. He may change the way thingsare done in the city and even the LAUSD, but after him, what deluge -- ordrought?

Patt Morrison: That said, AV is the kind of mayor who can fail or succeed spectacularly -- whichever it is, he won’t be remembered for doing anything halfway.

Moderator1: Is there a problem with a mayor who doesn’t leave a big mark? When it comes to presidents, I tend to prefer caretakers to GreatPresidents.

Patt Morrison: I don’t think you can have nothing but caretaker mayors.Someone’s got to make course corrections, and if they have to be big ones, amayor who puts the job on autopilot is going to send the city over the edgeof the Pacific Shelf.

Moderator1: Has L.A. gone from being a union-busting town to being aunion-run town?

Patt Morrison: The entertainment unions have always been gold in this town, and still are. I don’t think LA will ever be a union-run town but if anyone can do a Nixon-to-China with the unions, Villaraigosa has that chance. Some businesses are coming to see the social and profit consequences of thewage-race to the bottom and that, more than anything else, may bringbusiness around more to a moderate attitude toward unions.

Moderator1: What would you put in the L.A. City Museum, and where would you put it?

Patt Morrison: Heck, I could fill up an LA City Museum with the contents of my tchotchke shelves! I think it should be part of the Grand Avenue complexand I think it’s high damn time we had one. New York has one, Paris has one-- LA needs to be brutally acquisitive and stop spreading its historythoughout a lot of little themed, personal-collection museums and literallyget it all together.

Patt Morrison: Actually the Southwest Museum -- the city’s first -- would be ideal for an LA City history museum. It looks like a castle, it’s reachable by Metrolink, and it was founded by another great tchotchke collector -- and historian, bibliophile and all-around LA character -- Charles Lummis.

Moderator1: Who’s your favorite Republican running for president?

Patt Morrison: For entertainment value you can’t beat Giuliani. I’m thinking of him out in the Central Valley at that Ag expo, $9 admission, and what he must have collected on the soles of his wingtips. McCain has more explosive potential than a North Korean nuke ... I’m just sorry Frist isn’t in the running. The continuing uproar over his adopting cats in order to dissectthem would have been great Jon Stewart material.

Moderator1: Here’s a question from my illegitimate son:

TimCavanaughJr: Who’ll be the first Democratic candidate to drop out ofthe race?

Patt Morrison: He already did -- Evan Bayh, of the great state of Indiana. The last to drop out will be Dennis Kucinich and his perpetual peacecampaign.

F.Cleveland: Is anyone here?

Moderator1: This is a very exclusive club, F.

Patt Morrison: F. Cleveland, is that an existential question?

Patt Morrison: Are you Frances Cleveland, the trophy wife of GroverCleveland?

F.Cleveland: Has Patt talked about the DVDs public radio is giving forsubscription? The “911 Mysterys”?

Patt Morrison: I haven’t a clue about that.

F.Cleveland: I didn’t know Grover got married.

Moderator1: Via Google, it looks like the 911 Mysteries is acontrolled-demolition theory thing...

F.Cleveland: Some damning evidence apparently pointing toward conspiracy.

Patt Morrison: I refer you to the Popular Mechanics book analyzing thescience, engineering, avionics and physics of 9/11. Next?

Moderator1: Favorite all-time L.A. books, fiction and non-fiction?

Patt Morrison: Enormous Village, John Weaver, a classic. Island on the Land, carey mcwilliams...City of Nets ... Nathanael West’s books of course ... for starters.

Moderator1: Fast finger challenge -- can you name your reps on the CityCouncil, Board of Supes, State Assembly & Senate, and Congress?

Patt Morrison: Jose Huizar, Gloria Molina, Xavier Becerra, now Padilla ... and of course Feinstein and Boxer.

Moderator1: Much better than I would have done, but I’m new in town.

Moderator1: Bigger hunk -- Arnold, Antonio, Fabian, Garcetti, Steve Lopez, or Dean Baquet?

Patt Morrison: Oh man you ARE trying to get me into trouble, aren’t you? why don’t you put that question to paris hilton, who hands out ‘hot’ tags likeolympic judges hand out “10s” to mary lou retton?

Patt Morrison: Seriously? jeremy irons blows them all away.

Moderator1: Hasn’t Ralph Fiennes taken the title of Handsome-But-Creepy-Heir-to-James-Mason away from Irons by getting picked toplay Voldemort?

Patt Morrison: And burnished his image by snogging with a flight attendant somewhere over a major body of water? Naah, I’ll stick with the Irish Irons, thank you.

Moderator1: From email:

Moderator1: Do KPCC off-air people talk hella-trash on KCRW & Ruth Seymour?

Patt Morrison: Solidarity Forever!

F.Cleveland: I’m shamefully ignorant of who’s a local writer or not.

Patt Morrison: Give me some examples and I’ll try to help, once I put on my GPS psychic turban.

Moderator1: F. Cleveland’s question reminds me of a standing L.A. question: Is the city of the angels still a culturally underrated place (that is, still viewed as literarily behind NYC, etc?).

Patt Morrison: It always has been. The 19th century and early 20th is full of newspaper and magazine mockery of California both by “parachutists”here for a vacation and by those who never visited at all. When New Yorkwriters began arriving to write movies, they made fun of the place justbecause it wasn’t New York -- but they sure cashed the paychecks. There’sstill a potent brew of envy and snobbery with a large dose of ignorance whenit comes to writing about LA but I think local writers are being more widelyread and quoted and that should become a sufficient antidote to the pap andtrivia. No one who lives here EVER calls it “La-La Land” -- that shows thedeep deep divide.

Moderator1: You said it! Well that wraps it up for today. Thanks, Patt, and everybody who came, emailed, and otherwise joined the discussion.