Adam's Apple
Senior Member
- Apr 25, 2004
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Pretty good column on the California ballot initiatives.
How the Liars Won
By John Ziegler, The Los Angeles Times
November 10, 2005
THE RESULTS of the special election, while largely expected, are truly remarkable for what they reveal about who we are as a state and the current nature of our political landscape. They are not just important because they may end up being Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Waterloo, but also because they show so clearly that our political discourse is terribly broken, perhaps far beyond repair.
For instance, how in the world did Proposition 77 get so badly clobbered? The initiative which would have taken legislative and congressional redistricting out of the hands of politicians and given it to a nonpartisan panel of judges had the backing of our until-recently-popular governor, numerous Democrats and the majority of Republicans, as well as Common Cause and even the admittedly liberal editorial board of the L.A. Times (and every other major paper in the state). It is almost impossible to get that kind of agreement on what day of the week it is!
Not that many officials were willing to speak out publicly against trying to fix a clearly busted system of redistricting that nearly everyone agrees is corrupt and anti-democratic. Instead, the plan was apparently shot down because of 30-second TV ads that alternately featured a long-forgotten "People's Court" judge and three nameless (but clearly evil) old white male actors in robes who were seen carving up the state to look like Texas.
In fact, the entire special election campaign was dictated by 30-second TV ads (and to a lesser extent the relatively substantive 60-second radio ads) that were mostly such verbal garbage as to make even a Beverly Hills gold digger addicted to plastic surgery seem deep and honest by comparison. The vast majority of the commercials which, for merely a couple of hundred million dollars, took over our television sets for the final weeks of the campaign treated the truth as a mere technicality and the facts as just an obstacle to a goal apparently inspired by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis' famous mantra, "Just Win Baby."
for full article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ziegler10nov10,0,1109840.story...
How the Liars Won
By John Ziegler, The Los Angeles Times
November 10, 2005
THE RESULTS of the special election, while largely expected, are truly remarkable for what they reveal about who we are as a state and the current nature of our political landscape. They are not just important because they may end up being Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Waterloo, but also because they show so clearly that our political discourse is terribly broken, perhaps far beyond repair.
For instance, how in the world did Proposition 77 get so badly clobbered? The initiative which would have taken legislative and congressional redistricting out of the hands of politicians and given it to a nonpartisan panel of judges had the backing of our until-recently-popular governor, numerous Democrats and the majority of Republicans, as well as Common Cause and even the admittedly liberal editorial board of the L.A. Times (and every other major paper in the state). It is almost impossible to get that kind of agreement on what day of the week it is!
Not that many officials were willing to speak out publicly against trying to fix a clearly busted system of redistricting that nearly everyone agrees is corrupt and anti-democratic. Instead, the plan was apparently shot down because of 30-second TV ads that alternately featured a long-forgotten "People's Court" judge and three nameless (but clearly evil) old white male actors in robes who were seen carving up the state to look like Texas.
In fact, the entire special election campaign was dictated by 30-second TV ads (and to a lesser extent the relatively substantive 60-second radio ads) that were mostly such verbal garbage as to make even a Beverly Hills gold digger addicted to plastic surgery seem deep and honest by comparison. The vast majority of the commercials which, for merely a couple of hundred million dollars, took over our television sets for the final weeks of the campaign treated the truth as a mere technicality and the facts as just an obstacle to a goal apparently inspired by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis' famous mantra, "Just Win Baby."
for full article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ziegler10nov10,0,1109840.story...
