"How the liars won"

KFI host John Ziegler had an editorial in yesterday's L.A. Times:

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)...

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.

[...examples of the lying commercials...]

Unfortunately, in a country with a 1st Amendment, it is both impossible and inadvisable to ban or even restrict lying in a political campaign. However, that does not mean that there should be absolutely no repercussions for those who bend or break the truth in the pursuit of electoral victory. This is where the news media in California, as well as the public, failed in their democratic duties.

The newspapers (including this one, the paper of record for the region) made only a feeble effort to separate fact from fiction when it came to these absurd ads, and even then they made it seem as if both sides of the "debate" were lying equally.

...At least newspapers made some sort of an effort. Local TV news outlets (the very same ones that were making by far the most money from this election) gave almost a complete pass to the ads that were airing during their newscasts, focusing instead almost exclusively on the "horse race" aspect of the election...

He also mentions the KNBC forum that was hijacked by Democratic activists.

California · Fri, 11/11/2005 - 14:27 · · Importance: 1