Newt Gingrich bashes Politico's John Harris, media in debate ploy

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

The role of stalwart chief executive already had two suitors in Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Casting the rest of Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate, Ron Paul nailed the libertarian puritan and John Huntsman cornered reasonable moderate. So what job remained for onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich, struggling to make a mark on a stage stacked with eight candidates?

How about Chief Media Basher and All-Around GOP Team Guy?

It may have amounted to a bit part, but one offering scene-stealing opportunity, especially given that the event at the Ronald Reagan Library & Museum in Simi Valley was being broadcast by MSNBC. The liberal-tilting cable network gave the also-ran Gingrich the perfect foil, the chance to play Republican Party uniter and -- who knows? -- maybe begin positioning himself for some future Cabinet appointment.

Gingrich's turn will be most remembered (and already celebrated by multiple conservative commentators) for attacking Politico's John Harris, when the debate moderator tried to get him to take sides between fellow GOP candidates on the issue of healthcare.

The Georgian got in a few other not-so-subtle digs at the media and advanced a much broader thesis: Attempts to tease out differences between the Republican hopefuls were thinly veiled maneuvers "to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated."

That proposition is enjoyable raw meat for the GOP base. And it would make a lot of sense, except for the fact that the entire cumbersome, protracted and heavily covered primary-election process is designed to expose and explain differences among a political party's various candidates. Is there any other way to help voters decide which product to finally pull off the shelf? (Well, probably, but this is the system we are stuck with, for now.)

Yet Gingrich and a sizable pack of post-debate commentators expressed dismay, even outrage, that NBC anchor Brian Williams and Harris would try to get the candidates to talk about their differences. Obviously, given MSNBC's well-deserved reputation for liberal political commentary, this had to be a partisan plot.

This raises many questions: Did all these people sleep through the last several presidential campaigns? Don't any of them recall how the media, to take just the most recent instance, spent months reporting and glorying in every possible distinction between dueling Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Have political debates, three years later, been redesignated as "friending" circles?

You would think so to listen to the undeniably bright (and, in this case, cunning) Gingrich. From his first answer, he made clear he would be school-marming and parrying the debate moderators, while playing shamelessly to the partisan gallery.

Asked about writing the forward for Perry's book "Fed Up" -- which outlines the Texas governor's serious doubts about all sorts of federal programs, including Medicare -- Gingrich would have none of it.

"Look, he's said himself that was an interesting book of ideas by somebody who's not proposing a manifesto for president," Gingrich said. "And I think to go back and try to take that apart is silly."

Even though the book was published just last year, Gingrich suggested to Williams that questions about "Fed Up" made no sense. So Check One, on Gingrich's new debating rules: Would-be presidents should not have to talk about their previous scribblings, even ones they wrote as visions of the Oval Office danced in their heads.

Near the end of the debate, the former Speaker would have to straighten Williams out again. In response to a question about Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke (whom he would fire "tomorrow"), Gingrich pivoted to an earlier question. A much earlier question; actually from a previous GOP debate.

"We were asked the wrong question at the last debate," Gingrich said. "The question isn't, would we favor a tax increase? The question is, how would we generate revenue?"

Gingrich said the conversation should be about cutting government and opening vast tracts of Alaska to gas and oil extraction. Never mind that many economists and public-opinion surveys would seem to put some tax increases (for higher-income earners) on the table for most Americans. We nonetheless have Gingrich's Check Two: No more questions about higher taxes. For anyone.

He saved his third rule, and sharpest barb, for Harris, the longtime political writer and co-founder of Politico.com.

Harris suggested that the two GOP front-runners -- Romney and Perry -- had "a genuine philosophical disagreement" over healthcare. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney passed a reform that required residents to buy health insurance. Perry and other Republicans have designated such a "mandate," a key to President Obama's national healthcare law, as just the sort of big-government solution that is anathema to economic recovery and American values.

Harris asked Gingrich to weigh in on the side of Romney's Massachusetts plan or the small-government approach in Texas, where one-quarter of residents are uninsured.

"Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other," Gingrich snapped. Harris interjected that there is a real choice to be made -- requiring citizens to buy health insurance, or not.

Gingrich remained unmoved. He huffed that he would "repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated." Check Three: the media should never expect one Republican to speak ill of another.

It seems abundantly clear, as Gingrich pointed out, that Republicans are unified in opposing Obama's healthcare changes. But not so clear, or true, is Gingrich's contention that only slippery, scheming journalists want to talk about Romney's healthcare record. The record of the last few months will show any number of occasions in which Republicans on the stump, with little aid from villainous reporters, used "Romneycare" to bludgeon the former Massachusetts governor.

Could the news media in clear conscience cover the current campaign and not raise one of the front-running candidate's major policy initiatives, one that was also a substantial public policy watershed? Wouldn't a moderator who failed to question what other candidates felt about that initiative be guilty of sloppiness, if not malpractice?

That Gingrich has begun flailing to draw himself attention is not just a conclusion of crazy liberals. Speaking on Fox Business Network on Thursday morning, anchor Chris Wallace said of Gingrich: "He is doing this stunt, which he did with me and he did with John Harris yesterday, which is attack the messenger. If he thinks that works, fine. I find it kind of sad."

[For the Record: 2:08 p.m. Sept. 9: A previous version of this post said anchor Chris Wallace spoke on Fox Business News.]

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Perry, Romney square off in Reagan Library debate

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-- James Rainey
Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, right, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich greet after a debate among GOP presidential candidates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Musuem in Simi Valley on Wednesday. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

CNN's Chance out of Rixos 'nightmare,' ready to go home

Just out of Tripoli's Rixos al Nasr Hotel, which had been his prison for five days, CNN's Matthew Chance gave thanks for a turn of fortune that freed him and 35 other journalists, said he was still looking for a good, square meal and looked  forward to flying to London to see his wife and 5-year-old daughter.

A 15-year career as a foreign correspondent has taken the Briton to trouble zones from the Balkans, to Chechnya, to Iraq and Afghanistan. "Of all the terrible places I find myself in, this was by far, by far, the most terrifying of them all," said Chance at the end of five days of captivity at the hotel, which for months has been the Libyan government's headquarters for visiting journalists.

In an interview with the Big Picture, the 41-year-old Chance described the captive journalists grouping together for safety, plotting repeatedly how they might escape and making a nighttime raid on the hotel kitchen to bolster their shrinking provisions. Among the others at the hotel were news crews from the BBC, Sky News and Reuters. 

On Wednesday, CNN viewers could see Chance smiling broadly on camera from Tripoli, holding a flower handed to him by residents of the city, apparently liberated after more than four decades under the  dictatorship of Moammar Kadafi. He elaborated on his televised comments in a phone interview late Wednesday, Libyan time.

Chance said the situation at the hotel--which was profiled Wednesday by L.A. Times correspondent Patrick McDonnell--deteriorated over the weekend when official government minders disappeared, along with many of the loyalist troops guarding the hotel.

Five or six agitated guards with assault rifles remained behind, waving flags, shouting warnings and refusing to let the reporters and camera crews go.

"We couldn’t understand why we were being held against our will in this hotel," Chance said. "We were put in a hostage situation. We didn't call it that [on the air] because we didn’t want to escalate the situation. But that's what we were, hostages. We just didn't see what the point was or how it would end."

When the five-star hotel lost power, it became "hot, dark, sweaty and miserable," Chance said. Stray bullets would occasionally smack the side of the hotel or tear through windows.

"We would talk and go through all these paranoid scenarios," Chance said. "What if Kadafi's army makes a last stand? What if it's in the hotel lobby and we are stuck in basement or the top floor?"

With water and food in short supply from the start, the captives armed themselves with flashlights for a nighttime foray to the kitchen. "We opened fridges and cabinets and took cheese and dried fruit and water and the like," Chance said. "We hauled it all back to our sort of assembly area that we had set up on the upper floor."

The three dozen journalists talked continually about trying to escape. Perhaps they could scale walls behind the hotel and run. But they were not sure the entire group was fit enough to make it. Guards on the roof had Russian-made sniper rifles, with high-powered scopes.

From almost the start, the Westerners had been trying to persuade their guards that there was no point in holding them at the Rixos.

"They didn’t believe Kadafi would ever go away. They couldn't imagine Libya without Col. Kadafi," Chance said. "And when it finally sank in that that world outside the hotel had changed, that Kadafi was no longer there, things changed in an instant."

The ragtag crew of guards apologized, turned their rifles over to the journalists and fled into the streets of Tripoli. "It was a remarkable transformation they underwent," Chance said.

The International Committee for the Red Cross soon had four vehicles at the hotel, which is not far from the Kadafi compound overrun by rebels this week. The rescuers drove the journalists to safety. The reporter, who had kept the outside world apprised of the situation via Twitter, posted another missive just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, local time: "Rixos crisis ends. All journalists are out!"

The situation for journalists in the country remained dicey, though. Four Italian journalists were reported kidnapped Wednesday on a road about 50 miles outside the capital. There was no word on their  whereabouts.

On Wednesday evening, Chance said he was still looking for a good meal and to rotating out of the war zone. He has been based for several years in Moscow, but is relocating to London with his wife and young girl. "She starts school Sept. 5. I want to be able to take her."

Chance said he will be back to cover the Libyan revolution. He is not sure when. But he knows one thing: "I'm not going back to the Rixos. I wouldn't give it a good review at all."

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Journalists, including CNN's Matthew Chance, right, arrive at the Corinthia hotel after being evacuated by the Red Cross from the Rixos hotel in Tripoli, where they had been held captive for five days by loyalists of dictator Moammar Kadafi. Credit:  Paul Hackett / Reuters

 

CNN's Matthew Chance rides highs, lows in Tripoli war zone

The giddy lows and highs of working as a foreign correspondent in a war zone have been on vivid display over the last 24 hours, courtesy of CNN's Matthew Chance.

As one of a couple of dozen Western journalists working out of the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, Chance has been in the midst of the Libyan revolution but strangely removed from it.

On Sunday night, loyalist troops kept Chance and fellow journalists penned up in the hotel, until the minders suddenly left, as much of the capital city appeared to fall to rebels. A few agitated soldiers remained behind,  shouting at the journalists and issuing dictates.

As Chance's furtive glances and pacing made clear, the journalists had no idea what to expect--fearing both Moammar Kadafi's troops and rebels who they worried might overrun them. The news crews hurriedly posted banners, at the hotel proclaiming "TV," in hopes of warding off an attack.

 The Rixos may be a five-star establishment, but journalists have reported for months feeling harassed and menaced by government minders, who sometimes forced them to leave on a moment's notice.

Chance reported that electricity had gone out during the day Monday and that food and water at the hotel were in short supply.  In the early evening he wrote via Twitter: "Mood in Rixos much darker than before. Everyone really worried about what's going to happen to us." After nightfall, he tried to sound a positive note: "On bright side, am with excellent group of journalists at Rixos. We are feeling our way around corridors with candles. No power."

The digital communiques give a sense of Chance's roller-coaster ride, including frustration at not being able to get out of the  hotel compound. Then, a breakthrough: Just before midnight in Tripoli, Monday, the journalist tweeted news that Kadafi's son Saif al-Islam would arrive at the hotel for a news conference. Two exclamation points accompanied the missive. But then another setback--a report that Saif had aborted the visit because of the power outage at the Rixos. Finally, an hour later, the news whipped back in the other direction, as Chance confirmed that he had visited with Saif, who had arrived at the hotel, in a caravan of armored SUVs.

The dictator's son claimed through a translator that he would complete a "walkabout" in Tripoli to prove that neighborhoods allegedly in rebel hands really were still in the government's control. He accused the enemy of lying and said  "to hell" with the International Criminal Court, which said it would bring the Kadafi family to justice.

About 2:30 a.m. Tripoli time, Chance concluded in another Twitter message (via his handle @mchancecnn) that Saif's appearance was a "major PR coup for Gadhafi – if the rebels lied about this – what can we believe?"

Chance is a senior international correspondent, based in Moscow. He has been near the front lines before--in Afghanistan in 2001, in Iraq and in 2008 on the Georgian-Russian war. He is a native of Britain and attended the University of London, earning a bachelor's degree in archaeology and art.

Chance remained locked in the hotel, but back in the reporting game. He transmitted a shadowy Twitter photo of Kadafi's son before the journalist presumably tried to get a few minutes of sleep.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: An image grab taken from the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya satellite television station shows Saif al-Islam Kadafi, son of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, speaking to journalists in Tripoli in the early hours of Tuesday. A CNN correspondent was one of those to bring the world news that Saif was not in the hands of rebels, as the anti-Kadafi forces had previously reported.  Credit: AFP / Getty Images

 

Britain riots, Fox's O'Reilly asks: where are the guns?

Fox News personality and sometime media critic Bill O’Reilly thought he detected yet another case of liberal media bias last week, this time coming from England. The subject was guns.

As my "On the Media" column suggests, the recent riots in Britain have raised a lively discussion about whether social networks and cellphone communications should be limited.

O’Reilly suggested on his Fox News program that the social unrest should spark another debate. But he said “the BBC and the other liberal British press” had been remiss, failing to report how  British cops and shop owners weren't armed well enough to rein in the chaos.

If you “don’t have a gun, you’re in real trouble,” facing rioters, O’Reilly said.

"The difference between America and Great Britain is that here in America many of us are armed because of the Second Amendment," O'Reilly began. "In Great Britain they don't like guns . . . .the cops don't even carry guns."

No doubt a loaded firearm would have caused some hooligans to think twice before, as the Brits say, pinching (shoplifting) a pair of trainers (sneakers), or attempting much worse.

Of course, arming the populace can have other consequences, as O'Reilly should recall, since he was in Los Angeles at the time of the 1992 riots.

Fifty-four people died in L.A., about two-thirds of them from gunshot wounds. (Eleven of the dead were shot by police or the National Guard.) In the riots that swept several British cities this summer, a total of five died. One of them was by a gunshot. (Three others died after being intentionally run over by a car. One  man was beaten to death.)

A Los Angeles Times account a few months after the riots showed the mixed impact of private gun ownership. Widely distributed pictures showed Korean American shop owners defending their stores. But not all the gunfire went toward the right targets. The story described a group of Korean American youths who went to help the shop owners, only to be mistakenly shot themselves. Edward Song Lee, 18, died of his wounds.

Fox News Correspondent Amy Kellogg told O’Reilly last week that, despite the London riots, the debate about arming the police, or allowing more guns in the hands of private citizens, “has not come up.” O’Reilly is not ready to drop the subject, it seems. He ended the discussion predicting that, in the event of continued trouble, “the gun debate will ramp up.”

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Fox News' top-rated host, Bill O'Reilly has helped drive the entire cable network's ratings higher. Last week, he wondered why the media had so little to say about the lack of guns in rioting Britain. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

 

 

Will NBC bosses bring more Latino talent to KNBC-TV?

A couple of organizations representing Latino journalists have complained that KNBC television in Los Angeles has diminished the role of Latinos on the air in a city where the ethnic group represents about half the population.

A letter from the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) this week follows a similar complaint last week from the CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California. The letters to station management noted that several journalists have been demoted in recent weeks and that Channel 4 has no Latino anchors. L.A.'s other top news stations have at least one Latino anchor.

But NAHJ President Michele Salcedo reported on the organization's website Friday that station management has indicated changes are on the way. Salcedo's said the assurances came from  outgoing KNBC General Manager Craig Robinson, who is being named diversity officer for all of NBCUniversal.

Salcedo said that Robinson told her "it is not his goal to be without Hispanic anchors, and he and station executives are continuing to recruit Hispanic anchors and on-air talent.”

The chief of the Latino journalists group added that Robinson assured her “that the anchor lineup six months from now is not going to look as it does today. We also discussed establishing a pipeline to groom Latino broadcast journalists to fill positions throughout the newsroom as well as executive offices.”

Among the moves that alarmed Latino journalists was KNBC's removal of veteran Ana Garcia from her position as anchor of the 6 p.m. news. She was replaced by Lucy Noland, who was born in Vietnam of a Vietnamese mother and American father. Garcia remains at Channel 4 as an investigative reporter.

“I do think there is a huge problem with fact there is no Latino or Latina in a primary position at the station,” said one KNBC insider, who declined to be named for fear of angering management. “I think that is extraordinary, when you look at the population of Los Angeles. I don’t understand it.”

ALSO:

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No hacking at the N.Y. Post, says former N.Y. Post hack

Phone hacking in America? English reporter comes to U.S.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Ana Garcia arrives at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 63rd Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards this month. Garcia was part of teams that won a couple of the trophies but she lost her spot anchoring the 6 p.m. news at KNBC. She continues to work at the station as an investigative reporter. Credit: Valerie Macon / Getty Images

 

Great white sharks off L.A. beaches? Yup. Now they're on TV

White sharks at one of Los Angeles’ most popular surfing beaches? Yes.

They’ve become such a familiar site at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades that regulars have become almost, kind of, sort of comfortable with their presence. Sometimes the humans don't even tell lifeguards or researchers about seeing the predators.

That’s one of the revelations of “Great White Invasion,” one of several new programs debuting this week on the Discovery channel’s 24th annual “Shark Week.” The television event has been a hit for Discovery since it debuted in the 1980s, routinely attracting 20 million viewers a year. "Shark Week" topped more than 30 million viewers in 2010.

“Great White Invasion” describes how sightings of great whites have multiplied in recent years at Sunset—the surf break near where Sunset Boulevard empties on to Pacific Coast Highway—and at other beaches around the world.

The shark appearances here gained particular notoriety in 2009, when surf shop owner Randy Wright captured photos and video of the creatures jumping out of the water. The “breaching” photos--sizable sharks soaring out of the water--became a sensation on the Web.

The producers of “Great White Invasion” tried to secure some of Wright’s video, but the videographer had his own ideas for disseminating the information, though where it will be shown is not yet clear. Among the footage: shots of a shark perhaps 10 feet long jumping clear of the ocean's surface, video that a prominent shark researcher called “phenomenal."

Unable to secure Wright’s video, the “Great White Invasion” creators made due with interviews with  Sunset surfers about their shark encounters. They paired the Los Angeles segments with dramatic footage from white shark breaches in other locales, like Australia and South Africa.

Ralph Collier, the veteran researcher who founded and runs the San Fernando Valley-based Shark Research Committee, said he thinks “Great White Invasion” gives a fair account of white shark episodes locally. Collier appears in the documentary and comments on the recent proliferation of white shark sitings.

 “There has not been one surfer who was bitten or bumped or harassed at Sunset,” Collier said in an interview with the Big Picture. “There have been numerous reports of sharks coming up, usually on the starboard side of a surfer and rotating and then looking them over, before leveling out and swimming away. We are not really anything of special interest to sharks.”

The reasons for infrequent shark attacks on humans in Southern California are not entirely understood, Collier said. A teenage body-boarder was killed off Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, last fall. A veterinarian died while on a training swim off Solana Beach in the spring of 2008.

With millions of people entering the water, there have been only a handful of other fatalities in Southern California in the last half-century. Collier said there are some common sense precautions to be taken by those who enter the shark’s domain. Swimmers and surfers should avoid the ocean when marine mammals or a lot of bait fish are nearby. They should not wear flashy jewelry, swim suits or even nail polish that might attract a shark’s attention, Collier said. Though it’s not understood exactly what color range white sharks can see, better to go low-key.

“Great White Invasion" replays frequently this week, along with a host of other shark-umentaries. One other Discovery offering features "Chief Shark Officer" Andy Samberg, celebrity host for the  week's offerings. The "Saturday Night Live" comedian takes a look, and gets really scared, about sharks off the Bahamas.

ALSO:

Andy Samberg of 'Saturday Night Live' named Discovery Channel's Shark Week host

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: White sharks star in the Discovery channel program "Great White Invasion." Surfers in Los Angeles talk about seeing the predators off Sunset Beach. There have been no attacks on humans at the popular surf spot. Credit: C & M Fallows / oceanwideimages.com

Juan Williams: Muzzled, but still talking all the time

Among the striking non sequiturs in Juan Williams' new book "Muzzled," besides the title, is the author's simultaneous embrace of Fox News and despair at what he says is a national discourse that has become overly ideological and coarse.

Those two ideas may coexist in the nearly 300 pages of Williams' book, but they will ring jarringly dissonant to anyone who has spent more than a few minutes watching Fox hosts batter anyone with an opposing (read: liberal) position.

Fox is the leading practitioner of the full-contact partisan commentary that's spreading across cable television (most notably to MSNBC) and, arguably, to the body politic. Williams won a $2-million contract with Fox over three years after being booted from NPR last fall.

He charges it is the public radio network that is a safe haven for liberal political cant.

I have a longer discussion of the Williams book in my On the Media column, but there wasn't room to mention all the disconnects there. One other misnomer from the onetime Washington Post journalist: In a section of "Muzzled" in which he discusses how much the public liked his work at National Public Radio, Williams notes that the "ombudswoman said she got more response to my work than to any other voice on the network." What he fails to write is that much of that public feedback was negative--complaints about Williams' screeds on Fox.

The book and the discussion accompanying it raise many questions. One for NPR: If Williams was as ineffectual and overly opinionated as you suggest, why did you keep him around for a decade? Perhaps it had something to do with the star status he had achieved in part, ahem, by appearing on Fox. For Williams: If NPR was as corrupt and politically correct as you now report, why didn't you quit before they fired you?

I tried to get Williams through a couple of Fox representatives this week. They did not respond to my inquiries.

--James Rainey

Photo: News analyst Juan Williams is now a commentator at Fox News, full time, after being ousted from his job at National Public Radio last fall. His new book, "Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate," discusses the controversy and his thoughts on runaway political correctness. Credit: Richard Drew / AP

 

 

CNN Presidential Debate moderator: fast, not furious

CNN's solid political host John King was game to keep Monday night's Republican presidential debate moving, but speed and thoroughness don't  go together, especially in a discussion overflowing with seven candidates.

That meant the would-be GOP nominees got away with a fair amount of bobbing and weaving in one of their first mass debates. Mitt Romney wouldn't directly say whether he would raise the federal debt ceiling. Michele Bachmann punted on whether her anti-abortion stand would apply to victims of rape and incest. Ron Paul wouldn't say whether a 5-year-old illegal immigrant child should receive medical care at an emergency room. And Newt Gingrich backed what sounded like loyalty tests for Muslims who would want to enter his presidential administration, without any serious follow-up.

Whether it was the large size of the field or the desire to speed through many topics, the candidates mostly had it their own way Monday night at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

King can't carry all the responsibility for the lack of accountability in the two-hour debate. Even when the CNN host pushed for a little combativeness, the candidates wouldn't take the bait,  at least against each other.

Most noticeable for a lack of inter-party aggression was former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who declined to repeat his early challenge to Romney's Massachusetts healthcare plan. Pawlenty would only acknowledge that he compared Romney's plan, crafted when he was governor of Massachusetts, with President Obama's plan because Obama had said he modeled his legislation on the Massachusetts health law. On the weekend talk show circuit, Pawlenty had belittled "Obamney Care," since both the Massachusetts plan and the national healthcare reform require individuals to purchase insurance, a "mandate" vehemently opposed by most Republicans.

All the fire on Monday night remained on President Obama.

The next debate hosts might also want to rethink the notion of informal time limits. King tried to keep the discussion moving without a set limit. That meant he spent much of his time burbling "all right, all right, all right," under the GOP hopefuls as they went well past the parsimonious 30-second response time.

Better to bring back the red warning light for the next debate--and a more generous time limit.

CNN tried to lighten the serious subject matter with a "this or that" feature, as the cable outlet cut into, and away from, commercials. King asked the candidates about such lite preferences as Coke vs. Pepsi, thin crust vs. deep dish pizza, Johnny Cash vs. Elvis Presley and Blackberry vs. iPhone.

That produced little spark and less insight. If you're going to insist on bringing a pop culture or lite sensibility to the proceedings, at least challenge these pols. A few more challenging choices: LeBron James or Dirk Nowitzki? Bourbon or scotch? Craps or blackjack? Iowa or New Hampshire?

That last one would really make frontrunner Romney squirm.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, left, talks to CNN's John King, as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), right, joins in during the first New Hampshire Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Credit: Jim Cole / Associated Press

 

Weiner Twitter-pic story just won't go away

Rep. Anthony Weiner's television appearances Wednesday confirmed what you might have suspected: Congressmen don't win when they have to discuss crotch shots.

Right-wing commentator Andrew Breitbart  began pushing the story over the weekend that a photo showing a man's crotch in snug underwear had been posted from the congressman's Twitter account.

Those initial reports suggested that the  provocative photo had been sent in a direct Twitter communication (not visible to other Twitter users) to a young woman in Seattle. The woman denied receiving any photo. The New York Democrat said he had never sent such a picture, or ever met the woman in question.

She agreed that she had never met Weiner, though she acknowledged calling the lawmaker her "boyfriend" on the social network. She explained this as a fangirl gesture, delivered from a distance,  rather than evidence the two had any sort of real relationship.

Weiner got so agitated about being asked about all of this on Tuesday he called CNN's Ted Barrett a "jackass" during a confrontation on Capitol Hill. The lawmaker later said he lashed out because the reporter was interrupting him.

Weiner acknowledged that wasn't such a great performance and that he needed to do more to clear the air. So he was back on cable TV Wednesday, this time granting interviews to Luke Russert of MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer of CNN.

Weiner was calmer in those interviews than he had been a day earlier. He insisted he had never sent the picture in question to the Seattleite. But he also said he could not say for sure that the picture was not of him.

“It certainly doesn’t look familiar to me," Weiner told Blitzer. "But I don’t want to say with certitude to you something that I don’t know to be the certain truth.” Hmmm. Not exactly conclusive. And things got a little bumpier and more halting as the congressman tried to explain whether he had ever taken such a picture of himself.

“I can tell you this, that there are, I have photographs, I don’t know what photographs are out there in the world of me," Weiner said. "I don’t know what things have been manipulated and doctored. Um, and we’re going to try to find out what happened.”

Weiner declined to answer when pressed by Blitzer as to whether he had ever communicated by direct message with the Seattle woman. “Look, I am not going to get into how I communicate with people on social media," he said.

Asked to explain why he would have received another message, this one allegedly from a stripper, Weiner suggested his Twitter account might have issued a "pro forma" response, like ones that would have gone to others of the roughly 45,000 people who follow his 140-character missives. Weiner keeps up a lively, sometimes combative narrative on Twitter, making him one of the most popular lawmakers on the social media site.

Weiner, 46, tried a lot of angles to make the mess go away Wednesday. There was humor: “It seems like a prank to make fun of my name. When your name is Weiner that certainly happens a lot.” There was empathy: "I would just hope you would leave these people alone," he said of his Twitter followers. "They didn’t do anything wrong for following me.” There was the commonweal: "I want to talk about the debt limit and health care reform."

Weiner married former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin last summer, in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton. When Blitzer asked if his responses were designed to protect someone, Weiner replied, "Yes, I am protecting my wife."

The congressman said the pursuit of rumors in the story had gotten so silly that a blog's list of attractive women he followed on Twitter included his sister-in-law. But the furor seemed unlikely to conclude at least for a few more days. Those who wanted to keep it alive looked for a bigger public policy issue: If a congressman's social media account had been hacked, wasn't this a potential security threat to all of Congress? And shouldn't an investigation take place, to make sure the lawmakers could keep their online accounts secure?

Others were questioning Weiner's tactics in trying to blunt the questions. "Anthony Weiner's non-denial denial about the pic sure undermines his defense," said Daily Beast media and political writer Howard Kurtz on, yes, Twitter, "and casts doubt on hacking tale. Why'd he wait almost a week?"

On CNN, commentator Gloria Borger talked about the advantages and pitfalls of interacting with constituents on social media sites. “It establishes this sense of intimacy," Borger said, "and that can be good and sometimes it can be really bad."

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) as he met with reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday to dicuss a photo from his Twitter account. The lewd picture was a close-up of a man in tight underwear. Weiner denied that he sent the photo via social media, but he said he couldn't be certain it was not of him. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

 

 

 

 

Schwarzenegger mistress not named here, a rarity in media

Usually news outlets are noticeable for what they report. Less often, they stand out for what they don't.

That has been the case this week as the Los Angeles Times has held back the name of the child that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered with a woman who worked for years in his Brentwood home.

Times political reporter Mark Z. Barabak broke the big story (along with reporter Victoria Kim) at about midnight Monday on this website. It appeared in Tuesday's print edition of the paper, setting off a furor that has swept across other newspapers, television, radio and the Internet. Virtually every news organization I could find has named the one-time Schwarzenegger employee and provided other details about the politician-movie star's secret child.

The Times has not only declined to name the woman, but is also not disclosing the name, age or sex of her child.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Times Editor Russ Stanton gave me a statement explaining why the Times didn't publish the name.

"The public has a legitimate interest in the behavior of someone who held high office in this state and is likely to remain prominent for a long time," Stanton said. "Schwarzenegger’s conduct is what was newsworthy.

"In some circumstances, it might be necessary or appropriate to reveal the identity of a politician’s mistress," he continued. "In this situation, we thought it was not. We hewed to the principle of protecting the identity of an innocent child.

"To have identified the mother would, in effect, have been to identify the child. Different media companies have different standards. We will stick by ours, regardless of what others do."

By 3:45 a.m. Tuesday morning, the celebrity website TMZ was on the story. Later in the day, it identified the mistress and began running pictures of the child, with the face obscured. From pictures Wednesday of television news crews swarming around the woman's home in Bakersfield, it was clear the Times' position was not shared by a lot of others.

ABC flashed a picture of the woman on the morning news. TMZ had a veritable album of photos, including one in which the young child's face could be seen. The New York Times named the woman, described the "quiet cul-de-sac" where she lives and provided other details of her life, though the paper did not name her child.

(An Associated Press account I read also did not give the woman's name, although it described the media mob scene around her home and interviewed neighbors--and named the family dog.)

New York Times Editor Bill Keller emailed his thoughts on identifying the mistress. "Our basic job is to inform readers about news events, so we need a pretty compelling reason NOT to give readers information we think they care about," Keller wrote, in part. "We're sensitive to privacy issues, but in this case we don't see that compelling reason to keep our readers in the dark."

Keller added: "Often — as in the Schwarzenegger case — we withhold the names of children, because they are particularly vulnerable....

"The employee who had Schwarzenegger's child is a more complicated question. We don't know enough about the circumstances to know whether, or in what degree, she was a victim, beyond the obvious fact that there was a serious imbalance of power in the relationship.

"But there's nothing to suggest that reliving the earlier experience is likely to be traumatizing in the sense rape victims describe (she's lived with it — and worked for him -- for 10 or 15 years). And the reality is, there is not much privacy left for us to protect."

Even the smarmier corners of the Web seemed to be withholding the child's name. Though that did not mean it couldn't be found.

A news assignment manager at television's NBC4 in Los Angeles issued a Twitter message Wednesday listing the name and purported age. It appears that the NBC employee, David Reese, got the age wrong.

When I asked him if he would put the information about the child on the air, the response suggested Reese had suffered an instance of Itchy-Twitterfinger Syndrome.

His Twitter message to me about the use of the child's name: "We're not putting it out at all ... I should not have tweeted it."

They talk about the Fog of War. There's also something like the Fog of Celebrity. In the rush to get some part of the story of the moment, proportion and judgment can fly out the window.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he had an affair with a former household employee, an affair that produced a child. The L.A. Times, which broke the story, has not identified the child but many other news outlets have. Credit: Matt Sayles/ Associated Press