Bozo and the journalist

Bozo and the journalist

Occasional Report No. 40

 
Hello, everybody.    I am pasting below an email which I just sent to a list subscriber.     The subscriber is concerned with what he describes as Bill Kelly's bullying; my email explains that, for me, Bill Kelly is not a serious threat (though he surely will be, if elected next month) or a serious anything; but, Tom Lochner, Dan Borenstein, and The Times' coverage of Hercules politics,  are very serious threats, indeed.
 
 

 
Hi again, Joe...and Other Readers.
 
Joe, I agree with you:    Bill Kelly was out of line in making his ridiculous speech calling for an investigation by the Attorney General [re:   Myrna de Vera's attempt to silence Kent von Aspern].   I agree, and I think that you and I are just disagreeing on semantics.     You want to call it bullying, I want to call it showboating.    Whatever the label, Bill Kelly, once again, made himself ridiculous.
 
Much more alarming than Bill Kelly's buffoonery is Tom Lochner's journalism.    Yes, I re-read the article you linked (http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_21633292/hercules-council-candidate-calls-state-investigation-councilwoman?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com), and everybody should, before accepting anything more that Tom says.    Tom's article presents Bill Kelly as a sober, serious spokesman; but Tom attends council sessions, has seen Bill in action, and knows that Bill is an addled fool.    Tom presented the call for an A.G. investigation as if is were serious, but he must know that it's ludicrous.
 
Not only did Tom treat Bozo as if he were Winston Churchill, he then devoted the bulk of the article to an attack on Myrna, and that seems to have been the entire purpose of the article:    using Bill's absurd oratory as an excuse to revisit the von Aspern incident.   Myrna was definitely wrong in what she did in her treatment of von Aspern, but it was one discrete bump in an otherwise-laudable political career.     And The Times, which seems to have so much difficulty in finding space to devote to serious articles on Hercules, managed to find plenty of room for this long article, an article which repetitiously covered much of the same ground as earlier articles.
 
Bill Kelly will be dangerous if he's elected, but for now he is just harmless helium being released into the uncaring clouds.    Tom Lochner is dangerous right now.
 
I don't like to criticize Tom.    For the longest time, he was my greatest hero...and he's a genuinely good person, and I love talking to him.    But these articles are starting to add up, and the objective journalist is becoming more and more difficult to discern in the scrimmage.     That last article, about the latest activities of "Councilwoman Myrna de Vera's husband", in which the Councilwoman was named in the very first words, but the husband (to whose activities the article was supposedly devoted) was not identified by name until the fourth and final paragraph...that was just another excuse to tarnish the reputation of Myrna.    I've emailed Tom about this, I've tried really hard to accept his explanation, because I genuinely like and admire this guy.     I've tried, but, if you folks want to identify a real threat, you should perhaps focus less on the ridiculous Bill Kelly, and more on the very serious Tom Lochner...and his editor, Dan Borenstein.
 
Best,
 
Glenn