On June
25, 2013, LA Times copy editor Paul Whitefield splashed a hasty invective Five Reasons Not to Move to Texas Right Now.
His
reasons ranged from offensive, to immature, laughable, to self-conflicted, to
outright mendacious.
His five
reasons for not going to Texas would have better fit under the following
heading:
Five Reasons not to Read the LA
Times
Analyzing
the five reasons for avoiding the Lone Star State, one can tease out the
specific reasons why LA Times readerships is seeing hard times.
1.
With a faux-angelic pose of prayerful tranquility on the LA Times website, liberal
state senator Wendy Davis staged an eleventh-hour eleven hour filibuster
against a reasonable bill limiting abortions. Whitefield
trumpeted the importance of abortion rights, now on full display in
California, while the same privileges face serious opposition in Texas. As of
2014, California medical practitioners besides doctors may conduct abortions reverberations
of the Kermit Gosnell trial from inner city Philadelphia may become more common
in the Golden State because of this reckless law. How such an erroneous policy
honors women, let alone preserves their health, will be a feature of medical
research in years to come. To better rephrase, the right to life, from
conception to resurrection, is receiving an unprecedented resurgence of respect
and honor in our country. Even mainstream media outlets such as the Washington
Post have polled and recorded that a strong majority of women support ending
abortion after five months, except in cases of the life of the mother.
2. Paul
Whitefield hates Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose bold leadership drastically
lowed the tax burden for residents, along with tort reform. Furthermore, Perry
represents the conservative Democratic population which has swelled the
Republican ranks for the past twenty years. And the biggest reason Whitefield
dislikes Perry? The abortion issue.
Not only
does the LA Times demonstrate a qualitative lack of intellectual variety or
reason in its Opinion pieces, but the personal, gossipy snipping have become
the mainstay of these editorials. Shortly after the 2012 election, the Times
insisted on brazen, false personal attacks against Missouri US Senate candidate
Todd Akin, playing the anti-woman card. At least Weekly World News presented no pretense of seriousness.
Plus the
fact that the Times has played reliable cheer-leader for Governor Jerry Brown
and every progressive politician in the state. At least recently-installed Los
Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti recognized the folly of allowing the Governor of
Texas to court SoCal businesses without facilitating them to contact their own
mayor.
3. Keeping
in mind the main thrust of the piece, why Americans should not move to Texas right
now, Whitefield
criticizes the state’s consistent application of the death penalty. Such
double-standard double-talk displays an inescapable bias, or profound
ignorance, and from a copy editor, no less. California still has the death
penalty, in case Whitefield had forgotten, and the execution of Pelican Bay
inmates has proceeded apace. The editorializing editor neglected to mention
that California prisons are overcrowded and under federal injunction to release
or realign dangerous criminals back to California’s streets. Instead of holding
local and Sacramento politicians accountable for misplaced priorities and
dangerous policies, the editors of the LA Times slam successful states like
Texas.
For the record,
apart from escaped convicts and mass murders, the death penalty is not a reason
to resist moving to Texas, people seeking a better way of life and quality
future for their children, free from special interest pandering and
over-governance.
4. Of
all the offensive, or outrageous reasons, provided by Whitefield for not moving
to Texas right now, the
weather issue is Whitefield’s most relevant. Then again, the editor chides
that Texas experiences two seasons, hot and cold, neglecting to mention that
California experiences all four seasons, and sometimes at the same time, just
in different parts of the state. The only special exception, my South Bay home
particularly and Southern California in general, receives a modest change in
temperature from day to day, and the occasional heatwave wafts its way through
the region during the winter months.
Still,
the weather in Texas has varied in its fashion for decades, if not centuries,
and thus weather as a “right now” reason not to move is hardly meaningful. Such
tactless hyperboles and generalization have come to character LA Times
editorials, with grim effect on its once quality journalism.
5. The title
for the last reason should alone discredit the column:
What is this, a children’s book? Not
just unserious, but infantile. How much lower can the LA Times go?
And what was Whitefield whining about in
the last reason not to move to Texas right now?
A fertilizer plant exploded in Texas,
fourteen people. A ship with the same explosive nitrate had exploded in 1947,
killing six thousand people. In California, there have been earthquakes, riots,
rival gangs warring against each other, constricting taxes, thieving
politicians, failings schools, sclerotic unions strangling the life-blood out
of the state.
But one plant explodes, and no one should
move to Texas.
As of now, an average 1,000 people per
day have blissfully ignored Whitefield’s warnings.
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