Interesting bit by Jill Stewart today, as regards the actions and motivations, and frankly, the bias, in the recent elections in California.
Money lines:
“It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn’t care what it was.”
[…]
“The air of unreality among people here was so extreme that when they did the office pool, of something like 113 people who put in a dollar to bet on the outcome of the recall and on who would be chosen governor, only 31 bet ‘yes’ on recall and ‘yes’ Schwarzenegger to win. All you had to do was read a poll to know how wrong that was, but inside this place only about 25 percent of the people could see the recall coming.”
[…]
“People inside here are far more detached from the new media reality. They are generally unaware that the Times is reviled by large numbers of Southern Californians.”
[…]
“The reporters probed everything they could think of about Schwarzenegger: his health, his businesses, his charities. They couldn’t find out anything horrible about his charities, but they tried very, very hard. His business empire made him look good—so the business empire story was buried in the paper. It ended up on something like, I don’t know, Page A36. And as these issues got abandoned because they produced no dirt on Arnold, as desired by Carroll, the team going after him got more and more focused on sex and steroids.”
[..]
“It was awful to watch Carroll. It became a Capt. Ahab and Moby Dick thing where they felt an increasing need to nail those points that could most hurt Schwarzenegger. At times, it made me physically uncomfortable to be in the newsroom.”
No leftist bias, my butt.