Officer Rutten on the Media Beat: No Embargoes for Wizards

Last week, LA Times media columnist Tim Rutten instructed the LA news media that the only real issue in Mayor Villaraigosa’s extramarital affair was “the fact that (girlfriend Mirthala) Salinas continued to report on the mayor while they were involved in this fashion….”

Since that column, the Times’ reporters have dutifully focused on that aspect, writing the ultimate “who cares?” story today:

Mirthala Salinas was a rising star at one of Los Angeles’ premier Spanish-language television stations before she came to be known as the other woman in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s life.

A respected and aggressive journalist, she anchored a newscast that won two local Emmy Awards at KVEA-TV Channel 52 during her 10 years at the Telemundo station. She earned a Golden Mike broadcasting award as well.

“She was very smart and always had her finger on the pulse of the community,” said one former Telemundo executive, who recalled the 35-year-old newscaster as poised and articulate.

(Where was her finger again?)

Now, Salinas’ career hangs in the balance as Telemundo executives decide as early as Monday whether to fire her for having a romantic relationship with Villaraigosa while she was covering him as a political reporter.

The City Hall beat’s course thusly corrected, Rutten has moved on to Harry Potter, specifically the controversy over two book reviewers — the NY Times‘ Michiko Kakutani, the Baltimore Sun’s Mary Carole McCauley — publishing reviews in advance of the release of the final novel in the series early this morning. There was an agreement of some kind with media getting advance copies that they would not do this.

Rutten wants us all to know that, from his Olympian perch, he sees nothing wrong with what the reviewers did.

Usually, what the public trusts a newspaper to do is to tell things, not withhold information, but maybe those rules don’t apply to “the boy who lived” any more than the laws of nature do.

(snip)

(Author J.K. Rowling) told the British press that she was “staggered that some American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children, who wanted to reach Harry’s final destination by themselves, in their own time. I am incredibly grateful to all those newspapers, booksellers and others who have chosen not to attempt to spoil Harry’s last adventure for fans.”

Fair enough. She’s the author, and she’s entitled. The fact of the matter is, though, that both Kakutani and the Sun’s Mary Carole McCauley are accomplished critics whose reviews scrupulously avoided giving away anything that could be considered a plot spoiler. Even the most passionate Potterites could read their pieces without fear of compromising their pleasure in this new book.

Really? How does Rutten know this? Both reviews made it pretty clear that, to answer one big question in fans’ minds, Harry does not die. You had to read between the lines, but the tone and carefully chosen words in both reviews could only lead you to one conclusion.

From the Sun:

So, while we really can’t divulge the ending of Book 7, we can tell you this much:

As the series draws to a close, Rowling gives her favorite character a rare and precious gift, a treasure that outshines any other boon she can imagine — including immortality.

She gives Harry a family.

The Times’ Kakutani is more circumspect about the ending, but her descriptions of the novel tell readers what to expect along the way to it:

No wonder then that Harry often seems overwhelmed with disillusionment and doubt in the final installment of this seven-volume bildungsroman. He continues to struggle to control his temper, and as he and Ron and Hermione search for the missing Horcruxes (secret magical objects in which Voldemort has stashed parts of his soul, objects that Harry must destroy if he hopes to kill the evil lord), he literally enters a dark wood, in which he must do battle not only with the Death Eaters, but also with the temptations of hubris and despair.

Rutten wants us to know that Rowling — who, he emphasizes, has become a billionaire from her writings — isn’t really concerned, as she says, about “children, who wanted to reach Harry’s final destination by themselves, in their own time.” Nope. Rutten has deduced that “it’s about money.” After acknowledging there are bad guys — on the Internet! — who posted PDFs of the book, he goes on to make an obvious but pointless distinction.

Embargoes on reviews and discussions are another matter. All the outrage surrounding this particular book notwithstanding, contemporary publishers impose these blackouts not in the interest of readers but to protect the carefully planned publicity campaigns they create for books on which they have advanced large sums of money.

This is the economic imperative that leads publishers to withhold the contents of even nonfiction manuscripts that contain news that the public has a vital interest in knowing.

It’s also why newspapers, including this one, routinely break those embargoes without any pang of conscience. Our first and most compelling obligation is to our readers’ right to know and not to the commercial interests of publishers.

That’s right, everybody. It takes guts for journalists to ferret out the news from…uh, their own desks. You, my readers, have a right to know plot points in a work of fiction that was sent to me by the publisher. It’s my solemn duty to report this information, even though I agreed not to.

What Rutten is alluding to are the embargoes of non-fiction books written by journalists on the payroll of a newspaper, where legitimate news is squirreled away for maximum commercial impact, to the detriment of the public’s interest. The Washington Post, in particular, is famous for doing this, keeping accounts of secret White House deliberations under wraps so as not to spoil a book launch.

How is the Harry Potter series anything like that? Rutten is being excruciatingly literal here. But he also fails to support his case. How is money implicated? Spoiling the surprises wouldn’t have stopped readers from buying “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” As Rutten himself reports, some 1.8 million readers had already advance-ordered it from Amazon alone.

No; the only result of spoiling the surprises is spoiling the surprises.

Rowling is an artist of suspense. She knows what she wants readers to experience and when. But because Tim Rutten doesn’t get that, he’s let the word go forth that journalists have a right, nay a duty, to break embargoes for works of fiction. Just as he has ruled that Mayor Villaraigosa’s private life is none of our business, unless it creates a conflict of interest for a member of the sacred class of journalists.

Okay, Rutten, so what about this: What if an elected official was married to a novelist, and the novelist told the elected official the ending to his or her next book, not knowing that the elected official was also sleeping with a reporter? Would it be appropriate for the reporter to review the novel?

Gossip Counts the Most*

In the previous post about Live Earth, I tried to weave in a mindblowing article from the Sunday NY Times Magazine, “The Gregarious Brain.” The article is about Williams Syndrome, a genetic developmental disorder. Among its symptoms is extreme friendliness and aggressive conversational gregariousness, which shows up at an early age.

But while the victims of this syndrome are charming in small doses, they often find themselves socially isolated because their lack of social fear leads to a lack of “social savvy.”

Most of us know when our conversation partners have had enough of us. Williams sufferers do not. In studying how the Williams syndrome brain differs from a normal human brain, some neurological scientists believe the development of social skills, in particular the ability to get information about our peers via conversation, was a key to both individual survival and, ultimately, our species’ dominance.

The people with Williams syndrome bring the nature of those social skills into sharper relief.  It’s a tightrope walk between getting what we need out of our association with a group, and managing our (rational) fears about the group members on whom we must depend.

To get across this tightrope, we depend on our ability to suss people out. Our brains are very attuned to getting information about the people in our group. We figure out who to trust by what others say about them. We’re not like Williams syndrome people, friendly to one and all. We are careful, even among people we’ve known and worked with for a long time.

We get the signals we need from gossip.  If we didn’t have access to gossip, our social fabric would fall apart.  An enormous percentage of our mental energies are devoted to gathering and processing gossip, and our brains have evolved accordingly.

We bring the same wary habits to our public acts, as voters and consumers. We are all part of a global “group” now, processing information not just about our local cohorts, but about our cultural, economic and political leaders from what we learn about them in the media.

When the media puts up artificial filters, they say they do it for our own good. But we don’t feel protected. We feel trapped, and we look for a way out. In totalitarian societies, people are willing to risk imprisonment or death to obtain gossip about their governments.  The controls over information in American society are looser, but they undeniably exist.  When the mainstream media sits on information because they don’t think it’s appropriate to answer its consumers’ questions, we now can turn to the internet, the id of mass communication, to get the gossip we need.

Consider the case of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

In the past week or so, we have learned first from blogs, then from the mainstream press, that his wife is divorcing him, because he has been unfaithful to her with a reporter who covers him for Telemundo. There are unconfirmed reports about other affairs; the reporter might or might not be his current girlfriend. All these shenanigans played out during the past year, a difficult year for Villaraigosa politically. His signature issue, school reform, crashed and burned in part because of the mayor’s mistaken judgments and temporary loss of political mastery.

To LA Times columnist Tim Rutten, all this is none of our business, so shame on us for our interest in Villaraigosa’s private life and shame on the bloggers who dug it out.

Hang onto something solid, Rutten bloviates up a stiff wind here:

When it comes to reporting on politics and elected officials, distinguishing between what is properly private and what is necessarily public becomes more difficult all the time.

It’s easy to blame the news media for this — for all the obvious reasons. They include an increasing number of editors willing to take their cue from journalism’s lowest common denominator, the gossip sheets, whether online or on slick paper, that continue to proliferate like informational vermin. By its very nature, gossip does not respect the distinction between public and private because it doesn’t acknowledge the existence of such a dichotomy. In fact, part of gossip’s guilty appeal comes from thumbing its nose at such niceties. The insatiable maw of the 24-hour news cycle also is a factor, as is the generalized collapse of confidence by newspapers engendered by print journalism’s passage through an economically wrenching transformation.

He goes on to point out that prior LA mayors had affairs that weren’t reported “because, even if City Hall reporters had been inclined to pursue the story, it would have been virtually impossible to make it conform to the standards their editors enforced.”

Were those editors — who also covered up the misdeeds of national politicians — more virtuous than today’s? Or were they depriving us of information we could’ve used and were entitled to?

Luckily, an even more senior LA Times‘ columnist gets it intuitively. George Skelton writes today:

Those who claim this is nobody’s business except for the people directly involved ignore the fact that many Angelenos voted for Villaraigosa believing he’d be an inspirational mayor and someone whom Latino kids could look up to as a role model. This infidelity is these voters’ business too. The first Latino mayor of modern L.A. has soiled his image and spoiled their dreams.

Some voters insist that they don’t care about a politician’s dalliances. Fine, they can click the remote or turn the page. Others do care. They’ll factor it into their attitudes about the man.

Outside the Los Angeles Basin, Villaraigosa has been little known. Now, he’s being introduced statewide as a serial philanderer who dumped on his wife years ago, sweet-talked her back into the house, used her as a political prop and returned to the pattern of womanizing. The family breakup is especially disturbing because the mayor and his wife have two teen children.

Later Skelton points out the crucial difference between Villaraigosa and other philandering politicians like Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger: Villaraigosa’s wife has demanded a divorce. Corrina is not “standing by her man.” That’s an important detail. Another crucial difference? Villaraigosa wants more from us. He wants to put the genie back in the bottle, become again “someone whom Latino kids could look up to as a role model,” and run for governor.

Rutten ultimately joins Skelton in condemning Villaraigosa, but for the most weightless of reasons: Because his lover is a journalist!

Villaraigosa’s personal connection with Salinas is a private issue that legitimately concerns only the two of them and their families. No one else has a moral or rhetorical right to an opinion on that aspect of their conduct. However, the fact that Salinas continued to report on the mayor while they were involved in this fashion is a public issue.

(snip)

Villaraigosa knows perfectly well that an intimate relationship with a reporter is bound to raise questions about whether he granted her special access. Worse, it also raises profound conflict-of-interest questions for Telemundo. Has the network’s reporting on his tenure been manicured by a reporter in love with her subject? Has that subject used his mutual affection with the reporter to manipulate coverage of his agenda?

Those aren’t particularly pleasant questions, but Salinas and Villaraigosa have behaved recklessly in an environment that, for better or worse, has become unforgiving.

Yeah, Rutten. That’s probably the first question Mrs. Villaraigosa asked. “Did you grant her…special access??” And then the flying plates.

Rutten is a smart man, but writing like this makes him seem almost as disconnected from reality as the Williams’ syndrome people. The ethics of journalism aren’t the only ethics that matter. In fact they won’t matter, if and when Antonio presents himself to the voters again. We’ll be talking about his affair and whether or not he has found the way back to being seen as trustworthy. We’ll be talking about whether he got his act together and saved his mayoralty. We’ll be talking about whether he’s a good person — or not.

We’ll look for clues to the real Antonio, and if we have to search for them on those dreaded “online media” sites — because the LA Times loves its “standards” more than its readers — that’s where we’ll go. It’ s not because we’ve succumbed to “informational vermin.” It’s because that’s how we’re wired as humans.

*Edited, 7/10/07

Tired Earth*

Not too long ago, having a celebrity at your environmental press conference was a sure way to attract the cameras and spread the word. Luckily, most of the celebs who agreed to appear were walk-the-walk types, like Ed Begley, Jr. You wouldn’t invite anyone who wasn’t serious about it. Begley would bicycle all the way from the Valley to Santa Monica to stand up for Heal the Bay or the Coalition for Clean Air. If someone had taken a satellite photo of his home, it would have embarassed neither him nor his cause. And he was never sanctimonious.

Now, the celeb phase of the environmental movement has achieved its absurd apotheosis and badly needs to be shut down. Billed as a massive teach-in on climate change, the Live Earth concerts were, politically, a train wreck. From Rasmussen Reports, a polling site:

The Live Earth concert promoted by former Vice President Al Gore received plenty of media coverage and hype, but most Americans tuned out. Just 22% said they followed news stories about the concert Somewhat or Very Closely. Seventy-five percent (75%) did not follow coverage of the event.

By way of comparison, eight-in-ten voters routinely said they were following news coverage of the recent Senate debate over immigration. Fifty-four percent (54%) said they followed news coverage of the President’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence.

Skepticism about the participants may have been a factor in creating this low level of interest. Most Americans (52%) believe the performers take part in such events because it is good for their image. Only 24% say the celebrities really believe in the cause while another 24% are not sure. One rock star who apparently shared that view is Matt Bellamy of the band Muse. Earlier in the week, he jokingly referred to Live Earth as “private jets for climate change.”

Only 34% believe that events like Live Earth actually help the cause they are intended to serve. Forty-one percent (41%) disagree. Those figures include 10% who believe the events are Very Helpful and 20% who say they are Not at All Helfpul. Adding to the skepticism, an earlier survey found that just 24% of Americans consider Al Gore an expert on Global Warming.

Given a choice of four major issues before the United States today, 36% named the war in Iraq as most important. Twenty-five percent (25%) named immigration, 20% selected the economy and only 12% thought Global Warming was the top issue.

Whatever needs to happen next to bring about a reversal of man-made global warming, that goal is now farther away, thanks to Al Gore, Madonna, Leo DiCaprio and the global concerteers, who only managed to persuade the public they received some personal benefit from their association with the issue. Neither the celebrities nor the event organizers never answered the question of their basic hypocrisy. In a TMZ/Defamer/Murdoch world, of course we’re all going to find out how much energy the movement’s stars use, how many times they fly in private jets, tour demands completely at odds with their stated positions, huge stock positions in companies that pollute the most, and the vast amounts of energy burned and pollution released by the concerts themselves.

Gore and the celebrities complain about the tabloidization of the news, and are especially bitter if the snark gets in the way of their unselfish efforts to, you know, change the world. But an intriguing NY Times Magazine piece about a neurological disorder called Williams Syndrome and its implications for understanding why the human brain evolved the way it did, contains a profound nugget of insight into why celebrities hurt the causes they seek to help, unless they’re willing to be more like Ed Begley, Jr., and less like the people we saw on those concert stages Saturday.

Bear with me, it will all make sense:

Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist and social-brain theorist, and others have documented correlations between brain size and social-group size in many primate species. The bigger an animal’s typical group size (20 or so for macaques, for instance, 50 or so for chimps), the larger the percentage of brain devoted to neocortex, the thin but critical outer layer that accounts for most of a primate’s cognitive abilities. In most mammals the neocortex accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of brain volume. In the highly social primates it occupies about 50 percent to 65 percent. In humans, it’s 80 percent.

According to Dunbar, no such strong correlation exists between neocortex size and tasks like hunting, navigating or creating shelter. Understanding one another, it seems, is our greatest cognitive challenge. And the only way humans could handle groups of more than 50, Dunbar suggests, was to learn how to talk.

“The conventional view,” Dunbar notes in his book “Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language,” “is that language evolved to enable males to do things like coordinate hunts more effectively. . . . I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.”

Dunbar’s assertion about the origin of language is controversial. But you needn’t agree with it to see that talk provides a far more powerful and efficient way to exchange social information than grooming does. In the social-brain theory’s broad definition, gossip means any conversation about social relationships: who did what to whom, who is what to whom, at every level, from family to work or school group to global politics. Defined this way, gossip accounts for about two-thirds of our conversation. All this yakking — murmured asides in the kitchen, gripefests in the office coffee room — yields vital data about changing alliances; shocking machinations; new, wished-for and missed opportunities; falling kings and rising stars; dangerous rivals and potential friends. These conversations tell us too what our gossipmates think about it all, and about us, all of which is crucial to maintaining our own alliances.

For we are all gossiped about, constantly evaluated by two criteria: Whether we can contribute, and whether we can be trusted. This reflects what Ralph Adolphs, a social neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, calls the “complex and dynamic interplay between two opposing factors: on the one hand, groups can provide better security from predators, better mate choice and more reliable food; on the other hand, mates and food are available also to competitors from within the group.” You’re part of a team, but you’re competing with team members. Your teammates hope you’ll contribute skills and intergroup competitive spirit — without, however, offering too much competition within the group, or at least not cheating when you do. So, even if they like you, they constantly assess your trustworthiness. They know you can’t afford not to compete, and they worry you might do it sneakily.

The sentence I emphasized suggests why a global TV event featuring movie stars and pop-music performers might be just about the worst way to convey environmental information — or in fact, any important political message. In the very same global village Live Earth sought to educate, we are consumed with gossip about the stars who pretend to teach us–the truth about how they live as opposed to what they want us to hear and believe.

Stars attract attention, but the audience’s relationship with them is complex. We’re suspicious of their motives, don’t completely buy their idealism, and are on the lookout for hypocrisy — which this group of stars gave us by the carload. The media doesn’t create this; it’s human nature.

That is why the “carbon offset” concept is not working and should be dumped forthwith. All it does is emphasize that rich entertainers can’t bear to sacrifice and will buy their way out of living their lives in anything remotely resembling the fashion the rest of us must do. It destroys any possibility of consensus on dealing with climate change.

Climate change is a scientific issue. It raises complex issues for governments. Individuals can’t do very much about it, but they are avidly interested in considering viable solutions offered by experts. Of course, we might want to know something about those experts to determine if they’re trustworthy, but we wouldn’t be bombarded on a daily basis with stories about their incredibly opulent lives. Instead, the focus would be where it belongs, on the points of debate leading toward a political solution that, one would hope, would make a difference in earth’s environment.

Ironically, in “the entertainment capitol of the world,” there was no Live Earth concert. Just Mayor Villaraigosa, Begley, produce Lawrence Bender and a few supporting-actor types from TV like Daphne Zuniga and Sharon Lawrence, turning on some lights that made City Hall look green. I was glad the mayor mentioned that “Los Angeles recycles more than any other metropolitan city.” Hurray for the Bureau of Sanitation!

*Edited, 7/9/07

Seeing the Real You At Last: Antonio and the Times

It’s striking how the Los Angeles Times has reacted to the demise of Mayor Villaraigosa’s marriage. Its writers and editors seem genuinely shocked, like they’re seeing something about the mayor they had overlooked and now regret their past affection for him.

On Thursday, Steve Lopez literally tore him apart in a column that, if it had been written about President Clinton during the Lewinsky mess, would have earned him a good scolding from MoveOn.Org. The conventional wisdom during that episode was that Clinton’s extramarital dalliance had no connection to his presidential virtues. He erred, but only in his “private life.” But Lopez cut Villaraigosa no slack:

Unless he has had an affair with someone who reports on City Hall, or he otherwise compromised the office of mayor, it probably is none of our business. But Villaraigosa said nothing to dispel the raging rumors, and Corina Villaraigosa filed for divorce the next day, citing irreconcilable differences.

I wouldn’t bet on it, but maybe when it all sinks in, the mayor will wake up and realize it’s time to tame his incorrigible, teenage ways and do at least one job right. The 15-hour days haven’t done us, him or his family any good. He’s spread so thin, all his major goals are unmet.

With a long trail of close friends and supporters who feel Villaraigosa betrayed them to advance his own cause, let’s hope this latest failure, as he calls it, could finally bring the humility he so badly needs.

Today, it’s reporter Duke Helfand’s turn. In a story that relies on anonymous denunciations to a degree I find shocking, Helfand basically depicts the collapse of Villaraigosa’s marriage as evidence of a character flaw that could upend his political career.

The fallout from Villaraigosa’s separation has eroded some of his support.

“I think it removes some of the sheen that I’ve had for him,” said one prominent state leader who has known Villaraigosa and his wife for years but would not be quoted by name for fear of embarrassing them. “You can’t fool the people with a big smile. This is the playground of men in politics.”

Part of Villaraigosa’s problem in the current predicament, many say, arises from past behavior.

He has two adult daughters born out of wedlock, and he publicly acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife in the 1990s. That episode led to an extended separation and alienated for a time many ardent supporters, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who declined to comment for this report.

If, as expected, Villaraigosa runs eventually for governor, he can be sure that reporters and bloggers will scrutinize him in minute detail.

“In these kinds of situations, you can always expect a certain amount of prurient interest about what actually caused the split,” said Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist who ran former Gov. Gray Davis’ 1998 and 2002 campaigns. “But to someone with a high political profile like the mayor, the more telling thing is what comes afterward, in the long run.”

Few in Villaraigosa’s inner circle would speak on the record about his marital woes. But at least one person who has helped guide some of the mayor’s most important public policies said he had lost enthusiasm for him.

“You’re not as motivated,” said the friend. “You don’t do the extra thing that you used to do before. Everybody is holding their breath to find out what’s next.”

Don’t you love that anonymous source who asks Helfand to withheld his or her name for fear of embarrassing the mayor? Really? You think leaving your name off such a harsh comment makes it less embarrassing to him? I also love Helfand’s aside that Supervisor Gloria Molina would not comment. If he hadn’t thrown that in, most readers would have presumed all the negative anonymous quotes were from her.

This passage also made me laugh:

Other political leaders whose personal failings have made front-page news have emerged with their careers largely intact, or enhanced, even if their behavior cost them political points in the short run.

The list of such cases reads like a Who’s Who of modern American politics: — former President Clinton, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.

Now let’s run through that list of political leaders again, slowly.

Clinton? He has gone down in history as the only president impeached in the 20th century. Nearly two years of his presidency were consumed by the Lewinsky scandal. His second term was basically a waste. Yes, he remained popular, but he lost so much time, and that will permanently affect how history views him.

Gingrich? He never got out from under the reputation of being a guy who asked for a divorce so he could be with a younger woman while his wife was in a hospital with cancer.

Hart? How old is Helfand? His extramarital affair destroyed his campaign for the 1988 Democratic nomination — a campaign in which he had been an early front-runner.

Guiliani is the only politician Helfand mentions who seems to have survived his scandalous behavior — so far. It remains an open question whether the Republican party’s Bible-belt faction will give him a pass.

I don’t think Villaraigosa wants to be in the company of these men.

A former LA Times reporter, Mona Gable, added more fuel to the fire in Huffington Post. In a blog post, she pleads with Hillary Clinton to “dump Antonio” from her presidential campaign.

(A)s anyone who’s lived in LA for 15 minutes knows, Antonio isn’t very popular around here these days. He’s not all that great a mayor. He couldn’t get his school reform bill through giving him power over LAUSD, even though he had several buddies in Sacramento carrying his water. The notorious May Day melee where the LAPD was caught beating up immigrants occurred on his watch. He acted like LA had the Olympics in the bag–then when it didn’t come through, pouted like a two-year-old.

For that matter he isn’t very nice to waiters either.

Hillary is under the illusion that she’s getting a rising political star–a future governor of California! But she might want to do some old-fashioned reporting. Antonio isn’t much liked even among LA’s Latino political elite. He burned a lot of bridges in his relentless quest to become mayor.

And now we have the split from his wife Corina over an alleged affair. Ah, me. When Antonio was Assembly Speaker, I covered him for a brief time in Sacramento. You could hardly walk down a Capitol hallway without hearing titters about his philandering. So when the mayor’s office issued a press release last week announcing the breakup with his wife, it was hardly earth shattering.
And that’s where Antonio should have left it: with a nice dignified press release. But no. He had to hold a press conference, he had to bring in the cameras. He loves the cameras. And he had to trot out two daughters from previous relationships to stand beside him.

This was the most cynical of posturing. Was this supposed to convey what a great dad he is since his two kids with Corina were nowhere in sight?
Naturally reporters thought they had been summoned to ask questions about the end of the mayor’s marriage. Or some such craziness. But Antonio refused to answer any. He refused to say if an affair had led to the split and asked for “privacy” for his family.

So why the press conference? Was it because he knew that the very next day Corina was filing for divorce? Or is there some other scandal?

Hillary, do yourself a favor if you want to win California: dump Antonio.

So much has changed.

When Antonio Villaraigosa ran for mayor the first time, in 2001, the Times‘ yearning for his victory was palpable. When James Hahn used a negative (but true) campaign ad to beat Villaraigosa, the Times and other local media were outraged. Hahn was treated by the LA Times almost as if he was illegitimate — a pretender to the throne. At the time, I joked that Times reporters and editors were like fanboy teenagers with pin-ups of Villaraigosa in their bedrooms. It was so obvious. Antonio could do no wrong, Hahn could do nothing right. In perhaps its final kingmaking performance, the Times put everything it had on ensuring Hahn could not be re-elected, and that Antonio would replace him.

I never thought the Times would turn on Antonio so sharply. Okay, some of it is performance related. Villaraigosa has squandered his mandate mostly through political bumbling, and the Times, to its credit, has not shied away from calling him on it. But most of those stories expressed a certain optimism that he could turn things around.

Surprisingly, it is the marital separation that seems to have pushed the Times over the edge.

All of its stories allude to “swirling” rumors of an affair. That might be the clue. Not the fact of Antonio having an affair — that’s almost always a factor in a marriage’s demise. But the new woman’s identity, perhaps, or something else about the manner of his dalliance — maybe the Times knows something it can’t run with yet, something stomach-churning. And career-threatening.