Downtown News Goes Native

In this week's edition of the ever questionable L.A. Downtown News, staff writer Ana Scott milks sensationalism in a fashion that might have been better suited for Ed Anger's column in the late Weekly World News: "In a nearby plaza, mariachi music competed with hip-hop and the noise of hundreds of shoppers." (Where The Wild Things Are, Vol. 37, #26, 30 June 2008)

Since when did a shopping area get described by the proximity of its demographic? Has the shopping monstrosity at 7th and Flower ever been described as "In a nearby plaza, Muzak competed with Eighties music and the noise of hundreds of shoppers" when something such as the LAPD-inspired street skirmishes in 2000 (at the DNC2K) occurred amid the the middle-class white folk who are the majority demographic found there? Why now is there the reference to the music of the implicit dirt-farming wetbacks and dole-scum negroes required to set the scene for the lede—one that mentions an area abandoned by the very people who wish to retake it be redefining the term "urban" and by folk who wish to sterilise the area their beloved Hollywood/West L.A./Valley/what-have-you made into a dumping ground of working-, lower- and non-class?

Tell me, please, Ms. Scott, just why there was such a mention with respect to the nearby style of music when the deck (about some half-arsed actor whose behaviour prompted an incident) is ignored until well after the jump, for such an over-the-fold piece of flap? Are we that desperate to make hay? Perhaps your pen was taken over by a spirit? Or was it just plain bullshit?

Having been a vegetarian long before it were a vogue action of the upper-middle class, and being a person who is not wont to be self-righteous, I have sympathy for the reptiles suffering. I can talk all day and well into the night about turtles (as a child overseas as well as in U.S.A., I did more the plight of the tortuga than most think might have thought possible), so please do not dismiss me as one advocating humanistic rights over those of other animals.

I do not appreciate your implications by way of the style of music (and as a former professional music critic of nearly two decades, I understand all too well what you meant in the quoted bit above), nor do I appreciate these non-uber-urban schmucks suddenly deciding downtown Los Angeles can be used to further their acting careers so they can retire to West L.A.—or wherever—in the evenings to watch the explosive reactions on the nightly news in the comfort of their non-downtown hovels.

-BusTard

Comments

[Browne]

Downtown News is a piece of work. It's like the downtown version of the Daily Breeze or maybe to be a bit more generous (or harsh) a community newspaper version of the New York Post, but less entertaining and with very little soul.

The only thing decent in that paper is Sam Hall Kaplan.

Browne