In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.” The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State. It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.
Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”
He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending. Instead, he portrays those leaving as intolerant bigots for criticizing the “California ways”:
“And which ways would those be? Perhaps it’s our embrace of LGBTQ+ Californians. Or it’s our liberal politics, with the state Republican Party shrunk to irrelevance after its vicious attempt in 1994 to marginalize immigrants with Proposition 187.”
The reference to Proposition 187 was interesting since it passed with roughly 60 percent of the vote in the blue state to deny social services to illegal migrants. It was blocked by the courts, not the voters, including many democrats. Recently, California added free healthcare to other benefits for undocumented migrants.
The week that Thornton wrote his plea for people to keep quiet about conditions in California, the staff of the LA Times conducted a strike to oppose massive layoffs due to declining readership and profits of the newspaper. Like other newspapers such as the Washington Post (which lost $100 million last year), the editors and reporters appear willing to consider any option other than returning to objective reporting.
We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Downie recounted how news leaders today
“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
The L.A. Times has long been known for such advocacy journalism. As readership and revenue declined, it has gone through various owners and restructurings. However, it is still effectively writing off half of the population with its advocacy reporting. That is why it is so telling that an editor’s solution to the state’s problems are the same: simply do not report the problems. It will have the same success as framing the news in the newspaper.
Thornton, however, pledges that they will stay the course — just as his paper has done:
“We have 39 million people, Hollywood and Shohei Ohtani. This state is a haven for reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, but income disparity and the housing crunch are critical problems we have to fix for progressive ideals to match the reality on the ground.”
One fix again being discussed is a wealth tax, which will likely expedite the exodus of those trash talking former residents. They are also planning to tap their emergency reserves as legislators continue massive spending plans.
There is a pathetic element to the column’s plea. High earners are leaving the state as many undocumented migrants continue to arrive. Thornton admits that “the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.” He is hoping that these “departees” simply say that they loved the state that they just left at considerable cost and inconvenience. Alternatively, they could just say “I can’t talk about it” to, as Thornton suggests, “extend some goodwill to those of us who remain?”
I happen to love California. I would go there to spend summers with my grandparents in Cherry Valley. I also used to write regularly for the LA Times. I am also an avid hiker who loves the wonderful parks in the state. I have been crushed by watching the decline of both the state and the paper. The way to send “goodwill” to those who remain is to tell the truth about the state and the disastrous course that it is on.
We should not have to wait for LA Times or the state to collapse to discuss these problems. Both are a huge part of our nation and our history. So here is an idea for the LA Times. Instead of asking “departees” to stay silent, why not start to listen to them?
STFU … I was born in Glendale … 1945. Lived in California for 60 plus years. And watched a once beautiful state go to ruin on so many levels at the hands of poor leadership and corruption. You have it wrong, Mr. Turley, California “left” (irony?) me.
“Instead, he portrays those leaving as intolerant bigots for criticizing the “California ways” For the first time in its over 70-year history, the popular California burger chain In-n-Out will permanently close a restaurant – its only store in Oakland. Why? Because the safety of its customers and workers has been compromised by thugs whom the state’s leaders want to treat with “restorative justice.”
When I was 14-15, in 1953-54, I was a newspaper delivery boy. Actually, I had two newspaper routes, one the Herald Express (very fine paper) and the other the LA Times. Mea culpa.
Eliminating all the broken, damaged and utterly and totally brainwashed noggins of all the proggies will be necessary to save this nation – how to do that, now that is another question for another day.
The 800,000 presumed legal “emigrants” (California’s citizens) who left in 2022 were likely replaced with 800,000 new illegal immigrants. But California’s REAL problems (particularly in the agriculture sector) may be forthcoming….when the illegal immigrants start leaving, –complaining that California’s benefits are not enough….yes, we have no bananas today.
Lin,
Thank you for the laugh!
Everything’s fine. Keep voting blue.
“Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared ‘It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.’”
Remarkable gaslighting, Mx. Carroll. White, educated, and privileged is how I would describe much of the leftwing oligarchy.
And don’t forget brainwashed, Mx. Carroll. That’s another attribute of your privilege.
Diogenes: Here’s to your good point!
“The memo, a newsletter the school’s Chief Diversity Officer Sherita Golden, listed privilege as the ‘Diversity Word of the Month.’”
“In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, Middle of owning-class people, Middle-aged people, English-speaking people.”
https://wcti12.com/news/nation-world/johns-hopkins-walks-back-diversity-email-accusing-straight-white-christian-males-of-privilege
Lin,
I am privileged because I am able-bodied, heterosexual, English speaking male?
These people are stupid.
I am privileged because I am smart enough to know that these people are fools and/or grifters.
these people wouldn’t be progressive leftists if they WEREN’T stupid.
Astonishing, Lin! To be privileged, one has to be middle class. That’s a very convenient cutout for the snob class.
Upstate, hullbobby, Diogenes: Let’s go through her list, one. by. one.
-Better yet, here is my proposed headline for the Washington Post:
“Chief of DEI at Renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Schools of Medicine Seeks New Applicants”
Continue reading the proposed article to the above headline:
“…The school’s Chief Diversity Officer Sherita Golden, has listed the need to hire non-Whites, non-able-bodied, homosexuals, pan-sexuals, females, Atheists/Islamists/Muslims/Buddhists/Hindustanis/Jews/Folk-Religionists, etc., et al,
young people, old people, and non-English-speaking persons.
Correlative headlines and coverage:
Fox News: “DEI Trumps Merit in Renowned Hospital”
MAD Magazine: “Outdated, Irrelevant, Discredited, and Misinformed White Male Santa Claus No Longer Allowed in Pediatric Ward of Renowned Hospital.”
Mx.? Minx?
Mx is for those who do not identify as Mr Or Ms. I don’t want to risk triggering the poor creature. It’s like “Latinx,” which most Hispanics find offensive but the left still uses it anyway so as not to offend the 0.5% that make up Hispanx.
Just to be clear, I’m being facetious. I’m just needling her pronouns.
Why not. His hero newsom, already blamed cali’s huge budget shortfall, in the fleeing people. All of those millionaires, that are tired of the meatheads, in Sacramento, are off to greener pastures, along with their huge bank accounts. https://youtu.be/6Svc7GLUqd4?si=9Hw1_uBLF1i1ZIEE
ROTFLMAO! Folks at the LA Times, you need a reality check if this statement is true: “The week that Thornton wrote his plea for people to keep quiet about conditions in California, the staff of the LA Times conducted a strike to oppose massive layoffs due to declining readership and profits of the newspaper.”
A quick lesson: Decades ago I worked at a union shop company. The company was facing declining profits and repeatedly stated that to the work force. The union would not accept a less than the demanded raise and went on strike. The company promptly shuttered. The union workers I knew were forced into early retirement or jobs that paid less than half their original wage.
The LA Times is suffering from a combination of a self inflicted wound and a delusional work force. Their end may not be near but their integrity is certainly gone.
That is just too funny!
Please dont point out our multiple failed policies that we just keep doubling down on!
Sad fact is these are the people who can leave.
There are a whole lot more who cannot afford to leave and will be stuck there. They will suffer the most as the cost of living will continue to eat into their take home pay. With exception of 1%, the entire state will become a welfare state.
The politicians will continue to offer up freebees for votes and the spiral will accelerate.
CA is the perfect example of why we must vote for sanity.
Bread and circuses.
Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out but be nice to California when you’re leaving. By the way, are you aware of the new leaving tax that we will soon be imposing. You can run but you can’t hide.
Not sure whether you’re joking, but apparently anyone who leaves with decades of deferred income in a 401(k) or IRA can expect to be in future touch with California’s Franchise Tax Board.
Trump is becoming more and more addled. As Nikki Haley noted, “He claimed that Joe Biden was going to get us into World War II. I’m assuming he meant World War III. He said that he ran against President Obama. He never ran against President Obama. He says that I’m the one that kept security from the Capitol on January 6th. I was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6th.”
In his latest sign of his cognitive decline, Trump said at his rally, “The simplest of problems we can no longer solve. We can’t do anything. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
He has a long long long way to catch up to Joe “Look, Fat” Biden.
Biden’s getting old, but he’s more mentally fit and more physically fit than Trump is.
ROTFLMAO!
Please share the facts that back up your claim!
Put down the crack pipe, Hunter. It’s doing bad things to what’s left of your brain.
LMAO
You know–I can understand why the Bidens do what they do–money–but why do you cheerlead for them? Have you no self-respect?
Only one Biden is in office, and I think the country is better off than it was with Trump. YMMV.
You monitor this stuff and ignore similar activities from Joe Biden that have taken place over the course of decades? Do you have ‘partisan stooge’ tattooed on your forehead?
Ex Dem,
The fact they ignore or cover for all of Biden’s mental and physical “gaffees” are rather telling.
@UpstateFarmer
I agree. But it never ceases to amaze me that they ‘cover’ or ‘look the other way’ in the face of the obvious decline in a con man’s ability to play his game (mumbling, incoherent answers to questions, outbursts of rage, shuffling, tripping, etc.).
As Joe would say (before he is led off stage at the in Connneticut) “God save the Queen, man”!
“the obvious decline in a con man’s ability to play his game (mumbling, incoherent answers to questions, outbursts of rage, shuffling, tripping, etc.)”
Trump is the con man you’re describing.
@Anonymous
After YEARS of accusations and investigations that cost hundreds of millions of $ if not more, where is the proven con by Trump? Nada.
And your con man Joe has not only been caught bragging about his extortion, he is fighting the investigations. Would an innocent man not want to clear his name?
Trump’s already been found liable for fraud, for sexual assault, and for defamation — the latter two by a unanimous jury.
He had to shutter the Trump Foundation because of fraud.
Trump has been falsely bragging about winning in 2020, and he is fighting the investigations. He has repeatedly tried to argue that Presidents have to have absolute immunity, because he’s committed crimes that he wants immunity from. He’s trying to delay his trials because he’s not innocent.
Anon has landed exactly where its been predicted.
No facts support Dem policies. All the trolls have left is lies. There is zero content anon can use to support dems
Nothing I said is a lie. And as a start on facts that support Dem policies, the economy is doing better under Biden than it did under Trump, and Trump inherited a good economy whereas Biden inherited a problematic one.
Biden in the September 2020 debate said that the laptop was Russian disinfo. Now his DOJ admits it’s authentic. You people are nothing but liars.
The DOJ has not said that the laptop is “authentic” or anything close to that.
They only claimed that the results of search warrants for tax violations and illegal gun possession — carried out on HB’s iCloud account and the laptop they recovered form JP Mac Issac — have similar results. They did not attempt to carry out a forensic analysis of the laptop (or if they did, they do not say so in their filing) and did not legally have access to the entire contents of either the iCloud account or the laptop. That’s how search warrants work: they don’t let you search for whatever you want. Maybe you should read the actual filing instead of relying on the false reports of people like JT.
Nothing has been found that indicates anything but authenticity.
You have no way of knowing that, as you don’t know what they’ve found, other than the limited info they provided in the filing.
Even in the filing, they did not find that the search results were identical for the iCloud account and the laptop.
We know that Giuliani’s copy of the laptop isn’t authentic.
We know that the iCloud account was hacked.
no sources
Following your lead.
Sir, as the sign says on the door, No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.
And while the creepy old man in the corner may like your choice in clothing attire, we do not feel your Sponge Bob speedo is appropriate for the Wendy’s in store dinning.
Anonymous we don’t know how to evaluate your posts if you refuse to provide your source. Are you ashamed to tell us where you heard it? Did you get it from the same source that says Trump has syphilis because he has sores on his hands. The people who put this info out are looking for the suckers like you for the purpose of selling their tripe and they laugh because you fall for it every time. By the way, in case you haven’t noticed the subject matter at hand is the people of California leaving and taking their tax dollars with them. Just another subject that you would rather not discuss.
The source is the video of Trump saying that at his rally. You do know that his rallies are broadcast, right?
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
“As Nikki Haley noted, “He claimed …”
Pure junk. In this case, when one uses the words of a third party, it is clear that the person knows very little and should not be trusted. Nikki Haley wants to tear Trump down. You fell for it and didn’t look further to confirm. That makes you irrelevant and dull.
Hopefully when they leave the left coast they don’t bring with them that which they’re running from.
The writer snidely refers to those fleeing their ‘million-dollar bungalows” as if to mock them. However, the fact that the proceeds from those bungalows can get them a mansion in most of the country speaks volumes to why they are leaving.
Runaway spending is destroying California. But isn’t the federal government also engaged in runaway spending? Where are the rest of going to go? Canada and Mexico enforce their immigration laws.
CLUELESS. That is the prog/left in a nutshell. They cannot/will not see the utter destructive nature of their ideology and then want us to refrain from criticizing the messes that they make all over this nation and the world. Everyone knows that to housetrain a puppy you must make him understand where he can poop – same with the prog/left and that is why they hated the MAGA movement so much.
Next time they won’t say “please. . .” They will criminalize the dissing of California and send bounty hunters to grab them from their new locations.
California was trying to tax out of State income from those that left. I never heard how the worked out for them.
While this might seem as hyperbole, it is not quite far from the realm of possibility in the minds of the fanatic prog/left.
The farther ones moves from the truth, the more corrupt he becomes. Thanks, LA Times for proving the point.
OT, but this is very interesting: https://apnews.com/article/new-hampshire-primary-biden-ai-deepfake-robocall-f3469ceb6dd613079092287994663db5
Mr. Turley, is this protected speech?
This is an insurrection! Someone doesn’t want Dean Phillips to get any votes.
I was thinking more along the lines of Douglas Mackey.
Edwardmahl,
I agree!
This is clearly an attempt to keep Dean Phillips getting votes and even attention on the national scene.
Insurrection is right!
Democrats are Fascists!
Truths can’t be told…and they TAKE ALL THE POWER!
the top 10% now own a Record Percentage of Wealth