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It's Lew Wasserman day in the L.A. Times. In the Book Review, Richard Schickel calls Connie Bruck's new bio of the Hollywood powerhouse "the sort of elegy the old man would probably have liked...a neatly totaled, double-entry ledger, in which Wasserman's executive assets and liabilities achieve a perfect balance..." In a two-page spread in Calendar, staff writer James Bates (from the Business section) calls the book "about as close to an authorized biography as anyone will ever get" and interviews Bruck, a New Yorker writer who also is the wife of former Westside congressman Mel Levine. (Janet Maslin reviewed last week in the NYT.) Lew's grandson Caesy Wasserman is the subject of a story in this week's L.A. Business Journal, which also reports on the awkward position that the Gray Davis recall effort puts Democrats in.
The LAT, meanwhile, will be disorienting today for those who dismiss the paper as just a liberal partisan rag. There's a prominent argument in Opinion for patience in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century. It's balance you want? Steve Lopez writes that it "reminds me of O.J.'s search for the real killer." Beside an editorial that argues against the Davis recall, (it starts: "Is Gov. Gray Davis anyone's favorite politician? No. Not in this lifetime...), the paper's conservative cartoonist, Michael Ramirez, calls the Senate's child tax credit "welfare." David Savage's front page (above the fold) piece on chief justice William Rehnquist staying true to his ideals has nuggets to please both conservatives and liberals.
Elsewhere: In the LAT Magazine, novelist Susan Straight essays on the sensory joys of backyard apricots and pomegranates. Outside authors also appear in Opinion, where Lisa See decries the damage to antiquities by China's Three Gorges Dam and Stephen Randall, executive editor of Playboy and author of a funny novel on "lesser Los Angeles," chides the TV genre of home makeover shows personified by HGTV's "Trading Spaces." Finally, in her California section column on local history, Cecilia Rasmussen talks about Salton, the town that was drowned under the new Salton Sea when the Colorado River punched through a levee in 1905. She also explores the legend of a 16th-century Spanish galleon said to be buried under the sea.
Around the L.A. blogs: A letter in the LAT Magazine today praises Rip Rense for his recent story on the long-defunct L.A. Daily News (no relation to the current DN). Rense has much more on the original Daily News, including photos, on his blog......Moxie proclaims that in Hollywood circles Kabbalah is the new Scientology. "I'm sure somewhere L. Ron Hubbard is weeping. It's the 21st century, Scientology is so Tom Cruise kind of 90's."......Amy Alkon discloses a sweep of a friend's apartment found electronic bugs, and she all but asks the feds to show her the respect of a little eavesdropping: "Note to the government: Just because I wear inappropriately tight pants and high-heeled lavender boots doesn't mean I can't be a threat to national security."...Ben Stein's Monday Night at Morton's isn't really a blog -- it's on the Gossip menu at E! Online -- but he has some observations on the culture of the Los Angeles Country Club. It's an institution that has sat on the border of Beverly Hills for about 80 years but bars showbiz types from joining. Of course, with Stein the bottom line (always, like magic) is Republicans good, Democrats bad, but the rest of his piece is more original.