Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Who knew that blogger Mickey Kaus' call for the L.A. Times to run more gossip about the private lives of politicians would have such legs. First John Carroll used the occasion to complain to Times editors that the paper's coverage of L.A. politics was boring. Now today's Times runs an editorial (second spot in the paper, but first on the website) that mentions Kaus and says voters deserve to know the "juiciest tidbits unearthed" in the paper's recent profiles of the mayoral candidates, such as Bob Hertzberg suing his father.
The editorial is actually a bit of a retort:
Could it be that West Coast politicians just can't match the personal peccadilloes of their East Coast counterparts? After all, Kaus' prime example was that The Times had only mentioned in passing Hahn's separation from his second wife. Compare that with how the New York City tabloids covered then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani's marital woes.Back East, a mayor gets tossed out of Gracie Mansion and sleeps on a gay couple's couch before finally marrying The Other Woman. Here, the mayor keeps the house and the kids and, despite his sister's best efforts, can't get a date. Imagine the headlines: "Hahn Home for Dinner — Again," and "Mayor Spotted at Hardware Store on Weekend."
The biggest gossip scoop of the race, the paper says, is about Bernard Parks: "[He] has been married to the same woman for 35 years and is still madly in love with her."