Variety's eye on Westside politics

Ted Johnson, the Variety managing editor who writes the trade's politics blog, Wilshire & Washington, posts about Sen. Hillary Clinton's appearance Saturday at a local environmental gathering:

At [a] global warming forum in Brentwood today, as Hillary Clinton expounded onstage about the need to elect more Democrats to advance an environmental agenda, an anti-war protester in the audience started shouting at her.

Finally and somewhat indignantly, she stopped and said to the man, "Were you invited to speak here this afternoon?"

Soon security hauled him out, kicking and screaming.

It was a reminder of the politics of Los Angeles' Westside, a mix of limousine liberals, unabashed progressives and perpetual protesters, and perhaps the most fitting place to hold what was billed as the first such presidential campaign forum on the climate crisis.

Few others places in the country have embraced environmentalism with such evangelical zeal, backed up by potent fund-raising and activism, even to the point ridicule or under scrutiny for hypocrisy. So I felt a little sheepish in arriving at the event and being instructed to park my car on a grass lawn.

John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich also attended, but Johnson says all the presidential candidates were invited.