Someone ought to tell the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times to stick with celebrity gossip from now on, because their efforts at journalism aren’t going well
The editors at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed today supporting L.A. City Councilman Mike Bonin’s latest transparently political announcement that he’s going to “do something” about the homeless crisis in Venice Beach. The piece amounts to a piece of postmodern experimentation in which virtually every single word is inaccurate, misleading, or outright fraudulent. Like Mr. Bonin himself the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Times occupy a parallel reality in which the homeless crisis appeared out of nowhere to consume the city. To wit, the headline refers to “campers” on the Venice Boardwalk, as though it’s just kids spending a summer at Camp Wakonda.
The piece opens with a rhetorical flourish: “Nowhere has the idyll of the California oceanfront collided with the grim reality of street homelessness more than on Venice Beach.”
First of all, “the idyll”? Put the pen down, Montesquieu, it’s just a local op-ed. Second, beware journalists deploying the passive voice, it’s very nearly always a tell that they are massaging reality. When it comes to homelessness and crime in Venice Beach there’s no “collision” of factors. The crisis is a direct and completely predictable result of consciously bad policy choices, primarily by the councilman himself, over many years. Period. It isn’t some random confluence of events in which Venice finds itself.
Next: “Following public health guidance not to disperse homeless people during the pandemic, the city wisely chose not to enforce its ordinances against camping in parks and other public places.”
This is a perfect example of a true lie. Yes, L.A. followed (constantly changing, confusing, inconsistent, often downright contradictory) state and county public health guidelines during the pandemic. But Venice had been in a death spiral for years before that. Blaming the pandemic for the homeless crisis is like blaming the planes for 9/11.
“As a result, campers settled in at Venice Beach, mostly on a one-mile swatch of ground between the concrete boardwalk and the bike path. Tents also sprang up on parts of the beach and on the shuttered handball courts.”
No, no, no. Not “As a result” of pandemic policies. This is another lie, bookended with the cheapest rhetorical sleight of hand in the piece, the passive voice claim that tents “sprang up.” As if homelessness is a natural occurrence, like tides or weed patches.
This bit of dishonesty paves the way for the final turn of the screw, in which the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times shift blame from the homeless criminals and vagrants to law-abiding citizens who simply want to be able to walk down the street without being assaulted and without witnessing the decline of civilization. “The unhoused residents of Venice Beach have not exactly been welcomed with open arms.”
Riddle me this: In what bizarro Opposite Land should hard working, law abiding citizens welcome homeless addicts and criminals “with open arms”? Only the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times still use and apparently believe the politically correct but utterly disingenuous term “unhoused residents.” That is, as anyone with a marginally functional frontal cortex knows, a contradiction in terms. As though the only difference between the guy laying on the sidewalk in his own filth with a needle sticking out of his arm and the woman working in her home office is the latter’s roof. As if some jerk who stumbles off a bus at the boardwalk with nothing to his name but a bag of meth and a sense of entitlement is magically transformed into a “resident” entitled to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by people who actually contribute to their community.
It’s baldersdash, and no one but fraudsters like Mike Bonin and the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times even both trying to use it anymore.
A few sentences later comes another whopper: “With virus rates low in Los Angeles and vaccination rates high, all of Venice Beach needs to be returned fully to public use and kept that way.”
See what the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times did there? In the lede they casually established the lie that homelessness in Venice is a result of “public health guidance not to disperse homeless people during the pandemic.” In the body of the piece the lie becomes the main thesis. It’s almost subliminal when you think about it. See, now that the pandemic is over we can finally get down to clearing the boardwalk.
This is how a newspaper shamelessly, transparently, and dishonestly covers for a failed politician like Mike Bonin. The editorial also makes sure to double (at this point they’re tripling and quadrupling) down on the ultimate lie: That the homeless industrial complex will solve the crisis: “The only army of people involved here should be outreach workers and case managers with offers of housing or shelter for homeless people, all of whom are suffering the effects of poverty — along with some combination of bad luck, mental illness or substance abuse.”
Again, the dishonesty of the passive voice. The city needs to deploy people “with offers of housing.” You see, even the editors at writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times know that pretty much every person living on the Venice boardwalk has been offered housing or shelter, many of them multiple times. And the overwhelming majority – in excess of 90% – consistently refuse it. And the notion that they are “suffering the effects of poverty” implies that none of them, not a single one, has any agency in their situation. They all just are “suffering,” not making atrocious decisions that ultimately land them in a filthy encampment.
See how they try and fool us? But we know better.
The editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times shred the last of their credibility by calling on nonprofit profiteers like St. Joseph Center to lead the effort. St. Joseph Center, which has received in excess of $130 million in taxpayer funding over the last seven years and which has been caught red-handed dumping a disabled homeless woman behind a dumpster in a parking lot. St. Joseph Center, whose CEO makes nearly $300,000 a year. The fact that the paper has never, not once, investigated such a corrupt nonprofit before blindly opining that it deserves more of our money is pretty much all you need to know about (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times these days.
The rest of the piece isn’t worth the 0’s and 1’s it’s printed with. Because I value the few brain cells I have left I barely skimmed it. I did notice that the final sentence sets the stage for what everyone but the editors and writers at (what’s left of) the Los Angeles Times know: This latest move by Mr. Bonin is just the final, flailing rehash of his failed policies. It won’t do anything to help Venice, much less the rest of L.A., and least of all the homeless themselves who have suffered the worst under Mr. Bonin’s disgraceful tenure.
That’s why many people not just on the West Side but throughout the Southland are cautiously optimistic about recent efforts by Sheriff Alex Villanueva and even City Councilman Joe Buscaino. Both men have taken a harder line on enforcement and clearance than Mr. Bonin or the Times.
“The hurdles will be getting enough money and finding enough housing.” The idea that despite billions flushed into the homeless industrial complex we haven’t spent enough money, and that there isn’t enough space, is THE lie upon which irredeemable political failures like Michael J. Bonin stake their futures, indeed their souls. The difference these days is that everyone knows it’s a lie. No one believes Mr. Bonin or the Los Angeles Times. They are the failed old guard, and a new one is fast approaching to take their place and save our city – not to mention the long-suffering homeless population themselves.
the all aspect report 
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