California voters will have to sort out for themselves what they think of the "groping" allegations against candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. What they may not know, thanks to the editorial process at the Los Angeles Times, is that Gray Davis has a similar, perhaps worse, record of conduct, as noted by writer Jill Stewart. Bias? You decide.
Since at least 1997, the Times has been sitting on information that Gov. Gray Davis is an "office batterer" who has attacked female members of his staff, thrown objects at subservients and launched into red-faced fits, screaming the f-word until staffers cower.Posted by Alan at October 6, 2003 06:30 AMI published a lengthy article on Davis and his bizarre dual personality at the now-defunct New Times Los Angeles on Nov. 27, 1997, as well as several articles with similar information later on.
The Times was onto the story, too, and we crossed paths. My article, headlined "Closet Wacko Vs. Mega Fibber," detailed how Davis flew into a rage one day because female staffers had rearranged framed artwork on the walls of his office.
He so violently shoved his loyal, 62-year-old secretary out of a doorway that she suffered a breakdown and refused to ever work in the same room with him. She worked at home, in an arrangement with state officials, then worked in a separate area where she was promised Davis would not go. She finally transferred to another job, desperate to avoid him.
He left a message on her phone machine. Not an apology. Just a request that she resume work, with the comment, "You know how I am."
Another woman, a policy analyst, had the unhappy chore in the mid-1990s of informing Davis that a fund-raising source had dried up. When she told Davis, she recounted, Davis began screaming the f-word at the top of his lungs.
The woman stood to demand that he stop speaking that way, and, she says, Davis grabbed her by her shoulders and "shook me until my teeth rattled. I was so stunned I said, 'Good God, Gray! Stop and look at what you are doing. Think what you are doing to me!"'
After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources.
Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger.
via the Los Angeles Daily News