Cops Shoot Newspaper

by Jim Washburn

“Come sleep with the homeless” read the LA Times headline, more of a sales pitch than one is accustomed to finding in the paper’s news content, though maybe advertorial objectivity went out a Times Mirror Square window since they’ve started running fake news on the front page.

You perhaps noticed there was a fuss raised after this last Thursday’s Times ran a front-page ad that appeared to be a Column One story, sharing that left-side slot with the actual column. The faux feature told of a rookie cop’s first day on the beat, and how he’d had to plant four slugs in his first-ever suspect at a gangbangers’ party. It was so gripping you’d think it was straight out of a TV drama, which it was.

The article and the accompanying bottom-page ad for the new cop show Southland were segregated from the rest of the page by a black border, while the top of the article clearly said “NBC advertisement” with a peacock even, plus the article was in a different font than the Times uses. So there was little mistaking the story for the real thing, but there was also no mistaking the Times for the once-great paper it was, when it never would have blemished its news space with some ad exec’s novelty.

Did the Times realize it could save money by making its news in-house? When the paper screws up and then has to report on it, no one needs to leave the office to get the story. That’s money saved, plus on most occasions when the Times reports on itself, it only gets scooped by two or three other news sources.

In the inevitable follow-up article on this latest misstep, publisher Eddy Hartenstein explained, “Because of the times we’re in, we have to look at all sorts of different—and some would say innovative [I’m supposing that some is a subset of Eddy Hartenstein]—new solutions for our advertising clients.” He said he was just trying to ensure that the cash-strapped paper would be able to continue to operate.

Perhaps so, but it seems akin to your bank’s manager deciding they should shore up the bottom line by sucking cock: It may boost business in the short term, but all those cum stains and skinned knees can only reflect poorly on your core business and the institution’s long-term standing in the community.

I should note that the paper’s editor Russ Stanton and 12 other Times editors objected to running the ad. That it ran regardless cannot be a morale-booster for them. The day may be coming when journalists will all have to keep mouthwash and kneepads at their desks. 

But I digress. The “Come sleep with the homeless” snippet in the same day’s paper announced that the Dolores Mission Catholic Church in Boyle Heights was welcoming folks to come sleep with the homeless in the plaza adjacent to the church that night.

The reporter in me thought, “What great experience for an article!” Then friends invited us to dinner, and the reporter in me thought, “Food!” I’ve slept in the cold before, and there’s not much fun in distinguishing between the varieties of cold. Food, on the other hand, is a constant wonder and our hostess is a fabulous chef.

It’s funny how things work out. After the rich food, two goblets of red wine and an introduction to absinthe, I woke the next morning feeling remarkably as I might had I spent the night hugging a hobo in Pershing Square. I’m not much of a drinker, so I only have maybe three other hangovers to compare this one with. It was decidedly snarlier. Two days later I’m just beginning to feel ambulatory again.

Still, the absinthe currently available does not seem like it’s the notorious viand of 100 years ago, which reputedly caused hallucinations, dementia and death. It’s what put Alfred Jarry in an early grave. But I’ve also heard that’s all ballyhoo, of a cloth with the lies told to criminalize marijuana. As my well-traveled friend C.P. says, absinthe is “sorta like licorice-flavored NyQuil, offering no mind-altering agent, just another item for Woody Allen’s ‘Gallery of the Overrated.’”

Some people have asked about the friend I wrote about in my last column, the one in an ICU unit. Well, he died, further proof that you can be the sweetest person on this rotating planet but you cannot live without your liver. Hearts get all the songs and candy. Your liver’s used to that. It takes a lot for it to feel neglected, but when it does, the liver does not go quietly into the night. Even people who qualify for a new liver and outlive the wait to get one face a lifetime of medication, chemical imbalances, side effects and bouts of one weird thing after another. You can take in a feral animal and it will come to love you, but a new liver and your body never come to terms.

And when you’ve got nothing to do but ride things out to the end with your old kaput one, it is not at all a pretty exit from this world.

One of the things that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our proclivity for altering our consciousness by any means possible. By some accounts, civilization only took root because man wanted to grow crops to ferment. I would never recommend to the younger generation that they forego continuing this grand tradition of synaptic experimentation, but for chrissakes, do it with moderation and responsibility, kids, because drinking til organ failure is not a romantic or decorous way of making your exit from this life.

I could go on for pages about what a cool guy my friend was and not do justice to him, so I won’t. By many measures, he had a full and accomplished life. By his own measure, I suspect, he had a long path to travel yet before he could feel that way. He may be traveling it now, but not on this green earth.

Except in jest, he never would discomfit anyone, and probably the last thing he’d want is for anyone he’d left behind to feel guilty about not having been a better friend or more of a help to him. Yet I know there’s at least one of us who feels that way. 

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