Monday, May 5, 2008

CM PRESS # 353


Anaheim resident and Return to Reason Daily Pilot director of news and online Tony Dodero has a self-serving column in the Return to Reason Daily Pilot today in which Tony tells readers that it doesn't much matter if those who are reporting on Costa Mesa actually live here or far away. LINK

Tony is apparently responding to the CM PRESS's columns about Fullerton resident and Return to Reason Daily Pilot managing editor Brady Rhoades' stupid comments about Paularino Park (located not in Anaheim or Fullerton, but in Costa Mesa).

Well, Tony, here's why it matters.

If one actually lives in the city that one is reporting on, one is less likely to make the kind of stupid mistakes that Rhoades made in his recent blog about Paularino Park.

Instead of knowing the facts about the park, Rhoades just seemed to parrot the comments from another guy who has an agenda and whose comments are wrong. Here's the LINK to CM PRESS # 351 about this.

And, Tony, you say that it's more important that the employees of the Return to Reason Daily Pilot have "connections" than where they live.

So, who over there is connected to what's really going on? The paper is full of Return to Reason members and sympathizers and illegal alien friendly lefties whose biases seem to blind them to reality and causes them to think in something less than a straight line. You think they have connections?

Their connections are to the charities and other lefties. They just hear the same psycho-babble and kumbaya all the time at whine and jeez meets.

The Return to Reason Daily Pilot has been trying to use its connections to elect its fellow travellers to the Costa Mesa City Council for years and has expressed corporate surprise each time the Improvers elect candidates.

"Oh, my gosh, how did that happen?!" seems to be the response we've been seeing from the Return to Reason Daily Pilot after the last several elections.

First, the Improvers helped Chris Steel get elected when all you connected folks said he was unelectable. Then they helped Allan Mansoor get elected. Then Eric Bever. Then Wendy Leece.

The Return to Reason Daily Pilot can't have too many connections if it couldn't see those wins coming down the pike. Or, maybe it's just a brain deficit over there.

If you had been reading the CM PRESS, you would have had a clue.

Some might say that the Improvers always seem to be ten steps ahead of you folks at the Return to Reason Daily Pilot. Maybe it's because they actually live in Costa Mesa.

By the way, Tony, why didn't you mention that you live in Anaheim in your column?

And, Tony, when several people were shot in drive-by shootings in Costa Mesa last year, in separate incidents, the CM PRESS was there in each incident--before the ambulances arrived. We interviewed people on the scene and learned what was really going on, unfiltered by others. You were probably in Anaheim.

You see, Tony, lots of things go on in Costa Mesa when the Return to Reason Daily Pilot closes for the day and while you and Rhoades are back in your homes in faraway Anaheim and Fullerton.

Tony also tells readers in his column today that it doesn't matter that new reporter Alan Blank comes from a family of Return to Reasoners. Why, Blank is unbiased, says Tony. Sure he is. So, why did Blank write a puff piece about Humberto Caspa and his new book?

According to an email I received from Yvette Cabrera at the OC REGISTER, Caspa wrote the following nonsence in his book:

"Since most users of Paularino Park were ethnic minorities, and because Millard is known for having deep-seated prejudices against anyone who is not White, he asked for a mandatory prohibition that would have virtually denied access to the
park for Latinos and U.S. Latinos (sic)."

The above statement makes three different and separate false assertions of fact and attempts to establish, in a reader's mind, a motive based on views I do not have.

Let me diagram it for you:


1. "Since most users of Paularino Park were ethnic minorities"
---False.
Caspa doesn't live in the Mesa North neighborhood where Paularino Park is located and neither the city nor anyone else, that I am aware of, keeps a count of who uses the park either as a function of just the raw number of people, or broken down by race/ethnicity. However, since I live near the park and see it several times a day (and have for many years), I'm confident in saying that, based on my on-the-ground observations, most users were not, and still are not, ethnic minorities. However, ethnic minorities do use the park.

2. "and because Millard is known for having deep-seated prejudices against anyone who is not
white"---False. I do not have deep-seated prejudices against anyone who is not white. Anyone who thinks this, is either misinformed or has an agenda or both. I know what's in my mind. In fact, I'm the one that asked that the City adopt JFK's dictum about not using tax money in ways that discriminate based on race or ethnicity.

3. "he asked for a mandatory prohibition that would have virtually denied access to the park for Latinos and U.S. Latinos (sic
)."---False. I was one of many in the neighborhood who asked that the City of Costa Mesa name Paularino Park a passive park to make the park safe for all users.

Soccer was specifically named as a problem by most of the residents because it was the only team sport that was then being played in the park and which endangered toddlers and others in the park. However, the neighborhood asked the city to ban all similar sports--baseball, football, etc., from the park. The neighborhood's request first went before the Parks and Recreation Commission where it received a unanimous vote to make the park passive. It then went to the City Council and received a majority vote to make it passive.

The request by the Mesa North community, and the subsequent action by the City of Costa Mesa, was based on health and safety concerns and related to actions that were dangerous in this small park, and had nothing at all to do with race or ethnicity. The park remains open to people of all races and ethnicities.
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