Thursday, May 19, 2011

Ten Thousand L.A. Times Subscribers Cancelled Their Subscriptions When...

....LaTi reported on Schwarzenegger's crude behavior with women.

Tracy Weber reports:
Eight years ago I was dragged scowling and complaining into an investigation of allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger–the leading candidate for governor of California–had sexually harassed and molested women, including those who worked on his movies...

But the orders came from on high. They needed someone adept at persuading reluctant sources to share traumatic or humiliating experiences. So out I went crisscrossing Southern California in search of women groped by the Republican candidate for governor.

...several reluctantly began to describe behavior that appeared to cross every imaginable line. As I interviewed these women, I came to believe in the importance of the story. They were strong, professional, independent people, women like me: competent and assertive...

Election Day arrived and Schwarzenegger was elected by a wide margin. The Los Angeles Times was castigated for smearing Schwarzenegger close to the election. Ten thousand readers cancelled their subscriptions.

8 comments:

  1. I was one of the 10,000 who cancelled his subscription with the Times. I wasn't upset with the reporter; I was furious with the Times.

    Believe me, I was then and am now no fan of Schwarzeneggar. I thought and still think of him as a fraud. I voted for McClintock. The timing of the article, however, couldn't have been worse optically. It was no secret that the Times supported Bustamante during that election. The timing of the article gave the impression that the Times wanted to politically damage Schwarzenegger without giving him an opportunity to defend himself before the election. It looked like the editorial part of the paper bled into the reporting part. To me, that was too much, and I wrote a scathing email to the Times explaining my decision to cancel.

    Now it appears that the behavior that the article described was accurate. I'm sorry to hear that Tracy and those who reported Arnold's behavior towards them were harrassed as much as they were after the story. Unfortunately, though, given the timing of the story, what exactly did Tracy expect? She even indicated that the Times brought her in at the last moment so that they could get the story out before election day. Didn't the Times staff realize what the bloody optics would look like if they released the story as close to the election as they did? As bad as I feel for her and for those who provided info for the story, should she really be surprised by the reaction of some readers?

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  2. Yeah, and the majority of Californians probably think he invented Austrian Economics.

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  3. The author of this article might have also referenced the 5 star hotel masseuse from Portland, OR, who accuses Al Gore of forcing himself upon her in '06.

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  4. i have an alternative explanation to this funny fact that all politicians are apparently rapists:
    perhaps some of the women who threw themselves at powerful men and got a refusal are now into revenge mode?
    to be honest, i find a bit hard to believe that these politicians are all rapists. however i know as a fact that women queue outside the door of powerful men, and not just hotel maids.

    considering the legal framework around these sexually related crimes (only real evicence required is the words of any woman) i am not at all surprised they are becoming the favourite method to try to eliminate political adversaries. women were extensively used by the sovietic bloc.

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  5. Bash

    Really? like the woman who the CIA got to assassinate Castro by poisoning him? See how successful that was.
    Gold diggers don't usually get their hooks into a powerful man by cleaning a floor full of rooms or minding kids.

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  6. Arnold is the man. I have respect for the guy for all that he's done for physical culture. Aside from his foray into politics, his life is one big success story. Hell, even though he was a crappy governor, he was still the governor of the biggest state in the US, which isn't small potatoes.

    I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that the lines that he crossed were arbitrarily drawn politically correct ones, and not actual physically invasive ones.

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  7. The Governator's legacy for California is heavy debt and bankruptcy. I also voted for McClintock because only he had a shot at bringing the runaway borrowing, taxing and spending under control. But Californians didn't care about the government living within its means anymore than they cared about Arnie's groping or infidelities.

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  8. How long do you think Arnold will go before he has another woman in his bed? Men are what women have made them into. It doesn't excuse Arnold, but it does explain him.

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