All politics, even from D.C., are local, sort of

JOSEPH N. BELL

I’ve just finished going through the considerable pile of newspapers

awaiting me when we returned from our trip to North Carolina. They

took longer this time than usual because the Asheville daily, which

our friends take, tended to push anything that wasn’t local to the

back pages -- if they covered it at all. (Just like our editor at the

Pilot, who keeps telling me to keep it local.)

So, while picking my way through Newport-Mesa news when I returned

home, I had to catch up on the big scene, as well. And right there,

front and center, was the predicament in which Karl Rove finds

himself. I think it is a wonderful irony that a Time Magazine

reporter was prepared to go to jail rather than expose Rove -- not

exactly a soul mate of journalists -- as the leaker in the outing of

Joseph Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative. All that changed when Time’s

editors chose to turn over their reporter’s research notes and memos

to a federal grand jury. And, lo and behold, up came Rove.

So where’s the local angle?

At the risk of stretching a bit, all this reminds me of a

pre-Watergate collision I had with the Nixon administration many

years ago, when I was doing my intrepid-journalist number. I was in

Washington, D.C., tracking down two stories: the tactics of Vice

President Spiro Agnew in dealing with the American Indians’

occupation of Alcatraz Island and the disappearance of a study of the

social impact of pornography, done under Lyndon Johnson and allegedly

personally killed by Nixon.

Apparently I irritated enough low-level people that I was kicked

upstairs to John Dean in the White House for soothing. All I wanted

to know was why Nixon killed the study or a denial if he didn’t. What

I was offered was what Dean referred to as “deep background.” When I

asked him what that meant, he said that information he gave me could

be neither sourced nor quoted. When I told him that I considered

anything he said to me to be on the record, I got brushed off.

I bring this up because Rove’s attorney was quoted in the Los

Angeles Times as saying that “Rove was sharing what he knew ... on

double super secret background ... but with the specific

understanding it would not be disclosed.”

This is a device -- both a blessing and a curse -- used frequently

by public officials to make reporters co-conspirators in getting out

information the politicians want exposed while avoiding any personal

responsibility for its disclosure. But it also provides a channel for

whistle-blowers like “Deep Throat” to pass along information vital to

the public interest. So it’s a gray area in which the reporter has to

decide if he or she is just being used or if the public interest is

also being served. And every once in awhile, it turns around and

bites the leaker.

Meanwhile, back at the farm:

* I note that the attorney for Terri Schiavo’s parents showed up

in Newport Beach while I was away. Since he is also a preacher, he

celebrated the Fourth of July weekend as guest speaker at a special

patriotic Sunday service at the Liberty Baptist Church. According to

a Pilot news story, he described Terri’s final hours in detail and

repeated many of the claims that she both recognized and responded

emotionally to visitors and “was as alive as any person sitting

here.”

This saddens me. The yearnings of her parents are understandable,

but how long will they ignore the results of a thorough autopsy that

found Terri had massive brain damage, was in a persistent vegetative

state, was blind and whose apparent reactions were automatic

responses and not evidence of either thought or consciousness. Said

the doctor who performed the autopsy: “The damage was irreversible,

and no amount of therapy or treatment would have rejuvenated the

massive loss of neutrons.”

So can’t we now allow this lady the peace that was denied her for

15 years?

* AirFair members, about whom I wrote some months back, are

attracting increasing local attention by symbolically taking a stand

on the runways at John Wayne Airport against any further expansion of

the airport. They have been criticized for not getting in the fight

when El Toro was still in play and for not now suggesting alternative

sites to accommodate the continuing steady growth of passenger

traffic.

I sympathize with the first criticism more than the second. The

need for a larger airport has been clear for many years, and there

have been two opportunities to resolve that problem without further

burdening the residents of Newport-Mesa: rallying behind El Toro and

taking the same inflexible stand in the 2004 agreement that AirFair

is taking today. In both instances, Newport Beach put all its

energies into compromising new and increased caps, and Costa Mesa

just looked the other way.

Meanwhile, South County never changed its focus. It said no,

flatly and firmly, to any sort of a commercial airport at El Toro and

continued flipping the political coin until it came up its way.

That’s what AirFair wants to do now, use its no-growth inflexibility

to keep the heat on local politicians to find alternatives if they

want to keep their jobs. It worked in South County. It’s worth a shot

here. Maybe it’s our only shot left.

* Finally, our local public TV station that was snatched from the

jaws of the Daystar Television Network by a friendly foundation buyer

is now once again walking the streets unprotected after the sale was

quashed in court. Daystar, in its customary compassionate Christian

style, is threatening lawsuits and probably hellfire to any and all

parties that would now dare to oppose KOCE-TV’s sale to Daystar.

The only party not represented in this dispute is the public,

which will once again learn that money always prevails, and instead

of a local public-interest TV station, our public airwaves will be

turned over to fundraising for Daystar.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.