Gilchrist against the league

On the day before the first candidate forum for the 48th Congressional District seat vacated by Chris Cox, Jim Gilchrist, representing the American Independent Party, announced that he would boycott the meeting in protest of the “far-left agenda” of the League of Women Voters, which was one of its sponsors.

In support of his decision, Gilchrist offered a prepared statement saying that the league “supports taxpayer-funded abortion up to the day of delivery, new and expanded gun-control laws, higher taxes on working people, socialized medicine and unrestricted legal immigration.” He stopped just short of accusing them of coming out against baseball and motherhood.

The following week, a letter appeared in the Pilot from Christina Lucey, president of the Orange Coast League of Women Voters. Although the timing of her letter was clearly in response to these charges, it never said so. It was polite, reserved, factual and general, spelling out the principles and policies by which her organization operates.

That left Gilchrist’s rant hanging in the rhetorical air.

I’ve been waiting ever since for someone to pick up on this exchange, but the locals seem so traumatized by the dispute over where, when and if the city of Newport Beach is going to build a new City Hall that little else is in their vision. So in this void, I called Christina Lucey. Now, I would like to add a postscript to her letter.

I find Gilchrist’s charges reprehensible on three counts in particular. Lucey dealt only with the first when we talked: his use of labels too broad to counter, combined with inaccuracy when he got specific. For starters, the league is pro-choice, along with the majority of our citizens. It affirms the constitutional right of privacy of the individual to make reproductive choices. It has no stated policy on “abortion up to the day of delivery.”

The league has long supported regulating the ownership of handguns and semiautomatic weapons for consumer safety. It has no policy or connection with “new and expanded gun control laws.” The league supports the removal of loopholes in a progressive tax system that relies primarily on a broad-based income tax. How that translates to “higher taxes on working people” is a mystery. “Socialized medicine” is a catchphrase that can include whatever the person using it wants to imply. The league supports access to a basic level of quality care for all U.S. residents, including mechanisms to contain rising health care costs. And, finally, it has never had a position on illegal immigration, unrestricted or otherwise.

But even if Gilchrist’s charges were true and accurate, they represent legitimate issues that have every right to be debated -- not boycotted -- in a candidate forum. And placing the League of Women Voters on the “far left” politically is rather like locating the local Chamber of Commerce on the radical right. It all depends on where your center is. I thought we left the John Birch Society paranoia behind many years ago, but apparently not in the 48th Congressional District, where the political center -- if we are to judge by Gilchrist’s support -- still has some serious roots.

The League of Women Voters doesn’t need me to explain or protect it. The league’s long and distinguished history speaks for itself. What really startles me about this exchange is that a guy whose mind-set can put the league on the “far left” is apparently attracting substantial voter support to represent us in Congress simply because he plays to widespread fear and anger at illegal immigration with his vigilante tactics on the Mexican border.

He is no threat to win, of course. That was decided a long time ago when the local Republican hierarchy anointed John Campbell. I just wish that someone before me had been moved to stick it to Gilchrist as he stuck it to the league.

*

I’m still trying to figure out the message that Pilot parent the Los Angeles Times -- or, perhaps, I should say the Chicago Tribune -- is sending to its readers by firing op-ed columnist Robert Scheer and political cartoonist Michael Ramirez. I can’t resist comparing these moves to the problems of the Los Angeles Dodgers in trying to replace star performers they have traded or released with unproven -- at least in this market -- newcomers.

Whether you agreed with them or not, Scheer and Ramirez were seldom less than compelling. They left readers mad as hell or pumping their fists in agreement. They inspired hot debate on critical public issues -- and they did it from opposite political poles, Scheer as a liberal Times icon, Ramirez as a feisty conservative newcomer.

I mostly agreed with Scheer, who supported his positions with a strong factual base. I found Ramirez often mean-spirited and considered some of his cartoons -- especially the one he did on the murder of an abortion doctor -- far beyond the edge of fair comment. But the one place these two disparate men shared was the ability to arouse debate from the opposite extremities where they lived.

Instead, we now have bland, a disease infecting more and more of the media in this country. At a time when the mainline media is most needed to counter those in power who use the resources of wealth and government to attack their critics and cover up their lies and excesses, it is going bland. While we desperately need to clone a passel of Edward R. Murrows, we are becoming, instead, a nation of the bland leading the bland.

Let us hope that cutting off its philosophical extremities is not a sign that the high level of journalism the Los Angeles Times has maintained since its power center moved to Chicago has been infected with the blands.

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

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