“Papa” Doug Manchesters’s true colors emerge.
It is official now. San Diego’s daily has declared open warfare against the city’s most liberal mayor in history – Bob Filner.
Over the weekend, the U-T ran its new weekly poll, but this poll displays this aggression against Filner, as it asks readers to judge Filner’s job performance. Those who have been observing, know “Papa” Doug Manchester to be a reactionary, homophobe.
We in the progressive media world were so outraged by this naked demonstration of partisanship by the editors of San Diego’s monopoly press that both the OB Rag and the San Diego Free Press have polls on the homepage asking readers to judge “Papa” Doug Manchester’s job performance now that he has owned the U-T for over a year and half. So far, he’s received a majoritarian grade of “F” for failing.
Here’s a piece by Doug Porter with more details:
By Doug Porter / SDFP
What started out as sour grapes over their preferred candidate losing last fall’s mayoral contest has now become an all-out jihad. Frequent insolent editorials and a newsroom motivated by the need to prove their worth to a management team driven by desire to impose their agenda upon San Diego will no longer suffice.
Now it’s open warfare. Any pretense of the fairness hoped for by traditionalists in the public for the daily newspaper are gone. Now it’s yellow journalism– stinking, piss yellow– invective rolling off the presses at UT-San Diego.
Three examples will suffice for today, although there’s plenty more to be had lurking in the recent archives of the paper.
Witness this “lede” to a supposed news story placed in the upper right hand corner of today’s paper with the flag of the paper’s “Watchdog” flying above the headline, hoping to give this latest account some measure of credibility:
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used his tax-funded body guard to remove the No. 2 official in the City Attorney’s Office from a closed meeting this week, a move which the City Council president witnessed and called “wrong” and another council member described as “inexcusable behavior.”
Shall we start with the use of the words “taxpayer funded”, as if having police assigned to insure the mayor’s safety was some questionable idea? It wasn’t any big deal when former Mayor Jerry Sanders had protection. In any case, we never do learn the backstory on this incident. What was leaked? And it doesn’t matter to the UT. It’s Bad Words About Bob, and that’s what counts.
Given all the invective seed the daily fishwrap has sown amongst the fertile soil of the region’s historically fanatical right wingers, the only question we should be asking is: “Is the Mayor’s protective squad big enough?”
Lest anybody should forget, San Diego has a century-long history of vigilante violence, sometimes fueled by incendiary editorials. From the citizens patrols that terrorized advocates of the “Free Speech Movement”, to the Secret Army Organization coincidentally targeting (with acts of violence) the same anti-war professors being denounced editorially, to the more modern day manifestations of the anti-immigrant “Minutemen”, our city’s newspaper has played a role, none of it on the side of law and order.
Then there’s today’s editorial, appropriately titled “What’s That Smell at City Hall?” It’s all about “Bully Bob” and “Bully Bob Filner’s City Hall”, where “business as usual” generates malodorous fumes that threaten the very foundation of “America’s Finest City”.
Finally there’s this editorial cartoon. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but I’m not the only one who wondered about the exaggerated Jewishness of the Mayor’s portrayal. Were it not for the rest of UT-San Diego’s editorial pogrom aimed at City Hall, I’d be inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.
It’s one thing to oppose the Mayor’s policies. I get that. The real “business as usual” at City Hall is threatened by a Mayor with a progressive attitude. Bob Filner can be prickly. I get that.
I’m not saying the paper can’t or shouldn’t be critical. Lord knows, they might even get lucky and be right once in awhile. And taken out of context, both recent and historical, none of the examples I’ve cited today are inherently malicious. But they’re not one time or even occasional occurrences.
The real stink in this city is coming from Mission Valley, where a megalomaniacal land developer and his minions continue to throw stuff at the wall hoping something will stick long enough to generate a recall campaign.
Editor: Doug has an update from today (6-24-13) in this “war” between the U-T’s Manchester and the City’s Filner.
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