What A Hack Wants

Diminutive dimwit Mickey Kaus thinks a major problem with the Los Angeles Times is that it doesn't print enough gossip. Shockingly, not enough Times readers know about Mayor Hahn's divorce. And it's the Times' fault, because the paper's only mentioned it three times in the past eighteen months.

Kaus says Hahn's marital status is more newsworthy than the Times thinks because "[o]ur single-dad mayor has no nanny. Does rushing home to try to take care of his children rob from the energy and time he can give to his duties?" But Hahn's kids are at least 15 and 11 years old. Why the hell would Hahn have a nanny?

Of course, if the Times did have a gossip column, Kaus's constant complaint would be that the column slanted left. Every omission of a third-hand anti-Dem rumor shared among Kaus and his thigh-rubbing right-wing clique would be an excuse for Kaus to post the rumor at Slate and slam the Times for imagined bias. For proof of this premise, one need only recall Kaus's gleeful wallowing in Drudge's fraudulent Kerry smear, and his self-emasculating obsessions with Senator Kerry's hair, forehead and height.

Kaus tries to argue that political gossip would cure political apathy, as more shallow idiots like himself would be inclined to vote if the private lives of L.A. pols were made public. Of course, they'd be voting for idiotic reasons which had no rational relation to the pols' policies or plans. But Republican Kaus will take G.O.P. votes however he can get them.