Thursday, October 5th, 2006...6:47 pm
My Frustrations
The other day, I threw some totally undeserved scorn at the political reporters at the Star. I am not always happy with the stories in our morning broadsheet, but the political repoters are hard working, and their editors are a lot more interested in running their political stories than they have been in the past.
I chalk this up to frustration. I’m not justifying what I said, I’m just saying that I let my frustration get the better of me sometimes. Given the fashion this week, I should check myself into Sierra Tucson and blame George Soros.
One thing that gets me is the way our media sometimes seem to give certain elected officials a pass. Although national reporters do seem to have to spend an awful lot of time cleaning John McCain’s shoe polish off of their tongues, I haven’t seen this phenomenon from the local media quite so much. Remember that the Arizona Republic famously ran an anti-McCain editorial during his presidential run.
Jon Kyl on the other hand, seems to get kid glove treatment. Durring the interregnum at the Star between C. J. Karamargin and Daniel Scarpinato, we were treated to “Jim Pederson is never in Tucson” stories, but Kyl’s drive by campaign appearances were treated like visits from the Pope. Thankfully, this ended when Scarpinato came on board.
The papers in Phoenix have been particularly bad about this. For example, Kyl pressured the editorial boards at the Republic and the Tribune to write editorials criticizing an ad that wasn’t even running here. I can’t imagine why they thought it was part of their job description to help Kyl by giving him blurbs to put in his ads.
As it turned out, the group running the ads was not going to run them here until Kyl brought attention to them.
Here’s another example from the past. Kyl was involved in a car accident up in Phoenix in April of 1999. It would be no big deal, except that the accident was serious enough that the couple that Kyl apparently struck, Abdulla Al-Khaledy and Odila Dimas-Silverio, sued in Maricopa County Superior court in 2001 alleging “negligent and reckless driving” and “permanent, severe and disabling injuries.” For some odd reason, no police report was filed.
The suit was settled out of court.
So, you’d think this would have been all over the Republic and the Tribune. Nope. Absolutely nothing. Even if it turned out that the lawsuit was frivolous, you’d think that this would have been news.
Some people are just too big, I suppose.
11 Comments
October 5th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Well if you want to throw out wild accusations when are they going to write about Pederson’s secret love child?
October 5th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Clearly, your education is lacking (Chris) if you believe that telling facts (which can be found by all who are intelligent enough to read) is throwing out “wild accusations.” It’s obvious that you have no desire to learn the truth about what your Senator is failing to do for your state otherwise you would be outraged. Ted, I think you’re spot on. Kyl is throwing his weight around like people know who he is. Why should he be given special treatment? If he injured two innocent citizens someone should have reported on it, does that seem a bit corrupt to anyone? What happened to these people? Were they paid to keep quite? Are they still suffering injuries? It boggles the mind. But what is most scary is that people actually think Kyl is a good guy *shivers* it gives me goosebumps to think of the damage this man has done to this state, to veterans, to women, to the education system, I could go on and on. So Chris, I truly hope you open your eyes before the election and actually take a look at the voting record of the man you are defending, for your sake and the sake of this wonderful state.
October 6th, 2006 at 8:20 am
I am not defending Kyl. Tedski has a very weak case when he makes implications about a lawsuit that is settled. It’s kind of like that story about his brother and the girlfriend and the money. Ancient history, let’s move on to some current issues.
October 6th, 2006 at 8:54 am
Chris:
Ted did not make implications. He said it happened. Which is true. If you want to call that an ‘implication’ then I guess you can. You could also call it a ‘rabbit.’ Call it whatever you want to call it. It’s still something that happened.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:00 am
He wants an investigation of a lawsuit that was settled. What part of settled does he not understand? When a lawsuit is settled it means both parties agreed to the terms of the settlement.
October 6th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Chris -
I’m not calling for an investigation, I’m just curious why there was no investigation of this at the time it actually happened. What is it that makes folks like Kyl immune from scrutiny?
You brought up the case with my brother. Well, the reason why you even know about that is that our morning paper thought it was worth three days of stories. Why not the same scrutiny on other elected officials?
October 6th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
What is there to investigate about Kyl? The parties to a civil suit settled.
That the local paper investigated your brother and came up with nothing is just further proof that he used his influence as a state
legislator to affect a cover-up.
I think that’s why a neutral paper like the Kingman Daily Miner should look into your brother’s personal affairs so once and for all we can learn the true story behind the allegations.
October 6th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
The purpose of investigating is that Kyl is a Senator who used his status to have driving tickets removed from his record in DC and was in an accident in AZ but it was never reported. Doesn’t that seems a bit fishy? What if there was alchol involved. Wouldn’t you want to know if your senator was a druck driver? Do you think it is ok for elected officials to use their status to “overcome” the law? If it was never reported to the police how was it settled? I’m sure lawyers had to be asking for police reports, so where are they now? And if Kyl did have this covered-up who knows what else he has had covered up.
October 6th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
While they look into your theories they should investigate the drug stash house that Pederson had set up for his son. When did Pederson know that his son was using the property to store drugs? Did Pederson use his influence as a wealthy developer to lessen the charges against his son for dealing drugs? Wouldn’t you know if your son was dealing drugs out of one of your houses? Who knows how many other drug stash houses Pederson owns?
October 7th, 2006 at 8:27 am
I am more concerned about why Pederson is just not catching on? I know that he is running against an entrenched incumbent, but well financed challengers (and he is) can overcome incumbency advantage and this is a Senate race (where incumbents are ONLY re-elected about 90% of the time instead of 97% of the time in the House).
This is clearly THE year that Democrats should be overwhelming most Republicans. Especially those so closely tied to this failing administration and that did literally nothing about the other problems of Arizona (until now).
Pederson still doesn’t catch on…why? I mean…it doesn’t appear to even be getting closer.
This bothers me.
October 7th, 2006 at 9:44 am
My guess is that detailed polls will show Kyl hanging on to a very large piece of the GOP vote. He is liked across all spectrums of the GOP, not an easy feat. Combine that with holding his own among independents and a dash of name recognition and you have your explanation.
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