OC Weekly's Moxley: Regrets: Angry Liberals

[question everything]

September 9 - 15, 2005

Regrets: Angry Liberals
by R. SCOTT MOXLEY

The Weekly has hounded lazy mainstream reporters, bad musicians and crooked politicians, bureaucrats, judges, businessmen, school administrators, priests, and cops; provided exclusive reports about looming disasters; spoofed local idiots; defended abused minorities; and helped shape public opinion on issues like the Haidl gang rape controversy. Justice has found more than a few villains thanks to our work. So you’d think we would have earned respect as an independent news source during the past decade.

But in the alternative journalism world, two moves are sure to trigger a chorus of screams: writing a complimentary article about a Republican or exposing the lies of a liberal. I’ve done both during the past decade, and it’s earned me a big “fuck you” from progressive activists. The only time to stop pounding the living bejesus out of Republicans is to pen a hagiography about a Dem, they say.

(snip)

My sin? Well, I did endorse conservative Republican Tom McClintock for governor in 2003 because I believed — still do — that he was the only person in the race who wasn’t a habitual liar, even if I don’t share all of his policy positions. Most of my liberal friends dismissed that move as temporary insanity.

But what really pisses them off is that among those people I’ve investigated in the past 10 years are Irvine politicians Larry Agran and Beth Krom, ex-Laguna Beach Mayor Paul Freeman, state Assemblyman Tom Umberg and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez — all Democrats. I explain that good reporters are obligated to pursue the truth wherever it leads. If a liberal elected official, candidate or activist is a sleaze, then I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

(snip)

Many of my views are progressive, and I consider George W. Bush the biggest moron to sit in the Oval Office since Dick Nixon and pal Bebe Rebozo got drunk and contemplated nuking Vietnam. Christopher Cox, the Newport Beach Republican currently heading the Securities and Exchange Commission, is a snake. GOP wedge campaigns, while occasionally clever, induce bile. But I regret that some Orange County liberals believe it’s the Weekly’s job to elect Democrats, ignore their warts and even lie for them.

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/06/01/regrets-moxley.php

[bliss_eternal]

1. I don't know whether to cheer for this guy, or kick his ass...

I suppose if he is an equal opportunity investigative reporter--good for him, and good for the OC Weekly for keeping him on the payroll.

Dishonesty in either party should not be tolertated.

If he just likes to rake Dems over the coals for the sake of doing so, then :wtf:

Again, not at all sure what to make of this reporter...But he doesn't sound like he is enamored with Republicans, just because they are the party he supports (if that is his party). So, that is refreshing.

[question everything]

2. Oh no. He really goes after Republicans... after all they are

(edited for a better perspective)

the majority in Orange County (CA).

Here is more from the Weekly trip down memory lane

ROBERT K. DORNAN
“The Secret Lives of Bob Dornan” by R. Scott Moxley, Oct. 18, 1996

Stark, raving Dornan
Orange County Congressman Robert K. Dornan lived comfortably as the nation’s scariest bully politician before the Weekly opened its doors in September 1995. Combining a rare mix of oratory, religious fervor, unbridled ego, historical obsession, emotional instability and an unnatural interest in gay sex, Dornan believed he was leading a crusade that would land him in the White House. Like the movie that would become his favorite, Braveheart, Dornan loved big body counts and didn’t reserve his wrath just for liberals or reporters, who often cowered in his presence. He’d savage fellow Republicans too, once calling a prominent official a “closet homo” and Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam War POW, a traitor. If a national survey had been taken, many Americans would have described Dornan as a “nut,” but The Orange County Register had a different title: “military expert.”

Such crap got us thinking: What’s the real Dornan story? During a nine-month investigation, Moxley dug into every aspect of the congressman’s persona and emerged with this pre-November 1996 election story. Among the revelations: contrary to his image as a gung-ho military man, Dornan had skipped Korean War combat duty to enroll in acting school in LA. When the war ended, he enlisted in the Air Force, where he served as “writer, director and emcee” of an entertainment troupe that toured the southern United States, performing a near-life-threatening 64 engagements.

Days before publication, Dornan—who refused to cooperate for Moxley’s story—showed up unannounced at the Weekly, claimed Moxley was a prostitute and drug dealer, and unsuccessfully urged editor Will Swaim to kill the story or, at least, delete the chapter on his missing military heroics. They shook hands, and the article ran. Someone distributed thousands of copies to voters throughout the congressional district on the weekend before Dornan faced Loretta Sanchez. Dornan panicked. Shop owners in Garden Grove witnessed him dumping stacks of the paper in his SUV.

It was too late. When he discovered he’d lost by just 970 votes, he first blamed the Weekly in a written legal threat before eventually deciding to claim he’d lost because of a massive illegal-immigrant voter fraud scam. The OC bureau of the Los Angeles Times shamelessly championed the accusation, unable or unwilling to see the ridiculousness of Dornan’s belief that a house of nuns was part of the conspiracy against him. Moxley investigated all this too, spending weeks poring over voting records, interviewing experts and hunting down alleged fraudulent voters. For more than 15 months, he alone in the media predicted that Dornan’s cries were factless. The bitter, defeated ex-congressman responded by calling Moxley a “homosexual hit man” who had carried “wetbacks” across the Mexican border to vote for Sanchez. (In a moment of lovely irony, it was Moxley who had revealed before the election that Sanchez’s campaign adviser was a convicted felon.) Nevertheless, a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican federal judge humored Dornan, allowing him to subpoena Moxley’s investigative files and commanding him to appear at a deposition.

The Weekly fought the subpoena, Moxley refused to cooperate, and a debate erupted on the floor of the House of Representatives over whether to hold him in contempt of Congress. The move attracted national media attention, and the subpoena was quietly killed. Dornan went a little more nuts, grabbing Moxley’s throat at a special congressional hearing on the case in Santa Ana. The Weekly, he declared on television, was “Satan’s instrument” and a “scabrous, scandalous, calumny-spreading homosexual tool of Bill Swaim.”

(snip)

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/06/01/features-stories.php