Mike Davis on the recall

I thought of Mike Davis a couple of weeks ago when the LAT ran an astounding photo from up around Lancaster of a billboard bent backwards 90 degrees. "High winds" was the explanation, but I figured it had to be one of those tornadoes that Davis claims frequently occur but are hushed up. His Marxist view of Los Angeles history (with allowances for creative non-fiction) sees cover-ups and exploitation of workers and the poor everywhere. Now he sees the recall through much the same lens, worth mentioning because his books City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster evoke a strong mix of admiration and scorn. And, well, he's the winner of a MacArthur genius grant.

White rage is also the steroid that Republican strategists hope will pump up Arnold Schwarzenegger for heavy lifting in the October recall. Liberal commentators have attacked the movie star for his singular lack of articulate positions on decisive issues. But the criticism is unfair.

The Terminator, in fact, has a long history of ideological commitment which, for tactical reasons, his campaign-minders want to downplay. Most striking has been his extensive involvement in the nativist crusades to deny health care and education to undocumented immigrants, and to make English the exclusive official language. The poor boy from the Alpine boondocks was a key endorser of anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994, and, even more sinisterly, a longtime board member of U.S. English, a national organization with notorious ties to men in white hoods...

And on Bustamante:

The labor wing of the California Democrats should have embraced the opportunity of the recall to push forward one of their own. Davis has generally been detested by union activists. Yet the state federation of labor, and almost no one else, remained pathetically loyal to His Grayness and allowed his cunning and unprincipled lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, to run off with the party endorsement.

Bustamante may be preferable to Pete Wilson hiding inside the Trojan horse called Schwarzenegger, but the difference is probably less than most Democratic voters imagine...When Wilson suggested death sentences for criminals as young as 14, Bustamante responded that he might "with a tear in my eye, cast a vote to execute ‘hardened criminals' as young as 13."

He doesn't much care for Arianna Huffington either, writing "she is strictly freelancing with the aid of Hollywood money and her privileged access to media." This is the Left that people who complain the L.A. Times is "ultra-left" conveniently forget -- or can't comprehend. Pointer from a Matt Welch post at Reason's blog Hit and Run.