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Is Los Angeles headed for racial conflict? That and more inside.
Starters
Racial conflict coming, says L.A. political consultant
Kerman Maddox, a board member of the African American Summit on Violence Prevention, writes on the Times Op-Ed page: "what many people are whispering privately in barbershops, soul food restaurants and church parking lots in South Los Angeles. If relations don't improve between African Americans and Latinos in Southern California, we are headed for a major racial conflict."
Sure, this is multicultural Southern California, where coalition politics is supposed to rule. However, anyone paying attention to what is happening here knows the accuracy of this assessment. Why are Latinos committing violent crimes targeted against African Americans — especially in one neighborhood in the Harbor Gateway area — and why aren't Latino leaders speaking out against them?
Politics
Arnold calls Rush 'irrelevant'
Gov. Schwarzenegger was asked by NBC News for his reaction to Rush Limbaugh calling him not a real Republican. LAT
'Quality of Life Index'
Mayor Villaraigosa delivers remarks at the United Way of Los Angeles Quality of Life Index breakfast at 9 am at the Westin Bonaventure.
Debating Canoga Park Alabama gang
Interesting history to the gang — it began as a club of West Valley farmworkers in the 1930s — but around Canoga Park there is a lot of skepticism that it belongs on the mayor's list of worst eleven L.A. gangs. LAT
Picking away at CAO's power
The Board of Supervisors exempts the county fire chief from the new oversight powers given to the chief administrative officer. DN
Media
Times pressroom union wins
A National Labor Relations Board hearing officer rejected the LAT's challenge of January's vote to bring the Teamsters into the paper/s printing plants.
Organized book review sniping
I've received more than a half-dozen identical emails (under different sender names) addressed to LAT Book Editor David Ulin protesting Susan Kandel's review of Gronk by Max Benavidez. Cut it out.
New web job at LAT
Mike Young, formerly a deputy business editor at the Times and currently on what they call the "extended news desk," will move to the Foreign Desk as an assistant foreign editor for the Web.
New editor at OC Weekly
Ted Kissell is a former former senior editor at the Ventura County Star. He was previously a staff writer at Miami New Times and associate editor at New Times Broward-Palm Beach. LAT
Website noted
Amanda Roraback's World in a Nutshell are an offshoot of her Nutshell Notes series of books about areas of the world.
Police beat
Gee thanks
FBI analysts looking at the evidence against former Fox 11 reporter Roderick Bernsen concluded that either the sexual approach reported by two 12-year-old boys did not occur in the way that they said — or that it was more sexual than the boys said. Bernsen has denied the charges. LAT
Noted
Playa Vista in NYT
The peg for the piece by Terry Pristin is the new office developments planned at the east end of the property, near the San Diego Freeway.
Playa Vista sits on land once owned by Howard Hughes, the eccentric aviation pioneer and filmmaker. The Tishman site includes 16 structures that were built from 1941 to 1953 for the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, including the hangar where Mr. Hughes created the flying boat known as the Spruce Goose. Because of their role in the development of the aerospace industry in Southern California, most of these buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and must be preserved.
Mr. Miller acknowledged that it would have been easier to start with “a clean slate.” But he said his company was toying with the possibility of modernizing the Spruce Goose hangar, which has been used as a soundstage in recent years for movies, including “Titanic” and “World Trade Center.”
