Abcarian: That foul stench out of Santa Monica? A local weekly spreading malicious lies about Paul Pelosi? A bunch of nutcases in the media who need to go take a deep breath? All of the above, in one word, with a dash of “crazy” tossed in for good measure.
The smears started back in February, when the Weekly ran a story about the death of a man who, we were told, “was hit by a truck while riding his skateboard on the 101 Freeway near Santa Monica.”
And for good measure, we said, “The driver of that truck has not been identified.”
The author of the Weekly story was a resident of the Santa Monica area named John Schoenfeld. He seems to have started off a little shy while I was writing my book, but has now graduated to a full-blown “lunatic” with a “lunatic” press pass, and a “lunatic” blog. I won’t bother to detail his credentials other than to say they are legion and include a PhD in political science, which means he probably has another couple of degrees or degrees in another kind of study that has nothing to do with anything, like being a writer for the Los Angeles Times.
And Schoenfeld’s writing style is what you might call a “pornographic” approach, or as the Weekly called it a “nauseating” one, but you know what I mean. Schoenfeld described his hit man-driven mission to write a book about a car crash, and he described the victim as being hit by “a truck.”
Now to be fair, the Weekly reporter was referring to the victim’s death as having been caused by a “truck,” which, if nothing else, would explain why he was wearing a helmet and a seat belt. But the problem with that was in my mind and in the minds of the Weekly‘s readership what