Mickey Kaus: Chum in the Water [More Grayout puke bombs are on the way]

Chum in the Water: Overnight polls show Arnold Schwarzenegger even gaining one or two percentage points since the LAT's grope allegations. But here's the thing: It's not over. Thursday's Times story, as you might expect, prompted a flood of calls and emails from other women who claim Schwarzenegger groped them or was otherwise piggish with them. The Times is feverishly checking out these ledes, and there will be another tranche of ugly 'Arnold-humiliated-me' stories in the paper. At some point the level of sordidness may rise high enough to do him some damage. ... A ballpark estimate of how many gropees will pass muster? Dozens. [Not hundreds?--ed. No. Unless they come up with an online gropee registration form--and have you ever tried to register at the LAT?] ... 6:27 P.M.

I agree. Mulholland et al. cut their timing too tight. By the time the LA Slimes has lined up the next batch of maybe-gropees it'll be inside T-48 hours.

BTW, back in 1998 we were on the verge of getting a Republican majority on our county commission. Several weeks before the election, a lawyer friend reported that he'd observed the famously leftist editor of the local paper in the document vault of the courthouse, researching a bankruptcy the then-only Republican commissioner had been involved in 15 or 20 years before (a company he partly owned went belly-up for reasons which were no fault of his).

I called the editor and asked him, in several different ways, whether he was considering running such a story (answer: no) and if he was, would he allow my guy time to respond (not running it, but he'd be sure to do so if he ever did anything like that: it was "standard journalistic practice").

Sure enough, in the last edition of the newspaper before the election - this is a weekly - there's the attack piece, front page, above-the-fold, complete with the insinuation that our commissioner had been solely responsible for the bankruptcy. We got a response out in a daily paper which was published in the next county.

Nevertheless, we got our majority by retaining this commissioner and electing one other Republican, and the best part was, of the 3 Dems running (3-seat Commission) the only one elected was the older very conservative Dem who'd voted against a tax increase before either of the 'pubbies got on.

Some time after this, I told the editor that his "standard journalistic practice" hadn't worked. He just shrugged and said "well, in J-school they told us it'd always work".

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