Martini Republic, Marc Cooper, Mike Davis And That Most Elusive Of All Commodities - The Truth!!

I am not certain how the blogging war between LA Weekly writer & blogger Marc Cooper and the staff at the Martini Republic blog started (and seeing two sets of left-wingers trash each other would normally never cause me any grief), and even though Marc Cooper has been acting a bit like a spoiled child in the exchange, the Martini Republic's attack on Marc's credentials have gone a bit far.

So let me defend.... the indefensible. But before I go into my defense of Marc Cooper's credentials - let me give you my history with him. When NEW TIMES did a favorable article about my exposure of Mike Davis as a fraud, Marc called me up for an interview. And despite the fact that not one, but two other writers at NEW TIMES called me to say he was going to do a hit on me no matter what I said, I did the interview.

I also offered to meet Marc and show him a few hundred examples of how I could prove that Mike Davis had knowingly lied, but he refused to do that. I also offered to send or fax him the proof, but he also refused to allow me to do that, too. He said it was not going to be that kind of article - and he was right.

After we had a short and highly entertaining phone chat (he also refused to meet me in person) largely about our mutual childhoods in LA - and all the things we had in common, he printed a largely fabricated account of our conversation - including having me use words in contexts that I had never, ever in used in my life, much less used when I had talked with him. He also did not challenge a single fact that I had said was wrong about Mike Davis, but he did liberally go into personal attacks on my character, since he could not prove that anything I said was wrong.

However, other than when he is defending a friend such as Mike Davis - in which case Marc has zero compunction about lying - I find him to be one of the best - and most reliable political commentators writing in LA today.

So even though I am on the opposite side of the fence from him politically in many but not all ways, I find his LA Weekly columns on the state of the Republican and Democratic parties in California to be brutally honest and exceptionally insightful.

As always, my main concern is about one thing and one thing only when it comes to writing - the truth. And I always love to read points of view that differ from my own; my only problem is with people like Mike Davis who constantly and knowingly lie to support those points of view and papers like the LA Times who refuse to correct those lies.