My Secession Confession

I don’t think so. No matter where I slept, the deeper truth was that I lived at the L.A. Times, where the idea of a downsized L.A. was all but unthinkable, even as the Times was getting downsized itself.

Once my column was exiled to the Valley, I could better appreciate the Valleyistas‘ sense of martyrdom. In late 1997, my grudging respect for their resilience showed when I suggested that, if the Valley actually seceded, the least Riordan could do was to fly chef Paul Prudhomme from New Orleans to prepare my crow dinner.

In my last year as a columnist, as the Valleyistas gained momentum, my mood was often bitter, my ambition beaten down. The Vals, however, had nothing to with it. When I complained to Times brass about unfair treatment, about the belittling of my column, they thought I was whining.

”We have to quit meeting like this,“ I wrote in my swan song to readers, hundreds of whom had contacted me over the years. I assured them that nothing scandalous had happened -- ”no bloody glove, no stained dress.“ But I also wrote: ”On the bright side . . . I finally have the life experience to write the kind of darkly comic novel I like to read.“

And now here’s Lopez telling Kurtz how he gets his greatest response when he takes ”politically incorrect“ stands. I can only shake my head and smile.