Harold Meyerson

Street vs. Suite

Harold Meyerson
Why L.A.‘s janitors will win their strike At first glance, the struggle between L.A.’s janitors, who embarked on a countywide strike this week, and L.A.‘s highrise owners may seem ludicrously one-sided. The men who own the glass-and-steel towers along the Figueroa corridor, in Century City, at the Warner Center etc......

Gray Breaks With Gore

Harold Meyerson
When Al Gore unveiled his megacampaign-finance reform proposal earlier this week, he may not have realized that his No. 1 supporter in California would take one look at it and blanch. But that seems to be precisely what has happened. We already knew that Gray Davis was no friend of......

Right and White

Harold Meyerson
We had ourselves an old-fashioned primary out here last week. One look at the returns and you could think we were back in the ’80s, when only white folks voted, law-‘n’-order initiatives exploited people‘s fear of crime, and Republican governors put wedge-issue propositions on the ballot to steer the electorate......

It’s Their City, Which They’ll Sell if They Want To

Harold Meyerson
Photo by Debra Dipaolo Up until Sunday, I can’t say it ever really occurred to me that the Chandlers might sell the Times. The O’Malleys may have unloaded the Dodgers, London sold off its bridge, Joseph’s brothers dealt their sib into bondage and pocketed the change — but the Chandlers......
article placeholder

The Return of Conspicuous Consumption

Harold Meyerson
The leisure-class look: Eduardo Lucero green silk blouse and chartreuse beaded lace and Lycra capris. My favorite moment-that-never-happened in Campaign 2000 came in one of the earlier Republican presidential debates, when Governor W., asked to name his favorite political philosopher, answered: “Christ.” At that point, debate moderator Tom Brokaw might......

Bore and Gush

Harold Meyerson
Okay, what’s a four-letter word for ”our next president“? If you said Gore, you have about a 50 percent chance of being right next November. Probably a little higher than 50, but it‘s early yet. Vice President Al Gore has emerged from the primary season relatively unscathed, and certainly with......
(function(r, d, u) { var s = d.createElement(r); s.async = true; s.setAttribute('data-cfasync', false); u += '&cb=' + Date.now() + Math.random(); s.src = u; var n = d.getElementsByTagName(r)[0]; n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n); })('script', document, '//engine.laweekly.com/?221982862');

On The Eve of Super Tuesday

Harold Meyerson
It’s March, and Bill Bradley is going out like a lamb. Sixteen states are set to hold primaries Tuesday, and Bradley isn’t remotely close in any of them. In last week’s L.A. Times poll of California Democrats, he not only trailed Gore by a five-to-one margin, but was running three......

Primary Considerations

Harold Meyerson
I. McCain-ism Explained (Sort of. Provisionally.) John McCain had his Sister Souljah Moment on Monday. Just as Bill Clinton traveled to a meeting of the Rainbow Coalition in 1992 to denounce African-American racism, so McCain traveled to Pat Robertson’s hometown to excoriate Robertson and Jerry Falwell as agents of bigotry......

It’s Riordan Time

Harold Meyerson
Photo by Virginia Lee HunterWhen Abner Louima was recuperating in a New York hospital from his beating and toilet-plunger sodomizing at the hands of New York’s finest, his friends and family revealed to the media one particularly riveting detail of his account. While the cops were torturing him, Louima claimed,......

Establishment Boys

Harold Meyerson
After some weeks trooping around with the various presidential campaigns, I‘ve concluded that the writer who could best cover both the Bush and Gore efforts would be T.S. Eliot -- poet laureate of dry rot. A fundamental lifelessness, a stiffness and stillness of spirit, seeps through both endeavors, though at......