Long time readers of this blog may recall my affectionate referencing of some of his ‘toons, on those rare occasions when he turns his attention to climate and environmental topics. (Here’s a 2012 classic of his, sez me, on The Fun of Ignorning Climate Change.)
Rall is leftier than I am, and much angrier at Obama, but despite our political differences he’s a reliable witness to fact, in my experience, and so I was genuinely shocked a week ago to hear that my home city paper, the LA Times, fired him from a job posting and blogging on a weekly basis for the op-ed page because he had — allegedly — lied about an arrest for jaywalking.
Fourteen years ago. Jaywalking? Rall lying to his employer? What?
The story made no sense. At last Rall has drawn it up for us.
Kit Stolz 
It’s an awful story and the editors responsible at the LA Times should be fired for incompetence. Instead, it sounds like they have just gone silent and are stonewalling.
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Agree. LA Times story makes no sense. Think there must be more to this.
It’s not bizarre that Rall got in trouble for jaywalking. The LAPD was known for aggressively policiing that (I believe the policy has changed). It happened to me, although it was on a sunny day in Venice, on a weekday in an era when Venice wasn’t always crowded, and I wasn’t arrested — only cited.
But it’s bizarre that Rall’s encounter escalated into a full-scale incident, with a crowd, and that it was taped in an era when that wasn’t customary (right?) and then used as a weapon against him fourteen years later. Makes me wonder if some LAPD zealot might be involved.
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