Many times it has been the case that serious-minded democratic people and politicians have not responded to unfair attacks, and the outcome has been to get run over by the liars, exaggerators, and bullies. It seems to be the nature of progressive, serious, scholarly people to ignore blatantly unfair attacks [think Gore, think Kerry (Swiftboat), on a national level], the idea being that any rational, thinking person will discriminate and will recognize the attacks for what they are. Aguirre understands that he can’t let the biased reports and loaded questions go unanswered. And that is fine with the Aguirre haters, because then they can do the “doesn’t play well with others” attack.

I absolutely think it is fair for any reporter to ask the toughest questions possible, but the questions have to be fair and based in truth. Recall the old mock law school trial exercise, asking “when did you stop beating your wife?”, for which there is no directly responsive answer that isn’t incriminating. That is the type of Vigilante journalism allowed by the U-T, and Roth is not clean in this regard.

I doubt we can ever go back to a time where people pay attention to what anyone actually says or does but if we don’t we’ll continue to see the City and the Nation screwed into the ground by crooked politicians and special interest groups.

Aguirre’s lame attack on smoke shops rubbed me the wrong way, but I have to admit that the coverage of him in the UT and on KPBS smells something stinky, too.