Slant

We don't need any of that Texas-style, right-wing political slant in California textbooks, so it's good to see a bill, SB 302, progressing through the Legislature that would require textbooks to be scrutinized for any of the odious changes that the Texas Board of Education ordered inserted into schoolbooks there. But it's too bad that while state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was guarding textbooks against that conservative spin, he neglected to guard against the liberal political spin that was recently signed into law. The Texas changes, adopted in 2010, represented an offensive twisting of historical fact.

Before students hunker down to take their SATs this spring, many will have an array of tools to help them with the exam. Flash cards, study guides and - cursive handwriting? For many, cursive handwriting is a thing of the past, an archaic method taught in the days before keyboards and touch screens. But some argue that writing longhand could help in placement exams. National core standards don't require cursive to be taught to students, but some states, including California, Alabama and Georgia, have included cursive handwriting in their state requirements in early elementary grades, something supporters say should be more widespread.

I think it says something about the big-money media in this town when a reporter can for years retain the same assignment while possessing a decided slant on his subject. That slant was one that was seldom, if ever, detectable in Mark Heisler's work. Further, his depiction of Al Davis as a venal, disloyal, tyrannical, avaricious scoundrel is 100% accurate. I, for one, never doubted that Davis would eventually do unto Los Angeles the same as he once did unto Oakland, nor do I believe that his civic plundering is necessarily over.

Subtle fresh spring rolls, a rollicking green papaya salad, comforting pig's knuckle soup, fragrant lemon grass pork, "shaking" beef and caramelized shrimp -- they're all delicious, but hardly the easiest dishes to pair with wines. Unless, of course, you're at Slanted Door, Charles Phan's terrific restaurant in San Francisco. Slanted Door has always been different -- modern, hip, uncompromising. It was one of the first Asian restaurants to buy the same quality ingredients that Chez Panisse or Zuni Cafe might use. And it was also one of the first, if not the first, to have a serious wine list.

East of the sun's slant, in the vineyard that never failed, A wind crossed my face, moving the dust And a portion of my voice a step closer to a new year. The sky went black in the 9th hour of rolling trays, And in the distance ropes of rain dropped to pull me From the thick harvest that was not mine. From "The Pittsburgh Book Of Contemporary American Poetry," edited by Ed Ochester and Peter Oresick (University Of Pittsburgh Press: 398 pp., $15.95) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.

Re "Played by the NFL," Editorial, Oct. 14 Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group seeking to buy a National Football League team. I am sure that his removal has to do with him being such a controversial individual. In a perfect world, I would feel extremely sorry for Limbaugh because I would feel he was not treated fairly. In America, if individuals have the proper skills and qualifications, I believe they should be allowed to make an honest living doing whatever their hearts desire.

While waxing philosophical recently about the mysteries of the paradox, I noted that my favorite riddle was the old one--"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I said: "I think it's not only gnomic, but it may be the key to all the mysteries of the cosmos." I have an idea that modern biologists or zoologists have addressed this question and perhaps contrived an answer, or at least a theory. In my superficial reading, however, I have not encountered it. But amateur answers are abundant.

Receiver Jon Talmage figures heavily in Orange Lutheran's game plan no matter what the defense--or his own quarterback, for that matter--throws at him. Last week, in a victory over Los Angeles Cathedral, Lancer quarterback Robby Hobbs tried to hit Talmage on a post corner route. The ball was severely underthrown, but Talmage stayed with the play and made a one-handed catch deep in Phantom territory after the ball was tipped by a defender. "He saves us from a lot of interceptions," Hobbs said.

The list of freelance writing gigs on Craigslist goes on and on. Trails.com will pay $15 for articles about the outdoors. Livestrong.com wants 500-word pieces on health for $30, or less. In this mix, the 16 cents a word offered by Green Business Quarterly ends up sounding almost bounteous, amounting to more than $100 per submission. Other publishers pitch the grand opportunities they provide to "extend your personal brand" or to "showcase your work, influence others." That means working for nothing, just like the sailing magazine that offers its next editor-writer not a single doubloon but, instead, the opportunity to "participate in regattas all over the country."

Just how slanted can some reporting be? In "AIDS and 'An Early Frost': The Whisper Becomes a Shout," Nov. 13), which was partly about a recent "Cagney & Lacey" pro-abortion show, Morgan Gendel writes, "In Boston, which has a large Catholic population, 150 calls were placed to the CBS affiliate . . . 4 to 1 against the episode. . . ." I am fed up with the news media and others trying to make abortion a Catholic issue. The reference to Boston's Catholic population is a deliberate attempt to play on people's anti-Catholic views and discount the fact that many of us--Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, atheist, white, black, brown, yellow, old, young, middle-aged, rich, poor, male, female--are adamantly against the taking of innocent life.

We don't need any of that Texas-style, right-wing political slant in California textbooks, so it's good to see a bill, SB 302, progressing through the Legislature that would require textbooks to be scrutinized for any of the odious changes that the Texas Board of Education ordered inserted into schoolbooks there. But it's too bad that while state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was guarding textbooks against that conservative spin, he neglected to guard against the liberal political spin that was recently signed into law. The Texas changes, adopted in 2010, represented an offensive twisting of historical fact.

On Dec. 9, the website Media Matters published a leaked e-mail written by Fox News' Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon. In the e-mail, Sammon instructed reporters to avoid the phrase "public option" when referencing President Obama's healthcare plan. He wanted employees to instead call it the "government option," a phrase that Republican pollster Frank Luntz instructed Fox News personality Sean Hannity to use simply because "public option" was polling too well. I wrote that the e-mail "once again illustrates just how laughable the Fox News slogan 'Fair and Balanced' really is. " Here was a high-ranking Fox News official explicitly instructing employees to avoid using the term "public option.

From the time it goes on the air until it signs off, Globovision lets Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have it with both barrels. The Caracas-based opposition news and opinion channel's newsreaders and reporters — who make no pretense of impartiality and remain undeterred by harassment and threats of a takeover — regularly blast the president with obviously slanted coverage while giving opposition politicians free and usually unchallenged...

Ben Keith, a veteran steel guitarist who played on Patsy Cline's 1961 hit "I Fall to Pieces" before befriending Neil Young and going on to play on more than a dozen of the Canadian rocker's albums, has died. He was 73. Keith died of a heart attack, director Jonathan Demme said Tuesday. Demme, who directed Young's concert film "Neil Young Trunk Show" from earlier this year and 2006's "Heart of Gold," said Keith had been staying at Young's ranch in Northern California working on new projects with his longtime collaborator.

Jean-Léon Gérôme is by all accounts the poster boy of Orientalism. During the second half of the 19th century, the French painter found critical and commercial success with his meticulously detailed, exquisitely decorated scenes of the near East, most notably Turkey and Egypt. He appealed to popular hunger for what was then typically called "ethnographic" images: scientific-seeming studies of a foreign culture's lifestyle, costumes and more. His works were not just exhibited widely but reproduced shamelessly, the form of collectible etchings, lithographs and photographs, large and small.

Re "Played by the NFL," Editorial, Oct. 14 Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group seeking to buy a National Football League team. I am sure that his removal has to do with him being such a controversial individual. In a perfect world, I would feel extremely sorry for Limbaugh because I would feel he was not treated fairly. In America, if individuals have the proper skills and qualifications, I believe they should be allowed to make an honest living doing whatever their hearts desire.

When the LA Weekly wrote a lengthy story last September about how little Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attended to his official duties, it wasn't plowing fresh soil. The mayor's exuberant fundraising and his frenetic campaigning on behalf of presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton had already received plenty of attention, in this paper and elsewhere.

Preston Lerner wants us to know that movies "based on a true story" may not be fact-checked documentaries (" 'Based on a True Story,' " Sept. 11)? News flash: Not even documentaries are free of slant. While reading this piece it came to me that Lerner may have found the reason for the public's fascination with live, high-speed pursuits on TV news programs. At least those are free of manipulation. Mike Kilgore Los Angeles

Los Angeles is home to an industry that makes dramas and exports them around the world. But there's something wrong about the way our diverse city looks and sounds in big Hollywood films. With a few, notable exceptions, Latinos are usually in the background, doing yardwork or working as nannies, putting on the thick Spanish accents demanded by their scripts. Black characters are often wacky police officers, gangsters or single moms. Asians are technicians or immigrants who look confused.

When the LA Weekly wrote a lengthy story last September about how little Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attended to his official duties, it wasn't plowing fresh soil. The mayor's exuberant fundraising and his frenetic campaigning on behalf of presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton had already received plenty of attention, in this paper and elsewhere.