Being that I’m always edgy about being quoted about anything, here’s another example why. Kevin Roderick of the indispensible L.A. Observed emailed me last month. He told me he was writing a feature for Los Angeles magazine on Eric Garcetti and since my councilman and I had established something of a rapport via Blogging.la posts that I (and other contributors) have made and he’s been responsive to, Roderick wanted to know if I’d be interested in sharing some thoughts about the connection Garcetti’s blogifications have made. I was happy to do so and sent back a reply with a few anecdotal type examples.
Well, the issue with Roderick’s feature hit the streets last week (the feature’s not yet available online) and while running errands with Susan this weekend, we hit the news stand off of Vermont in Los Feliz Village last week and grabbed a copy. Driving home, Susan found the article and rummaged through it until she found my name.
Bloggers who live in his district have learned that Garcetti is apt to pop in with a signed comment to posts about neighborhood issues. “I was somewhat shocked to get such a quick and direct reply from my councilman,” says Will Campbell, who posted at [B]logging.la about a homeless encampment under the Sunset Boulevard bridge in Silver Lake.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that quote and it’s certainly what I wrote… but the thing is it isn’t all that I wrote. Unfortunately an email program crash and burn at the beginning of the month erased two years of incoming and outgoing emails, including my reply to Kevin so I can’t lay it out verbatim. But if memory serves, I prefaced what appeared in his article with something along the lines of: “…having long grown accustomed to my city representatives operating as if in a different dimension, I was somewhat shocked to getsuch a quick and direct reply from my councilman.”
Without that intro setting up my past experiences with walled-off local leaders, my surprise at his reply isn’t about how I feel Garcetti has set himself apart from a history of distant or disconnected civic leadership. Instead of being about how he’s broken the mold, it becomes strictly about him writing back. And it wasn’t about that.
Oh well, like I said at the top, I’m always edgy about being quoted and I attribute this overt reaction to that paranoia. I certainly don’t mean this as a slight to Roderick for whom I have great respect. I just had to get it off my chest.
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