A politician honored for his
gun control efforts is arrested for attempted arms smuggling.
He held press conferences denouncing violent video games and helped
pass legislation in California prohibiting sales of such games to
minors. And yet, secretly, he was living the life of a Grand
Theft Auto character.
The downfall of Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco
should be an utterly captivating, fascinating story, and the
national media should be sinking its teeth into the details. I
joked when Yee was
first arrested about how he is destined to be parodied in
Grand Theft Auto. That was before the FBI’s report was
even released. Now, I’m convinced the report could be the outline
for an entire Grand Theft Auto installment (have they set
a game in a parody of San Francisco yet?). Yee’s story of
corruption, attempted gun-running and accusations of vote-selling
(an undercover FBI agent posing as a medical marijuana clinic owner
wanted him to support legislation introducing new barriers to entry
for potential competition) is actually just a small part of a
larger story about the crime scene in San Francisco. Beyond Lee’s
role, the
whole story (pdf) is full of drug transactions, stolen booze
fencing, a home invasion by apparently Mexican gangsters, what
appears to be counterfeit credit cards supplied by a Russian
hacker, and more. It has everything. There’s even a
money-laundering scene that takes place inside a massage
parlor. It’s part FBI report, part Hollywood pitch.
And yet, it has not captured as much national media attention as
one might think. Not long after the story came out, every
Republican I follow on Twitter was noting how stories about Yee’s
arrest were burying the fact that he’s a Democrat. I’m not
particularly interested in an argument over which party is more
corrupt. In the Corruption Olympics, each party is full of stellar
athletes whose gold medals were paid for by taxpayers, manufactured
by a company with cozy ties to both parties, and cost 300 percent
more than they would in the private market. Nevertheless, given the
media coverage of every time a conservative Republican politician
on the state level says something dumb or controversial, it is
worth noting. Today Glenn Harlan “Instapundit” Reynolds is calling
out CNN at USA Today for
failing to follow the story:
[O]utside of local media like San Francisco magazine,
the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Times
buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page
A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, “California: State
Senator Accused of Corruption.” This even though Yee was suspended,
along with two others, from the California state senate in light of
the indictment.CNN, home (also until last week) of Piers Morgan, whom Yee had
praised for his anti-gun activism, didn’t report the story at all.
When prodded by viewers, the network snarked that it doesn’t do
state senators. Which is odd, because searching the name of my own
state senator, Stacey Campfield, turns up a page of results,
involving criticisms of him for saying something “extreme”.
Meanwhile, CNN found time to bash Wisconsin state senator and
supporter of Gov. Scott Walker, Randy Hopper over marital
problems.But there’s a difference. They’re Republicans. When Republicans
do things that embarrass their party, the national media are happy
to take note, even if they’re mere state senators. But when
Democrats like Yee get busted for actual felonies, and pretty
dramatic ones at that, the press suddenly isn’t interested.We’ve seen this before, of course: Washington Post
reporter Sarah Kliff dismissed the horrific Kermit Gosnell trial as
a “local crime story”, even as the press was going crazy covering
another equally local crime story, the George Zimmerman trial.
Likewise, another state senator, Texas’ Wendy Davis, got national
attention when she filibustered an abortion bill, a story that fit
conveniently with the “war on women” theme used by Democrats.
Read more
here. A search of Yee’s name on CNN brings up nothing past the
year 2011. The most recent story is about California
banning shark fins, and Yee is quoted with concerns that the
ban targets Chinese-Americans.
I did a few other national news searches with Yee’s name.
Nothing came up on NBC News, but CBS and ABC had stories. Fox News,
USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal all had
stories. MSNBC
noted Yee’s arrest last week, hilariously starting the coverage
of a spate of Democratic corruption investigations by leading with
how many problems the Republicans have first. But they reported
Yee’s arrest before any details were provided of the charges. They
have not followed up with any subsequent stories that indicate
exactly why Yee was arrested.
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