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Columns/Opinion

Do our supermarket aisles really qualify as racist?

My supermarket has a giant “international” food aisle dominated by Asian and Latino products. Which items end up in a section dedicated to a particular foreign culture’s cuisine and not mixed in with the so-called American staples — Heinz, Campbell’s, etc. — fascinates me. Why, for example, is Cafe Santo Domingo on a Dominican Republic shelf and not next to Maxwell House in the regular coffee aisle? David Chang doesn’t see these placements as mere marketing decisions but as something more sinister. Founder of the Momofuku restaurant empire, Chang calls the “ethnic” ...

Some new insight into ‘facts’ about media bias

Since colonial days the press has been a target of those who believe journalists have a point of view that shapes their reporting. There have been numerous articles and studies revealing a journalistic predisposition to opinions and subjects that reinforce liberal points of view. Now comes an excellent critique from World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky. His latest book, “Reforming Journalism,” is a philosophical and even theological deconstruction of historic and contemporary media. Olasky dismisses the notion of “objectivity” in journalism. Everyone has a belief ...

Audubon has quantified threat

For serious birders who regularly observe birds in the wild, ignoring climate change isn’t possible. We have been seeing and documenting the effects of a warming climate since the 1950s. In recent decades, that has meant a consistent northward shift in where species are found. Glossy black great-tailed grackles, previously found primarily in the tropics, first reached southeastern California in 1964; they now stalk and squawk around lowland ponds throughout most of the state. Big tropical seabirds named boobies (because early sailors took their tameness for stupidity) rarely ...

‘That couldn’t happen here in America’

I was maybe 10 years old when this happened. Mom is driving, I’m in the back seat. It’s night. She’s trying to cross a busy L.A. thoroughfare, from a side street. Southbound traffic is jammed, but a guy in a truck makes a hole and waves us through. We’ve almost cleared the intersection when a car, speeding northbound, clips us. We go spinning up over a low brick wall onto somebody’s lawn. My head smacks the window hard enough to crack it. And I remember thinking “This can’t happen to us!” As a child I had a morbid fear of accidents. So somehow, I convinced myself we ...

Why don’t the feds care about animal cruelty?

Nearly 300 raccoons bred and slated to be sold as pets or for use in experiments swelter in stacked cages as the temperature hits 100 degrees. A circus is cited for more than 100 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act — including for failing to provide animals with adequate veterinary care, minimum space, shelter from the elements and clean water. A roadside zoo keeps an Asiatic black bear who suffers from dental disease and is at least 400 pounds overweight in a cramped cage. Why are these outfits still allowed to continue conducting business as usual? And more importantly, ...

Reaping the whirlwind in Syria

President Donald Trump, according to his Twitter feed, has made a deliberate policy decision to cut America’s losses and withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. “The endless and ridiculous wars are ENDING!” he tweeted Monday. “We will be focused on the big picture, knowing we can always go back & BLAST!” Like a lot of the president’s tweets, that’s not entirely accurate. The new U.S. posture in northeastern Syria is a response to the obduracy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, U.S. officials tell me, who was unmoved by the pleading and pressure of U.S. diplomats and ...