Ron Paul Shamelessly Ripped in LA Times as Stupid

While the Los Angeles Times has neglected to cover the huge outpouring of support Californians have shown for Texas Congressman Ron Paul across the state, it has found it necessary to denigrate Ron Paul in a recent childish article. In places ranging from Chico, to UCLA, to Berkley, Paul has drawn crowds ranging from a few thousand to an estimated 10,000 Californians coming out to hear Ron Paul speak. The Los Angeles Times has been virtually silent on this topic, yet when Lisa Mascaro and her editors came across a study on speaking styles in Congress, they decided it appropriate to use that information to smear Congressman Paul.

"What has become clear in the new research is that the soaring oratory that once filled the floors of the House and Senate with million-dollar diction and sophisticated syntax is making way for a more modest approach," the LA Times story reads. The story photo features Congressman Paul and his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, highlighting that the latter Paul especially speaks on an eighth grade level. 

Paul regularly draws 5,000 people in audiences rain or shine to hear him speak in any state. The Los Angeles Times misses that story. They miss the story of his Republican supporters stepping up into leadership roles across the Republican Party to help rebuild a directionless Republican Party. Paul is running for the highest office of the land and by simply acknowledging Paul’s presence in the race they can broaden the debate that takes place; they can broaden the discourse. Instead, they choose to use infantile logic and language in covering the candidates. What is that logic: “Ron Paul different, so Ron Paul scary.”

But they do not overlook Paul when there is a chance to say that he delivers speeches that are at an eighth-grade level. They go so far as to imply he is "sophomoric" and lead the story with a photo of Paul speaking to his son Senator Rand Paul. The message is a hard one to miss: Ron Paul is stupid. Is this how hard it has become to attack Paul's ideas that the Federal Reserve Bank must be audited, our foreign policy strategy must be rebuilt on more solid foundation, and a congressman's oath the Constitution should be taken more seriously? Is the only way to attack him to descend to the grade school tactic of calling a superior adversary "stupid?"   

Mascaro, in an article written at a freshman year of high school grade level,does not mention, list, or link to any metric of how she evaluated these grade levels. Following the same methods, one could just say Mascaro writes at the second grade level – much worse than the literal sophomoric moniker she applies to members of congress. 

Curiously, the thrust of Mascaro’s argument is that it is appropriate to denigrate plain-spoken politicians while praising those who use the most contorted of language. This is praise that I have honestly never heard from any single human being before, perhaps helping to demonstrate how out of touch Mascaro is.

After denigrating Paul, she even goes so far as to cite a quote that Paul uses in virtually every stump speech and claims that it was something that is no longer used by politicians. Here’s Mascaro:

"Consider Everett M. Dirksen, the legendary Republican Senator from Illinois, who defended a civil rights bill in 1964 by paraphrasing 19th century French writer Victor Hugo: ‘Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.’…But that was then."

This is all quite typical of many in the media: lack of research, superficial view of topics, low level of discourse. In a childish hatchet piece, Mascaro has neglected to acknowledge the substance of Paul’s important statements, statements that are resonating with a generation of young people, are echoing cross-generationally, and are single handedly changing the face of public discourse in America. This piece by Mascaro is typical of an arrogant media that prides itself on being good grammarians, yet who so many Americans look at ruefully for turning their profession into one virtually indecipherable from that of the mindless stenographer.