Whom Is The Daily Caller Casually Libeling Today? (Hint: It Is Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa!)

Nice work, Daily Caller "News" "Foundation"! You've got a throwaway news item -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new job as a visiting fellow at Harvard -- and used it as the stock for a bouillabaisse of casual lies and pointed misinformation! Young Robby Soave, "reporter," must be quite proud of him!

How are you casually libeling Antonio Villaraigosa today?

Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles who racked up countless ethics violations and used taxpayers money to refurbish his yacht, will lecture at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the fall. [...]

Villaraigosa left office earlier this year upon completion of his second term. As mayor, he was the subject of numerous ethics investigations, and was forced to pay back $42,000 in sports and concert tickets that he accepted as gifts. He was also accused of nepotism, campaign finance violations and spending taxpayer money to fix up his yacht.

His wife divorced him in 2007, following revelations that he had an affair with a television reporter for a Spanish-language station.

Well, not to get all technical on you, and the math, it is hard, but the "countless" ethics violations were indeed quite countable -- and they comprised exclusively another item in your list (listed separately as if it were yet another strike) that he took free tickets to Lakers games and the Oscars. You know who cared about that? Nobody. Nepotism? His daughter worked for the state. "Spending taxpayer money to fix up his yacht"? That was weird, we felt like we would have heard about it if Antonio Villaraigosa owned a yacht??? Oh, that is right, because Antonio Villaraigosa did not own a yacht. The city of Los Angeles owned a yacht, which it bought in 1988. You know when 1988 was? It was 15 years before Antonio Villaraigosa became mayor!

Oh, and his wife totally broke up with him over his affair with Mirthala Salinas, you are totally right about that. DID YOU SEE HER???

Anyhoo. We're not quite sure why this stuck in our craw so this morning; after all, it's among the Daily Caller's lesser flat-out lies. But as a lifelong Angeleno, your Editrix is quite certain Villaraigosa has not gotten the credit he deserves, even from fellow liberals, for his term as mayor, when he was as tranformative for Los Angeles's transit, infrastructure, and environment as Pat Brown was for California. And what do we hear from our neighbors? "Meh, where are our One Million Trees?" And "waaah, why is Antonio Villaraigosa such a loser that he is leaving office and having to look fora job, because he forgot to line his pockets over 20 years in the lege and the mayor's office, what an embarrassment, areweright?" (That one, from LAWeekly, was particularly fact-free and dumb.)

In short, if we had a joke, it would go here at the end. The end.

[ DailyCaller ]