As many in the Santa Clarita Valley know by now, our local advertising circular, also know as The Signal, is often fraught with mis-quotes, half truths, stories that are pieced together after the fact and opinion pieces that are filled with false claims. If you are involved in the local politics at all and have a different point of view, than you know just how awful the advertising circular can be in slamming you. They can more or less say anything they want because they can hide behind the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
If you haven’t noticed, the advertising circular is a tool of its major advertisers and of the City of Santa Clarita. Take for example the Sunday column, or should we say ranting, of Darryl Manzer. In his latest attach against Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, Darryl apparently has a pathological hatred for the Supervisor, he goes off on the Cemex Mine and claims that the Supervisor could have gotten the votes to block it. Claiming that Supervisor Antonovich could have gotten the votes to stop the Cemex Mine is basically saying that somehow the Supervisor has the power over the others members of the Board of Supervisors to get his own way. That is a downright insult to the four other County Supervisors and to the political process itself. From time to time you get out voted and that goes on everyday across our great country. In politics you win some and you lose some, its called democracy!
Darryl also claims that Supervisor Antonovick has a “personal helicopter so he can get around the district faster”. Where is the proof to back up these accusations? There is none! One only needs to pick up the phone and make a few calls to get the facts. The truth is none of the Los Angeles County Supervisors has a personal helicopter. I would challenge Manzer or the prime mates running the local advertising circular to prove otherwise. Show the public absolute proof that Supervisor Antonovich has a “personal helicopter” that is for his own use or the use of any of the other County Supervisors for that matter.
Step back for a moment and understand that all of these false accusations are being made by a guy that lives in Virginia. The advertising circular actually has a columnist that comments on local issues and he doesn’t even live in the Santa Clarita Valley. Darryl Manzer does not attend local community meetings, he doesn’t attend County Board of Supervisor meetings, City Council meetings, Town Council meetings or any other meetings yet he can write a column filled with misinformation in the “local paper”.
Unfortunately, Manzer can write any kind of rubbish he likes and his friends at the advertising circular will print it. They don’t care if there is any truth to what is being printed, so long as it is self-serving and further attacks everyone and anyone that has a different viewpoint than their major advertisers and the City of Santa Clarita. The Signal is not representing the entire valley but rather a smaller and, let’s face it, bygone version of this valley. This is something that is chuckled about, on a regular basis, by many.
Columns like those from Manzer, a use-to-be resident, continue The Signal’s slide down the slippery slope of irrelevance; an advertising circular, neither taken seriously nor purchased for any other reason than coupon clipping and yard sale notices. Yes, a newspaper should be about building a readership through the dissemination of unbiased information or factual opinions pertinent to the local readers and should only be supported by advertising. It’s not about pandering to the advertisers and friends at the expense of the readers as has so often been displayed by The Signal.
I don’t expect anything to change! Darryl Manzer’s column in the local advertising circular will continue to do a hatchet job on a good people, like the Supervisor, but in the end will only further display his ignorance and stupidity. Or, to use some “western” terminology that Darryl can understand, apparently he likes to display himself as a Horses Ass.