What the hell is the Orange County Register doing?

News coverage? Nah. Deliberate propaganda with a twist of creepism? Yes, please.

I had a plan for this entry.

A good plan.

As a longtime journalist and a dude who began his career at a newspaper (The Tennessean in Nashville) before shifting toward magazines, then books, my idea was to explain to readers what has gone wrong with local media, and why no one (on the right or left) can depend on quality area coverage. I was going to discuss budget cuts, staff shortages, social media clicks, laziness. On and on and on.

But then, as if Allah or God or Erik Estrada had entered my brain, the Orange County Register helped bring my thoughts to life. With this garbage.

The piece ran in yesterday’s newspaper, beneath the headline, IF ACTIVIST TRUSTEES WON’T TELL THE TRUTH, STUDENTS WILL. It was co-bylined by two people. One, Roger Ruvolo, is apparently a right-wing newspaper editorial board member who’s been around a minute. The other is Rebecca Friedrichs, a name you might recognize for all sorts of reasons that bring forth hives, warts and herpes-like symptoms.

This is her …

And if you’re thinking, “Holy shit! She looks like literally every other MAGA-spewing Orange County conservative woman I’ve ever, ever, ever seen!”—well, bingo! That would be correct. And if you’re also thinking, “I bet she thinks like literally every other MAGA-spewing Orange County conservative woman I’ve ever, ever, ever heard!”—well, double bingo! According to her myriad social media feeds, Friedrichs is sick and tired of the liberal agenda having an agenda. She doesn’t trust teachers, libraries, principals, politicians, unions, guinea pigs, lamp shades, the numbers 5, 4, 2, 7, 14 1/2, 22 or any soups that taste like mushroom, barley or liberal tears. She pops up at events with names like FREEDOM EDUCATION SUMMIT and seems to think any sort of scholastic LGBTQ+ acknowledgment is akin to showing students nude photos of Satan in a Hillary Clinton Halloween costume.

Wait. I digress.

I read IF ACTIVIST TRUSTEES WON’T TELL THE TRUTH, STUDENTS WILL and felt like head-butting a wall. In short, it’s a funhouse mirror retelling of what took place at last week’s Capo Unified School Board meeting via two hard-right partisans (Ruvolo and Friedrichs) who I have to believe were not there. Why? Because I was there, and pretty much everything they describe is either a deliberate lie or an unintentional lie.

For example:

• The authors write: “Within the context of discussions on the book at the March board meeting, a Capistrano Unified board member, Judy Bullockus, quoted a line from the board-approved book. No one was shocked or appalled. There were no gasps in the crowd. It was simply a discussion about the book and its contents.”

• The truth: That’s not what happened, or even close to what happened. And all Ruvolo and Friedrichs had to do was watch the video to know better. Judy wasn’t quoting a line from the book. She literally used the n-word without quoting a line from the book. She just (poof!) used it. In a sentence. And if you don’t see that as at least somewhat problematic behavior from one whose position involves education, you have spent waaaaaay too many moons inside the Orange County bubble.

Here, once again, is the clip. You be the judge …

• The authors write: “[The union] organized a bunch of manipulated kids and activist adults to converge on the April board meeting with speeches to attack Judy Bullockus and to call for her resignation. They showed up early in order to grab up all the speakers’ cards and dominate the meeting. They brought divisive protest signs that should never be part of school board meetings. One said, “You have to be a ‘B’ word to say the ‘N’ word.”

• The truth: I don’t even know where to start, but the dishonesty of that passage should infuriate the OC Register’s five remaining editors. First, the turnout wasn’t organized by unions. At all. This was, literally, the authors guessing and projetcting. It was organized by myriad local parents and promoted by Democratic clubs. These were, like, myself, citizens horrified by what they witnessed.

Furthermore, I was at the school board meeting from pre-beginning to end—and every kid I saw (literally every kid I saw) was positioned alongside a hard-right parent and handed a script by a dude named Frank Rodriguez, best known as an out-of-town agitator who rolled with Gays Against Groomers, a notorious fringe hate group deemed all things sinister by the Southern Poverty Law Center (among others). Rodriguez has his own special page on the SoCal Extremism Watch’s website, which includes this gem of a passage …

This bearded, bowlegged olive pit was the dude providing scripts to kids. And the only people reading those scripts were on the right. One after another after another. One kid wore a MAGA hat. A large number were Mormons plucked from Lisa Davis’ church. They stumbled over words and bungled names—because they knew not what they were spewing. They were pawns. It was pathetic.

In their column, Ruvolo and Friedrichs have the batshit audacity to quote “Nathan”—who—like seemingly every other far-right speaker that night—had his exact words fed to him by the creepily hairy Gays Against Groomers proud boy. Nathan’s minute-long moment in the sun was no different than an AI Bot reciting the Gettysburg Address (or, in this case, Donald Trump’s historic “Grab ‘em by the pussy” monologue). It was pure nonsense, made worse by the fact that the kid is the son of Lisa Zollinger, one of the board members.

And here’s what sucks. What legitimately sucks: As a veteran media guy, the column, while awful and deceitful, doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the Register: A. Publishing it and B. Not sending a writer to report on the eventing. In the aftermath of the Bullockus weirdness, everyone within 50 miles was aware the fire was going to be lit. We all knew there would be hostilities, drama, highs, lows.

Back in the day, this would have been a no-brainer for the Register. Once upon a time there was a fleet of local scribes, just waiting to be farmed out to myriad events. Had that happened, someone would have seen Rodriguez (again—a notorious agitator and XXL Slurpee-sized tool bag) handing out scripts. Someone would have learned the four MAGA board members had met with Rodriguez (again—a member of a designated hate group) two nights earlier to plot it all out. Someone would have found out that Bullockus had used the n-word by choice, not as a direct quote from the book.

Alas, print is dead and mainstream media is on life support, and in its place are two out-of-their-depths partisans freely printing bullshit to pass as fact. You, dear reader, are not being informed. You are being gaslit.

On the bright side, these days the average Register reader is, oh, 95-years old and pining for Lyndon Larouche.

On the down side, those folks vote, too.