During Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church Obama-McCain interviews earlier this month, the pastor asked McCain to identify the “three wisest people that [sic] you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration.”
McCain quickly named General David Petraeus and Lindsey Graham, a Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina. Here was McCain on the third of his four choices: “I think John Lewis . . . [he] was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve, continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America. He can continue to teach us all about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than ourselves.”
Over at KDOC’s Daybreak OC, which broadcast the Aug. 16 event live and offered commentary during breaks, the Lewis answer stumped everyone but not necessarily because they disagreed with his choice. Hosts Shally Zomorodi and Pete Weitzner looked dumbfounded. Brett Barbe, the local Republican campaign consultant and a usually on-the-ball fellow who has experience working in our nation’s capital, volunteered lamely that the only John Lewis he knew is the former OC state senator who became disgraced ex-Sheriff Mike Carona’s campaign consultant.
But here’s the really puzzling tidbit: Barbe’s commentary counterpart, Frank Barbaro–head of the OC Democratic Party, a veteran trial lawyer, a Democratic National Convention delegate and a Magna Cum Laude USC graduate—was baffled too.
Who is Lewis (pictured)? Just a monumental historical figure who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement to end segregation. Lewis spoke at the famous 1963 March on Washington when King gave his “I have a dream” speech. A participant in the Freedom Rides (popularized in Hollywood films), Lewis also organized the 1965 non-violent protest across a Selma, Alabama bridge that ended with vicious attacks by redneck state troopers. And he’s been a notable Democratic congressman from Georgia for 22 years.
Shame on you Frank.
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.