Shortly after posting what could have been a parental notification about skin symptoms experienced by children infected with the swine-flu virus (if it was not a reference to a youth center birthday party), Clockwork received even more startling news about an event state Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim) participated in this morning. Blared the fax:
“ASSEMBLYMAN WASHES HANDS WITH CHILDREN IN THE FACE OF SWINE FLU . . . CALMS SPANISH-SPEAKING PARENTS ALARMED BY NEWS REPORTS.”
Whoa, are they implying Solorio used children as soap in his bizarre hand-washing ritual while looking directly into swine flu's face? Or was he washing the face of swine with kids?
Further investigation–meaning reading the actual press release–shows Solorio visited the Santa Ana preschool Kidsworks to “wash hands with four- and five-year-olds.” The politician says immigrant parents are beingĀ misinformed by Spanish-language television mistakenly leading viewers to believe the swine-flu outbreak is as bad in the U.S. as it is in Mexico, where there have been multiple deaths.
Actually, Joe, English-language television hasn't been much better in that regard.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.