I-N F-I-R-S-T PE-R-S-O-N

It’s Not Easy Being Malibu

BY HANS LAETZ

About 10,000 gallons of raw L.A. sewage spilled Friday near Pacific Palisades; maybe you smelled it or saw the pumping trucks off Pacific Coast Highway. No big deal, the beach was closed for a day. It rated a 20-second voice-over on the TV news.

Of course, a few weeks ago, a couple hundred gallons of street runoff—not raw sewage, but standard urban runoff— leaked into Malibu Lagoon. My computer’s Google news alert went berserk as articles from around the world piled in—another sewage spill in the “exclusive celebrity enclave,” as the outside media loves to tag Malibu.

Errors and a snarky attitude dog stories about Malibu.

Take the recent whopper about local movie stars—Malibu residents are always movie stars in many news outlets’ stylebooks—facing the possibility of having to give up DNA samples in a search for sewage leaks. Los Angeles County had to call a news conference the next day to knock that one down, but misleading “Malibu stink” stories are still winging their way around the world. Even the North Korea Daily in Pyongyang ran a headline over the Malibu star poop scoop: the sun never sets on the Malibu celebrity toilet fixation.

Last October, I stood next to a putative environmental reporter on the Malibu Pier during the big LNG Paddleout. The reporter didn’t ask the stars about LNG, but whether they thought Malibu movie types have a right to complain about LNG when their septic tanks are polluting the ocean on a regular basis? After first responding with blank stares, all agreed that no, septic tanks should not leak into the ocean, and yes, by golly, they should be repaired if they do. Of course, these latter comments were not reported.

The media’s star-struck attitude towards Malibu surfaced again last week, in a one-sided article about the Ramirez Canyon battle that quoted Joe Edmiston as saying Malibu should do the right thing, but only quoted the city’s attorney as noting that it had just snowed out here. Reading this latest article, one would think Malibuites earnestly want to erect tollgates so underprivileged visitors will not drive through celebrity poop on every snowy canyon road.

Another publication last week took Malibu residents to task for not erecting barricades when they learned that the son of a corrupt, possibly murderous African political strongman had purchased a $35 million mansion overlooking Malibu Pier. The article suggests that Malibuites have been too easy on him. Perhaps they should march on his gate with flaming torches, or at least T-P his mailbox.

Of course, the African son-of-a-despot had been living in Los Angeles for years, ostensibly unnoticed by that L.A. publication. His move to a Malibu mansion, however, made it news, even though the Malibu Surfside News had that story in its Nov. 16 issue, a few days after an international human rights group revealed the connection.

These incidents are not exceptions, but the media norm.

Perhaps some of the mistakes can be attributed to ignorance or lazy reporting, but there appears to be real bias as well. And even more may be going on, especially with some of the things being flung around about Malibu as the LNG battle comes to a head.

BHP Billiton is spending millions on public relations, including finding allies in the Australian press who say the only persons opposing Cabrillo Port are millionaire movie star crybabies. Pro-Billiton blogs on the Web paint Malibuites as coddled millionaires and billionaires.

A former Long Beach city council member, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor, carries the BHPB flag with comments about Malibu being full of spoiled stars awash in sewage that were parroted by the media and the Net. Malibu is an easy target for someone with an axe to grind.

Meanwhile, TV reports on Friday said another 10,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the ocean down in—drum roll, please—Long Beach. That makes 20,000 gallons of sewage spilled from area sewers last week, versus none from Malibu’s creaky, celebrity-poop-laden septic tanks.

Even in the coverage of the Malibu Road fire, being a celebrity garnered extra solace from the big city press. Or was that just schadenfreude with a sympathetic headline?