Clarification.

That Rushfield quote I posted last night is getting reblogged — I just want to be clear I posted it as an example of everything I disagree with when it comes to sentiments about Los Angeles. I don’t mean to single Richard out. He’s a friend and I feel like he appreciates this kind of honesty. But his paragraph is reflective of a widespread fallacy about this city. Every time I read that sort of thing I cringe. Another recent glaring example is the opening to that Rex Sorgatz piece on the Neiman Journalism Lab website a few months ago, which ruined an otherwise insightful article on the future of television. This notion that Los Angeles is a hollow shell of an accidental aggregation of people united in their shallow motivations has calcified into a trope. Like all other tropes at best it’s wrong, though its real worst sin is that it’s lazy.