I'm just saying, after an outside reminder, but pretty much a year ago I called for a moratorium on the excessive "Antonio love" in the L.A. press. LAObserved had this post, linking to this piece in the L.A. Times' "Outside the Tent" feature (now in the archives), which is sort of related to this whole riff in the LA Weekly. Today, the press seems to be making up for lost time, going hard after Villaraigosa on his affair with Mirthala Salinas, and potentially, others:
Reporters bombarded him today with gossip-column questions. Inquiring journalists wanted to know: Was Villaraigosa still seeing his girlfriend, Mirthala Salinas? Should she keep her job as an anchor at Telemundo Channel 52, even though she covered the mayor while the two secretly dated? What about rumors of another relationship between Villaraigosa and a city planning commissioner?
"You know they're out there -- you know they'll come out!" one reporter shouted out to the mayor. "Were there other affairs in the last year and a half?"
And next we will begin to wonder when it's getting excessive in reverse. Is it really so new? Nope. It's simply that familiar, sweet smell of pop media, politics, and sex, till death do us in.