The East Bay Express has a stinging attack on Bates, making two points that Defenders of Bates haven't really addressed. The first is that the appeal of Bates was that he was better then Dean, better then all of the dirty Berkeley politicos. The second is that the problem isn't that Bates stole the papers so much as he lied about it for a month afterwards.

The EBE also has explosive allegations that Bates not only told his political allies about it, but formulated a media spin plan for the eventual day when the cops would confront him(!)

According to a source close to the Bates organization, the mayor contacted key campaign supporters three weeks ago and warned them that, sooner or later he would have to own up to what he did. His eventual apology displays a Clintonesque bad faith that seems the very essence of calculation. Note the passive language in his admission that "a number of Daily Cal newspapers were placed in recycling and trash bins during the day." Or his obvious effort to spread the blame around when he says, "I apologize on behalf of myself and my supporters for our involvement in this activity." These aren't the tactics of an exhausted man losing control of his brain's impulse center.

The first level of badness was stealing. Then lying. But surely there's a place in moral purgatory for an 'honest politician' whose first response to doing something illegal and wrong is to say to himself 'How can I get out of this without consequences by manipulating the media and my own supporters?'Email This Post!