Economist.com Cities Guide: Los Angeles Briefing - November 2005

News this month

A church shamed

Los Angeles’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the biggest in the country, has confessed to being “embarrassed, contrite and ashamed” by a decades-long record of priests molesting children. This follows the release in October of personnel-file summaries for 126 clergymen, some dating from the 1930s. A 2004 report signed by Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has led the archdiocese for the past 20 years, had already revealed how seriously the Church mishandled its scandals, preferring to move accused priests from one parish to another rather than defrock the man in question. Indeed, the archdiocese waited until 2002, when the paedophile scandal first came to light, before adopting a policy of “zero tolerance”. Because the alleged abusers were moved on average every 4½ years, the Los Angeles Times reckons that children in three-quarters of the 288 parishes in the archdiocese may have been molested.

The next question is what impact this report will have on a civil suit brought by some 560 alleged victims. One near-certainty is that the Church will have to make a record settlement (some estimates go above $1 billion). In the meantime, calls will mount for the resignation of Cardinal Mahony, who has long been aware of the abuse.

Officers on the roads

Those who live and work in LA spend a great deal of time staring at their car dashboards, stuck in traffic, waiting idly as time ticks by. But Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, has a plan for reducing commuting times by 20%. He has posted traffic officers at 38 of the city’s most congested intersections, to supplement the traffic signals during rush hours. He presumes that these officers—whose balletic arm gestures are a joy to behold—will discourage drivers from blocking intersections, while the tickets they write for offenders will defray some of the project's estimated $3.9m annual cost.

An alternative idea would be to improve the effectiveness of LA’s traffic signals. Only 1,658 of the city’s signal-equipped 4,325 intersections have up-to-date synchronised lights, and there is a glaring shortage of left-hand-turn signals.

True blue

The Getty Museum is finding it hard to stay out of the headlines. Its long-time antiquities curator, Marion True, is being investigated by the Italian judiciary for alleged complicity in the smuggling of valuable artefacts. The Getty has been steadfast in her defence, but will that remain the case? In early October, Ms True resigned after it emerged that she had bought a holiday house in Greece in 1995 using a rather suspicious $400,000 loan. The loan was arranged by a lawyer who was introduced to Ms True by one of the museum’s main suppliers of antiquities.

Ms True's defence attorney has argued that the introduction was innocuous, and that the loan was repaid in 1996. But the museum's code of behaviour requires employees to report any transaction that indicates any hint of a conflict of interests. The Los Angeles Times reports that the museum was aware of the home-loan transaction three years ago, but the Getty has not commented on this.

Photo finish

Thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s governor, Hollywood celebrities will have a new way to take revenge on the paparazzi who hound them. The Gubernator has signed into law a bill that makes, from next January, any photographer who commits assault while taking pictures liable to civil damages and the loss of profits made from the photo. Publications that solicit the photos can also be held liable.

The law results not just from the governor’s own paparazzi-chased past but from recent incidents when photographers' antics have led to accidents. Last May, for example, Lindsay Lohan, the teen star of “Mean Girls”, accused a photographer of deliberately ramming into her car in his quest for a photograph. In October Ms Lohan—again in flight from the paparazzi—had another car accident, with a non-photographer. Sceptics doubt whether the law will work, not least because publicity-hungry stars need the paparazzi almost as much as the paparazzi need them.

Shoah Foundation joins USC

Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation will become part of the University of Southern California from January 1st. USC, which will fund the foundation to the tune of about $5m a year, has promised to preserve and develop the foundation’s unique collection of 52,000 videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors.

The Hollywood film director conceived the idea for the testimonies when he was directing “Schindler’s List”, his 1993 film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who provided refuge for Jews during the Holocaust. Over the years he has donated around $65m of the foundation's $150m, and wants the archive to expand to document all genocides, regardless of where they occur. “I would love”, he says, “to see tolerance education as a prerequisite for graduating high school.” Mr Spielberg, who was turned down by USC as a young man, is on the university board; he has said that USC’s pioneering work in digital libraries will help make the archive available to audiences around the world.

Catch if you can

November 2005

Painted Prayers: Books of Hours from the Morgan Library

Until January 8th 2006

Books of Hours, which gave the reader a prayer for any given hour of the day or time of the year, are some of the world’s most beautiful illuminated manuscripts. This exhibit at the Getty Museum affords the opportunity to see 52 of them, along with six printed books. The manuscripts, dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries, are touring the country during the renovation of their home, the Pierpoint Morgan Library in New York.

Highlights include the “Hours of Henry VIII”, thought to have been created for the English monarch by Jean Poyet, a French artist. Also see the “Hours of Louis XII”, a devotional book presented to the French king in 1498. The Getty, working in conjunction with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, can also pride itself on reuniting many parts of a book that was dismembered in the 17th century, and whose fragments have been reassembled in the last 30 years.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049. Tel: +1 (310) 440-7300. Open: Tues-Sun 10am-6pm, and till 9pm Fri and Sat. Entry: free (parking $7). See the museum's website for details.

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