Thank God for David Beckham and his timing. Arriving as he did and being introduced to fans in Carson Friday, the soccer superstar may have helped provide Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with some perspective.
Antonio thought the worst of the fallout over his extramartial affair with disgraced Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas was over, especially after Thursday's uneventful day on his rounds of Los Angeles when reporters for the first time failed to ask him about the romance that killed his 20-year marriage.
There was a big sigh in the Villaraigosa camp at City Hall, and speculation grew among political watchers that perhaps the mayor had weathered the worst.
But then the news media has always been easy on Antonio.
Not the public, especially the 3,000 soccer fans who crowded into the Home Depot Center in Carson. When Antonio was introduced Friday, he was roundly booed. "It really came through on TV, and I'm told the mayor looked taken aback by the reception," wrote blogger Kevin Roderick, whose profiles of Villaraigosa and elsewhere have always been adoring.
A good barometer of Antonio may be Roderick's next Los Angeles magazine offering on the mayor, not to mention a barometer on Roderick's own credibility on how he covers Antonio.
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