Breton’s Embarrassing Suck Up

Steven Greenhut: No one would expect Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton to take on a tough issue or defy conventional wisdom, but his March 21 bouquet to Mayor Kevin Johnson was uncomfortably embarrassing even by his standards. It’s rare to find a journalist whose groveling includes anything this bad: “Mayor Kevin Johnson could become a transformative figure who moves Sacramento away from small-time thinking and leaves the capital in far better shape than he found it.” Breton was championing a corporate-welfare stadium deal that could use some journalistic muck-raking. Instead he heaps praise on the plan and champions the idea that the only thing that stands between Sacramento and world-class-city status is a taxpayer-funded sports complex.

This is the most embarrassing graph: “How did KJ do this when otherS tried and failed for 10 years? Connections, baby.”

This is pretty embarrassing, too: “On the arena, KJ was liberated to tap his strengths.”

Well, at least we know Breton will get his calls returned from the mayor’s office. But this is journalism at its most nauseating worst — a columnist who asks the most conventional questions, curries favor with politicians he covers and champions an insider deal filled with taxpayer funding and cronyism as some sort of big-thinking endeavor. Yuck.

MARCH 22, 2012.