
Every once in a while a reporter sets something wrong. So wrong that it is a bit embarrassing. I didn’t really want to write about this most recent mix-up, but I couldn’t get the theme song from the old TV comedy series Cheers out of my head.
Here we have a sitcom about a local bar named Cheers in Boston, yes that is where the original Tea Party occurred. The sitcom revolves around the relationships between the staff and their regular customers. This is a bar where locals hang out, and everyone knows your name.
The lyrics go like this…
Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name.
So we have these Tax Day/Tea Party protessts in Santa Ana yesterday. We have GOP speakers from all across the county lining up to speak at these protests. Then we add to the mix a reporter for a relatively new online publication OCLNN.com covering the event. In his story, posted on Thursday afternoon he wrote the following:
The health-care overhaul bill signed into law last month was perhaps the most popular target of scorn. State Sen. Lou Correa (R-Santa Ana) dismissed Democrats’ claims that the bill represents progress because it will provide more people with health insurance.
“Call it what you want,” he said at the Santa Ana rally. “It’s socialism and it’s communism.”
The OCLNN reporter Erik Holmes was somewhat apologetic for the error when I contacted him to let him know about the error. He wrote by email; “Yeah, I realized that. Don’t know I screwed that up. Thanks.” Read more of the story, since revised, here.

So imagine the horror felt by democrats across the county who have always believed in their hearts Senator Lou Correa was too conservative to be a democrat. One quote from a friend was; “Whaa? Did Lou REALLY say this at the Santa Ana tea party rally today?? They mistook Lou for a Rep–and if he really did say it, perhaps it explains why…”
I think you get the point. So long story short, after a flurry of emails and phone calls we were able to get to the bottom things.
- Senator Lou Correa was not in Santa Ana at the time of these protests. In fact he was flying back from Sacramento. Conspiracy theorists will love this part, we have identified a Republican witness to verify that he was on the plane.
- From the reports of signage floating around attacking him by name, we doubt it would have been a friendly crowd.
- Lou Correa, personally got a good laugh out of the whole mix up.
- The legislator who actually made the comments, attributed by OCLNN to Senator Correa, was Assemblyman Van Tan. Tran is currently challenging Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.
So in addition to being mistaken for a balding Latino elected official by a local reporter, he lost the opportunity for his “Sound Bite Fame” by not having his comments attributed to him.
So to Assemblyman Van Tran, we simply raise our cup of morning tea and say…
Cheers!
Here’s to better name and face recognition in the future.
everybody makes mistakes; but it’s easy to see why here since they look so much alike 😉