[See also other articles by Gustavo Arellano.]


A commentator on my previous post about the latest pee-pee battle between OC Blog god Matt "Jubal" Cunningham and Newport Beach lawyer John Manly pointed out something that deserves further examination. The lawyer helping Cunningham and the Friends of Monsignor John, Darren Aitken , not only is Cunningham's former classmate at Servite High School (the all-boys Catholic prep in Anaheim) but is also the son of Wylie Aitken , one of the county's more prominent lawyers and a longtime Democratic Party activist. Aitken, in turn, is a proud Catholic who is listed as a Silver Sponsor in this year's edition of the Red Mass, going so far as to join Darren in presenting Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown with gifts of bread and wine to consecrate. Wylie also helped the Diocese of Orange hammer out their 2005 $100 million settlement with 87 molestation victims. Given all this, Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit's characterization today of the bipartisan nature of those professing to care for sex-abuse victims while spinning for pedophile apologists (and their apologists) as a "very strange coalition" isn't a mystery: it's part of the same, long, sad telenovela that is the Orange diocese sex-abuse scandal.

E-mail: GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM