THE BELL CURVE:Leading ladies of O.C. politics

In case you’re looking for collateral damage from the Chicago Tribune’s heavy hand on its major property, the Los Angeles Times, consider the case of Jean Pasco. She’s an award-winning reporter who saw the handwriting on the wall when the Times emasculated its editorial staff that tries valiantly to cover Orange County. Pasco’s crisp, tough and fair reporting met the highest demands of professional journalism for both the Times and the Orange Country Register for many years.

But that didn’t stop her — especially considering the new economy moves ordered by the Tribune — from taking advantage of the opportunity offered by a newly created job as director of the Orange County Archives.

If this seems like a long leap for a lifelong journalist who loved her work, a capacity audience at the UC Irvine University Club last Tuesday thought so too. The occasion was the meeting of a local organization called Women in Leadership that for more than a dozen years has served as a political action committee with two principal missions: to elect political candidates committed to preserving reproductive freedom of choice and to increase the number of women in political office. Since I believe in both of these goals, I felt privileged to be the only male at a luncheon table full of potent women in Pasco’s audience.

When I asked if — given my sympathy with their goals — they would support me for public office, I was told I lack one qualification. I would be welcome to come to a Women in Leadership meeting and present my case for election, but I couldn’t look for an endorsement because “our primary effort is to push strongly pro-choice women candidates only.” These ladies are tough.

Before we heard Pasco speak, the various candidates endorsed by Women in Leadership’s 150-some members were introduced. They were impressive both in number and clarity and included Dolores Otting and Brenda Martin running for seats on the Newport Beach City Council and Serene Stokes and Karen Yelsey for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board. Marilyn Brewer was on hand to represent Barbara Venezia, the candidate who isn’t but seems to be catching on nevertheless.

Pasco’s talk was mostly anecdotal, but she took some swipes at national coverage of Orange County. The coverage “never takes anything that happens here seriously. The nutty stories are the only ones that play nationally,” she said. She cited as an example the notorious Tan Nguyen campaign letter that warned in Spanish that immigrants could be jailed or deported for voting “which got him attention he never would have had.” She also regretted the loss of Robert Dornan as a publicity magnet for local politics.

Pasco concluded that she’s not quite ready to come out swinging because “I haven’t got used to expressing my own opinions, but it won’t be long.”

Oh, yes, and she also added that any of us who have Orange County lore, in whatever form or from whatever period, who would like to share it with the public, she would be pleased to look it over. You can reach her at Orange County Archives, (714) 834-2536.

We’re not going to see a movie called “Death of a President” in Newport-Mesa because the people who bought the Edwards chain of theaters have decided for us that we shouldn’t.

The film, which recently won the International Critics Prize at the Toronto Film Festival, uses technical effects to superimpose Bush’s face on a figure who is shot while hassling with protesters. Reviewers have praised it as a political thriller that is restrained and complex and focuses on the dangers of rushing to judgment. It is a British film that opens next week in the U.S. and has been booked for more than a hundred venues nationwide — but not at Regal Theaters where we might see it.

The reason, explained Regal’s chief executive to a Times editorialist, is: “We feel it is inappropriate to portray the future assassination of a sitting president, regardless of political affiliation.”

Regal owns the theaters and can decide what it wants to show. But it might much better have confidence in our individual ability to decide whether we want to see this film, just as it did with another film released by the same studio, “The Passion of the Christ.” And as it does weekly with violence that would make “Death of a President,” as it has been described, almost a morality story. I’d like to decide that for myself.