They just don’t get it.

Compare the front page of today’s New York Times (national print edition) and the Los Angeles Times.

New York Times lead story: “Israel Steps Up Gaza Raids.” Accompanying articles: a new partnership between John McCain and George Bush; a rise in corporate headquarters located in Manhattan; a marijuana club on Fisherman’s Wharf; internet phone calling; and a blueprint found on a computer for the terrorist attack in Bali last October.

Now check out the Los Angeles Times: “Confusion Grips Mexico Election,” splashed across four of the five front page columns, and occupying nearly half the page. Three additional stories on the Mexican elections are bill boarded on page one.

Is this difference in perspective explained by the three hour time difference that allows LA Times editors to put later-breaking stories on their front page?

No. The New York Times does have a comparable article to the front page LA Times story—discussing the razor-thin margins in the election returns—but it puts it on page eight, without any front-page notice.

No, it was editorial judgment, not time zones, that explains the complete absence of a Mexican election story on the New York Times’s front page, and the all-encompassing coverage in Los Angeles. Mexican immigration is the dominant reality in Southern California. Ten percent of all Mexicans now live in the U.S., most of them in California. Mexican politics have become central to California’s fate: if Mexican governments continue to promote illegal immigration as a solution to their failed economic policies, California’s political and cultural fabric will continue its transformation, for better or worse, into a modern-day Aztlan.

Following each illegal immigration march this Spring, the Los Angeles Times mutated into what was basically a set of lavish advertising supplements for amnesty: full page after full page of photos and text celebrating the explosion of illegal immigrant power. No East Coast paper poured anywhere near the resources into demonstration coverage.

When the establishment elites in New York and Washington pronounce on the inevitable assimilation of Mexican immigrants and invoke Ellis Island to buttress their argument, they are speaking from a position of pure ignorance. Few have spent much time, if any, in California, which many regard with barely concealed contempt. Before they issue their next bromide, they might visit a few California cities and talk to residents, both Anglo and Hispanic, about how they see their communities. They might talk to jail wardens and hospital executives about their clients populations, and to school leaders about the cultural identity of their schools and curricula. Or they might speak to the editors on W. 1st St. in Los Angeles about what drives their editorial decisions.

The Beltway and Manhattan power brokers might still reach the same conclusions about the minor role that immigration is playing in shaping the country’s future, but at least they would be forewarned.