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Did a Blog Spank Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor?

The LA Times reports:

With a sigh, Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor explained how she became the “Claremont Cookie Monster.”

It happened during a chance encounter in March outside her husband’s law office in the heart of the quaint college town.

She noticed that Girl Scouts had set up a cookie sale on the street corner outside her office. Taylor approached a troop leader and asked if they had permission to set up.

The troop leader, Maia West, said she did.

West said Taylor told her she was disrupting Taylor’s business. Taylor says she was simply worried that the girls could get hurt next to such a busy intersection.

The confrontation ended with Taylor calling the police and the half-dozen 8- to 10-year-old Girl Scouts packing up their cookies.

Calling the cops on Girl Scouts? A surprisingly rookie mistake for a career politician. According to the Times, Taylor got called out by the Claremont Insider blog:

After packing up and leaving the sidewalk in front of the law office, West and her troop were steaming.

“It was such a negative experience,” said West, who has lived just outside Claremont for nine years. “Here we are trying to empower these young girls to be entrepreneurs, and this woman shuts them down.”

A few days later, West made what would be a fateful decision: She sent an e-mail chronicling the incident to the Claremont Insider, a popular blog in town known for gossipy items and sharp jabs at local politicians.

On the blog, the mayor became known as “Queen Ellen,” “Wrong-Way Ellen,” “Tough Cookie Taylor” and “Her Honorable Majesty.”

It wasn’t long before the Claremont Courier picked up on the story, publishing readers’ letters ridiculing Taylor for taking on the Girl Scouts.

So new media again provides political accountability. On top of which, The Insider catches a number of mistakes in the story, showing how new media can provide media accountability too. Makes you sort of proud to be a blogger.