Reader Gary S. writes that the folks at the L.A. Times can’t give their paper away:

My adult daughter was shopping in the Von’s supermarket in La Verne late yesterday afternoon. As she went through the self checkout line, she was approached by a LA Times representative offering her a free subscription. When my daughter declined, the rep brought up the “coupons” and that it was “free”. My daughter still declined.

The fun started when the Hispanic-appearing woman behind my daughter was offered the same “deal”. She snapped “absolutely not!” to the rep. When the rep said “what about the coupons?”, the woman snapped back “what about the LA Times?, I don’t want that in my house”.

Intrigued, my daughter hung around for a few minutes, and saw no takers. When she mentioned the story, my wife mentioned that she had been approached at the same store earlier, and she also saw no takers.

When you can’t give your newspaper away, the future does not seem bright. Further, I don’t think Murdoch is that dumb. If he really wanted a newspaper in Los Angeles, he could start one from scratch and bury the LA Times in mere months.

“I don’t want that in my house!”

I came to the same conclusion in 2006. More and more people are coming to that conclusion all the time.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t write about this paper so much any more. Part of the reason is burnout. But honestly? Part of the reason is that it increasingly seems irrelevant.

While Mitt Romney rejected it:

The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.

Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.

Walker said he used his actual street address in England but entered Arkansas as his state with the Schenectady, NY, ZIP code of 12345.

“When I did Romney’s, the payment got rejected on the grounds that the address on the card did not match the address that I entered,” he said. “Romney’s Web site wanted the code from the back of card. Barack Obama’s didn’t.”

All the people who told us that this was impossible because Obama was verifying the addresses (hi, “Geek, Esq.”!) will have to come up with a new argument. It’s only $10! It happened only once, I mean twice. Fill in lame argument here.

Big Media will ignore this. Which is why Mitt Romney can’t let them.

Why, this sounds an awful lot like a foreign policy issue. If only there were some high profile event coming up very very soon where foreign policy would take center stage . . .