LETTERS

—The Real Rhody Davis

Los Angeles

March 6, 1987

DEAR EDITOR:

Okay, now they’ve gone too far, beating up on Craig Lee because he thought the Beastie Boys were immature assholes and non-musicians. Assuming that Craig Lee has gray hairs, listens to classical music and has never been to Disneyland! Well, let me set the record straight: Craig Lee has no gray hair, he has always listened to and loved totally weird avant-garde music of all kinds, including the kind of garage-band punk rock he pioneered in L.A. with his band The Bags. He had the normal happy-unhappy childhood and definitely went to Disneyland. I know because I took him. Looks like Mr. Couch is the grouch.

—Joanna Lee (Craig’s mom)

Studio City

May 20, 1988

DEAR EDITOR:

I often find the Weekly somewhere between humorous and hypocritical in its schizophrenic selection of content, a mix of Cosmopolitan and The Progressive. Although I suppose your fashion infatuation is directly related to advertising revenue, I find your use of 12-year-old Chloe from Elite on the cover of and in the April 29–May 5 "Spring/Summer Fashion ’88" issue sick. Children’s designer clothes are bad enough, but at least they are for children. Chloe is portrayed as an adult, modeling adult clothes, and therefore the Weekly is implicitly sanctioning the idea that a child may be treated as an adult. I am sad to see the Weekly condoning the trend in our society that robs more and more of its youths of their childhood.

—Peter Hutcheson

Hollywood

July 15, 1988

DEAR EDITOR:

It was with overwhelming shame that I read, in L.A. Dee Da, crack investigative reporter Dierdra Hoffman’s passionately detailed description of the loathsome behavior at the annual Water Buffalo Beauty Pageant and of my unforgivable behavior as a "judge" in what she so tellingly describes as a "voyeuristic debacle" — surely one of the worst kinds of debacles that can be imagined. "‘What a pervert!’ one of the contestants was heard cooing in the ladies’ room." What a painful opinion to accept. What a difficult opinion to coo.

But hold! (as they frequently yell in Shakespeare). Having thought about this more carefully, and having checked through my jam-packed appointment calendar, I am amazed to find that I was not, in fact, a judge in the above-mentioned pageant. I was — you’ve guessed this already, I’ll bet — not even there. I was somewhere else entirely.

So if I wasn’t there, who was? Ms. Hoffman and her feverish imagination? Ms. Hoffman’s not entirely trustworthy informant? Lots of ladies’-room denizens cooing arbitrarily? What can it mean? Perhaps that Hoffman gal is just thrashing me on spec, not an unusual journalistic practice for one striding manfully toward a Pulitzer Prize.

—Buck Henry

Los Angeles

January 19, 1990

DEAR EDITOR:

We are angry and alarmed by the unbelievably insensitive decade-ending wrap-up issue. The editorial agenda seems to be drifting more and more toward straight white men’s navel-gazing regarding their nostalgic pining for the ’60s and monocultural pseudo-hip posturing. We don’t know whether to shout "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!" or "LAME! LAME! LAME!"

The Weekly’s exclusion of a lesbian or gay person’s perspective in the "Blown Away in the ’80s" overview was especially insulting and outrageous. To ignore AIDS as perhaps the most overwhelming news story of the decade is not only rotten journalism, it dishonors more than 70,000 American men and women who actually were "blown away" by AIDS these past 10 years. It disrespects their friends, lovers and families who nursed them, buried them and now grieve for them.

The Weekly’s willful ignorance of AIDS in this issue, and its general inability to distinguish and cover other diverse cultural concerns and the lesbian and gay community, are reprehensible. Lesbian and gay people will not quietly or meekly become "disappeareds" in the pages of the L.A. Weekly.

—Ann Bradley, Bill Capobianca, Ayofemi Folayan, Cheri Gaulke, Mark Haile, Michael Kearns, Richard Labonte, Michael Lassell, Eric Latzky, Tim Miller, Paul Monette, Torie Osborn, Roland Palencia, Clair Peterson, James Carroll Pickett, Helene Schpak, Terry Wolverton

July 13, 1990

DEAR EDITOR:

I was angered by your recent cover. How dare you print "Burn This Cover" on a picture of the American flag! Don’t you realize that the burning of all those Weekly covers will release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and add to the solid-containment content of the basin’s atmosphere?

Please, in the future, ask your readers to recycle any flag pictures printed on newsprint that they feel compelled to get rid of.

—Christian Shea

Hollywood

November 13, 1992

DEAR EDITOR:

Earth to L.A. Weekly. Bill Clinton is going to be a shitty president. You’re not going to be the thorn in his side. You endorsed him. He’s got your vote. I don’t think he cares about anything you’ll ever say or do. You’re endorsing the status quo. Picking among the evil of three lessers is no choice at all. There’s nothing "radical" or "liberal" or "bohemian" about it. While many voters are feeling disaffected about the Democratic Party and its attempts to distinguish itself from the Republicans, it’s nice to see the Weekly is still ä endorsing every moron with enough money to call him- or herself a candidate . . .