Letters

—Randall Sullivan New York City

CHARLES RAPPLEYE REPLIES: I can’t say how I look, but I certainly feel humbled. After all, if a journalist of my lowly stature, and an incompetent one at that, can compel Randall Sullivan to document even one of his many lurid allegations, then I’ve accomplished about all I could dare expect. It’s disconcerting, though, to see that Sullivan continues to allude to unnamed “police informants,” and unnamed “evidence,” even as he seeks to defend his reporting on Kevin Gaines. And if Reggie Wright did say that four cops worked off-duty for his security squad, that’s still a far cry from the central claim of Sullivan’s ambitious account, that a “growing cadre of black officers” ran drugs and committed homicides at the direction of Death Row magnate Suge Knight.

THE BARD UNBEARDED

DEAR EDITOR:

Terry Morgan wrote in a review of Amy Freed’s new comedy, The Beard of Avon [New Theater Releases, June 15–21], that the play was “about the popular academic party game of questioning whether Shakespeare really wrote all of his works.” Actually, the question is not one pondered by academics, at least not academics in the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. You’d have to look damned hard to find an academic in those fields who thinks there is any reason to doubt Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. Besides, Amy Freed has said that her play is not intended as a serious questioning of the authorship of the works. I wish reviewers would report that.

—Richard NathanBurbank

GOD BLESS THE CHILD

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Ernest Hardy’s “Return to Life” [June 1–7]. If the child knew his music history, or even read the liner notes of the disc, he would know the sample on “Get It Up” is not the Jacksons, but rather the Isley Brothers’ “Tell Me When You Need It Again.”

—Anthony RuckerNashville, Tennessee

ERNEST HARDY REPLIES: The child apologizes for any inconvenience. I was using information provided by the publicist and working from an advance CD that didn’t have liner notes.

ANXIOUS, BUT ELATED

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: the article about Café R&B [“House Rent Stomp,” June 8–14]. I am so elated that Brendan Bernhard stumbled upon this deserving band and had the good sense to write their story. Let’s just hope that now that the secret is out, the suits don’t come around and muck everything up.

—Sheri SwansonGlendale

GOOD AS . . .

DEAR EDITOR:

Jonathan Gold and his Counter Intelligence column are the No. 1 reason many of us get the Weekly. Great job in getting him back.

—Dan BercuSanta Monica