A DARK TOWER OF CORPORATE GREED . . .


With the acquisition of the New Times, our “alternative” newsweekly offers us no alternative. The aggregation of media ownership in the States over the last decade has reduced the number of individuals controlling our press to just a few hundred, and that number continues to shrink.

Now you’re one of them. How does it feel to have “arrived”? For us citizens,
it sucks.

How large does a corporation need to be before it says “enough,” before it
stops swallowing everything in its path? Must the aggregation of power, the
aggregation of wealth, really be the logical end of capitalism?

Thanks for contributing to a world of ever fewer choices.

—Commander MacBragg
Bel Air

 

Thanks for getting rid of New Times — a better paper than you’ll ever
be. It’s nice to know all that Marxist/New Age horseshit you guys push goes
out the door when it comes to ensuring your own survival. You’re complete hypocrites.

—Michael Mayo
Los Angeles

 

There is plenty of room in this town for two alternative voices of the weekly-rag
variety. The New Times kicked up the quality and helped keep you honest.

—Andrew Kasiske
Sierra Madre

 

Re: “A More
Anxious Weekly” [October 4–10]. The fact that Harold Meyerson’s article
was printed should speak volumes. I think his being allowed to bite the hand
that feeds is a pretty good endorsement of the Weekly’s management.

—Jeff Merrick
Glendora

 

Thanks for letting us know why we can’t find our New Times this week.
It was gracious of you. But where do we now go for movie reviews that critique
the movies, rather than their politics?

—Billy Vera
Los Angeles

 

I am a longtime reader and supporter of the L.A. Weekly. I am also
very glad that the reactionary New Times has been put out to pasture.
Now I think the Weekly has the opportunity to do one simple thing to
vastly improve itself: Get Tom Tomorrow into your pages! I think you would be
doing your readers and yourself a favor by picking up his cartoon.

—Jason McDaniel
Los Angeles

 

Goodbye, New Times. No more “The Finger”? No more Jill Stewart? No
more Savage Love? What the hell are we going to do? I hope (and expect) the
L.A. Weekly will rise to the occasion and hire these terrific journalists.
Our city needs them.

—Alex Graham
Palms

 

Why aren’t archived articles of New Times being made available to your
readers? I’ll bet Cardinal Mahony is very pleased.

—Judith Lillard
Los Angeles

 

. . . BUT STILL FULL OF SURPRISES

I was more than a little surprised by the moronic review
by John Powers of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine [“A
Man Escaped,” October 11–17]. I expect more from the pseudo-intellectuals
who write for the L.A. Weekly. It doesn’t take a lot to figure out whom
the film is aimed at — not the informed or well-read, but for the people who
inhabit the film, the stupid, gluttonous lemmings who make up 70 percent of
America today, those who live blissfully ignorant with 30-second attention spans,
who watch Cops religiously. So Moore uses the medium that he berates.
It’s called “irony.”

As for poor old Mr. Heston and the other gun-toting, missile-launching Republicans,
if they were merely “gaga old fools,” it would be heartless of Moore to get
in their faces, but they’re much, much more dangerous than that. They’re in
our faces selling testosterone-driven fear, violence and war for their own agenda.
Thank God someone is unveiling their hypocrisy. And that someone is Michael
Moore.

—Rich Sienko
West Hollywood

 

I saw Bowling for Columbine and was wondering if film reviewer John
Powers saw the same movie I did. Michael Moore created a thought-provoking documentary
that was greatly appreciated by the packed opening-night audience in Westwood
last Friday. And these people weren’t “European intellectuals,” as Powers wishes
you to believe; they were Americans! If Mr. Powers wasn’t moved by the power
of the film, which probes America’s obsession with guns, then he obviously missed
the point. Maybe his ego was bruised by Moore’s finger waving at the media for
their share of responsibility.

This film should win Oscars but probably won’t because it rubs politicians
and the old Hollywood guard the wrong way. How could the media possibly praise
a film that features Marilyn Manson looking like a mild-mannered, well-educated
saint, while typical American heroes like Dick Clark and Charlton Heston just
look like assholes?

—Lee Chambers
Marina del Rey

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