Letters

I’ve just finished reading Marc
Cooper’s Dissonance column in your June 22–28 issue. First, I think it’s
a great move on your part to have Marc as a regular on your paper. The guy is
smart, an intelligent dissenter, and to me he just makes sense. As for the question
of the progressives taking back either the Democratic Party or the country,
I say, “Keep on dreaming!” Our political system has been so corrupted by money,
maybe it will have to hit bottom — like when they give an election and nobody
shows up — before we see any real change.

—Issa Keita
Los Angeles

DEAR EDITOR:

With all due respect to Marc Cooper, I just read his Dissonance column and
was disappointed. Cooper, like most of what I read in the Weekly, has
basically rehashed what a lot of the non-affiliated left has been grumbling
about for years and wrapped it around an upcoming conference. If the Weekly
is going to call a column Dissonance, then you should at least consider a more
dissonant kind of writer — Johnny Angel, say.

—Elisabeth Kasson
Burbank

DEAR EDITOR:

Marc Cooper should just send his résumé over to Fox News with an attitude
like the one expressed in his article. Clinton was the subject of nearly $200
million in investigation, and negative publicity generated by right-wing neofascists.
The trendy cynicism Cooper displays is exactly what the new Brown Shirts of
the right wing depend on to continue their mission. Get over yourself, smash
your Smiths records, and figure out what it is you want the world to be. Thank
you.

—Erik Hilsinger
Eagle River, Alaska

DEAR EDITOR:

As chairman of our organization’s endorsement committee, I must take issue
with Marc Cooper’s swipe that we progressives forgot to invest attention in
Tom Hayden’s recent unsuccessful campaign. On the contrary: We made his election
to the L.A. City Council a top priority. We sponsored quite a few house-party
fund-raisers for Tom, and our members were out in force precinct walking and
phone banking. The sting of Hayden’s defeat was all the greater to us because
we did not merely sit by and let it happen.

—Clifford Tasner
Vice President
Southern California Americans
for Democratic Action

TRAVAILS OF SCIENTOLOGY

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Gale Holland’s “Unfair
Game” [June 22–28]. Thanks for outlining the travails of Scientology critic
Keith Henson. It’s rare, these days, to see journalists take the time to cut
through “spin” and lies, and hit a nail so squarely on the head. At some point,
I am hoping that law enforcement and the legal system will wake up and begin
to see — and investigate — Scientology’s constant legal proceedings as criminal
harassments by an organized-crime syndicate. Because that’s exactly what they
are.

—Michael Reuss
Fort Collins, Colorado

DEAR EDITOR:

Thanks to Gale Holland for the piece on Scientology and Keith Henson. She
covered material that can be a minefield for the uninitiated. Sadly, active
Scientologists will be prohibited by their “church” from reading this excellent
article.

—Chip Gallo
Washington, D.C.

DEAR EDITOR:

Nice article on Keith Henson. However, I would like you to clarify that I
was not arrested for cultivating marijuana, “as was former Scientologist Jessie
Prince.” I wasn’t even arrested. I was ordered to see the judge for violation
of an injunction Scientology had set up — having to do with sitting in a red
Santa’s chair and walking down the street with two picket signs in Clearwater,
Florida.

—Tory Bezazian
Burbank

DEAR EDITOR:

Gale Holland’s piece ridicules the Church of Scientology for taking seriously
a bomb threat made by Keith Henson. In the same article, Holland writes, “Henson
worked in the 1970s for an explosives company in Arizona, and arranged pyrotechnic
parties in the desert ‘similar to Burning Man.’” This reader is mystified why
anyone should not take such a threat very seriously. Is Holland brimming with
Panglossian naiveté, or is she just not being objective?

—Jeff Farrow
Tujunga

DEAR EDITOR:

Keith Henson does not have to like Scientology, but he made violent threats,
was convicted of a hate crime by a jury of his peers, then fled to Canada to
escape punishment. He is a convicted criminal and fugitive from the law. Why
are you defending him? Your credibility suffers.

—Bill Zalin
Los Angeles

DEAR EDITOR:

Your recent article on Keith Henson really misses the point. A jury unanimously
convicted him of interfering with a religion. His interference consisted of
following Scientology religious workers, taking down their license numbers and
stalking them at their homes. This is not the expression of opinion; it is
harassment of individual Scientologists solely because of their faith. If the
victims of Henson’s obsession had been members of a Catholic or Jewish congregation,
I’m sure that even the L.A. Weekly would not be so cavalier about the
rights of the church members involved.

—Pam Shannon
Church of Scientology
Los Angeles

MOTION SICKNESS

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Joseph
Treviño’s “Almost Aboard” [June 22–28]. I’m sick and tired of hearing the
Bus Riders Union call the MTA racist. I find it incredibly naive to assume that
there is some vast conspiracy within the MTA simply because it’s trying to build
a faster, smoother, more efficient way for its constituents to get around. I
invite L.A. Weekly readers to look at a map of the Los Angeles County
rail system and see which communities it travels through. Since when are Watts,
Compton, Koreatown, Vermont-Wilshire, etc., enclaves of white populations? Anyone
who says they are does not know Los Angeles very well, and anyone who says that
the majority of rail users are white obviously has never ridden any of the Metro
Rail lines.

—Jason Saunders
Los Angeles

DEAR EDITOR:

Joseph Treviño’s article failed to mention that the Bus Riders Union’s conflict
with the E.L.A. Light Rail is about more than civil rights. It’s about money.
The E.L.A. Light Rail will, in large part, be funded by money — from the feds
and the state — that has been earmarked for rail use only, money that cannot
be used to buy more buses, or for housing, or for health care, etc. (It was
earmarked before the BRU’s consent-decree lawsuit.) Therefore, if the BRU was
successful in halting the E.L.A. Light Rail project under the guise of civil
rights, that money, somewhere in the range of $400 million, would be taken away
and used in another city. East Los Angeles would be left with nothing — no light
rail, no improved bus system. Sure, the BRU would have another feather in its
cap. But it would not have won the heavily Latino Eastside anything tangible,
and it’s nearly impossible to see a civil rights victory in that.

—R. Daniel Gutierrez
Los Angeles

BRICKBAT

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Brendan Bernhard’s “The
Ad Campaign That Would Not Die, 2001” [June 22–28]. Has anyone noticed that
Church With Red Ribbon, 2001, referring to the First United Methodist Church,
designed by architect Thomas B. Barber (1929) at the top of Highland Avenue,
is not “bricks, stucco,” as the label claims, but an unusually fine example
of exposed reinforced-concrete construction? This is somewhat like a museum
mislabeling an oil painting acrylic. MOCA should get its facts right before
presuming to label the city.

—Jack Burnett-Stuart
Los Angeles

DON’T MESS WITH MY INNER CHILD

In your July 6–12 issue, you published a review of the
play The Book of Esther. Please note that the performance your reviewer
attended featured Liza Kaplan, not Allyson Ayalon, as Young Mindy.

—Deborah Sale Butler (Adult Mindy)
Studio City