WILD GIRLS, BACK TO FRONT

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Paul Cullum‘s ”Girls Gone Wild.“ Please do not put stories about pornography on the cover of your paper. I also found the pictures of scantily clad women that accompanied the article unnecessary. I know pornography and its purveyors and stars are becoming socially acceptable, but that business exploits women and encourages the view of women as sex objects. There is no need to promulgate those views in the L.A. Weekly.

Otherwise, I love your newspaper and look forward to Thursday so I can read it. I am possibly your newspaper’s biggest fan, so please do what you can to avoid subjects that are demeaning to women. Or at least keep such articles off the cover.

–Felicia Rusnak

Los Angeles

DEAR EDITOR:

Thank god for ”Girls Gone Wild.“ I can say without hesitation, those GM Video guys, the Voyeur Video morons and their cronies, not to mention those who consume the crap, are the single biggest reason I stopped going to Burning Man. That whole crowd is the white fly of humanity: Once they ”discover“ your eventhappeningvacation spot, it‘s all over. You have no choice but to deal with pukin’-drunk frat boys, shallow drunk sluts, and jerks with cameras shoving you aside to get the ”good angle.“ Mr. GM Video himself hit the nail on the head: They catch everything. You can‘t even take a shower at Burning Man without some scumbag snapping or rolling film. They’re the kinds of people who think all nudity is sexual, and if you‘re taking it off, you’re fair game. It‘s completely offensive.

But hey, if that’s what those guys are into, fine. If fellating a couple of strangers while receiving oral sex from a couple of other strangers for the porn industry makes you feel important or good-looking or validated, go ahead. But please go to some private place you thought up in your own little pea brain and do it. Stop foisting yourselves and your industry on those of us who don‘t want it. You break the law shooting it, and you break the law selling it. You take pictures covertly, use zoom lenses so people often don’t even know they‘re being photographed, and, the biggest joke of all, you don’t call it porn. I talked to a guy at Voyeur Video about the illegality of selling Burning Man footage, and he assured me that, get this, his homemade video was ”pretty artistic.“ The most pathetic part of it is, of course, if there weren‘t a market for that kind of low-level porn, they wouldn’t shoot it.

So, Load Warriors, pukin‘-drunk frat boys, shallow drunk sluts and all those others involved, please go home (or better yet, go straight to your therapist’s office). Some of us still prefer to have sex the old-fashioned way: privately.

I miss Burning Man!

–Miss Delux, a.k.a. Donna Ward

Los Angeles

ATTACK OF THE ALTERNATIVE NPDs

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Millay Hyatt‘s ”An American in Berlin“ [New World Disorder, November 9–15]. This is the second time I’m treated to accounts of psychological misadventure in Germany, and subsequent projections upon the psychological makeup of my nation of origin by writers of this paper. Writer A, whose name has escaped me [EDITOR‘S NOTE: That would be Ben Ehrenreich, in the July 27–August 2 ”Berlin Journal“], ends up at the ”Love Parade“ among inebriated teens bused in from various European hinterlands where he draws references to the dreaded fascist past by examples of excessive whistle blowing, puking and urinating among the shrubbery, marching to martial techno beats and a work of dubious architecture that was prominently featured as perch of lovelorn seraphs in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. He then goes on to question why all these people are not at the WTO summit in Genoa battling it out with the carabinieri.

Ms. Hyatt, on the other hand and apparently without knowing it, shacks up in political Fringeville among the very folks who were battling it out at the WTO summit while [Ehrenreich] visited the ”Love Parade.“ She mentions as organizers of the event political entities whose collective share of the federal vote is barely 5 percent, who bear Cold War grudges as functionaries of the former Communist party of the former East Germany and are intrinsically opposed to capitalist ideology. What did she expect?

I would like to point out — though I reluctantly justify the nation which I‘ve consciously chosen not to live in — that Germany is contributing to the present war on terrorism about 4,000 troops including special forces, extensive logistical support including 5 AWAC surveillance planes, flying hospitals and some solid intelligence (I believe it was German intelligence that alerted the CIA to Mohamed Atta’s possible membership in a terrorist organization prior to 911).

There are two things the vast majority of Germans have actually learned by completely obliterating their cultural heritage: a

1) It is absolutely no fun to have the living shit bombed out of you.

2) There‘s nothing more dangerous than the ideologies of narcissistic poison dwarfs.

–Thomas von Wendt

(Kraut in exile)

Los Angeles

EVILDOERS — SAVE ’EM, SELL ‘EM, SWAP ’EM WITH YOUR FRIENDS

DEAR EDITOR:

It was somewhat refreshing to read ”The Rough Guide to Nicaragua“ [November 9–15], John Powers‘ attempt to paint a realistic picture of Daniel Ortega, whose dark deeds have basically been whitewashed for over two decades by the press of the left. ”Egomaniac“? For sure — the younger cadres of the FSLN would love to ditch him, along with Tomas Borge, the other dinosaur of the party’s leadership. But ”born-again yuppie“? Definitely a misnomer, as he and so many others of the Sandinista old guard are, rather, still living off of the ill-gotten gains which they obtained via the great piñata of 1990, when the Sandinistas ripped off the Nicaraguan government, right down to the plumbing, as they were leaving office in electoral defeat. ”Alleged child molester“? We may never know for certain so long as El Gallo remains safely beyond the authority of the legal system due to his parliamentary immunity.

Jimmy Carter casting aspersions on the Bush administration‘s serious warnings about what a Sandinista victory would have meant to Nicaragua? No surprise there. It was Carter himself who ushered in the Sandinista nightmare in 1979 and who has remained friendly with the Sandinistas ever since. In truth, though, the Sandinistas have never left power, at least not entirely, as they’ve continued to pull many of the political strings from behind the scenes owing to their predominance in the Assembly. They‘ve managed to thwart reform at almost every turn — except, of course, the self-serving Ortega-Aleman political pact, which threatens Nicaraguan democracy and almost got Danny Boy elected.

Enrique Bolaños is not perfect. He should have left the Aleman administration earlier than he did, but at least he did so and thus was never faced, like Al Gore, with having defended his besmirched boss to the bitter end. Nicaragua can be very grateful for the free and fair election of Mr. Bolaños, whereas that of his less-than-worthy opponent would have been an utter disaster.

–Peter Schuck

Encino

SORRY, WE THOUGHT HE WAS THE MESSIAH

I am writing in response to Nancy Rommelmann’s article ”Eat at L. Ron‘s“ [November 9–15]. This article oozes with snide remarks, and hatred of the Scientology religion. Being a Scientologist, I find it very offensive. The man whose picture you mockingly placed next to this article is a very great humanitarian.

–Denise Munsterman

Los Angeles

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