Movin' on Down

The rent is too damn high! Or so last week's cover proclaimed. Inside, writers Hillel Aron, Farley Elliott, Amanda Lewis and Jill Stewart detailed the ways in which young creatives are dealing with L.A.'s growing lack of affordability — by moving in with someone else's parents, giving co-ops a try, and renting out their homes via Airbnb.

But Aron's list of affordable alternatives to L.A.'s most popular neighborhoods angered readers (“Lateral Moves to Poor Man's Land“). “This a joke, right?” Gberllado rants. “The level of insensitivity in this article is too ridiculous to take seriously. It dismisses the populations (you know — people, families) that have lived in the 'poor' neighborhoods for years, if not decades. L.A. Weekly editors, way to cultivate community.”

Valleypinoy agrees. “Hmm … remember all those L.A. Weekly articles blasting politicians for causing/enabling gentrification? Pot, meet kettle.“

Patriot Games

Is it fun to watch Americans kill a bunch of Afghanis? Amy Nicholson's suggestion that Lone Survivor, the new Mark Wahlberg movie based on the “eyewitness account” of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, might be anything other than good, violent fun had readers fuming (“Lone Survivor Shows Our Boys Suffering But Doesn't Ask Why,” Dec. 27).

Tippiv writes, “To bastardize Mark Twain, Ms. Nicholson isn't going to let the facts get in the way of a sarcastic, juvenile review grounded deeply in her own political beliefs. Rather than reviewing the film on its own terms, or even sticking to the facts, Ms. Nicholson meets what she calls exaggeration with hyperbole. She says that the number of enemy fighters is exaggerated from 10 to 200. If she had done any research (but why bother with the truth when it interferes with your rant), she would know that, while estimates vary, the Medal of Honor citation written for Murphy placed the number at approximately 50 — meaning they were still outnumbered 12-to-1. I am sure Ms. Nicholson has not faced anything quite so harrowing since someone nudged her basket in line at Trader Joe's.

“The biggest absurdity in the naive, ill-considered review is that the men and women of the U.S. military are not somehow responsible for the security of this country. Maybe in L.A. 9/11 is just one more cinematic fantasy, but I assure you that staring at the mile-high plume of smoke towering over the island I live on painted a very different picture. Perhaps Ms. Nicholson can find meaningful work and a new homeland at a Toronto paper in the northern paradise of Canada.”

Reader anicholson2 gets nastier. “You're garbage and have no clue why you have the right to even say such things. You have done nothing for your country but be a drag on society. I pray that your girl parts catch the rot and fall off.” Ah, so this is why we fought the Taliban: So angry readers have the First Amendment right to curse a film critic's vagina!

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