Letters

Contact us via e-mail (letters@ocweekly. com), regular mail (Letters to the Editor, OC Weekly, P.O. Box 10788, Costa Mesa, CA 92627) or fax (714-708-8410). Letters will be edited for clarity and length. By submission of a letter, you agree that we can publish and/or license the publication of it in print and electronically. All correspondence must include your home city and a daytime phone number.

I have just finished reading Peter Fletcher's article about God ("Robert Schuller to Atheists: 'God Is With You!'" Jan. 11). As a local minister, I wanted to send Peter a note apologizing for all of my brothers and sisters in the faith who are also writing you this morning—only they'reprobably writing to tell you what a hell-bound bastard you are.

I'm sorry that we have taken it upon ourselves to explain to everyone else why there is such horror in the world. I'm sorry we have seemed to condone that horror and that we have pronounced that God does, too. I'm sorry that we've read your article and still didn't "get it." Rather than pondering how it is that people of faith have painted a picture of God looking like "such an asshole," we blame you for bringing it to our attention. Sorry, Peter.

Whatever possessed Fletcher to use Dr. Schuller's picture? Why would you choose to assassinate his character by placing it next to such a perverted write-up? You had better thank God for freedom of speech, for nowhere but in America could you get by with such statements of vulgarity as you chose to use.

I live in Los Angeles County. So what is OC Weekly doing on all the newsstands in Long Beach? I have picked it up once or twice and tossed it. I would have never looked at it again. However, one of my friends gave me a copy with an attached note saying she felt my pastor should be made aware of this. I have now made many others aware and will continue to do so.

Nick Schou's hilarious article about Katherine Smith shows what a crackpot we have running for state superintendent of public instruction ("Driving Miss Kathy," Jan. 11). But even more laughable was Los Amigos chairman Amin David's comment that Mrs. Smith has "moderated her stand on immigration" and opposes "the racist policies of Harald Martin." What evidence does Mr. David have to suggest this? Not only has Mrs. Smith been an eager and willing participant in all the witch-hunts that Mr. Martin has launched against Mexican schoolchildren, but she also continues to defend him even as he wages other campaigns to scapegoat undocumented workers for all of society's problems. Mr. David's support of Mrs. Smith's candidacy casts doubt on his credibility as a "leader" in the Latino community.

If Jim Washburn wants to keep an unbiased eye on the war, maybe OC Weekly can get him one of those small satellite dishes so he can check out the news from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's perspective (Letters, Jan. 4). You might be surprised at the excellent quality, and you'll find it's cheaper than your local cable connection. See www.global-cm. net/CAN/canadiansolution.html.

Joel Beers' review of Copenhagen ("Crashing Bohr," Jan. 11) identifies German physicist Werner Heisenberg as a Jew. This is wrong. Heisenberg is referred to a couple of times in the play as a "white Jew," which the play explains is the term Germans had for scholars of "theoretical" physics—a subfield mainstreamers disdained and that was the only area open to Jewish scientists (which is why Einstein and others wound up specializing in it). Obviously, Heisenberg could not have continued to head Germany's efforts to develop atomic weapons had he been of Jewish ancestry. His mentor Niels Bohr—the other key figure in the play—was only half-Jewish but still had to flee Denmark for his life after the Germans occupied his nation.

We're sorry Copenhagen failed to connect with Beers. But as he suggests, there are many theatergoers who are absolutely riveted by it. And had he not fallen asleep—twice, as he points out—he might have escaped the error in his review.

John Powers reminds me again how much I dislike critics ("Math-geek Shine," Dec. 21). His diatribe against The Shipping News is neither clever nor conceptual. It is an out-and-out attack against a sensitive, well-acted, well-constructed and well-received adaptation of a complex, convoluted Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Powers has a hatefest with similes, metaphors and slang—"schlub," "doughty," "slippery Spacey," to name a few. My question is: Did he actually see American Beauty? Kevin Spacey was the underdog in that movie, too, and not the monster Powers wants him to be. This was an absolutely prejudicial review, unwanted and unwarranted.

In Gustavo Arellano's Jan. 11 review of the new Voz de Mano CD ("like a Stratocaster smashing onto a turntable"), some malignant editor changed the words in the original from "romantic revolution" to "Romántico Revolución." That would've been cute but for the fact that Spanish (like many Romance languages) runs its adjectives after its nouns and thus the correct adjective ought to have been "romantica." The result: Arellano's friends are calling him a pocho. Interestingly, a few of those friends are calling him estúpida pocho.