Letters

Contact us via e-mail (le*****@oc******.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. All correspondence must include your home city and a daytime phone number.

THE ULTIMATE CENSORSHIP

“Letters will be edited for clarity and length.” That's what it says at the top of the Letters page, right? Then why have you resorted to the ultimate censorship by posting only a sentence or phrase of the letters (Letters, Jan. 4)? You now have so dim a view of your readers that you are not even going to allow them to read the letters themselves? Not only are you continuing this endless spiral into the abyss of arrogance and self-importance that seems to have plagued your paper in the recent year, but also you now deem it fitting to eliminate the spirit of the Letters page? Your “Best of OC” issue was a joke, knee-deep in self-righteous bullshit, filled with inside jokes only someone at your paper would get, and pandered to your advertisers.

It's quite disturbing to me that a paper I care so much about and look forward to each week seems more concerned with its image than its substance. Come to think of it, isn't that what this county is about? You are becoming what you fear and resent most. Paraphrase that!

Patrick Wagenbrenner
via e-mail

SNAPPING BACK AT FASCISTAS

Last year, my husband and I inadvertently moved to OC, a place we've scorned almost forever as a wasteland of ugly strip malls, foolishly ostentatious housing tracts and noisy religious zealots. But we comforted ourselves by clinging to the fact that we're barely inside the county line. So it is that I've recently discovered the OC Weekly—and Jim Washburn! Whoo-wah, he's fabulous—especially when he articulately snaps back at fascistas on the Letters page. Keep up the terrific work. You make life in OC worth living.

Laurel Hall
La Habra

TOO WILEY FOR THEM

As former members of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, we feel your story on Wiley Drake Jr. cast too much white light on the youth pastor (“Son of a Right-Wing Preacher Man” by Matt Coker, Dec. 22). The youth ministry rarely helps out at the church's homeless shelter. Churchgoers are led to believe Drake works with the homeless residents more than 40 hours per week in addition to acting as youth pastor. If this is true, why is he away from the office so often to attend sports games in which members of his ministry are participants? He is not enrolled in college nor does he seem to have any plans to get a college education. What kind of example is this for the young people in his ministry? What makes Wiley Jr. even qualified to be the youth pastor? Because he “grew up” in the church? Would you see a doctor who grew up with a family of physicians but never attended medical school? The youth in his ministry are at First Southern Baptist often, but it seems it's usually just to have fun. Out of the 30 or so who attend “Ground Zero” every Friday night, only about six come to worship on Sunday mornings. Usually, you'll find Wiley Jr. and the kids at amusement parks and late nights at coffee shops. Is this how you reach out to youths? What happened to really studying the Bible and its message?

From personal experience, we can say that it was Drake's youth ministry that first caused our family to question First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. Our child didn't seem to care about us after joining the youth ministry but did care about getting free stuff there. We no longer have anything to do with that church.

Name withheld by request
Orange

HE WAS 'THE NICE ONE'

The Locals Only article from Oct. 13 (Rich Kane's “We Should Give You Such a Spanking”) that I just pulled off your website says about my ex-band, “This was a glorious return-to-form performance after a year spent locked in a slew of various band turmoils.” For the record, the only “turmoils” are ones my band mates have brought upon the band through their selfishness and lack of consideration for anyone but themselves. I was always the “nice one in the group,” anyway. For two years, I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of a studio apartment that I shared with them in Costa Mesa. We were inseparable, but they cut me off as a friend since March for no reason, and karma or reality is what finally made them realize it will never be the same without me in the group, and they've packed it in.

I've had numerous people tell me after seeing the new four-piece version, “It's okaaay but NOT the same at all!” And it's disheartening. I co-wrote every song they played since my absence and would never dream of attempting to carry on as the Pressure without either of them. We were three parts of what I thought was a unique entity, and it is sad that they have chosen this route. Best of luck to them anyway.

Jason Michael Thornberry
via e-mail

CURIOUS GEORGE W.

I know it's been weeks since Commie Girl pondered the future boy-king George W. Bush's nickname-to-be (Rebecca Schoenkopf's “The Naming Thing,” Dec. 1), and I'm not sure anyone's suggested it yet (if so, please forgive me. I've I had my head buried between my knees, alternately puking and kissing my ass goodbye), but why not follow the leader and think simple? How about “President Duh”? Just drop the “bel ewe” syllables altogether. Also, has no one else noticed that the man is the human incarnation of Curious George?!

Steve Garcia
Fullerton
The Man in the Yellow Hat responds: Yes. Check out Michael Moore's Rage Against the Machine video for “Testify,” in which Moore juxtaposes a monkey and the president-elect. It's all there: protuberant upper lip, large, low-set ears, blank stare.

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