Letters

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SID'S VICIOUS

I really liked the “Where Famous People Eat” issue (June 23), but I can't help but feel sorry for all those loser musicians you talked to who like Sid's. Saying Sid's is a great place because you can get a piece of crap steak for 10 bucks is like bragging about getting a $5 blowjob from a homeless crack addict with trench mouth (who happens to be a relative).

And, my, have times changed. If 15 years ago you had asked a bunch of OC musicians where to eat, they all would have said Zubie's. Maybe if our local musicians returned to Zubie's, which actually isn't half-bad (well, yeah, it is, but it's still better than Sid's), instead of eating the leakage Sid's slops around, they wouldn't be so ear-numbingly horrible.

Tom Vasich IrvineIT HAPPENED HERE

Having just finished an article on Manzanar for an e-zine, I found the start of Jory Farr's article “Horror, Hiding and the Holocaust” (June 16) unusually haunting because I could easily have substituted Japanese-American and Japanese-Latino names. Most of the Japanese-Americans who were interned were school-age American children whose parents were denied the right to citizenship until 1952, over President Harry S. Truman's veto. Organized anti-Asian groups have been a part of California's history, and our continuing ignorance is demonstrated in Orange County where a couple tried to secure a license plate with a racial epithet for Japanese on it and where local Caucasian actors are still doing Asians in [shudder] “yellowface.”

The value of articles such as Farr's lies in reminding us how easily things can get out-of-hand. Americans continually blame what happened in Germany on Hitler, thinking that if he hadn't existed, it wouldn't have happened. No one looks at the anti-Semitism in Europe that supported the Holocaust or the anti-Asian sentiments on the West Coast that allowed places like Manzanar to come into being. It can happen again. Proposition 187 is a good example.

Kat Avila IrvineDRAMA CLASS

Tim Meltreger: While as your former junior high history teacher, I applaud your writing style, I am disappointed that I may not have taught you adequately to appreciate and explore the historical perspective of events (“Dis-Union: Orange Unified union boss John Rossmann's weird little war,” May 19). While in focusing on the current struggles over contract negotiations in the Orange Unified School District (OUSD) you have captured the dramatics and established a unique perspective in your article, you have failed to explore and analyze why so many of the teachers—veteran and new alike—admire John Rossmann. His courage, dedication, insight, compassion and keen intelligence have not only guided us but have also inspired us to strive for a fair contract in OUSD. There are few people who could have united and led us as he has. I believe that history will treat him well.

Lynn Lorenz OUSD teacher Tim Meltreger responds: It is the very fact that you're a history teacher (and an excellent one, as I remember) that impedes your understanding of something even John Rossmann will tell you—the so-called “dramatics” are the story. Without Rossmann's antics, there is no story, and he knows it. In fact, since my article ran, Rossmann's dramatics have gone from bad to worse. Recently, he went on the record as blaming Orange's new teachers for making OUSD “a ghetto district.” Anaheim Hills and Villa Park are ghettos? Dramatic enough for you? He went on to conjure the ghosts of the right-wing Education Alliance—the long-defunct group that failed some years ago to Christianize OC's school boards. I fail to see how either of these tactics is going to get you a contract any sooner. Rossmann is all about the drama—and he has turned Orange Unified's tragedy into a comedy. P.S. I deserved every one of those detentions.FIRM HANDSHAKE

Victor D. Infante was too generous in crediting me with the Appellate Court's favorable decision in the Arthur Carmona case (“A Slow-Paced Legal Thriller,” April 7). It was the LA-based firm of Sidley N Austin, particularly James M. Harris and Deborah Muns-Park, who did all the work to prepare the appeal and habeas petition. I know how difficult it has been to help Arthur Carmona, and what they have done for him is monumental and rare. In the beginning, it was only his mother, Ronnie Carmona, and my novice self trying to fight for justice from my small home office. Now he is in the hands of this huge, prestigious, knowledgeable legal firm. Their endless—and completely donated—work on his behalf must not be overlooked.

Nadia Davis Santa AnaWE'RE SELF-LOATHING

Jim Washburn's attitudes on homosexuals are very typical for Americans and Europeans (“Who's Gay in History? Pretty Much Everybody,” June 16). Here in our part of the Pacific, homosexual activities live side by side with what you think of as “normal” sex. Men fall in love with women and raise families. Men also keep male lovers, and women make love to other women. There is no conflict with family life. I was amazed when I first heard that Americans detest “gays,” as you call them.

We believe that “homophobia” is spread by Christian missionaries here in the islands, and that is why we have told them to stay away from the outer islands, where most of us live. We go to the main islands only during the daytime to earn money as mess-hall workers and cleaning women. I hope this letter will help you find a new balanced view.

Kota Balikapapan Sipadan, UNP

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