Letters may be edited for clarity and length. E-mail to le*****@oc******.com, or send to Letters to the Editor, c/oOC Weekly, 1666 N. Main St., Ste. 500, Santa Ana, CA 92701. Or fax to (714) 550-5908.
NATIONAL DISASTER
The times change, yet Jim Washburn's irrational hatred of President Bush endures [“The City That Bush Forgot,” Sept. 16]. In his latest one-trick-pony rant Washburn hypothesizes a grim federal response in the aftermath of a future major earthquake in California and suggests disastrous consequences to state water supplies. Washburn will undoubtedly be thrilled to learn that this state's Office of Emergency Services already warns us that we must be self-sufficiently prepared to survive the aftermath of a major earthquake with no services for up to one week. That's seven full days for Washburn to blame the president for shifting tectonic plates miles below the surface of the planet. I would fully expect Washburn to rename the famous fissure that runs beneath the Golden State as the “San Andreas (Bush's) Fault.”
Chuck Rose
Temple City
The only problem with Washburn's column was that he may have put himself out of business with a single sentence that renders all of the rest superfluous: “George W. Bush is a piece of shit.”
Eli S. Evans
Via e-mail
FLOOD OF MEMORIES
Thank you for a well-written account of the flood of 1938 [Gustavo Arellano's “After the Deluge,” Sept. 16]. It's a sobering reminder that Mother Nature's forces are sometimes cruel to those who least deserve it. The photograph of Mr. Montaa with his young daughter's body is forever burned in my memory.
Name withheld by request
Santa Ana
I have an idea for the ever whining, whimpering Gustavo Arellano. It's his next cover story: 6 million Mexicans ruthlessly slaughtered in Hitler's concentration camps with full photo coverage of how Ireland's potato famine drove them there.
Dash
Costa Mesa
BEERS' NUTS
Joel Beers' “Fat Like Me” [Aug. 26] was an awful article. It made fun of fat people and had no compassion. This made the article mean-spirited and evil. You all should feel ashamed of yourselves!
Allison Stalder
Via e-mail
Okay, so I saw Urinetown at Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse because of the glowing review it received from Joel Beers [“Urine Luck,” Sept. 2]. All I can say is that Mr. Beers must have taken a hit of acid. There is no way that Costa Mesa Playhouse's production was better than the national tour . . . without the use of mind-altering drugs beforehand, of course.
Fuzzy
Long Beach
ASK, RECEIVE
Jim Washburn, are you trying to win the coveted liberal liars prize of getting to fuck Michael Moore in his big fat socialist ass? Like Fahren-lies 911, your “Stop the War” article [Sept. 2] was either half-truths or total lies. So Bush has turned Iraq into hell on Earth? Are you saying it was a land full of happiness and lollipops under Saddam's rule? Try telling that to the women who were raped and tortured. How about the Olympic athletes who were tortured for not performing well enough? Try telling that to the 300,000-plus Kurds he killed with chemical weapons. Oh, wait, you can't. Because they are fucking dead! Torturing prisoners? As opposed to what? Beheadings? These are people who want to kill us. Fuck them. Republicans own the media? On what planet? Apparently everyone but you knows how left the media is. Buy Citgo gas? Hugo Chavez was NOT democratically elected. He lost by 17 percent but took control anyway and shot demonstrators. I am sure you are right that Citgo does not contribute to Bush, as Chavez is anti-American and pro-Castro. Mr. Washburn, you are a worthless, ignorant, lying, UN-American sack of shit and a great argument for retroactive abortion.
Matthew A. Stolz
Via e-mail
Jim Washburn gently remonstrates:Matthew, I can appreciate how pissed off you are, because I'm pissed off too. And if you'd bother researching a few goddamned facts, maybe we'd even be mad at the same things. For a start, read what Iraqis are saying about their lives now: with death squads roaming their country unchecked; terrorist assholes and U.S. air strikes taking turns blowing their neighborhoods up; prisons as sadistic as ever; child malnutrition rates up; basic services still not running; and gasoline unobtainable in that oil-rich land, many of them aren't delighted. And let me say this for the millionth time: Saddam was a monster, but we helped make him. The CIA helped the Baath party and Saddam's rise to power. President Jimmy Carter cut off aid to Saddam because of his human rights abuses, unlike Reagan and Bush 1, who DID NOT GIVE A FUCK about the Iraqi people. They restored and boosted aid to Saddam and supplied the intel and equipment that helped him commit his worst atrocities. The 1988 gassings that Saddam's now being charged for? They occurred on Reagan's watch. Do some research, Sonny, and see if this isn't all true. Same with weapons inspectors: there they were, in Iraq, not finding weapons. The whole world knows this—why not you? Chavez was elected twice, plus a big win in a referendum, and virtually no news source disputes that he's hugely popular with the majority of Venezuelans, except for the hose in your ass that you're evidently getting your news from. As for the liberal media: NBC is owned by General Electric, which makes military goods and contributed $1.1 million to Bush in 2000; CBS is owned by Westinghouse, a giant in the nuclear power industry, with its board headed by the Carlisle Group's Frank Carlucci; CNN's owned by Time-Warner, which gave $1.6 million to Bush; Fox is owned by evil squid Rupert Murdoch. For that matter, I'm owned by Bechtel.
