Why Gore would censor "South Park"
BY DAVID HOROWITZ
(07/19/99)

"Moral" conservatives and "concerned" liberals love to invoke the name of "the children" whenever they want to disguise the fact that they're trying to sanitize America. They especially love to, in their rhetoric, combine their favorite victim with the ultimate villain. Everyone can hate TV!

Folks, if you hate TV, don't buy one. You are free to do that.

As a liberal, it makes me a bit afraid to mention such a candidate, but a fiscally conservative civil libertarian would wipe out the competition. A "hands off my personal life and wallet" message would resonate with those tired of Tipper and her silly, paranoid mentality about children; with those tired of people in government telling us what we can say on the Internet or do with our bodies; and with people whose lives, or whose friends' lives have been destroyed by the misguided "drug war." All in the name of our children.

What will we leave "our children" if we don't act soon? A country where the media is censored, drug users are locked away for life, violent children get the death penalty, and where we drop bombs on countries with more freedom than ours. That's not America. That's not even Singapore.

-- David Isbister

Freedom of expression has long been a bipartisan cause and whipping boy simultaneously. Liberals and conservatives alike have fought for it, and liberals and conservatives alike have done what they could to undermine it over history. If Clinton and Gore like the V-chip too much, well, how's that different from the elder George Bush campaigning against the American Civil Liberties Union in 1988? The ACLU is far more consistent in supporting freedom of expression than anybody who walks around with a party label on his or her lapel.

Horowitz keeps trying to pretend that the Christian Coalition and its anti-free expression agenda is not a large and important constituency to the Republican party. They aren't "caving" to the V-chip, they're embracing it as naturally as their lungs embrace oxygen. Some Republicans still remember what conservatism actually means; unfortunately, they're rapidly following Barry Goldwater to the happy hunting grounds.

And I'm getting tired of people who defend the gun and tobacco lobbies on "free expression" grounds. When you stretch the metaphor that far, you end up making it available to the Ted Bundys of the world too.

-- Francis Volpe
Carlisle, Pa.

Little did I expect to see an anti-censorship stance taken by this conservative author. A daring stance indeed, considering conservatism's track record on censorship. I applaud him for having the guts to take a stand for what he believes in and not conforming to the narrow mind-set of the typical conservative.

-- Victor Allen
Mobile, Ala.

While I don't find "South Park" humorous, the Gore/Clinton thrust toward censorship is revealing -- and it's scary. Once again, the theme that "government can solve all our problems" raises is ugly head.

I think people first see all the marketed toys, T-shirts, lunch pails and other junk, and assume that these moon-faced kids are simply "cute," without watching the show to realize that they truly are foul-mouthed, bigoted creatures. Parents should look to themselves, and not the government, for responsibility about what their children watch. The "soccer moms" should actually watch a couple of shows and understand that the foul-mouthed little cartoon characters are no more suitable for little children than Fritz the Cat (the R-rated animated cartoon) or "Beavis and Butthead."

-- Gary A. Smith
New Milford, Conn.

Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl
BY TRACY QUAN
(07/22/99)

This is the most painful and personal story I could have read. Some six years ago I was madly in love with the most wonderful person in the world. Kathy was an angel sent from heaven, a perfect match for me. I was working diligently as a creative person in the music business, and she ... well, was chronicly unemployed, but had the sweetest drive and ambitions. Kathy spent the beginning part of our relationship living with me, but then she moved back in with her roommate Percilla -- an odd type, who had just recently moved to New York City from Australia, and was Asian as well. Percilla's well-paying job was as a nude model. (I, of course, assumed she was modeling for art students.) Percilla harassed Kathy weekly to work for the same agency; and when Kathy decided to pose nude as well, she suddenly came into money. She explained it as ill-gotten gains from working at the Palladium, where she said she received hefty commissions for setting up drug deals. Three months later, I came home to my roommate and best friend crying. They explained that Kathy had been working as an escort; a mutual friend had hired her by calling her agency's phone number. After days of fighting, excuses, lies, and stories of sexual abuse by her father, Kathy came clean and told me the truth. Percilla was a call girl, and Kathy was working at the same escort agency as my boss's future wife, and he was aware of the whole situation. Kathy charged $600 per half-hour, of which she paid $200 to the house. She only went on 10 or so dates where she actually performed sexual acts for them. Most of the time she required her clients to wear two condoms, but she also admitted to having once john who offered her $1,500 to have sex without protection.

To the best of my knowledge, Kathy is no longer in this business. She caught Herpes 2 years later, and is now a seriously disturbed individual, full of self-hate. I had a nervous breakdown, and was unable to continue my career in the music business. The moral: An escort's life in New York is not glamorous. It is a long downward spiral of self-abuse. AIDS is upon us, and the glamorization of the sex industry will only instigate the continued ignorance practiced by heterosexual men and women.

Name withheld at writer's request

The unbearable whiteness of being
BY KATHY DOBIE
(07/19/99)

I can't believe the way the author practically justifies why these people did what they did. How is it possible that you can attribute the violent actions of these young, white males to the premise that they are disillusioned with the life they were born into?

As a Hispanic female, born into what is considered a working-class household, I find that notion ridiculous. Minorities deal with being excluded, discriminated against and ostracized on a daily and continuous basis. We encounter and deal with the same feelings of so-called exclusion, yet we minorities, for the most part, do not go out and shoot people for no reason. As a society, we realize that the cause of violence is the perpetrator's willingness to commit a violent and illegal act. So please, spare us the sob story about how these well-to-do white boys had such a hard life. Tell them if they really think life's hard, they should come stay in Brooklyn for a few days and see how the other half lives. They wouldn't last through the night.

-- G. Velez

Change every reference to race in this article from white to black (or Latino or Native American or any other race) and you have an article so filled with racist diatribes that I doubt Salon would have bothered giving it the time of day. Responding with hate toward what Dobie calls "lonely, none-to-pretty white boys" only feeds the hate and isolation they may be feeling. This articles continues the cycle of violence I'm sure the author deplores. These men and boys don't need more of our scorn, they need more of our compassion. But telling them that they might as well commit suicide because "their families would survive fine without them; indeed, they would be happy to see them go" is not an answer. This article is a misguided, ill-informed and ignorant attempt at addressing this issue.

-- Daniel Crandall

Kathy Dobie was inaccurate in her glib reference to "white supremacists in Sacramento accused of murdering a gay couple." The accused killers live in Redding, 200-plus miles north of Sacramento, and the murdered gay couple also lived in the Redding area. The tie to the Sacramento area was that the FBI has determined that the same men accused of the gay hate crime killing also allegedly torched several Jewish temples in Sacramento recently, illustrating the link between gay bashing and other, more racially motivated hate crimes.

As a resident of Sacramento I concede that we too have skinheads, but none of them has killed anyone -- yet.

-- Stacy Selmants

Formula for disaster
BY KATIE ALLISON GRANJU
(07/19/99)

One of the things my wife looked forward to with the birth of our first child was the chance to breast-feed. Unfortunately, it was physically impossible for her to do so for longer than a very challenging two months. Switching our daughter from the breast to the bottle was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that had to be made for her continued health. Our daughter has not had poorer health than any other of the many children her age in our neighborhood. There are many other contributing factors to a newborn's health, such as home environment and genetics. It's just not so that using formula is tantamount to a death sentence. And stating such a one-sided, alarmist opinion is not good journalism.

Of course it's better to feed a baby breast milk. But sometimes it's just not a decision that's in the best interest of a child, for a thousand different reasons. Making a new mother who cannot breast-feed feel guilty for this does not help anybody. Just think where we would be if there was no such thing as formula.

-- Jay Milton
Seattle

Parents deserve to make informed decisions in how they will care for their children and are only cheated by the misguided attempts of parenting advocates (doctors, nurses, parenting magazines) to assuage possible guilt by withholding facts about the risks in using infant formula. While infant feeding has been upheld as a "lifestyle choice," the truth is that whether a family chooses to breast-feed will impact their child's present and future health.

-- Dawn Friedman

The reach of the infant formula makers is so pervasive that a child may be hooked without the parents' knowledge or permission before the child leaves the hospital. Our first child was breast-fed, and we planned to do the same with our second child, born in May. We kept our new daughter in the room with us to facilitate the feeding process. The hospital staff, after dropping off two "gift" diaper bags filled with infant formula samples, took our daughter to the nursery for a routine, state-mandated blood test. With the Virginia baby swap fresh in my mind, I tagged along to keep an eye on my daughter.

The nurse conducting the test had a bottle of infant formula ready for my daughter. When I protested that my daughter was being breast-fed, the nurse sniffed that my daughter was obviously hungry (as if a heel-stick could not be the source of the screaming and tears). Had I not been there, there is no doubt that my daughter would have been started down the road to infant formula dependence.

-- David Agosto
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

The war over KPFA
BY ANTHONY YORK
(07/17/99)

The real diversity issue at KPFA is about the need for diverse viewpoints in an increasingly monopolized broadcast environment.

Mary Frances Berry and the Pacifica national staff have been attacking KPFA's audience, staff and volunteers, the people who built the Pacifica network with their time and money, because they don't like criticism. Under the pretext of creating more diversity, Pacifica attempts to dismiss all of its critics as violent racists. This in turn justifies calling in the Justice Department, employing armed guards and locking out the staff.

I worked for Pacifica (not KPFA) in the early '80s as a Washington correspondent. As a producer of national programming, I've generally sided with Pacifica on the need for more national programming, a more professional air presence and the need to expand the audience. But expand is the operative word here. The current audience of KPFA is not just a bunch of old white males, a putdown used by Berry and others to justify abandoning the left-wing politics of the station's loyal supporters. The current audience is a foundation to build on. The damage done by Berry and the Pacifica staff may soon be irreversible. Their actions in this dispute violate everything Pacifica stands for. Let's hope these two resign before it's too late.

-- Lewis Cohen
Oakland, Calif.