Letters for December 2, 2004

House of crack

Re “Praying for recovery” by Wesley F. Sander (SN&R Cover, November 18):

Wesley Sander’s article reveals the nature of the sad sacks whose stories he discusses. Every person profiled is a self-indulgent baby, a loafer who has made the conscious decision to abandon productive behavior in favor of vice and self-indulgent hand-wringing over life and their lack of desire to participate. Poor, poor me.

Baloney.

The House of Joseph might as well be the House of Crack. The effect is the same whether one is a drug addict or a Jesus junkie—your problems aren’t your fault, and you shouldn’t have to face them. With drugs, it’s a chemical reaction. With religion, it’s the knowledge the invisible man will make it all right. It’s the same euphoria—in one case delivered with a needle or pill and in the other delivered through a book.

There is a lot of wisdom in the phrase “Crack open your Bible.”

Each of us has unfortunate things happen in our lives, some more than others. There are precious few problems in life that can’t be solved by falling out of bed every morning and working at some sort of job. Even that isn’t always easy. Still, you have to choose to live or not to live. If you choose the latter, don’t bemoan the “demons” that did this to you and then pray for some sort of recovery. Perhaps if the gentlemen profiled were kept busy 10-12 hours a day, they would find that they had less time to feel sorry for themselves and relapse.

Life is about choices. That’s it. The source (and the fix) of most problems can be seen clearly in a mirror.

Dave Garner
Gridley

Frivolous claims, frivolous letters

Re “Scott may be hot, but O.J.’s not guilty” (SN&R Letters, November 11):

Just when I thought all of the tunnel-visioned morons had spoken their piece on November 2, I discovered a stray in our midst when I came across the letter written by Ralph Rivers. He states that because the Brown family refused to release their phone records of June 12, 1994, then Simpson must surely be innocent.

The least Mr. Rivers could do would be to check the actual court transcripts of the trial. In there, he would find that on February 7, 1995, prosecutor Marcia Clark entered Juditha Brown’s phone records into evidence. To save time, the defense immediately stipulated that the records were true and accurate and that Juditha Brown’s last call to her daughter was at 9:42 p.m., not at 11 p.m., as Mr. Rivers states. This fact was also stipulated to the grand jury and at the civil trial. In 2000, Simpson’s lawyers raised this point again as a ploy to convince an appellate court to throw out the civil verdict against Simpson.

Instead, a federal judge threw out the suit, calling it frivolous. Come to think of it, in light of what happened on November 2, so is this whole issue, as well as this letter.

But I’ll wager Mr. Rivers voted for Bush, as well.

Ron Waggoner
Sacramento

Child molesters are terrorists

Re “Branded” by Chrisanne Beckner (SN&R Cover, November 4):

Let me put this as bluntly as I can: I am sending a petition out to everyone I know to boycott SN&R, its affiliates and all companies who still have the slovenly, despicable moral standards to advertise in your pathetic, insidious journalistic rag. Never before has your publication been so guilty of an irresponsible defense of the most reprehensible form of urban terrorists the world has ever known.

I assume next week your wretched piece of filth of a publication will draw a sympathetic picture of Osama bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and foreign terrorists, now that you’ve conducted such a vigorous defense of national terrorists.

You and your publication are beneath my contempt. I hope for your sake neither you nor anyone else at your publication has to go through the hell of sexual abuse or, worse still, have that happen to a child. Personally, were I governor of California, I would have Child Protective Services kick down your door and jail the author, the editor, and anyone else who signed off on this piece.

Despicable. That’s the only word for it.

Seek help while you still can. I pity you.

Geoff Lilley
via e-mail