Reader letters: Let the Marianne Williamson debate rage on

Regarding the column with the print headline “Snicker at Our Peril” [June 29], about presidential candidate Marianne Williamson in the first round of Democratic debates:

Mary McNamara said it best with “an air of easy confidence that seemed at odds with the abrupt strangeness of what she was saying … jarring and tangential … wacky.”

You could have left it right there.

Can you just see her telling Mitch McConnell “that legislative details are not necessarily as arresting as rediscovering our moral center and collective energy”? She’d be laughed out of the chamber.

I am wondering about the online headline “Ignore Marianne Williamson at Your Peril.” What will happen? Will she cast a spell on all of us?

Dan Johnson

Salem, Va.

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The Trump experience has shown American voters that it is dangerous to our democracy, our rights and our national security to elect someone who campaigns on slogans and is utterly unprepared to lead our hugely complex national enterprise.

That Marianne Williamson derided candidates who offer serious policy proposals and detailed plans is a disqualifier, not an asset.

Sorry, but she needs to self-help herself out of the presidential campaign.

Marcy M. Rothenberg

Porter Ranch

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Marianne Williamson should be given credit for turning in one of the most impressive debate performances among all the candidates during the two-night debate schedule. Although Williamson did not have an opportunity to speak as often as many of the “top-tier” candidates, when she did speak it was quite evident that she was truly speaking from her heart and her soul.

Her outrage over the “kidnapping” and “child abuse” being undertaken by the current administration was not to be ignored, but it was made ever so much more poignant in that it was truly felt, deep moral outrage. The absolute conviction with which Ms. Williamson speaks is truly refreshing. It should carry her far in this presidential campaign. At the very least it will hopefully give some of her competitors a cause to stop and reflect before they speak.

Gary Tereshkow

Palm Springs

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Thank you for an intelligent, courageous, wise, conscious view of a very special, different candidate.

Myriam Soler

Los Angeles

Finding the fun in Dems’ debate

A hearty thank you for Lorraine Ali’s layered and witty commentary of the Democratic debates [“Miami Democratic Debate,” June 27 and 28].

My first laugh was “Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand interrupted everyone, every few minutes, rolling over their time as if it was a plush Persian rug.”

My membership in Ali’s fan club was sealed with “After Diaz-Balart failed, twice, to make sense of entrepreneur Andrew Yang’s complex equation for keeping the middle class afloat, his glasses slid down his nose like a white flag of surrender.”

I read the article to simply ascertain the facts of the last night’s proceedings, but the robust, symphonic writing added layers of rich depth that gave me so much more.

Mindy Johnson

Westlake Village

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My wife and I greatly enjoyed Lorraine Ali’s coverage of Round 2 of the Democratic presidential debates. Her sense of humor is as refreshing as her incisive observations on this feisty rendition of low-brow TV. Especially Joe Biden’s “crime of growing old,” not the least of your droll character observations.

Jeff Denker

Malibu

Sanders not so simple to sum up

Lorraine Ali’s hit piece on Sarah Huckabee Sanders [“One Tough Act to Follow,” July 1] used the pejorative “mouthpiece.” That makes it seem that other presidents and press were paragons of truth.

Ignoring tools of the trade, such as exaggerations, inaccurate characterizations and cherry-picking, some lies are worse than others, as the law rightly recognizes, possibly even reaching the level of criminality, such as Bill Clinton’s lie that led to him being impeached.

Others may have huge repercussions on the nation’s affairs, such as President Obama’s promise that if you like your health care plan and doctor you could keep them.

I prefer many of Trump’s braggadocious and inconsequential lies, such as the size of the crowd on inauguration day, to those.

David Goodwin

Pasadena

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When it comes to Sanders, and other such prolific and accomplished liars, one has to wonder if there isn’t something lurking behind their apparently pathological lying.

Chuck Almdale

North Hills

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This: “Through it all, she exuded levels of conviction most folks can’t muster even when they’re telling the truth.”

Bob Wieting

Simi Valley

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Your typical disrespectful, insulting rant against Sanders reinforces the public’s impression that The Times is merely the Pravda of the far left.

Sandra Wilson

Venice

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I must disagree with the article’s final conclusion. Sanders didn’t leave a “low bar,” she left a really high bar. Certainly higher than Sean “Spicey” Spicer ever achieved. He was probably too moral and professional to come close to her qualities. To be able to lie and twist the truth and deliver her message with such conviction and a straight face takes an amazing character. No, Sanders left a really high bar, as in “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Craig Peterson

Santa Monica

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Your criticism of Sanders is like the pot calling the kettle black. I read the L.A. Times every day, and it’s riddled from cover to cover with half-truths, exaggeration, misrepresentation, distortion and outright lies. The Times’ reporters, columnists and critics have no restraints on them, because the editors condone and encourage all of the above when it has anything to do with Trump or anyone in his administration.

The Calendar section of The Times was always fun and enjoyable to read, but you and your politically correct colleagues have ruined it.

Norman Eagle

Palos Verdes Estates

New LACMA plan is shocking

The photo running online with the story about opposition to LACMA’s redesign [“LACMA Opposition Group Vows to Keep Fighting the Museum’s Zumthor Plan,” June 25] looks like the back of a small and dated airport. And there appears to be no landscaping up to the edge of this building. Landscaping had always distinguished this museum campus. This design and money spent on it should be sufficient reason to terminate the museum director.

As a professor of architecture and urban design, I am shocked to think the county would permit any building spanning over Wilshire Boulevard let alone this cheesy building. Most cities protect major urban corridors rather than undercut them as this flyover scheme does.

The buildings planned to be torn down are valuable statements to the eras they were built in by significant American architects.

What is so compelling about the original museum buildings is that they do not attempt to compete with added buildings but serve as a backdrop (the glue) to the Japanese Pavilion, La Brea Tar Pits visitor center and the theater addition to what will be the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

This LACMA design is a destructive proposal for a very special part of Wilshire Boulevard.

J.E. Lange

Denver, Colo.

Chang far away on ‘Yesterday’

It would be unfortunate if Justin Chang’s review of the excellent Danny Boyle film “Yesterday” [“The What-if ‘Yesterday’ Is Nowhere, Man,” June 28] were to have a negative impact on the movie’s success.

Chang makes it clear from the start that he’s not willing to accept the suspension of disbelief that allows for the film’s primary premise to succeed. Rather, he attacks it, calling it a “thinly imagined comic fantasy” and claiming that viewers must accept a “genial what-if absurdity” of the premise. Well, exactly. We know it’s not a documentary, after all.

He refers to a poignant scene near the end of the film as an “offensive climactic twist.” For spoiler reasons, I can’t explain what that scene entails, but it’s anything but offensive.

It’s still only midyear, but I suspect Patel and Boyle may get Oscar nominations for their work. That could make Chang look like a “Nowhere Man” for his dismissal of what is one of the better films of the year.

Jay Berman

Manhattan Beach

Interview keeps Tom Petty alive

I’m listening to Randy Lewis’ interview with Tom Petty [“Tom Petty’s Final Interview: There Was Supposed to Have Been So Much More,” Oct. 4, 2017] for about the fourth or fifth time. The tunes will outlive us all but this interview makes it feel like he is still with us. And of course it still sucks that he isn’t.

Jim Tosches

Encinitas

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