Gee, all that sounds so wonderful, maybe I'll become a conservative. On second though, maybe not.

Jim Skerritt

Palm Desert



Klavan's worry about the right losing the culture is specious: The right never had it in the first place. He's proof-positive that conservatives should never try to talk about art, let alone attempt to create it. I'm afraid the only thing Mamet gets out of the deal is instant irrelevance, artistically speaking.

Justin Tanner

Los Angeles



What a relief to see that, according to Klavan, the right's "anti-gay prejudice" is finally fading. Funny he didn't mention that those on the right had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to this so-called new political awareness by "brain-dead" liberals -- just like they were to numerous pieces of legislation, including civil rights, equal workplace rights for women and men and environmental awareness.

Oh, and about Klavan's observation that conservatives "admit when they're wrong and change their minds" -- I find it hard to believe that he actually wrote this with a straight face. We are talking about the ideology of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, just to name a few.

Happy fifth anniversary of the Iraq war to you, Mr. Klavan. If we are lucky, a liberal, brain dead or otherwise, will be elected as our next president. Then perhaps we could drag the right, kicking and screaming, into ending this bloody, costly debacle.

Bob Harris

Hollywood

Black anger in the United States

Re "It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world," Opinion, March 19

Instead of a rational explanation of her anger as a black woman, Erin Aubry Kaplan resorts to an angry diatribe peppered with the very same venom that she claims to deplore. She writes, "Nothing makes them [white people] more skittish than realizing that there are angry black people in their midst." After mentioning two nitwits like Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus, she writes, "white anger is seen as fundamentally reasoned and righteous, and Americans have an almost limitless capacity to forgive it when it isn't."

Being a 51-year-old white male, I was taken aback as I realized that Sen. Barack Obama, who Kaplan characterized as an angry black man, makes me "skittish." I thought that I admired him. I guess I view Limbaugh's and Imus' anger as fundamentally reasoned. I thought they were two small-minded idiots. Apparently because I am white, I require a black woman to tell me what I am really thinking and why.

Racism is not limited to skin color. There will never be an intelligent discussion of race in our country when the very people who profess their desire to eliminate racism continue to perpetuate it. Obama attempted to address that very issue. It's too bad that Kaplan chose not to listen.

William R. Paxton

Los Angeles

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