Readers React: What the box office doesn’t say about America

To the editor: When Jonah Goldberg says, “The left may be anti-military,” I am not sure if he is saying that is a possibility or that we liberals are in fact that way. (“Hollywood, where liberal values reign -- except at the box office,” Op-Ed, July 7)

I can say that this liberal is not anti-military but anti-military adventurism. I do not support sending our men and women in the military into harm’s way for dubious reasons colored by jingoism. I would suggest this is pro-military.

Goldberg then questions liberals’ commitment to family values. Certainly I don’t value them when they come with the quotation marks suggesting slavish obedience to the way it used to be. We liberals are in fact members of families whose happiness and, yes, morals we value.

In the real world, families are complex entities, and how they strive to find the right answers to life’s problems and questions needs to be managed with 21st century thinking, not slogans.

Bill Elmelund, Los Angeles

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To the editor: After years of watching films and TV shows about young women who contemplate abortion but instead choose to give birth, I found “Obvious Child” to be a refreshingly brave film for depicting a young woman who isn’t ready for motherhood choosing to terminate a pregnancy, a choice that many real-life women make every day.

Goldberg says that the film’s disappointing box-office numbers are evidence of Americans being more conservative than Hollywood. I would suggest that “Obvious Child” was hindered more by a lousy ad campaign, which didn’t prompt me to see the film. Rather, I was persuaded by the favorable reviews.

The majority of Americans support a woman’s right to make reproductive choices at least some of the time. The fact that most people are missing out on “Obvious Child” doesn’t diminish this fact

Clifford J. Tasner, North Hollywood