Letters : Oratory Hits Highs and Lows

On Thursday evening (March 21), I attended West Hollywood’s version of “The Gong Show”--the City Council rent control public hearing--during which various pros and cons were presented by members of the bristling audience. The emotional level of oratory ranged from cretinous to compelling. The following is what I had to say:

As a rent-paying manager speaking for an understandably alarmed and sure-to-overreact owner, I urge you not to perform a radical mastectomy under the guise of “concern for tenant welfare” (a k a rent control and its related annual increase and rollback situations), because you may well be unleashing a terminal cancer, and West Hollywood will most assuredly assume the status of a slum with any and all forms of immoral and antisocial subcultures synonymous with such a decayed state proliferating.

In short, look carefully before you cut, or you won’t have very much left to look at.

Returning to my place against the wall, I was called a “hit man” by a member of the opposition. “Maybe so,” I snapped back, “but at least I’m not firing blanks.”

WILLIAM MARGOLD

West Hollywood