Rocking the Dogg

After your cover stories on rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg (Nov. 7) and Interscope Records executives Ted Field and Jimmy Iovine (Oct. 24), I feel compelled to write.

To put people like them on your cover in this town is to glorify and condone their actions. As the old show-business saying goes, “No publicity is bad publicity.” That is why I am so outraged at having covers two times in three weeks dedicated to sleazy muckrakers.

Of further worry is the Oct. 24 sidebar profile of Doug Morris. As he has climbed the corporate ladder at Atlantic, he has consistently solicited musicians from the bottom of the musical barrel. Just a few years back, he made a deal with Luther Campbell to distribute 2 Live Crew.

I think it is your paper’s responsibility to give some perspective to the man’s career, if only because you portray him as the front-runner to take over as head of America’s most powerful record company, the music division at Time Warner.

Messrs. Morris, Field, Iovine and Dogg may cloak themselves in the First Amendment; however, their living is casually made holding up a youth so influenced by the media that lives may be lost in the name of this “art” form.

ELLIOTT ZUCKER

Beverly Hills

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The real tragedy involved with Snoop Doggy Dogg’s predicament is that he’s practically guaranteed a No. 1 spot on the charts--and unfortunately that spot will be filled by someone who perpetuates all the negative myths and stereotypes about African-Americans, has an arrest record as long as one of Rick James’ wigs and is already a walking statistic.

I look forward to the day when a truly innovative genius bursts on the scene who can pull kids and adults out of dead-end lives, who can get them rolling on a path toward real change and who doesn’t fulfill the KKK fantasy that all minorities will stay neatly isolated in their ‘hoods and continue to kill each other off.

It’s not supposed to happen that way. African-Americans are jewels in the crown of this incredibly resourceful country. I wish Snoop Doggy Dogg the best of luck in looking more like his idol Al Green than a chapter of “True Stories of the Highway Patrol.”

Message to Snoop: We need a leader that doesn’t follow.

KAREN ORSI

Sherman Oaks