Editors Cross the Line to Community Bashing

* Your editorial “The Name Game Has Crossed the Line” (April 3) has crossed my line. I am astonished by the limited perception of Valley realities exhibited by your limp and rather thoughtless editorial. The Valley is no longer in the 1950s. We are well into the 1990s, pointing positively toward the 2000s.

Demographic changes are transforming many neighborhoods from clusters of nameless and voiceless ticky-tacky boxes into richly diverse and aspiring communities with new energy coming together in common pursuits, What started as Neighborhood Watch community meetings in Canoga Park have become community activist missions in South Winnetka.

The Times misses the point that “community” in the traditional American as well as sociological sense is abiding and emerging in the Valley. Unfortunately, your editors also cross the line from community advocacy to community bashing.

What’s in a name? Is West Hills any bigger or grander sans Canoga Park? Absolutely not. What does Winnetka lose if its southern residents lay claim to Woodland Hills and Pierce College roots?

In fact, West Hills might have more vitality if it were, like Gaul, divided into parts including North West Hills, South West Hills, East West Hills and, of course, West West Hills. Just imagine the earlobe-to-earlobe smiles of the newly dubbed West West Hills hillside huggers.

Instead of leading Valleyites to brighter vistas, you are locked in the grip of a sad and reactionary historical perspective. Owensmouth is gone, Canoga Park is dying, the Picos and Sepulvedas are also gone. What happened to Canoga Park Rotary, the granddad and mother of all West Valley Rotary clubs, should also happen in a broader sense to older communities begetting newer and richer communities. Why not? That is what history teaches.

People are going to reach out and assert their need for identity and value in this loveless and punishing Los Angeles sociopolitically-correct and sometimes corrupted climate of 1994.

I would appreciate The Times better if it dropped the role of Malvolio, keeper of the Duke’s estate in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” It would be more appropriate for The Times to trust the good sense, goodwill and good humor of well-meaning and community-serving folks in our Valley who remain inextricably wound into the values fabric of traditional American culture.

JERRY DOMINE

Canoga Park/Winnetka