Hateful Speech in Congress
Your editorial, “Free Speech That’s Costing Congress a Lot” (May 14), indicates that your hypocrisy is apparently unlimited.
The pattern is clear. No statement by any Democratic member of Congress, no matter how vile, intemperate or unfounded, deserves even mild scolding by The Times. When Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) compared the Speaker to “a Hitler,” The Times was silent. When Rangel said that conservatives who wanted to cut spending were equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, you said nothing. Conversely, even the most mild verbal transgression by a Republican causes The Times to go ballistic in its sanctimony.
DONALD BRIAN WARD
Los Angeles
* You were making sense with that editorial until you said, “The radical left is by no means lacking in practitioners of hate speech and similar verbal filth.”
The editorial was about the foul mouths of Congress and you bring up the “radical left”? Whom exactly were you referring to? Ron Dellums? Dick Gephardt? Maybe, gasp, socialist of all socialists, Ted Kennedy? The reference to the “radical left” (as if any semblance of one really existed in America in 1995) seemed forced and warrantless. The American left has had its fringe elements, but for the last decade, it has been the right wing that has forwarded the culture of violence and division in America’s political arena.
ZAPATA ESPINOZA
Los Angeles
* Regarding the slur by Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) against gays and his subsequent apology (May 12 and 13): Verbal shorthand? That may be. However, whose who use “homos” may also have among their shorthand repertoire other hateful, unacceptable “short forms.”
House Republicans and Democrats alike should take appropriate and immediate action against Cunningham. Failure to do so implies approval of hate and bigotry.
GLEN W. REDMAN
Los Angeles