Celebrations Need No-Fault Insurance

I was disgusted to read Randy Harvey and Mark Heisler’s journalistic 1-2 punch in support of lack of accountability [June 25]. I am in my early 40s and was raised to believe that, with rare exception, we are all blessed with the free will and ability to make choices. That is why it never crossed my mind for even a moment to blame anyone other than the idiots themselves who destroyed and vandalized property for the riot outside Staples Center. However, true to form the “media elite” can’t see it that way.

Mr. Harvey ridiculously analogizes the Staples Center rioters to the downtrodden peasants of 18th-century France who stormed the monarch’s palace when he equates broadcasting the game on an outdoor giant video screen to the comment by Marie Antoinette, after being told her people were starving and had no bread, to “Let them eat cake.”

Also, if the trashing of police cars was done by Angelenos who felt “alienated from the society in which they live,” I doubt very much this alienation was because they couldn’t score a Laker ticket. If that were the case, literally millions of us should have been rioting.

Mr. Heisler is no better when he explains that the grandiosity with which professional sporting championships has become imbued allows some of us to confuse “mayhem with joy.” Excuse me, but I’m sure most thinking people would have no difficulty distinguishing between these opposites even if Glen Rice appears on the cover of TV Guide and The Times sends eight writers to cover the event instead of four.

When will we stop excusing the inexcusable and defending the indefensible? The only way to expect accountability is to assign accountability where it belongs.

RIC OTTAIANO

Fullerton

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Randy Harvey’s “Not for the People” hit the mark. I haven’t paid the price to see any major league sport for years. I refuse to contribute to the ridiculous salaries paid to superstar pro athletes. If an athlete’s salary of millions of dollars per year to sink baskets, hit a baseball, or throw a football is justified, then what should cops and firefighters, who risk their lives daily, be paid?

But guess what? The consumer is king. If every single ordinary working man and woman in the L.A. area said, “Enough. I’m never going to shell out more than one-hour’s pay at the current minimum wage, to see any sporting event,” things would change. When only Jack Nicholson and 100 other movie stars and corporate execs show up, what will happen? Will Nicholson say, “OK, I’ll take care of Shaq’s $50 million this year”?

ROBERT W. BLISS

Mission Viejo

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Randy Harvey stated that there’s “no excuse for violence,” and also acknowledged that the melee “probably” would have occurred, but his underlying implication that the exclusion of the common fan from Staples played a role is dead wrong. No one was excluded from the parade, and yet additional looting and vandalism took place Wednesday.

It is not right for [Jerry] Buss to have to shoulder even one iota of responsibility for what took place after the game, and it is not fair to suggest that he lower his ticket prices to accommodate a broader spectrum of fans. Like it or not, sports is a business, and its pricing is governed by supply and demand and a need to generate profits in order to be sustainable.

ELI EISENBERG

Agoura Hills

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I find it very disappointing that Red Auerbach, Jerry Krause, and several letter writers to The Times felt the need to rain on Phil Jackson’s victory parade. They complain that his fantastic success is solely due to being blessed with the best players available.

I agree that Jerry West deserves a great deal of credit for bringing Shaq and Kobe to the Lakers (as well as the heat for the Glen Rice-Eddie Jones blunder).

I also think Jerry Krause deserves praise for finding Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, and many of the Bulls’ great role players.

But have we forgotten how both of those teams fared before Phil Jackson took the helm?

ART ALENIK

Laguna Beach

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Reader Mark Roth incorrectly wrote, “Pat [Riley] had won a grand total of zero titles without Magic, Kareem and home-court advantage . . . “ in the June 24 Viewpoint. Pat Riley and the Lakers won the championship in 1985 without home-court advantage.

HERSHEL REMER

Los Angeles

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