Weather Editorial Was All Wet
Re “Is There Still a Sun Up There?” editorial, Feb. 23: Yes, people living in Southern California get used to nice weather. Yes, we’re spoiled in that way. But I found the (possibly well-intentioned) editorial with the theme “it’s just rain, get used to it” insensitive and insulting.
It is contradicted by reports elsewhere in your paper on the destruction caused by the recent rains. In addition to destroying homes and property, this amount of rain kills people.
And what do you mean, Southern Californians don’t know weather fear? When it’s raining again and the hill above your house is threatening to come down, when your car is stuck in a river that used to be a street, or when everything around you is heat and tinder and smoke -- doesn’t that count? When you’re jumping at aftershocks -- I don’t know if that’s weather, but it’s fear.
People complain about bad weather. Get used to it.
Emmy Goldknopf
Los Angeles
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Why would The Times mock its readers for being a bit obsessed with the weather of late? The logic employed, that the weather normally babies us and is much worse more often elsewhere so we should feel guilty about our excitement, is so faulty. Iraq is more dangerous, Africa is more diseased, China has more pollution, Iran’s government is more extreme: Does this context mean we must sneer at our own concerns about danger, disease, pollution and government?
Children are born every day everywhere, but when it happens to us, is it not legitimately a big deal? Is it not a time-honored tradition for news to emphasize the local angle? There was a photo in the same edition of a tree-crushed car on Silver Lake Boulevard. Is that not an entirely commonplace thing, a damaged car, and yet, isn’t it a perfect symbolic photo of our interest and concern? In mocking readers who might be in a tizzy about the weather, the irony is that The Times mocks itself and its very purpose.
Douglas Baldwin
La Canada Flintridge