OK, now it’s your turn
Re “Our Mission,” editorial, Oct. 23
Your mission is flawed. The newspaper is not a “citizen” by any definition. You do not have the right to vote, drive a car, serve in the armed forces. Nor have you ever done these things. Maybe this is why I rarely agree with your editorials. The Times believes that it is something it isn’t, and I have the responsibility and integrity to point out the difference in writing to you regularly.
KENNETH W. KELLER
Valencia
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I sat down to read the editorial page this morning and cannot believe the decision to make the print smaller. It is my assumption that the majority of your readers are over 50. What were you thinking?
LOIS TANNENBAUM
West Hills
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Reading the new L.A. Times’ mission and principles cracked me up. You may think all that stuff you claim to be true, but from my perspective as an activist for Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, your claims are just so much puffery. I challenge you to read your editorial and ask yourselves how you do at defending civil liberties when the liberty in question is owning guns.
JIM DODD
San Diego
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Re “Op-Ed, explained,” Opinion, Oct. 23
There’s no single hard-news columnist in your editorial lineup who offers a consistent critique of the empire or who has a progressive perspective on public policy issues facing this country. Who will point out the emperor’s new clothes?
REV. JIM CONN
Former Mayor
Santa Monica
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Congratulations on your new first-section layout. You’ve finally collected all of the opinion pieces in one section.
ALBERT NICHOLS
Los Angeles
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Presenting pictures and personal philosophies of regular Times’ columnists is a brilliant and overdue idea. However, Joel Stein’s juvenile, egocentric, it’s-all-about-me blather is mildly amusing at best; his satire is heavy-handed and insulting, and he is, in general, a waste of newsprint. My suggestion? Lose him.
CAROL HAMLIN
Irvine
*
Dump Jonah Goldberg. His views are often so extreme that, unless you are trying to cover in equal depth every part of the political spectrum, from far right to far left (which in my opinion does not make much sense), I can’t see what he contributes to your paper or your message.
PETER SMITH
Vienna, Austria
*
I was enjoying your informative special Oct. 23 editorial page and Op-Ed page until I came to Max Boot’s characterization of himself as being “a conservative internationalist -- someone in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.” If so, that’s quite a high-powered tradition of which to be a part. I see Boot as being a militarist in the tradition of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Attila the Hun and Ivan the Terrible. A very harsh judgment I know, but Boot brings out the worst in me.
GEORGE MILLER
Los Osos
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Let’s give it up for Niall Ferguson, Max Boot and Jonathan Chait. These aren’t people whose views I share very often, but they’re the only ones whose brief introductions on the new Op-Ed page contained none of the following words: fun, Seinfeld, totally awesome, completely sucks, humor, giggle and entertained.
CYNTHIA CARLE
Los Angeles
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Why do most of your Op-Ed columnists look as if they just graduated from college? Are they using 20-year-old photos, or is there no room for baby boomers’ views? Do journalists’ abilities fade on their 50th birthday?
NEILL LEVY
Chatsworth