Letters to the editor

Ever since NBC made the announcement to replace Jay Leno with Conan O’Brien on “The Tonight Show” in 2009, I have been hoping the network would change its mind. Why must youth always be served? The baby boomer generation will be the largest group over the age of 45, and the advertisers should finally open their eyes to this. More disposable income than ever, and able to stay up later as well.

It’s painful and annoying to watch O’Brien try to talk to his guests. He’s like this overeager little boy who constantly interrupts his guests. Leno is fun, easygoing, and you know he’s going to ask the right questions and get some good laughs.

All I can say is, if “The Tonight Show” goes to O’Brien, I can finally get some sleep.

Dee Dee Messina

West Hollywood

If Leno goes to another network, I’ll follow, and I suspect many others will. He has established an audience, and it is not O’Brien’s audience. I doubt O’Brien will change his material to fit the earlier, older audience. If O’Brien comes to the earlier hour, he will simply bring his own audience, and NBC will see a drastic drop from Leno’s to O’Brien’s numbers. If there is anyone who wants to watch both in the same time block, there’s always TiVo.

Phil Van Camp

Murrieta

The government of Iraq wants Blackwater USA out of Iraq. Can you blame it? Blackwater contractors are accountable to neither U.S. courts nor Iraqi courts. They are mercenaries immune from justice. Get them out. Use the money we are paying them to raise the salaries of U.S. soldiers. Maybe then our military men and women will be more likely to reenlist rather than “going Blackwater.”

Ex-soldiers can make thousands of dollars more as Backwater employees -- and without that nasty business of actually being held accountable for their actions.

Randal Seech

San Clemente

Although The Times has some difficulty classifying the legal role of mercenaries hired by the United States to operate in Iraq, Article 3 of the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries is much clearer: “A mercenary ... who participates directly in hostilities or in a concerted act of violence, as the case may be, commits an offense for the purposes of the Convention.” In other words, mercenaries in combat are war criminals.

Michael Haas

Los Angeles

While I agree with Kate Schmidt that Marion Jones is “arguably the greatest female sprinter in our history,” Jones didn’t achieve that status because she injected steroids. Jones’ athletic achievements are the result of hard work and, not to be dismissed, good genetics. There is no doubt that any steroids Jones took assisted her training, but steroids alone did not make her an elite athlete. She still had to do all her training, competing and mental psyching. It’s about time that people admit this fact.

It’s also about time we decide what we want from the sports figures we turn into social icons. Do we want good, clean, honestly competitive sport, or are we more interested in supermen and women? Do we admire our athletes enough to want them to stick around for our pleasure and awe, or are we satisfied to get a few incredible seasons from them, only to see them waste away from the effects of synthetic assistance? Assisted or otherwise, Jones earned her medals. The U.S. Olympic Committee should return them and punish those who convinced her that she couldn’t succeed without their “help.”

Michelle Solotar

Los Angeles

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas cannot be considered an “affirmative action hire.” Affirmative action takes past discrimination into account in order to level the current field for minorities. The goal is to help those who were mistreated in the past. Thomas was not selected as part of an affirmative action policy, and certainly not to help minorities achieve equality, but rather in a cynical attempt to place a hard-right conservative on the bench.

It’s obvious that he was selected for two reasons: because he would be a reliable far-right vote, and he could win confirmation. Being black made it easier for him to be confirmed because liberals would be hesitant to vote against him for fear of appearing racist. This is not affirmative action, this is cynical and manipulative politics.

Randall Gellens

San Diego

James Kirchick’s simplistic view of liberal resentment over Thomas’ Supreme Court appointment misses the point. Thomas used the system to advance himself and succeed, at which point he did an about-face and used anti-affirmative action opinions to pull up the ladder from behind himself, leaving other minorities to suffer the effects of past discrimination. He turned his back on programs that encourage public institutions to be more representative of the population. Then Thomas has the audacity to write a partisan book while currently sitting on the highest judicial body in the United States.

Dennis Snyder

Long Beach

Affirmative action was not created to reward the disadvantaged but to eliminate discrimination against qualified people of color. Quotas are not specified. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he got his opportunity in part because of affirmative action. Others did too, I’m sure.

Of course the first President Bush did not select Thomas because of affirmative action. He had two reasons: He wanted a conservative on the court, and he wanted the black vote. Why isn’t that perfectly obvious?

Martin Rich

Encino

I’m a pragmatist. Thomas is a Supreme Court justice. We’re stuck with him. His stand on affirmative action is valid even if some people believe it is hypocritical, a feeling that does not matter. What I don’t like about Thomas is that he and Justice Antonin Scalia think that the Constitution must be interpreted according to 18th century beliefs. I hope that nonsensical stand is gutted by a smart attorney.

David Burkenroad

Los Angeles

Most blacks have been promoted because they earned it. But there is no denying that some promotions were made at the expense of competence to correct imbalances in racial makeup at corporations, departments and institutions. Even without affirmative action, political appointments would be made with an eye on ethnicity and gender. A Supreme Court without a black or a woman? Unthinkable!

Joseph Sterling

Temecula

No! This is not a wise expenditure. We will need this money to pay reparations to whomever is going to pick up the pieces in Iraq after we leave. The conceit that the United States has some legitimate status in Iraq is erroneous. We have no more legal standing there than the British and French had at the Suez Canal, the Wehrmacht had in Warsaw or the Russians had in Budapest. The Anglo-American invasion of 2003 was an illegal act of war, and the continued presence of U.S. forces is an ongoing war crime.

Our failure to understand this fact is the ignorance of empire and will only lead us next year to be asking similar questions about our presence in Iran or God knows where. The empire is over; let us come home and rebuild the republic.

Joseph Gius

Los Angeles

So China is angry and “demands that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements” to give the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal. While the Chinese government has many responsibilities, instructing other countries about whom they should or should not give awards to is not one of them.

Perhaps the Neanderthals in Beijing would accept a trade deal instead: They take on Osama bin Laden as their enemy, and we’ll take the Dalai Lama as ours. I wonder, what would it be like having someone devoted to peace and nonviolence as your enemy?

Cindy Fabricius-Segal

Upland

I’m at a loss to understand why there is so much teeth-gnashing over the housing slump, when anyone with half a brain could see that home prices were overinflated and mortgages were too easily obtained, a combination that was a recipe for disaster. When the dust settles, which should be in about two to three years, housing prices should be more realistic, yet inevitably speculators will push them up and we’ll see the same scenario occur again. When will we ever learn?

A.J. Buttacavoli

Walnut Creek, Calif.