Letters to the Editor

See yah, Sarah!

I was born and raised in Detroit. After getting laid off from the City of Detroit, I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and returned to Detroit in 2004.

My first response to Sarah Klein's "Go west, young gal" (Metro Times, Dec. 6) was "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." In a sudden déjà vu, however, I remembered saying the same thing to the "L.A. sucks" whiners in the '80s, '90s, and into the '00s.

The L.A. Sucks crowd would recite a long litany of whines: earthquakes, smog, freeway congestion, Crips and Bloods, graffiti, carjackings, serial killers, unemployment, riots, the L.A. Times, brush fires, lousy schools, the brutal (allegedly) LAPD (where I worked!), no culture, New York is cooler, etc. Sarah's Detroit sucks list was just as impressive. I couldn't refute the anti-L.A. list, just as I can't refute Sarah's specific rants. I certainly didn't move back to the D because of its excellent city services.

I moved back to Detroit because I wanted to be part of its rebuilding. In a perhaps sappy way, I felt and still feel that Detroit needs me, my energy and my dollars.

And I moved back for selfish reasons: The housing dollar goes muy far in Detroit compared to just about every other place. It's exciting living here: free festivals, great music, art and classy museums. And if you live in Midtown, you can walk to most of this. I still love L.A. (though I hate the Lakers). But every day's an event in Detroit.

I've come to accept that Woodward Avenue runs through my veins.

Sarah, as the saying goes, the grass ain't always greener on the other side of the fence, or on the other side of Bob Seger's great divide. You certainly have the required bad attitude to make it in Detroit. I'd hate to see that attitude go California-mellow on us. Nonetheless, the door will stay open for you.

Good luck! We'll miss you. —Tom Page, Detroit

Anyone who's been to other cities long enough to get a pulse from the people who live there learns quickly that everyone gripes about where they live. They whine about the heat in Texas, the traffic in L.A., the tourists in N.Y., the outright hostile vibe in Chicago, and so on.

It seems Sarah Klein is in for a role-reversal as she seeks her geographical cure. Now, rather than being the one complaining, she'll be what they're complaining about in "sunny, shiny California." That being: Bitter, cynical, raging narcissists from the Midwest moving there every day to further overcrowd their sink-hole of souls.

P.S. Where in California don't they have homeless people? —Peter Midtgard, Redford

Jack Lessenberry has sex on the brain. Bill Clinton wasn't impeached for "tasteless sex acts," as Mr. Lessenberry states in "Terrorist state: The USA" (Metro Times, Dec. 6).

Bill Clinton is the only elected U.S. president to be impeached because he committed acts of perjury and obstruction of justice. The U.S. House of Representatives did the right thing when it impeached Bill Clinton. —Martin Yanosek, St. Clair Shores

I want to know where the hell Jack Lessenberry gets off saying it's my fault Bush is in the White House and I'm responsible for the war we're in right now.

Every time I've voted in my life I've voted Libertarian. They are the only party that believes on a philosophical level that foreign wars are not within the legal realm of the U.S. government.

I don't support this two-ring circus that runs our government: Lessenberry does. Over the years Jack the Hack's writings have revealed that he is a supporter of our bipartisan system. The only third party he has ever propped is the Greens, who are the biggest bunch of limp-wristed commie rat turds this side of the Detroit River. Before this election, Lessenberry urged us not to vote for them.

The fact that he is such a loud political voice in our area and that he supports the parties that put us in this mess would suggest that the blood is on his hands if anybody's. —Dan Keizer, St. Clair Shores

I enjoy reading Lessenberry's column every week in Metro Times. For the most part, I agree with your assertions about the Iraq situation, but I disagree that going ahead with impeachment proceedings against Dubya would be counterproductive. Removing him would be practical — a practical lesson in democracy, as well as a practical tool in flushing out government cover-ups and incompetence. To say that democracy would be "weakened if we get in the habit of trying to remove any president we don't like" implies impeachment in this case would be used to remove an unpopular president, rather than as impeachment is intended: as a weapon, albeit unwieldy, to deter presidential malfeasance. Granted, as John Vining said, it's a "dilatory and inefficient process." But it serves none to shy away from it because some deem it as habitual. What begs clarity is whether the American political system promotes the election of habitual wrongdoers to public office in an age of information hangover and drift. If one saw the Iraq war with the immediacy of some, in terms of life or death for tens of thousands, the question of impeachment would not be debatable; it would be moot. —Renoir Gaither, Toledo

Erratum: Due to an editing error, Jack Lessenberry's column, "Terrorist state: The USA" (Dec. 6) incorrectly rendered Lindsay Lohan's "two mysterious words" to the family of the late Robert Altman. "Be adequite," she advised them. See metrotimes.com for the corrected column.