Feedback: Understanding Muslims can help

Television critic Lorraine Ali’s article [“Confronting How We See Muslims,” March 24] drives home the point that knowledge and familiarity are everything. Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have been bitter enemies ever since Pakistan was created, in 1947. The two neighbors, each with a nuclear arsenal, have fought several wars with each other.

And yet, roughly 200 million Muslims reside in India in relative peace. The Hindu majority may not embrace its Muslim citizens — indeed, they may not even “approve” of them. But unlike the U.S., they are familiar with Islam’s cultural identity. Unlike the U.S., they are not ignorant of it.

David Macaray

Rowland Heights

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You’ve got one thing really wrong in this column. Trust me, Republicans want Ilhan Omar talking, the more, the better.

Robert Chapman

Downey

Crude Crüe has fans, detractors

Lorraine Ali calls the Mötley Crüe movie “The Dirt” and the band a bunch of sexists [“Bad Boys in the Band,” March 21]. Actually, they were just a group of guys living out their fantasies with women who were more than willing to indulge them.

Ease up on the sexism charges. If the girls were willing and band was willing, what was the harm?

Mark Walker

Chino Hills

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To say Mötley Crüe “was never that great,” and refer to them as a “nominally talented band,” just because you find their misogyny distasteful does Mötley Crüe and their legions of fans a great disservice. Maybe you never saw them live. I did. Many times. They were a great band. And their best songs have stood the test of time.

Lynne Vermillion

Santa Barbara

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The article said the film is as vapid and sexist as the band was. So surely that’s a good representation of the band itself. It’s all well and good not liking a band, what they do and what they stand for, but if a film made about it is actually accurate surely that deserves some praise.

It’s one thing to dislike a film but that must be held within the context of the material (the book) they’re working with. There was no #MeToo, no Time’s Up. It was almost expected of a band to behave in this manner. Was it right? No. Was it carried out? Yes.

Georgina Elliott

Bournemouth, England

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Thank you for calling out these lame posers. It was never cool to act that way and it never will be.

Jim Picco

Santa Monica

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You don’t have to look with fresh eyes to discover that Mötley Crüe was about debauchery.

The women who sought out this band had to know what they were signing up for. How are they victims? It seems that some of these #MeToo conversations imply that women can’t be trusted to make their own decisions, and they need to be protected from the dangers of the world. Well, you can’t have it both ways: Women can’t be both free and without responsibility for the choices they make.

Stan Brown

Claremont

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Lorraine Ali is probably both accurate and justified in her scathing depiction of the film as a mindless glorification of not just rock excess but downright loathsome behavior, especially toward women. The fact that she describes such hideous rock-brained activity in unflattering terms is her right and her duty as a critic. (She’s pretty creative with the put-downs, too.)

I don’t think she’s missing some subtle critique contained within the film’s nauseating expose of bad boys running amok. But there seem to be a number of people who are miffed at being told the party wasn’t all good fun with zero consequences.

The film seems to be positively gleeful in its vicarious reveling with the band in all its juvenile, sexist and destructive mayhem — just a harmless bit of depravity. It’s as if the filmmakers were hell-bent on being part of the action they missed when it first went down. Well, let’s not forget Netflix, in its brazen rush to gain more content and make a splash with it, has exercised little or no critical judgment about the content’s message and absence of moral grounding.

Ah, life was so much simpler before some folks woke up and started to complain about mistreatment of women, racial and religious groups, the poor, etc. It ain’t “political correctness”— it’s advocating for us to be more decent human beings.

TR Jahns

Hemet

Remembering Dick Dale

Thank you so much for your wonderful obituary of Dick Dale [“Surf Guitar Icon Sent Waves Across World,” March 19] by Randall Roberts and Randy Lewis and appreciation [“Surf-rock King Dick Dale Took That Vibe Global,” March 19]. I clearly remember when I initially heard his first record played on rock radio, “Let’s Go Trippin’,” — but that was not the real revelation of his guitar sound, so different from any before heard. No, that was the flip side of the single with the faster tempo “Surf Beat.”

Ronald Maxson

Los Angeles

Memories from the early days

Regarding Randy Lewis’ “‘Talk Is Cheap,’ but Listen Up” [March 22]: I liked the album “Talk Is Cheap” a lot when it came out in 1988. I still listen to it once in a while.

My dad was stationed in the U.K. back in the mid-’60s, and the kids on the air base got bused to rock concerts and dances around the Essex-London area. We saw a bunch of groups that became iconic. In 1965, we saw the Rolling Stones at a theater, and then the whole gang of us got to go backstage and meet the band. The girls were going crazy for Mick Jagger, but the boys were more into Keith Richards. Who knew that over a half-century on we’d still be reading about Keith and the Stones?

John Britt

Calabasas

‘Open exchange of ideas’ needed

Regarding: “Is Fox Having Moral Qualms?” by Lorraine Ali [March 23]: Many moral judgments are made in this article about many network employees. That’s why I find it strange that Lorraine Ali apparently has no moral qualms regarding Fox News. I believe the people’s voices must be heard. When we permit any group to subvert this process, we’re playing with fire. The possible outcomes include anarchy, totalitarianism and outright dictatorship. Think Russia, Nazi Germany, China, Islamic State.

Abridging the speech of those whose views are out of step with current “right think” amounts to censorship, plain and simple. Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and their like need to be heard, no matter how distasteful to some their opinions may be. For the sake of the democratic and open exchange of ideas, one hopes Fox News will continue to show the estimable courage they have to date.

Jeffrey W. Denker

Malibu

Wishful thinking leads us astray

I agree with Mary McNamara [“In the Theranos Scam, We Blinked,” March 27]. In almost all cases there is no magic elixir to an issue. Yet we still want to believe there is one. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s famous line from the movie “A Few Good Men”: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Norb Puff

Newport Beach

Peele has talent, period

Regarding “It’s ‘Us’ and Them” [March 25]: Why is that in articles about Jordan Peele’s remarkable accomplishments and his latest movie, “Us,” he gets referenced as the director of “black” horror movies. To me, this smacks of racism since there are never any references to “white” horror movies.

Just acknowledge his accomplishments, his Oscar, and the wonderfully scary future he has as a screenwriter, director and actor. His talents are incredible no matter what color of his skin.

Kim Airs

Culver City

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