Letters to the Editor

Turn the Paige! Woody Paige is a fucking tool! He thought going to New York City would be g-r-e-a-t! He left Denver in the dust, and now the failed ESPN tool is returning to Denver, a city he spit on as he left. We should all turn the Paige and let him know once and for all he is not welcome back to the city he thought wasn't good enough. Randall Centers

Evergreen

Enjoyed your piece on Woody Paige's fleeing of Cold Pizza. I do feel obliged, however, to point out that my site, Deadspin.com, is anything but anonymous. My name is Will Leitch, and I write it. I only use the royal "we" to be a pretentious ass.
Will Leitch
New York, New York

"To the Max," Michael Roberts, November 23

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If the Boulder ACLU takes an interest in something, you can be sure it's a publicity-rich issue so blatantly obvious that even a stump could figure it out. Such was the case in the recent Max Karson pseudo-controversy, in which there was much less than meets the eye. Despite University of Colorado Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Ron Stump's halfhearted efforts to get his foot into his mouth, in the end, nothing much actually happened.

This performance was actually an improvement for Stump, who once famously threatened to haul students before what is laughingly called Judicial Affairs for talking to the press about their drinking habits, until general howls of derision forced his hasty retreat. The Boulder ACLU joined the chorus on that one, too.

Neither the ACLU nor Mr. Stump were exactly eloquent in another recent flapdoodle, in which the CU Ski and Snowboard Club was publicly whipped and forced to grovel after campus activists and two perennially left-of-the-moon professors denounced the club in trademark over-the-top style. The club's terrible sin against political correctness was in planning to hold a "pimps and hos" party in which they intended to dress and rap in the same style that has made numerous performers of color millionaires and earned these gangsta mavens the fawning admiration of the black community, except maybe for Dr. Bill Cosby.

Ho, indeed. Apparently, not all American civil liberties are created equal.
Peter Aretin
Boulder

Michael Roberts implies that "publicity-hungry...media darling" Max Karson contacted the media to promote himself, when in fact he was the one approached by Colorado Daily reporter Paula Pant after CU administrator Ron Stump threatened his First Amendment rights. While Karson did distribute copies of The Yeti to the Colorado Daily office adjacent to his regular distribution location in the UMC cafeteria, he had been doing that for nearly two months before any news stories came out about him. To write that his distribution, rather than Stump's comments, sparked Pant's story is simply false. And to imply, as Roberts did, that after his meeting with Stump, Karson went running to the media is also false, misleading and disingenuous. The two met on October 19, and Paula Pant's first piece was published November 5, almost two and a half weeks later. Colorado Daily staff obviously did not consider Karson's writing newsworthy until it was denounced by the CU administration.

It's clear that the Daily, like Westword, is mostly interested in writing about things that make CU look bad. Rather than taking the great opportunity that an alternative newspaper would have afforded to write critically and in depth about the substantive issues -- sexism, misogyny, female masturbation -- that Karson addresses satirically in his newsletters, you chose to revisit the hackneyed story of another CU PR screwup. What a waste.
Jamal Feinstein
Amherst, Massachusetts

Michael Roberts responds: Let me get this straight. A guy who publishes his own self-consciously provocative newsletter; who hands out copies of it all over the CU-Boulder campus, including at the office of a newspaper; who eagerly chats about his scolding at the hands of a CU official with a reporter at that newspaper, not to mention representatives of every other media organization who contact him; who records a rap song about the ensuing controversy that includes the line "I like the attention, now I got an erection"; and who then gives away CDs featuring the tune on campus, too -- that guy isn't interested in publicity?

"How Swede It Is," Tuyet Nguyen, November 23

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If Tuyet Nguyen is so dense she can't see the irony of a Swedish rock band that sings its songs in English and is marketing itself in the U.S. complaining about American cultural "oppression," she really needs to find another job.

Give me a break. Do people even think before they start reflexively spouting off garbage? If the Swedes in the Sounds were so worried about American cultural "oppression," you'd think they could have picked a better vocation than "rock star."

And if that's all your reporter can write about this group, it's a shame you can't find better.
John Newman
Northglenn

Playlist, Glenn BurnSilver, November 23