Congratulations to Patricia Calhoun for cutting through all the crap the mayor's office has been handing out about Denver International Airport (and Denver's daily papers and TV stations swallow). Her March 23 column, "Loan Sharks," was the only honest piece of journalism I've seen on this subject. She knows when to call a spade a spade--and a loan a loan.
I guess we all know who's footing the bill.
Roger Holman
Aurora
Westword has amply documented the numerous blunders associated with the planning and construction of DIA, but no one has yet set forth what I consider the best reason that the average metro-area resident who flies at most once or twice a year would prefer not to abandon Stapleton: the freely available and really cool experience of driving on I-70 and being "run over" by a taxiing jetliner! I'll bet the loss of this great encounter never even entered into the debate over the wisdom of relocating from Stapleton!
Michael Donahue
Boulder
First, AIDS
Regarding Steve Jackson's "Ill Will" in the March 16 issue:
Many thanks for covering the very timely issue of AIDS funding, organization and the ouster of Lance Clem from the Governor's AIDS Council. I sincerely encourage your continued coverage of this topic.
Public health officials and doctors alike must continue to be subjected to high levels of scrutiny, and rightly so, especially in light of your story and the many changes currently surrounding the various public health agencies and other public AIDS commissions, committees, et al. Especially now, too, because the federal funding levels have jumped and our disbursement hierarchy has been altered. I am a long-term survivor with AIDS and feel certain that your interest is helping my health in a most crucial period. Your article nicely touched on the weak governmental support still being offered to established holistic, nursing, native and spiritual health providers. While Denver has become visionary in this regard, the feds and many states seem sorely lacking. I applaud Lance Clem for having the guts to help bring these concerns to light. It's distressing that his "style" is not fully appreciated by the Colorado Department of Health. Lance has many supporters in the community, and many of us also feel free to speak out when we're not affiliated or working for the public health system--our very own medical-industrial complex, getting bigger by the month.
Michael Schaffnit
Denver
Wet Your Whistle
While I was "wading" through the Whitewater coverage last week, I reread Patricia Calhoun's March 16 column, "Trickle-Down Economics," about the RTC whistleblowers. It should be required reading for everyone in the country as well as everyone in Denver. Ms. Calhoun did an excellent job of putting the situation in perspective--I wanted to tell you that first. Next, I'm going to write our congresspeople and demand an investigation of not just Whitewater, but the entire Resolution Trust Corporation. Thank you.
Sarah Manning
Denver
Johnny Be Good
Regarding Michael Roberts's "Grand Old Punkers" in the March 16 issue:
Johnny, we hardly knew you! So now we know what happened to Rush Limbaugh's illegitimate love child. For a band that was the torchbearer of the original punk movement, Johnny Ramone certainly personifies where the Ramones have been headed slowly but surely for the last several years...into the land of monotony. So you've never practiced a day in your life? Congrats! Wasn't punk about doing your own thing and breaking down all existing barriers? Punk is only punk if it's fresh and new, get it? But what else could we expect from an aging right-wing Republican just coming out of the closet? Maybe playing for Dan Quayle's inaugural ball come 1996?
Patrick Casey
Denver
The Gathering of the Klan
Regarding Andrea Barnett's "The Girl Next Door" in the March 16 issue:
If beauty really does come from within, then your "cover girl," Brooke Wolff, is a putrid, maggot-eaten abortion. She thinks people who leave nasty messages on her racist hotline are perhaps "afraid of" her philosophy. Afraid? I think not. Perhaps those nastygrams stem from the outrage felt by many, myself included, when they hear of her wholly backward mode of thinking. Indeed, could it be that Wolff herself is the one afraid--of the concept of living harmoniously with the nonwhite populace?
Although it probably doesn't need to be said--this all seems so elementary!--one of my dearest friends and mentors is black. I love her for her wisdom, sense of humor and insight. In fact, it doesn't even occur to me that she is black, except for when people like Wolff surface from the underbelly of humanity.
Wolff's clever play on words--"I don't hate black people. I just love white people"--doesn't disguise her true belief that nonwhites are inferior to whites. Well, Brooke, white folks like me don't love you.
So go on, Brooke. Keep those blinders firmly attached to your eyes and enjoy your shallow, misled life. And to Denver's nonwhite community, I say, ignore people like Wolff. Continue to proudly be who you are. If it's any consolation, people like Wolff make me embarrassed to be white.
L. Ellis
Denver
You have some nerve glorifying this bitch of a hate-monger. It seems that the only true journalist employed by your rag is Patricia Calhoun. At least she writes about something worth reading. If your rag was worth anything more than lining someone's birdcage, you would give equal time to both the idiot racist hate-mongers and the really enlightened human beings who believe in equality for all.
As for white power, I am glad she is proud of who she believes she is--but she is sadly mistaken because no one that is an American is pure. To be pure one must have no trace of any nationality but one in their genetic family history. Which means no mixing of German and English or any mixing of any kind. Therefore this belief in white pride is only a fairy tale for inter-breed buffoons like Shawn Slater, Thom Robb and anyone who even slightly buys into their idiotic ideals. So all of you subhuman, interbreed racists need to drag your knuckles back the way you came and crawl into your caves and continue to live your myth.
Lee McCall
Aurora
Brooke Wolff paints a pretty picture of herself. But leaving aside her racial bigotry, it's clear this young woman, like most Americans, is completely ignorant about drugs.
How does deliberately poisoning herself with the same insecticide (nicotine) sold in Black Leaf 40 make her a "strong, well-adjusted" person? How can she claim to be "very independent" when she is a severely addicted drug addict who smokes two packs of tobacco cigarettes during her interview? How can she be "truly concerned about the future of her possible children" when tobacco drug-addict mothers give birth to children with significantly lower IQs than children whose mothers do not poison themselves or their fetuses?
How can she believe that "drugs" are ruining America and that the Ku Klux Klan does not tolerate "drugs" when she is a drug addict? How can she belittle people as having "no pride in themselves, and a self-esteem problem" when she voluntarily poisons herself?
She reminds me of William Bennett, the tobacco drug addict who was drug czar in the War on Some Drugs and an evil man who pretends to be a fount of morality. Like Bennett, Wolff is an intellectually challenged drug addict who believes she is against "drugs," while at the same time she is addicted to the deadliest and most addictive drug of all, tobacco.
Tom Barrus
Golden
If Brooke Wolff is an example of "the white race," then I would have to admit to being ashamed to have white skin!
Contrast her character with that of the late Daddy Bruce, a black man, an individual who was honored by all Coloradans--white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American; by all religions--Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu; and by philosophies such as humanism, atheism and rationalism.
Brooke has made a fool out of herself by publicly revealing she is an ignoramus in biology, religion, psychology, sociology and ethics. Her association with Pastor Pete Peters, a psychologically insecure man who functions on a childlike level, and with Shawn Slater reveals her failure to achieve importance by her own accomplishments and has resulted in her using Jews and blacks as scapegoats to give her a false feeling of importance.
She should also be aware that Jews are not a race but a culture whose members practice Judaism, a religion consisting of family responsibility, justice for all people and a quest for truth. She is too dumb to know that Satan is simply a semantic term that represents evil. Does she realize that she has been brainwashed because her lack of self-esteem has made her just as susceptible to nonsense as were the followers of David Koresh?
Jane Conrad
Brighton
I am writing in response to the article on Brooke Wolff. In her disgusting interview she stated that she made friends easily and had many. As a former classmate of Brooke's, I would like to inform everyone that the reason she had so many friends was because no one knew of her KKK connections. I only have one question for her: Brooke, if you are so proud of your racist friends and views, why didn't you share any of this with your nonracist friends at school?
Personally, I don't believe Brooke Wolff is as proud as she wants everyone to believe. It scares me to think that someday she may have kids and participate in raising another generation of haters.
Name withheld on request
First, let me ask why Andrea Barnett would use her only time on earth to report such a contradictory story? If you leave unimportant nothingness alone, it stays just that. Print it, and you might as well have the mortar ready. Why would a newspaper give someone with such mixed-up, contradicting thoughts the front page, let alone an article? Until you find someone whose facts and thoughts coincide, don't publish. "Tabloid" is such a harsh term.
It is obvious that Brooke knows very little about Christianity. It doesn't take a scholar to understand that when a group of people kills in the name of Christ, they oppose the principles of Christ. I agree with Brooke when she says, "I think our message touches something inside [people] and they are afraid of that." I feel it jab my sense of love and unity. It does more than just touching, it rips these dear things away from me.
It is because of people who have turned into the likes of Brooke Wolff, and a needy press that supports such matters, that I hope to leave the States for good after college. Westword, if you are going to put the Stars and Stripes behind something, put it behind something meaningful. Like something that helped found this country. My apologies to anyone uninvolved in the publishing of the story.
Justin Bock
Denver
The Return of the Native
When I picked up the February 9 issue and saw Steve Jackson's "Civil Wars," I had a bad feeling. Westword definitely has published some good articles in the past, but I had a feeling this issue was beyond your ability to handle well.
You see, being white and living among white people, I knew that this was going to present a great opportunity for ignorant, racist whites to denounce Indians in general and Colorado AIM in particular, and some of the letters to the editor have borne this out. Whites don't want to see strong Indians, effective Indians or especially critical and vocal Indians.
I recall a conversation I had with a very successful head of a large business in Denver. After mentioning I was working on a project with AIM, a foreign woman asked what or who AIM was. His reply: "We won't talk about them. They're bad people. They kill people." Now, is this true or is it a media-manufactured idea?
It wasn't long ago that white writers back East cranked out literary pulp about Indians for the benefit of white readers and, by doing so, fueled the genocidal attitude out West. The older I get the more I realize how slowly things change. Raising the issue of the validity of Glenn Morris's and Ward Churchill's contributions to the Indian community based on what percentage of their blood is Indian introduced a racist element into the article. It seems to me the work they do, the acceptance of them in their tribes and the support for them by their tribes determine who they are--not the opinions of a writer or the prejudices of the readers, and certainly not the opinion of the U.S. government, which has shown absolutely no credibility, honor, honesty or legality in its dealings with Indians.
Kerry Appel
Denver
It's good to see the alternative journalism of Westword, i.e., the honest reporting of issues rather than the adver-
tisement-driven, press-release-based regurgitation of "news." "Civil Wars" was refreshing in its candor and political incorrectness--which is to say, it was more honest than what we are accustomed to. The government-paid professors (pretenders) Morris and Churchill only emphasize the administration problem at the University of Colorado. At an institution known for paying teachers not to teach, it should not be surprising that they hire pseudo-Indians.
Colorado AIM is no less administrationally challenged. Why, with the abundance of intelligent and capable Indian leaders, are people like Russell Means, Churchill and Morris in charge? I'm sure that there are many Indians who are honest, proud and self-sufficient, and who would not be so hypocritical as to derive their income from the straw-man government they keep knocking down.
Russell Means--now there's an inspiration for a noble leader. He burned Alcatraz in his "takeover" and most people who see the damage wonder why he's not in a cell. Then he urinates on Rushmore's Washington, and pours red paint on Plymouth Rock. A truly noble leader. But as most Coloradans can see, a hypocrite cannot be expected to be logical. While he demands respect for his heritage, he damns the Italians for celebrating theirs. Let Russell go to Hollywood and leave leadership of AIM and other Indian groups to those who are worthy of being followed.
Larry DeCicco
Evergreen
