Chuck Roast To the Editor, Regarding "News Of The Weird" (Tucson Weekly, January 2): Wow, that Chuck Shepherd really blew the lid off those zany artists! Imagine, thinking that"string or wire" could constitute a sculpture! Or that someone was insane enough to make sculptures "featuring bizarre, severed penises" and believe that the public would accept this as art! Well, Chuck inspired me to look into this whole "art" scam, and I discovered quite a few other loonies. Check out the following: • Renaissance "artist" Leonardo da Vinci ground up colored rocks and glued them to pieces of cloth with oil, attempting to produce what he called "paintings." Many of these "paintings" contained images of Jesus, Mary and other mythical figures! • Wacky painter Pablo Picasso drew goofy looking people with both eyes on the same side of their heads! He claimed he was creating a new art form called "cubism"! • So-called "genius" Mantegna tried to produce two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional space by having parallel lines converge at a horizon point! His "art" was hung in churches where people pretended that a piece of bread was actually a piece of human flesh! I can't wait for the next News of the Weird! I understand Shepherd has found out about a politician who attempted to claim leadership of a country because a majority of the citizens voted for him! --James DiGiovanna Stinker To the Editor, For a long time I have been toying with the idea of writing to complain about your "Staggering Heights" comic strip, but the January 16 issue was the clincher. Let's examine the content of that week's comic and see if we can identify what's wrong with it. Panel 1: A waitress asks a man why he has eaten four plates of beans. Panel 2: The man mentions he has jury duty. Panel 3: The man eats a spoonful of beans. Panel 4: The man explains that he is eating beans to get out of jury duty. So let me get this straight: The powers that be at the Tucson Weekly actually felt that a joke about eating beans to make yourself gassy was worthy of publication? Unless your editorial staff is composed entirely of Beavis and Butthead types who sit around the office lighting their own farts, I'm deeply curious how this comic ever got past the first stage of inspection. It's not just this particular comic, though. Joe Forkan's strips are usually lame. Sometimes when I get a Weekly, the first thing I do is flip to the back to find out what lousy cliché Forkan is going to dredge up. I'm beginning to think maybe it's all a put-on, and Forkan is purposely creating bad comics to make some sort of satirical statement. Is that it? Is "Staggering Heights" the Spinal Tap of comics? Forkan is a talented artist, as evidenced by the caricatures he often does for your covers and news stories. But his writing stinks. Isn't it time somebody took Forkan aside for a heart-to-heart? I'm sure he'd have a good career ahead of him if he didn't insist on attaching mediocre concepts to his sophisticated drawings. --David Price The Reich Stuff To the Editor, I usually pass over letters that begin "I am offended by...." It is easy to conclude the writer is just another authoritarian twit of a perpetual victim with nothing interesting to say. I would have been wrong in the case of Barbara Goodfriend (Mailbag, Tucson Weekly, January 23). She is not uninteresting. Making the legitimate point that "the total horror of the Holocaust" is deplorably trivialized by calling anyone of whom one does not approve a Nazi, Goodfriend throws out these numbers: "...[O]f the six million souls who died at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices, 1.5 million were children 18 years old and younger." Not counting military deaths--and I mean no disrespect by that; it's just that this discussion specifically concerns civilians--the Third Reich is generally understood to have slaughtered as many as 12 million people it deemed enemies or nuisances. Jews accounted for half the total, of course, but Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and criminals of both the political and common variety were also worked, shot, gassed, tortured, vivisected, and starved to death. (And Hitler is only this century's third most proficient butcher!) Goodfriend, who accuses The Weekly of "forget[ting]...six million souls," is guilty of exactly the same offense. She continues: "Can you possibly envision 1.5 million babies, toddlers, youngsters and teens--all dead? Why does the term "1.5 million babies" sound familiar? Ah--that's the yearly harvest, in this country alone, of Roe v. Wade. --Ryan Anthony To the Editor, One Barbara Goodfriend writes in that she is "offended" by a subhead comparing the Border Patrol to the Nazis (Mailbag, Tucson Weekly, January 23). Yes, I'm bothered also that you would use such ignorance in comparison of legitimate police, the Border Patrol, to the Nazis. It was ignorant on your part, you know. But I'm more offended that Goodfriend seems to think that World War II consisted of only Jews dying in prison. Give me a break, Goodfriend. Over 13 million people died in the prisons, including mostly non-Jews. Then count over 20 million who died in Russia alone, thanks to the German extermination units, the military and the war in general. Jewish-approved terminology is a bit much when throwing together a subhead. Perhaps you should have a politically/ethnically correct editor on your staff? --Tomas Sesma Seeya! To the Editor, Well, I had stopped looking at The Skinny months ago and most of the so-called reporting, too, but my eye caught the "scoop" on John Kromko being found working at Payless (Tucson Weekly, January 23). What is the point of this "news"? In fact, what is the news? What is the point at all except to sneer and shower contempt on the man for the way he now earns his living? (There is obviously something pathetic and disreputable about people who work at those places. They can't afford to eat at Janos, for one thing.) I do not know Kromko. I do not care about Kromko. But what business does he have appearing in your paper unless he has done something of public significance, as politician or activist or skydiver or whatever? Such newsworthlessness, such undisguised snobbery and scorn, such flat-out cowardice in printing those items anonymously, as well as a slew of other sorry practices, explain why I will no longer read The Weekly. As much as what you publish, it is your tone--smug, self-righteous, vindictive--that is repellent. --Mark Jacobs We Want Letters! Thrilled by our brilliant insights? Sick of our mean-spirited attacks? Need to make something perfectly clear? Write: tucsonweekly@tucsonweekly.com

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