‘Sex and the City’ turns heads

THANK YOU to Carina Chocano for voicing my views on “Sex and the City” [“An Inviting Return,” May 30]. The movie, occasional pun excluded, was quite good. And, at 45, I very much enjoyed seeing women of my age in a story with relevance.

I hope the review will help it get a wider audience, as well as convince Hollywood that Diane Lane can’t do it all herself.

Maureen Driscoll

Toluca Lake

FRIDAY night at Bella Terra in Huntington Beach appeared to be a repeat performance of what occurred at the ArcLight in Hollywood [“Well-Heeled Audience,” by Lisa Rosen, May 31]. Hordes of women everywhere, from the theater to all the local restaurants, wearing high heels and sipping cosmos. It looked like men were an endangered species, for at least that night.

Hopefully Hollywood will sit up and take notice. The “chick flick” is not dead!

Bobbie McIntyre

Seal Beach

CHOCANO captured the depth of the script and the development of the characters. But she missed the mark on why straight guys are not likely to want to see it. It is laden with the Candace Bushnell proto-feminism that bashes men every chance it can. Big is afraid of commitment; poor Steve is tortured because he [had sex with] someone, even though his wife turned him into a monk. And the “boy toy” is hardly allowed to be seen as the fine fellow he is, because he is in the way of Samantha’s real nature.

They make fun of men, always have. No man is good enough, smart enough or brave enough for them.

Steve Cohen

Los Angeles

OH, MAN. And now the campaign for the Democratic nomination has even spilled over into the film reviews! While commenting on the reluctance of male moviegoers to attend “Sex and the City,” Carina Chocano slipped in this little stink bomb: “Considering the treatment Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has gotten in the press throughout her presidential campaign, this [men not wanting to see the film] comes as no surprise.”

Wow. This is so offensive on so many levels, not the least of which is positing as fact the notion that the Clinton failures are due to maltreatment by the press, and sexist maltreatment at that. I guess the obvious isn’t so obvious: Claiming victimhood when you are to blame plays into every sexist stereotype going. And it insults the women fighting real battles of gender discrimination across this country and the world.

Julia Newton

Studio City

Parents’ trap

RE “Mom’s in the Clear This Time,” by Susan Salter Reynolds, June 4: It may be true that mothers alone are not totally responsible for our consumer culture, our pushing kids to do more than they can and our obsession with the Ivy Leagues, but it is equally true that parents are the best protectors of their children and ultimately must take responsibility for their well-being.

These books might help, but unless parents spend more time with their children, have more meals with them and more time hanging out, all the books in the world will not make them good parents.

Robert Kesten

Washington

Open house

Your two articles about “homes as art” [“Block Party? Not Happening So Far,” by Christopher Hawthorne and “Breuer House Opened Door on Failed Bidding,” by Paul Lieberman, June 3] were interesting – kind of.

The articles purport to comment on the “artistic value” of these homes. But since they haven’t sold yet, their value can’t be ascertained – so the articles were premature.

The fact that the homes didn’t sell at art auctions is probably more a function of the awkwardness of applying that process to a unique home than to the value of the home itself.

Todd Piccus

Venice

Pressing excuses

IN THE midst of his excellent review of Scott McClellan’s new book [“Another Round of Fire From a Bush Defector,” May 30], Tim Rutten offers a defense of the media after 9/11 that is at least as disturbing as McClellan’s revelations about White House propaganda and deception. Rutten claims that in the wake of the wrenching trauma of 9/11, the press felt “the moral obligation to demonstrate solidarity with a country under deadly attack,” and to have not given the administration the benefit of the doubt “would have been mindlessly adversarial.”

“Mindlessly adversarial”? Many would say that for the press to have challenged the administration in a time of crisis would have been “courageously adversarial” and precisely what the Founders expected from a free and independent press protected by the 1st Amendment.

Looking back, had the press been less compliant and more skeptical, the American people would have been better equipped to question the Bush administration and oppose what are now seen as disastrous foreign policies, shocking abuses of human rights and serious assaults on civil liberties.

Stephen F. Rohde

Los Angeles

TIM RUTTEN defends his fellow journalists against McClellan’s claims that the media was excessively deferential in the run-up to the Iraq war by claiming that they felt a “moral obligation” to demonstrate “solidarity” with a “country under deadly threat.”

This amounts to the shocking claim that one of journalism’s core duties – providing a check against official abuses of power and ensuring governmental accountability – is not possible, perhaps even reprehensible, in times of crisis, and that the Fourth Estate is mandated instead to provide emotional solace through the unquestioning acceptance of administration claims.

While this might have been conventional wisdom five years ago, it is either an act of intellectual dishonesty or professional myopia to offer the same mea culpa now. If the press can’t admit it failed in its mission, how can it profess to have a relevant mission at all?

Robert W. Sawyer

Long Beach