Vilify

Re "Anti-Tobacco Ads Don't Educate; They Just Vilify," by Daniel Donahue, Commentary, April 11: If ever an industry is worthy of vilification, it surely is one that harms the health of every person who uses its product, with annual deaths exceeding 500,000 (in the U.S. alone) and burdening society annually with billions in health costs. This lovely industry continues to pay TV and movie producers to have actors smoke. Why not rate TV and movies not only as to the amount of sex and violence in them but also by the amount of smoking?

Angry voters infamously shut down Congress' switchboard in 2007 to oppose immigration reform - an outburst that helped convince Republicans of the proposal's outsize political peril. As Congress debates immigration reform again this year, there are still a lot of angry people - at least if the vitriolic phone calls and faxes raining down on one Florida farmer are any gauge. Joe Wright was featured in a Los Angeles Times story and video in February about how business owners are becoming vocal supporters of immigration reform.

I don't know Bret Johnson. I do know quarterbacks and kids. Sure, Johnson may have made a bum call in walking out on UCLA after he got demoted from the starting QB job. But what is the kid--19? This isn't Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait. Or Nixon justifying Watergate. This isn't even a big-bucks pro quarterback who presumably has some maturity and accountability. Is this reason enough for Mike Downey to vilify the young man? Wonder why L.A. is the quarterback controversy capital of the Western world?

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was remembered Friday as a leader who cared for the poor and opposed the dominance of one nation over others during a funeral ceremony that attracted dignitaries from around the world. The Venezuelan national anthem was played by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, directed by conductor Gustavo Dudamel. In his funeral oration, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Chavez, who died Tuesday at 58 after a long bout with cancer, was the champion of the oppressed and "redeemer of our poor and those of all the world.

Perhaps if Madonna had not been raised Catholic she would never have made money by ripping off Catholicism. Maybe when Madonna finally grows up, she will realize what a hypocrite she is, and that fact alone--not her Catholic upbringing--is why she is so racked with "guilt and remorse" (a Madonna quote from Rolling Stone, as reported in Calendar March 8). Madonna, no one has ever been able to have their cake and eat it too. You cannot rightly capitalize on the beautiful images of the Catholic Church and then turn around and vilify the church.

Would you please not allow T.J. Simers to write any more articles about his Notre Dame daughter or Bill Plaschke to write in Life & Style about his Brownie scout daughter? It makes us realize that they are human and have families. This is confusing and it is difficult to vilify and malign them when they write their other stupid columns. DUANE GOMER Mission Viejo Letters should be addressed to Sports Viewpoint, Sports Department, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, 90053.

Re "So He Was an Arab--Let's Not Overreact," column, July 7: I applaud Dana Parsons for his thoughtful and reasonable words in the column, and I commend The Times for publishing it. Our nation is understandably tense and on edge, and that makes it all the more important not to jump to conclusions or vilify a whole group of people. As Parsons writes, the individual who opened fire in the airport is exactly that: an individual. We should not, as some Americans and Israelis have, assume he is a terrorist or a member of some larger, hostile group.

Sports agent Gary Wishard says that Perry Klein's story, the rags-to-riches tale of a controversial quarterback, will make a best-seller someday. An appropriate title might be "The Post Man Always Rings Twice." Klein, after all, had been knocking on doors for some time until he found a football program that allowed him to showcase his talent. It all came together last season at tiny C.W. Post in Brookville, N.Y.

When David Gautreaux volunteered to assist at a charity golf tournament in Thousand Oaks two years ago, he was eager to meet the event's host, Angelo R. Mozilo, then chief executive of mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. An actor and investor who owned Countrywide stock, Gautreaux was stationed at the 12th hole when Mozilo strode onto the green. Gautreaux remarked that Mozilo was winning. "He turned at me, and his voice was like a bark. He said, 'We better be!' " recalled Gautreaux, who was taken aback.

Pancho Real was at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church with his wife and daughter one Sunday in October 2006 when his cellphone rang. He was summoned to a park near his home on Drew Street, a drug and gang haven in Northeast Los Angeles, to kill a man he didn't know. The Mexican Mafia wanted a paroled Avenues gang member named Frank "Kiko" Cordova dead. Real left church with his family and called another gang member, Carlos Renteria. At the park that afternoon, they figured out who Cordova was but saw he was among children.

MOSCOW - His books were burned by a mob in Azerbaijan's second-largest city. His wife and son have lost their jobs. A crowd in a small town demanded that his blood be tested to establish his true ethnicity. The nation's president stripped him of his honorary title as "the People's Writer. " And an infuriated mob under his window made threats against his life and told him to leave the country. Akram Aylisli, 75, says the treatment he has received since publication of the Russian translation of his latest book, "Stone Dreams," defies even his own literary imagination.

She is described by people who hired her as modest, generous, pleasant and so ordinary they struggle to recall anything about her. Her lifestyle showed no sign of extravagance. Quite the opposite. The politicians and consultants who trusted Kinde Durkee with millions of dollars saw little to hint that she might become vilified as "the Bernie Madoff of campaign finance treasurers. " The 1950-vintage house she owns with her husband on a tidy street in Long Beach's Bixby Knolls is distinguished by its neglect.

President Obama on Monday waded into the labor standoff in Wisconsin and warned that the rights of public employees should not be infringed upon. Speaking to the National Governors Assn., Obama noted that many states as well as the federal government face tough economic choices. But the president, who has been criticized by some labor allies for not speaking out more forcefully on the Wisconsin situation, noted the fight between Wisconsin's public unions and the Republican administration in Madison.

The man known as the father of the so-called Great Firewall of China is defending his invention, which blocks access to hundreds of thousands of foreign websites, and says he uses privacy software to test the holes in the censorship technology he helped create. In a rare English-language interview published Friday, Fang Binxing, president of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the state-owned Global Times that he owned six virtual private networks, or VPNs, to scale the firewall and determine what was and wasn't accessible in China.

Is a governor's power to pardon criminals a valuable tool to correct unjust sentences or does it undermine the rule of law by allowing politicians to forgive offenses as personal favors? Legal experts contend that this vestige of a sovereign's absolute power does both. Clemency grants at the end of a governor's or president's term have become a routine departure ritual, gaining attention only when they offend the public's idea of fairness, as did President Clinton's 2001 intervention to forgive fugitive financier Marc Rich and President Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon.

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables have sparked a political battle in India, putting the ruling party on the defensive with their disclosures on alleged human rights violations and religious extremism. Most damaging to the Congress Party was a cable reporting that Rahul Gandhi, scion of India's first political family and pegged by many as the nation's next prime minister, told the U.S. ambassador last year that hard-line Hindu groups in India could be a bigger threat to the country than Pakistan-based Islamic militants.

Piecing together six weeks of testimony, prosecutors Wednesday portrayed Mark Scott Thornton as a coldblooded killer and consummate liar who executed Westlake nurse Kellie O' Sullivan, even as he led her to believe he would spare her life. During closing arguments, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael K. Frawley urged a Ventura County Superior Court jury to convict the Thousand Oaks man of first-degree murder and a special circumstance that could put him in the gas chamber.

JUST hours before her first performance anywhere in more than 20 years, former ballet star Gelsey Kirkland is onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House, not only practicing her own moves but coaching American Ballet Theatre principal Irina Dvorovenko.

President Obama sought to challenge critics who say his administration has been hostile to businesses, arguing in a televised forum Monday that measures he has taken to stabilize the economy have boosted the private sector. During an event styled as a town-hall meeting on business news channel CNBC, the president acknowledged that the economic recovery was not proceeding as quickly as he would like. But he said he has "absolutely not" vilified or enacted policies harmful to the business community.

Pancho Real was at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church with his wife and daughter one Sunday in October 2006 when his cellphone rang. He was summoned to a park near his home on Drew Street, a drug and gang haven in Northeast Los Angeles, to kill a man he didn't know. The Mexican Mafia wanted a paroled Avenues gang member named Frank "Kiko" Cordova dead. Real left church with his family and called another gang member, Carlos Renteria. At the park that afternoon, they figured out who Cordova was but saw he was among children.