Letters to the Editor

What You Say

DRUG CRAZED

Your column stunk (Loose Canon, "Beehives and Hive-Minds," Bruce Schimmel, April 22). I have been to three Tea Parties in Washington and two in Philly. You havn't (sic) a clue. What a lazy, no thought, go along with the liberal crowd, mindless, unfocused, rambling piece of crap of a column! Think of my letter not as criticism, but as an intervention. Any descent (sic) person, even one who can't remember agreeing with you on anything, even someone who thinks the main motivation of your weekly column is to ingraciate (sic) yourself to left wingers, someone who thinks you care nothing about the truth and wouldn't recognize it anyhow, someone who nearly weekly pukes at your spinelessness, is revolted by your 100 percent dedication to political correctness, cannot stand by and let you descend to the depths represented by your ridiculous beehive column. For your own sake, please print a retraction, claim you were crazed by drugs, despondent at a ruined relationship, desperate for some media attention or anything you can think of, but tell the public you now realize what a tragic mistake that column was.

Your package on the lunacy that is DROP should be required reading for every concerned citizen in this country, let alone Philadelphia (Cover Story, "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle," Ralph Cipriano, April 22). If the Tea Party jackasses really had half a brain, they'd grasp that it's not about calling Obama a socialist or a communist or a fascist or whatever ignorant derogatory slander they don't understand well enough to even spell properly, but the unchecked, unaccountable power grab that's largely taking place at the state and local level, especially with regard to public-sector pension systems and the fiscal nightmare that will conveniently set in well after the do-nothing fucks who can actually do something about it no longer have to put themselves before the voters. CP's story rekindled my faith in the future of journalism. Great job. I'm passing it on to as many people as I know.

I'm not sure if I got to meet you that night at the ENPC rally, but I'm glad you came (Cover Story, "Agricultural Phenomenon," Isaiah Thompson, April 29). What a night that was, so exciting to be a part of something bigger than you, with people you live down the street from. I'm the "young, bearded white guy" who was jubilantly handing out seeds. Great article on urban agriculture, I really enjoyed it. To be honest, that seed thing was a last-minute, half-baked idea because we had a bunch of seeds that my friend Art from our Urban Farm Team at Circle of Hope gave us to do something with. I think he rescued them from being thrown away. But isn't that the story of all that land we're trying to put to good use? Anyway, I was pretty happy when not only was almost everyone into sharing seeds to grow some food, but they all were into getting this land redistributed back to good use. I'm glad you came to shine a light on such a good story.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

The right-wing American media giving legitimacy to these "Tea Party" lunatics has to stop (Cover Story, "You Say You Want a Revolution?" Holly Otterbein, April 15). Free speech is one thing, but I'm really tired of these racists, sexists and xenophobes using terrorist tactics when they don't get their way. Then they try to cover up their terrorism by whining "free speech," never mind these are the same people who muzzle the free speech rights of those who disagree with them. (And the FBI is useless, afraid to do anything about them because, after all, the targets of their terrorism are only Democrats.)

These neocon goofballs never act up until a Democrat is president. They whined loudly in the 1990s, but were conspicuous by their silence from 2001 to 2009. Not a fucking word about everything the twice-unelected Bush and Cheney junta did. "Tea Party" trash are pissed off because a half-black man is president. They label themselves "independent," "non-party" or something else, but they never, ever criticize Republicans to the degree they do Democrats.

But I do want to personally thank every piece of Tea Party trash because you have managed to awaken my inner liberal. These ber-patriots would have been firmly on the side of King George III. Period.

In the April 29 article "You've Come a Long Way, Baby," we mistakenly reported that six states permit gay marriage. In fact, five do — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Iowa, as well as Washington, D.C. Although the Maine legislature passed a law in 2009 granting marriage equality, in November that state's voters overturned that law via referendum. City Paper regrets the error.

Due to an editing oversight in last week's A Million Stories, a quote from a Sestak staffer that was "not for attribution" was incorrectly identified as "off the record." City Paper apologizes for the confusion and, for the record, does not print off-the-record comments.