Richard L. Grant
Pacific Heights
Shit Has a Fan
SF Weekly, in true tabloid journalism style, managed to completely miss the point in the cover article "Men Behaving Viciously" (March 19). The portrayals of the ACT UP San Francisco activists were one-dimensional at best, faulting the activists as if they concocted their frustration out of thin air.
San Francisco AIDS Foundation Executive Director Pat Christen is painted as the innocent victim of a group of lunatic, vindictive, phlegmatic, kitty-poop-tossing psychos. Nowhere in the article is the bigger picture presented. For instance, during her tenure as executive director, Christen has intimidated and fired union members and activist employees. Of particular concern is her cutting of bilingual/bicultural services.
Chicano AIDS activist Ronnie Burk had his own reasons for tossing cat litter at Christen, but it is untrue that he screamed that she should die while he did so. Burk yelled that Christen didn't deserve $140,000 a year, and that has been recorded on video.
Anyone who keeps treatment out of the hands of sick people, discriminates against patients and workers because of their native language or ethnicity, or sits it out on company time while people are dying deserves to have dump trucks of spit, shit, and whatever else tossed his or her way.
Jaime Gutierrez-Rodriguez
Mission
Tara Shioya replies: Such legal niceties might escape the notice of Gutierrez-Rodriguez, but San Francisco AIDS Foundation Executive Director Pat Christen's statement regarding Burk's outburst is legally sworn to be true and correct.
Racist Spot
I found Michael Scott Moore's review of Berkeley Rep's Macbeth ("Scot Free," Stage, March 5) to be offensive in the extreme. Since when is casting a black principal actor in a Shakespeare play a "deviation," as he calls it? It is no longer unusual to cast non-Anglo actors in Shakespeare, if it ever was, and to note the actors' race in such an insensitive way shows Moore's ignorance of the history of Shakespearean theater.
It is also sad and offensive to me that the critic chose to bring O.J. Simpson into his review, though the plot of Macbeth has no parallels to the Simpson trials. Is O.J. Simpson the only thing that comes to mind when Moore sees a black man? If so, perhaps he has some work to do on his own racism. If Moore wishes to discuss race in relation to Shakespeare, the least he could do is impart a little intelligence to the discussion rather than the offensive and flip comments he made in his review.
Melissa Kirk
Berkeley
Correction
Due to a transcribing error, Nancy Ware, the head of the upper school of San Francisco Day School, was misidentified in the April 9 Mulch "Lusty Teens Tangle in the Web." SF Weekly regrets the error.
