Hate Is Not Funny

I'M GOING TO assume the editor of Metro Santa Cruz missed the swastika attached to the KSCO station on the cover of the Oct. 22 edition. Since the artwork is of DeCinzo I hope he just snuck one in on you. I have never seen a DeCinzo comic I have objected to. He tends to take on all comers, so he is an all-service jokester. This is the first time I have seen him pen hate; and hate is not funny. DeCinzo cannot be so ill informed that he does not know that KSCO is owned and operated by the Zwerling family who are Jewish. In a world where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants the world to deny the Holocaust, throwing a swastika on a Jewish-owned business is tantamount to a hate crime. Sure it was only a drawing, but I can't imagine the pain it caused to your thousands of readers of Jewish descent who picked up your entertainment guide and found the universal sign of hate and anti-Judaism on the cover. In short time, I will not be surprised to see real swastikas painted on the walls of KCSO by some unthinking vandal, and you will be to blame.

 Bradley Goodwin,
Santa Cruz

Despicable and Disgusting

I KNOW we have freedom of speech in this great country, but I need to speak up about how offensive I found the picture on the front cover of your weekly that depicted a certain radio station with a swastika pasted on it! You may call that freedom of speech, but I call it a lie and defamation of character. How can you accuse an entity of such a horrible thing when it is certainly not true. Do you understand how many people would be offended by this because of their heritage? How offended do you think those folks are that may have had relatives die at the hands of the Nazis? How dare you! How dare you attack a radio station who has done so much public service? How dare you attack a radio station that helped us all with so much information when we were having wild fires threaten our lovely area early this summer? They have been key for years to public service in the Santa Cruz area. Metro Santa Cruz is despicable and disgusting and I will never read Metro Santa Cruz again!

M. Darsey,
La Selva

Cajone Test

LEAVE IT TO Metro Santa Cruz's resident cheap-shot artist Steven DeCinzo to take local political commentary to new lows with his cynical and misguided cartoons directed at Mayor Ryan Coonerty.

As one of the many activists in Santa Cruz who fought against offshore oil drilling (and DeCinzo was nowhere around for those battles), I found his recent reference to offshore platforms especially offensive.

Of this I am sure: Coonerty contributes more to this community in a single day than a loser like DeCinzo ever will in a lifetime. Coonerty's behind-the-scenes negotiations to forge a settlement with UCSC were not only historic, but they also speak to his unique abilities--and sensibilities--as an elected official in the community in which he was raised.

And if DeCinzo wants to put his money where his mouth is, I'd be glad to bet him a buck for every vote that Coonerty gets over the second-place candidate in next week's election; and I'll pay him five bucks for every vote that Coonerty finishes behind any of the other council candidates. Those'd be five-to-one odds, and probably the best the little weasel has seen in a long time. Let's see if DeCinzo has some real cajones or hides behind his pen.

Geoffrey Dunn,
Santa Cruz

Note to Readers
Last week we went overboard. Our cover, which featured a cartoon Obama as a cartoon superhero, also depicted a cartoon swastika next to a cartoon drawing of local talk-radio station KSCO. In real life, we apologize. If we had it to do over again, we'd have busted out the whiteout and skipped the storm of righteous wrath that rained down on our heads and obscured the more important issue of that week: the upcoming election.

--Editor

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