A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE

EDITOR: Your article on rising rents is laughable ["Urban Diaspora," Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, Oct 11]. Certainly, some people are being priced out of their apartments, but others are moving in. Rents only go as high as someone will pay. Certainly, the people with more money might not be the favorite types of the editors or readers of The Stranger, and the city will change somewhat, but let's put it in perspective.

The bad news is that there are people who like being able to walk to amenities, visit friends, and commute 15 minutes to work who have a little more money than you. Should those people be forced to live in the suburbs because they have too much money?

For every apartment converted to a condo, someone is buying a condo. For every house torn down, there are one or more townhouses (ugly and poorly designed as they are) being created. If anything, the problem is that not enough new density is being created. If it were not for these condos and townhouses, these buyers would still be seeking apartments in choice neighborhoods.

While it is a shame for some, especially the working class, I find it preferable to a city ravaged by flight due to undesirability, lack of jobs, and a ravaged economy. Yeah, I miss the old Belltown. I just wish I had bought a building there when I could have. While it may be tempting to decry a new city populated by "yuppies" or "the wealthy" or whatever, I would hardly call it ravaged.

Matthew Reichlin

THE LONG VIEW

So hipsters are having to move out to the hinterlands of North Ballard, Lake City, and—god forbid—West Seattle. Cry me a fucking river. I had to move to Spokane to find a house I could afford. If you can still afford to live in the city, bully for you, but the rest of us forming the great migration out of town are braving it in a land where there is no Cafe Allegro, no decent sushi, and certainly no Chop Suey. On the plus side, there are plenty of prehipster Comet Taverns everywhere, where you don't have to ask for your PBR in just the right tone of bored irony to avoid getting a dirty look from the bartender.

Michelle Swanson

PART OF THE PROBLEM

TO THE EDITOR: Your recent writing on Dennis Kucinich shares the same fault that has come to define so much of The Stranger's political coverage ["Because He Was Right," Eli Sanders and Dan Savage, Oct 11]. Character assassination and simple insulting rants replace fact and cloud the big picture. One has to get halfway through the article before one can even learn that Kucinich is... a representative from Ohio. Prior to this point in the writing, we learn that Kucinich is short and a vegetarian. And that in The Stranger's view, Americans would never vote for a short vegetarian because 41 percent of us still believe that Saddam had WMD or connections to 9/11, or because we are "flag waving."

The Stranger's comments beg the questions of whether or not The Stranger is aware that the 41 percent in question are almost exclusively Republican voters, and whether or not The Stranger is aware that Kucinich is running for the Democratic nomination, not the Republican nomination.

I am not a D. K. supporter myself, not remotely. I think it needs to be clear, however, that The Stranger is not helping Democrats by cheaply assailing the only actually liberal candidates in the 2008 nomination race. I can see it happening again: the long, ugly ride where leftist and liberal media convince leftist and liberal media to vote for corporate-sponsored D.C. establishment candidates because of the myth of "electability." I am waiting for your anointing of Hillary Clinton.

I no longer even bother with the Democratic Party. I don't have a dog in this race. However, in watching publications that continue through whatever abysmal reasoning to support the Democratic Party, but that have primarily leftist or liberal readerships, I can't help feel despair at the way your editors and commentators continue to undermine liberals and leftists by causing us to believe that we are some tiny fringe in the U.S. Have you noticed? Eighty percent of the U.S. population wants this war over with, presumably including half of the people who still think that Saddam had connections to 9/11. The only thing lower than George Bush's 32 percent approval rating is the terrible 22 percent approval rating had by the Democratic Congress, currently under "centrist" D.C. establishment leadership. Poll after poll show that the public by large margins think Congress is too friendly to big business and corporations, has been ineffectual on the environment, and has done too little to stop Bush. These are the exact complaints of the liberal candidates that you, The Stranger, continually drag through the mud.

I don't care if D. K. has an attractive wife. I DO care that so few media outlets in the country will give the time of day to the few (if less than great) candidates in this race who are actually willing to represent the liberal activist voter base of the Democratic Party. Consider yourself part of the problem, as far as I can see it, not the solution.

Cliff Frensley

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

EDITOR: I always wonder about a short essay that has two bylines. Why should so few words take two people to concoct? Now I understand.

The hatchet job on Dennis Kucinich is so astonishingly moronic, so mind-numbingly stupid, so snarky, brain-dead, elitist, off-base, condescending, and incoherent that it took two petty little twits to write it. Sanders and Savage reveal all the insight of two whiny, pimple-faced twerps hiding out in the basement until the refractory period is over so they can masturbate again to their Elton John poster.

Grow up, girls.

Tim Daly