The world of Tila Tequila

Shrinking space and shrinking editorial IQ

Three-fourths of Page 1 and a full page inside on someone named Tila Tequila [“Tequila’s Sunset,” March 14]?

It’s bad enough the Sunday Times has -- necessitated by a combination of the recession, Sam Zell and the Internet -- shrunk to but a shadow of its former self, but some editorial good sense should still prevail at The Times.

To paraphrase Joseph Welch in responding to Joseph McCarthy’s slurs against his client: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Martin Cooper

Encino

Visiting the world of Tequila

The Times has sunk to a new low. Nobody with a brain cares about Tila Tequila. I came home to my Sunday paper to find that you had wasted space on her and was extremely disappointed to see that someone who has literally no talent or skill had gotten front billing for being a narcissist with loose morals. What kind of message do articles like this send to young people?

Please don’t ruin any more of my Sundays with garbage like this. Spend more time writing about people trying to make a positive difference in this world.

Jim Leckey

Huntington Beach

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Thank you for not presenting Tila as some sort of martyr or role model. It’s nice to know that those in the media actually see her the way we all do: A sad, lonely woman desperate to succeed but willing to throw anyone under the bus in the process. Thank you for the phenomenal read.

Stephanie Bruninga

Phoenix

Mahler had early boosters

Regarding the story on Mahler [“Learning to Love Mahler,” March 14)]: One of the earliest champions of Mahler was Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski launched his long tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra with a spectacular presentation of the Eighth Symphony in March of 1916.

The use of Mahler’s music in Luchino Visconti’s film “Death in Venice” was very appropriate because the author of the original story, Thomas Mann, had attended Mahler’s own initial performance of the Eighth Symphony in Munich in 1910 and was so impressed that he wrote a personal letter of admiration to the composer and gave the main character of his story (published in 1913), Aschenbach, the exact features of Mahler.

Although Aschenbach is a writer in the original story, Visconti’s transformation of him into a composer with the use of Mahler’s music was a stroke of genius.

F.M. Swensen

Santa Ana

Defending Lang Lang

I am outraged at the arrogance and spitefulness of Alan Chapman’s comments [“Mozart in the Morning,” March 14] about the classical pianist Lang Lang. He states, “I would not walk across the street to hear him play.”

To talk of Lang Lang, who is not just a brilliant performer but an effervescent one, in denigrating terms ill behooves Chapman, a man of music and a Yale-educated music theory scholar. Lang Lang has showmanship and dazzle. Artists bring their own individual style and passion to make music come alive.

Chapman does great disservice to KUSC by ranting about a young, gifted performer.

Prem Kishore

Reseda