Coverage of Colorado Tragedy

It must indeed be a slow news week when you allow Earl Ofari Hutchinson (Commentary, April 29) to sound off on the Littleton tragedy as if it had anything to do with the affairs of oppressed minorities. The “nagging suspicion” that nobody would have cared or covered this story had it been an inner-city incident is both spurious and a setback to the very ideals Hutchinson purports to champion. What will his next commentary be--that the bombing of Belgrade gets more media glare than if it were Detroit being hit by NATO missiles?

Choose your targets more responsibly, Mr. Hutchinson, and let the nation grieve for its innocent dead without trying to score rhetorical points in the incident’s bloody wake. Haven’t we enough divisiveness to go around?

DAVID WEISS

Tarzana

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Reading Hutchinson’s “What If It Wasn’t in Suburbia?” makes me realize how obvious his points are. Since when does violence in the ghetto receive so much analytical care? Violence is nothing new! How many youths have died and will continue to die outside of the so-called safe suburbs? We need to wake up and realize how widespread violence has become.

The truth of the matter is that adults have become extremely disconnected from youths. I believe adults have lost youths to stereotypes and media influence. Youths are smart, unsophisticated, scared, questioning, all in one package, which makes them very complicated, and not just someone to push rules upon.

EDUARDO R. GARCIA

Los Angeles

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Littleton: Abundant and often glorified violence on TV and in the movies, violent video games, TV newscasts with one murder after another and one violent story after another, gun availability and the National Rifle Assn., latchkey children, the Internet, neo-Nazis and right-wing “patriots,” state-sponsored executions, police violence against innocent citizens, two “righteous” and “just” wars (Iraq and Yugoslavia), a permanent war economy, military/hero worship. Any questions?

JOHN SLEVIN

Los Alamitos