Mailbag: Opposing views on Cambodia and Port mural

Long Beach Press Telegram | 27 March 2016

The Feedback Feedbag is all over the map this week, with mail coming in response to such far-flung subjects as Cambodia, the Port of Long Beach Mural and the neverending story of what to call this column.

Our column Thursday urged our City Council to (at least) draft a resolution against a planned appearance in the April 10 Cambodian New Year Parade in Long Beach of the son of Cambodia’s despotic prime minister who was with the barbaric Khmer Rouge.

We’re not going to name the writer of this response for her own benefit. We care about people. That’s our big sin: “These folks are so used to getting everything given to them,” she wrote. “If (they) feel so strongly about their country, why are they here?”

We’re not going to speak for them, but we’re guessing it’s because they didn’t want to be slaughtered. We could be wrong. Maybe it’s our town’s vaunted salubrious climate, or its high Walkability score. Why are we here? It’s a question we could ask of ourselves, if we wanted to get all philosophical, which we don’t.

Turning to the mural at the old Port of Long Beach headquarters, which is teetering between destruction and salvation (again, who among us isn’t?). Reader responses help maintain the fragile balance.

Emily Quest, a Cabrillo VIP Parent, says the mural should be installed at Cabrillo High (being’s how the chronological mural kicks off with a depiction of the high school’s namesake). “The Arts Council, LBUSD, Roberto Uranga …” and a number of other civic and neighborhood groups, Quest writes, “need to band together and make a Kickstarter and do this preservation effort.”

Bob Ballew, on the other hand, writes, “Once again Growbatty gets it politically incorrect. The mural is out of touch with the times” then goes on to say stuff like “Where is the Mexican flag representing the majority of Long Beach residents, the rainbow flag celebrating our diversity?” It’d be a good point but our finely tuned sarcasm gauge was pegging before we made it to the end of the letter.

Changing the name of this column has proven to be more problematic than we’d anticipated, but we soldier on, having at least managed to hog-tie the former name of “What’s Hot!” and left it struggling in the trunk of our car.

Since then, we’ve been changing the name pretty much on a daily basis, depending on the subject at hand.

Still, suggestions continue to come in. Like this one from Debra Simmons who suggests The Hot Scoop, probably, we figured, because the Hot thing won’t go away and because of our relentless scooping of our ever-diminishing competition.

We were half right. Simmons explained: “Because you are still hot, in a cool kind of way.” OK, duh. But the scoop part, she writes, is because she saw us at Baskin-Robbins one time getting a scoop of ice cream.

Our pal Dan Spellens offers Grobaty’s Corner, which sent our memory back to when we had a brief run writing Kal’s Korner, which was a spoof on a small-town Iowan newspaper columnist.

Another person of unknown gender, name of Kim, suggests Shock & Awe, which has mixed connotations, but we’ll use it today.