I'm entirely shocked and offended at the cover of your Sept. 24 paper ["The Big Strip-Off"]. It seems to me even the most brain-dead whitey would recognize the blatant stereotyping racist imagery you chose to display so proudly.

But then, we are living in Portland, Ore., so perhaps the imagery is fitting. It gives all the ignorant white people around here an opportunity to comfortably sit in their racist easy chairs. All is well in the white enclaves. African Americans are still being kept in their place, and, for an added bonus, Bart Simpson is doing the dirty work! Who could hate lovable Bart Simpson? Let's put a big happy smiley face on our racist cartoon, shall we?

Oh, it's all so easy.

Grace Carter
Southeast Steele Street

PEST CONTROL

Please clarify what the Housing Authority did wrong in telling an abusive correspondent that he must direct his comments/rants to their board chairman [Rogue of the Week, WW, Oct. 1, 2003]. Did they threaten him with legal action, or a rent increase, or any other harm? Did they say that they were erecting a firewall to "stop [his letters] before they get there?" Did they shuffle him off to some powerless functionary? No, no and no. Actually, it looks like they did what any other well-run public organization would have done, and in fact what Richard Ellmyer himself suggests: They told him that if he sends his letters to anyone but the designated, responsible liaison, he will be ignored.

Scott Zenkatsu Parker
Southeast 49th Avenue

EMPEROR DUBYA

Does the Nose realize what's at stake in claiming George W. Bush's chief foreign-policy challenge is that "his act has simply gotten tired" ["Bush's Premature Iraq Elation," WW, Oct. 1, 2003]? The writer prefaces this argument with a charming little paean to the cause of freedom and democracy so nobly represented in the campaign against Iraq. Who could reasonably object to such a cause?

In place of that interpretation, I would suggest the basic motivation for this campaign and the entire Bush Doctrine is world conquest, not in the sense of getting every country in the world to fly the U.S. flag, but by creating economic environments and consumer habits that universally secure the interests of this nation. Of course, the official position of the U.S. cannot be represented in terms of global domination; hence the recourse to talk of freedom and democracy.

The Nose appears to heed this message like a dutiful schoolboy reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Foreign governments, however, are bound to be a little more skeptical (as should journalists be). One can assume that what they object to is less Bush's cowboy swagger than the Bush administration's attempt to conquer the world on behalf of U.S. economic interests.

Many other countries would probably each like to conquer the world on its own behalf, but at the moment none of them stands a chance. Even if one attributes to the international community no motive more exalted than this crass realism, their objections to the Bush administration are still far more substantial than Bush's
putative image problem.

Derrick Calandrella
Southeast 37th Avenue