Mailbag: ‘Would-be Easy Riders’ making some feel uneasy

In your story covering “The Ride,” where “hundreds, if not more than a 1,000,” “thunderous” motorcycles roar down PCH (“‘Every year we cry,’” Sept. 12), you make it sound like these riders are somehow doing something noble and patriotic by disrupting the peace in our town. As a longtime resident of Newport Beach, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Most of these motorcycles have been illegally modified for the sole purpose of making them unbelievably loud and noisy. These would-be “Easy Riders” love to gun their engines as they knowingly try to intimidate those of us in the vast majority who would much prefer peace and quiet. This is how we commemorate a solemn day in our nation’s history? This is how we honor the victims of 9/11? I think not.

I implore our Newport Beach Police Department to do its job and to aggressively cite riders of illegally modified motorcycles. In addition, I feel very strongly the city should impound, confiscate and destroy the bikes of repeat offenders. We need to make it clear that the city of Newport Beach will not tolerate illegally modified, overly loud motorcycles on our streets, with or without American flags mounted, on 9/11 or any other day of the year.

Allen Drucker

Newport Beach

Helping form harmony for all

Thank you very much for your reasonable and balanced editorial (“Defusing Islamophobia,” Sept. 12). This kind of editorial is what we need in our country to have peace and harmony for all Americans.

Harry Hamid Shorooghi

Laguna Hills

Right wing full of ‘RepubLiars’

Tucked away on Page 4 of the Sept. 2 issue is a headline: “Irvine official target of probe.” It is made to sound like some unimportant Irvine city employee, with no relationship to Newport Beach, is under investigation. Come on, Daily Pilot, you can do better than that! This bombshell story is about a Republican, Rep. John Campbell, who represents Newport Beach with his headquarters in Fashion Island.

I would normally be inclined to ignore such news manipulation knowing that Newport Beach is a bastion of the newly resurgent John Birch Society. However, these are perilous times for our country’s democracy and something very insidious has been going on.

Democracy flourishes only with the active participation of an informed electorate nourished by an independent and critical media. Unfortunately, today we have neither.

In the age of the Internet, lies, fear and hate are spread through self-serving blogs and reported immediately, without verification, by irresponsible journalists. The shameless right-wing noise machines and the cowed mainstream corporate media have succeeded in delegitimizing the duly elected president of our country with their scurrilous falsehoods about his religion and place of birth.

It seems plausible that these corporate-funded, Supreme Court-enabled insurgents fueled by race-baiting and hatemongering can bring down our form of government to the great delight of al-Qaida. Keep it up, RepubLiars!

Jamshed Dastur

Newport Beach