Mailbag: Proposed advertising board is a bad deal for Costa Mesa, F.V.

Two weeks after Cheryl Brothers was anointed mayor of Fountain Valley and just days before Christmas, the City Council on Tuesday may give Clear Channel Communications the ability to construct a massive two-sided, highly intrusive commercial advertising LED billboard.

Merry Christmas to the poor citizens and homeowners of nearby Costa Mesa and the uninformed and unaware citizens of Fountain Valley.

The city says it needs the revenue, apparently no matter how garish or intrusive the lighting or the questionable content of the advertising. Did you also know that the city will have no legal control over the messages broadcast over these commercial advertising boards for the next 30 years? Good luck, Fountain Valley, in going to court trying to regulate or pursue broken promises against a multibillion-dollar advertising company like Clear Channel.

The city says it will receive $150,000 in revenue from Clear Channel every year. That’s quite a bargain for Clear Channel. This means the city will receive $17.12 per hour while Clear Channel is able to broadcast close to 1,028 commercial advertisements per hour between the two LED boards.

In my opinion, it is devious, underhanded and sad that this issue is being handled in this manner by Fountain Valley city management, the Planning Department and the City Council.

Leston Trueblood

Fountain Valley

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What is it with all this violence?

When I was young (granted, that was awhile ago) people were friendly and helpful to each other (really).

If my mom heard that some people down the street were having a hard time, she would go visit them, and chat a little, and then slip them enough money to go buy groceries.

And no one locked their doors at night. No one. There was no need.

Well, safe to say, it’s not safe anymore. What happened?

Here is something violent that happened when I was young: Bambi’s mother got shot. It was horrifying. Kids were leaving the movie theater in trauma. It helped that our mothers tried to explain that it was just a movie, a cartoon, in fact: “Snow White.” They assured us that no one would actually shoot a mother.

That was a while ago, wasn’t it?

Think of how different that is from what goes on now. Imagine saying to someone today, “I just saw a really exciting movie, although it’s a little tough to handle. This cartoon deer gets shot by a cartoon hunter ...’’

The violence in society seems to come out of the blue. But it doesn’t. It gets built up in society, layer by layer, year by year, higher and higher. Any particular dramatic incident is just the tip of a much larger cultural iceberg. Which is a little scary.

But here is perhaps a reassuring thought: The average citizen does have some control over all this. If the average citizen refuses to support violent comics, novels, songs and music, movies, computer games, television and toys, that will start to melt the iceberg.

Steve Davidson

Newport Beach

The writer is a clinical psychologist.

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