Brady Westwater on Mon, 30 Nov 1998 17:31:20 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Mike Davis Expose Hoax


I am responding to Peter Lunenfeld's outraged post that someone had the
audactiy to post my essay on Mike Davis _Mike Davis as the Wizard of Oz_ on
< nettime>.  First, of the over 300 responses I have received from the
leading urban theorists in the country, among others, I have had exactly two
negative responses to my essay; both of them were from personal friends of
Mr. Davis and neither of them challenged my work - just my right to disagree
with Mr. Davis.  Even the web master of _Radical Urban Theory_ Matt Jalbert
- publisher of Mr. Davis's works (and a real class act, I might add) - sent
me congratulations over my essay.  My purpose in the paper was to establish
that Mike Davis has been writing with total disregard to the physical and
emotional reality of Los Angeles - which I feel I have proven beyond a
doubt.

If Mr. Lunenfeld - or anyone else -  would like to join me on a tour of
Bunker Hill, the Wilshre district and Hollywood to see how the physical
reality of LA differs 180 degrees from what Mike Davis says it is, I hope he
is open minded enough to see the truth with his own eyes, rather than
through Mr. Davis's paranoia.  Salon.com just took the tour with me and,
like everyone else who has taken the MIKE DAVIS MEMORIAL BUNKER HILL TOUR,
they have a totally different perception of MIke Davis and his writings. 
BTW, It is called the Memorial Tour because once anyone takes it, the idea
of Mike Davis having any credibility about LA is a distant memory.

One suprising note is that, once my writing became public knowledge, Mr.
Davis has - in a preemptive strike though an article in the LA Weekly -  now
admitted that for ten years he has been manufacturing interviews, making up
'facts' and has operated with a total disregard for the truth.  In  other
words, he - faced with irrefutable evidence - now admits he is a liar.  So
much for that idea being 'ludicrous' Mr. Lunenfeld.

As for my saying that being born in Fontana disqualifies MIke Davis from
being a writer about LA - well, what I said was that claiming he was BORN in
LA in _ECOLOGY OF FEAR_, as he does, is a lie.  And being raised in the
desert outback of San Diego County does not, I feel, give him a 'special
understanding' of the city of Los Angeles, as his fans have claimed.

Now that even Mike Davis - if not Mr. Lunenfeld - admits that much of his
writing - is at variance with the truth, I will in my next essay  address
how each of his 'ideas' is equally at variance with the truth.  Stay tunned.
 Same channel.  Different time.

Your 'umble servant, 

Brady Westwater 
WWMalibu@aol.com

PS - Peter - say hi to my many friends at Art Center.....

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