Dawn Steel...L.A. Times, 12/22/97

Suzanne's Take: A Social Commentary

DAWN STEEL AS A GOOD MODEL
AND THE L.A. TIMES AS A BAD ONE
December 22, 1997

Dawn Steel is dead. A great lady. As the first female to head a movie studio, she broke through to make a new space for women in Hollywood. Maybe it's Woman needed now to break through in the arena of philosophers and kings. Steel's obituary, juxtaposed to the Opinion section of yesterday's Los Angeles Times, prompted me to write this letter to the editor:

"Reading your front page piece about Dawn Steel and the contribution she made that her straight-shooting supported, rescued me from what I was feeling from reading about 'THE SPIRITUAL VOID,' as you headlined the Opinion section of yesterday's paper. I felt like I was in a time warp reading, 'Where Have Parents Gone?,' which treated our 'moral hunger' as breaking news and rumbled about the consequence of women coming out of the kitchen. 'Increasing Incivility,' which told me 'believers have not been notably less warlike than others,' as if affiliation with formal religious is the determinate for how good we are, was equally irritating. What a low level of intention you demonstrated to deal with the great spiritual uprising that is underway in the world. Why are you not supporting the signs of hope, committing the paper to their flowering? Take a stand, for heaven's sake. You report on outer manifestations as if that is the only realm in play.

What is happening at our core? How are we becoming greater? What's the evolution that's going on? Egads, it's toward oneness -- where we get that we are interconnected. One big tribe. We help each other. We patch up the world. It is infinitely more interesting and exponentially more valuable to be dealing with what we are becoming than grieving for what we are not. For spot-lighting these two rambles through the ills of modern day life, my Steel-induced 'take-no-prisoners' gutsiness is crying, 'Shame, shame, shame.'

"One problem with us 44 million adult American 'cultural creatives' (according to a 1994 study which counted subscribers to the 'new' values) is that we are not organized and we hold no council. There are no institutions, no lobbies, no nothing but a vast pool of individuals aware that oneness is the goal. But, trapped in mechanisms birthed to house a different order, we must tear ourselves loose to reinvent itself mightily. I challenge you, Los Angeles Times, to be a gateway for a crusading energy on behalf of an idea and understanding whose time has come."