Volume 44- No. 23
by lyle e davis
If you are reading the edition of The Paper within the San Marcos Kaiser Permanente Clinic, it may be the last copy for awhile.
A gent by the name of Sean J. Villafranca, building manager for that clinic, has decided that he doesn’t want you reading The Paper and, for several weeks, has ordered his custodians to throw out our papers which had been distributed to most of the departments.
We were delivering between 2500 and 2800 copies each week to Kaiser. We consistently received phone calls and emails complimenting us on our cover stories, on our Chuckles, and our feature stories . . . as well as the local news which covered North County communities.
We were unaware of any problem with Kaiser.
Mr. Villafranca simply decided, arbitrarily, to order our papers destroyed. No phone call to us, no email, no letter, nothing advising us of any problem. We were curious as to what problem Mr. Villafranca had with The Paper. It appears to us that Mr. Villafranca either has a personal agenda or a personal vendetta. We see no other logical explanation.
Our Chief Distributor, Gary Loader, met with Mr. Villafranca who told Mr. Loader that the reason(s) were “offensive jokes,” and The Paper - 760.747.7119
website:www.thecommunitypaper.com
email: thepaper@cox.net
June 6, 2013
that we were racist in our news coverage and/or commentary.
Let’s deal with the last issue first:
Mr. Villafranca may not be aware of it but I founded “Los Caballeros de Aventura” (The Gentlemen of Adventure) about 18 years ago. This was an organization designed to divert at-risk Latino kids to healthy, active lifestyles, to help them discover life and its many adventures. To keep them out of “los pandillas” (gangs) and out of the juvenile justice system. To keep them from killing each other. (The motivation for me to found this group was learning of two young Latinos having been shot and killed in driveby shootings). I ran that organization for six years before retiring and turning it over to others.
During the entire six years I ran Los Caballeros, not one single kid in the organization entered the juvenile justice system. We became close friends with the kids and their families and, to this day, they contact me and let me know how they are doing. Many are married and now are raising their own families. Does that sound like a racist to you, Mr. Villafranca. Making such an unfounded an illinformed allegation suggests that it is you, Mr. Villafranca, who is a racist, not me, not The Paper. I further submit, Mr. Villafranca, that I have probably done far more for the Latino community than you have or would ever hope
to accomplish.
As to the second allegation, offensive jokes:
In the 14 years we have owned The Paper we have had run over 728 editions (52 weeks x 14 years) with an average of 15 jokes per “Chuckles” column. That comes to about 10,920 joke over a 14 year period. In that time we have received, perhaps, ten complaints about jokes. At least one of them was valid. I had, via an editing error, had let a scatalogical term slip through and it was published. That was
about 10 years ago. A lady complained and she had every right to. We were wrong and owned up to it.
Jokes are a subjective thing. We seldom, if ever, publish jokes about Mexicans, about Blacks (African-Americans) or other commonly maligned nationalies. I am of Norwegian descent. Were someone to tell or write a joke about Norwegians, I would probably be the frist to laugh, if it were a good one. I would like Mr. Villafranca to point out one “offensive” joke and tell me why it is offensive. We probably get more
“Kaiser San Marcos Bans The Paper” Continued on Page 2