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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

"We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a 'snob' despite the millions she has spent on our city's homeless and mentally ill over the past decades."

What is this trash? Calling someone a "snob" is libel now? Who upvoted this? Why is it on the front page? Come on.

Flagged.

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Yeah, like anyone cares what the Chronicle prints.CW Nevius (the columnist who has been baiting Danielle Steele and calling her a snob because her barge downtown house is surrounded by a hedge which protrudes onto the pavement) has been doing this schtick for 10 or 20 years, he's a professional whiner. I was actually surprised to see him whining about Danielle Steele because he's usually whining about poor people. The chronicle is an extremely parochial newpaper and CW Nevius is just the resident grump. They also have a resident angry conservative columnist, two resident self-absorbed sports writers, etc...much like many other small town newspapers. People who want a serious daily newspaper in SF read the WSJ or NYT, both of which have SF offices and produce a local supplement.

"Yeah, like anyone cares what the Chronicle prints"

Seems like people do. Including yours truly.

I found the dissonance between the prominence and reputation of the speaker and the crudeness of the remarks interesting, hence my up vote. Comparing hoodlums tossing rocks to Kristallnacht is beyond depraved.

Is HN really an appropriate place to point out stupid letters to the editor?

This is a sonar ping bouncing off a person closely intermeshed with communities HN readers care about. It casts into relief certain cultural values and tendencies of our community, e.g. our discomfort with moral ambiguity (Bill Gates/Uber/prosecutors/Comcast tend to be judged as scumbag or not in the top comment, with the nuance being expanded upon in child comments versus the other way around).

This stupid letter to the editor has (a) made the news elsewhere (b) been explicitly disowned by his firm: "Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree."

Regarding (a), the news contains lots of Stupid Celebrity Stories, but that's the kind of thing I look at HN to get away from.

Given his god-like status in the VC community -- and of the company he founded, which until recently has boasted of its "continuing relationship" with Mr. Perkins -- it's more than appropriate:

    http://www.kpcb.com/teams/partners-emeriti

He's the founder of a (formerly) top-tier SV VC firm, and the issue of "how SF and VC-funded tech get along" is a huge local political issue in SF right now, so I think it's quite relevant.

(and, it's a letter-to-the-editor, so he's not being misquoted, unlike the "creative editing" applied to make pg look sexist)

It should be noted that Danielle Steel is allegedly Perkins' ex-wife.

What's the significance of that? I must admit I have no idea who either of them are.

So you flagged the post before even clicking through? C'mon man! It's right there in the link:

"Mr. Perkins is a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers."

How do you think I quoted the article if I didn't click through?

Of course I read it, but I'm not familiar with the author nor the company it says he founded.

KPCB (more commonly "Kleiner Perkins") used to be the top VC firm in the world (at least for tech/IT/Internet; the other candidate would be Sequoia, but they're both clearly in the top 5 in the dot com time period). They funded Amazon, Google, Genentech, Sun, etc. They basically voluntarily abdicated shortly after the Google investment and went into clean tech for some reason.

John Doerr is probably more prominent in the IT space than any of the "name" partners, though.

Thanks for the info.

I still don't get why it's HN-worthy though. I do realize that there is a certain amount of interest in the finance side of stuff here (which I don't really share, but I see it) but even there, "important VC guy makes an ass of himself on the WSJ letters page in a way that is not related to tech" hardly seems relevant.

If a current VC said what he said, I think that would be unquestionably relevant, given how contentious the income/wealth/etc. inequality issue is right now.

There's a vastly better argument here that he's an 80 year old former-player who is saying crazy things which are relevant to the industry but not particularly relevant because he's been out of the game so long (and is potentially not in full control of his faculties, although plenty of 80 year olds are.)

He was her fifth husband [1997-2002], or so Wikipedia informs one.

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