To the editor:
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Recently the Reader has chosen to cover the current events surrounding the HotHouse [The Meter, September 22, August 4]. Great, keep the stories coming. Unfortunately, thus far the reporting of Marguerite Horberg being ostracized from the very club she founded and nurtured throughout the course of two decades has been unsettlingly biased in favor of the corporate interests that have chosen to oust her. Bob Mehr quotes Marc Harris as saying “Most important for HotHouse is that the turmoil of the past few months has subsided.”
As an artist and filmmaker living in Chicago, it deeply troubles me that the Reader would play this corporate game with the obviously fiscally minded Marc Harris rather than reach out to the artists, patrons, and its own archive of stories to see that the HotHouse simply isn’t or can never be the HotHouse without Marguerite at its helm. Culturally, without Marguerite Horberg, this city is on a downward spiral. Truly. Whereas culturally, without any of the existing members of the HotHouse board, this city would soon recover–in hours perhaps. The Reader has obviously and apparently missed this issue and the point to the story, and I hope many future articles will be written to rectify this and expose and deliver the true nature of this story and the terrible tragedy that has taken place. To drop the matter now without further journalistic effort and still refer to your publication as a publication for the arts and about the arts would be criminal.
