Photograph Courtesy Antonyan Miranda

Miranda estimates that they have about twenty billboards up around the county right now. With regulations capping San Diego at just under 600 allowable billboards, this means that these flippant, sometimes confrontational ads make up about 3% of all available billboard space in San Diego.

Miranda’s malign message

Danielle Thomassen’s interview in San Diego Reader of vapid divorce attorney Tim Miranda (“Divorcée talks with Antonyan Miranda, king of divorce billboards”, Cover Stories, May 3, 2023) gave him much more credence than he deserves. Was it really necessary to mention the writer is also a divorcée? That term was retired in the Nixon era. As if being a qualified female journalist sent to interview a male bully with a bat isn’t cringey enough! The sweet cover art made this snake in the grass look as safe as cotton candy. SD Reader, you failed your writer and angered any reader with a brain.

But I digress.

With over half of all marriages ending in divorce, this law firm is harvesting the easy pickings; capitalizing on the misery of angry clients that see his ads and appear at his door with conveyer belt frequency. Clever and quite full of himself, Miranda refuses to “dignify the criticism” of detractors of his acerbic ad slogans. Well, isn’t that special!

Meanwhile, mostly men across San Diego are getting the undignified message that it’s acceptable to refer to their soon-to-be ex spouse, frequently the mother of their children, as “ho”, “witch” or “gone girl.” Just as Trump has his pathetic defense of “locker room talk” for his “grab ‘em by the p-----” comments, Miranda is normalizing, justifying and even cheering on aggressive posturing by men.

In this country, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner. That’s 12 million women and men over the course of a single year. It’s a known fact that women, in the process of leaving a male partner, are at heightened risk of retaliatory violence and often death. It’s become a daily read, men and occasionally women, slaughtering their whole family: the spouse, kids, themselves, even neighbors and strangers with alarming frequency when a marriage is ending. People losing their minds on a daily basis with tragic results. Do they really need cheering on? Isn’t violent messaging like Miranda’s irresponsible? How many in divorce are dangerously close to the tipping point?

Divorce is depressing and expensive. In divorce made more contentious and dangerous by nasty and inflammatory innuendo, the only clear winner is this clever, despicable lawyer. He’s not on your side. He’s capitalizing on your misfortune while laughing all the way to the bank.

Marina Andriola

San Diego

Potential politician protests plan

How now brown cow! Why would someone with no chance in winning, run for mayor of San Diego? (“You Can’t Fight City Hall... but now you can buy it!”, SD on the QT, May 12, 2023) Well, I’m a candidate for mayor in order to inject a truth serum in the veins of voters. DO NOT SELL CITY PROPERTY! Manage the City’s coffers like an adult and not like a drunken sailor in a Spanish port. Why is the City’s liability fund hemorrhaging at the seams? Because there is no vision! “Without vision, the people shall perish.” —William James.

Daniel Smiechowski

Bay Ho