Tag: President Bush

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Zoo Kudos

I want to thank the Flyer for the well-presented story you published (“Out of the Woods,” August 14th issue) about the forest in Overton Park. I appreciate the opportunity that you gave the zoo to share its position with your readers. There is a great deal of passion over this forest, and I hope that we can keep your readers informed about the intended Chickasaw Bluffs trail as the vision becomes fleshed out.

Brian Carter, Director of Marketing and Communications

Memphis Zoo

Dumbasses

I was saddened to read last week’s letter from editor Bruce VanWyngarden, a typical criticism of low-information voters (Letter from the Editor, August 14th issue).

Being a truly informed voter is a full-time job, but even then, the discerning voter who watches C-SPAN, reads newspapers, and knows the pundits and politicians doesn’t have all he needs. Instead, the rational voter uses heuristics — shortcuts that simplify the field.

Party affiliation mirrors one’s views on the issues. A candidate’s moral conviction hints as to how he will act at 3 a.m. A “dumbass” voter (as he put it) can also look to friends and religious leaders who share his values. Issue voting is not the only path to an intelligent vote.

As a self-proclaimed smartass, I see truth in slogans such as “He’ll raise your taxes,” “We can’t cut and run,” or “the audacity of hope.” McCain is right to ask if Obama is more than media hype.

Nikki Tinker’s ad was not shameful because it appealed to our demons. It was shameful because it was a lie. It sought to disparage a public servant’s distinguished record. Steve Cohen won because he stood on that record and let voters decide themselves.

The problem is that Watergate and Monica and Iraq have cost us more than our faith in politicians; they have destroyed our faith in each other. This country, like VanWyngarden’s letter, is bitter and skeptical. We should recognize the common man’s awesome capacity for good. Just because others vote differently or on different criteria does not make them dumb.

Drew Dickso

Memphis

I found tremendous irony in last week’s editor’s note. I agree with Bruce VanWyngarden in his assessment of Nikki Tinker’s outrageous ads (not to mention Walter Bailey lowering himself to the bottom of the barrel). However, to say that most Memphians are above the “dumbass” line is a blatant untruth.

Think about the other city and state officials who’ve been elected over the past 20 years. Explain to me how the pompous and mighty Willie Herenton continues to get reelected by the same “low-information voters” time and time again. And Rickey Peete? This guy gets caught accepting bribes, gets out of prison, gets reelected, and goes corrupt again. Need I mention John Ford, that great humanitarian and bribe-accepting king?

I could continue, but with all the corruption that has taken place over the past few years, this letter would take days to complete. In the meantime, my suggestion to Memphians would be to take your head out of the sand and do a real background check on candidates. That way, you may be able to climb out of the “dumbass” pool.

Jeff W. Compton

Memphis

Color blind?

In a recent “Rant” (August 7th issue), Tim Sampson said there would be voters who vote against Barack Obama because of his color, which is ugly but true. There are also people who will vote for Obama because of his color, which is just as ugly and just as true.

Charles Ballew

Marion, Arkansas

Georgia vs. Katrina

Recently, I watched a video of Americans off-loading relief supplies to Georgia. I found myself offended by this act of charity.

Why? Because the Bush administration sent these supplies before the smoke could clear over the rooftops, while our own citizens, trapped in floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina, couldn’t get the government to drop off a case of bottled water.

We all watched the suffering of our fellow Americans on TV. These were desperate people begging the government to help for a week. Yet, let the poor Georgians suffer 10 minutes of stress, and Bush sends every unit available to help.

That ain’t right, folks. It is truly offensive, even if there are good intentions behind it.

Joe M. Spitzer

Memphis

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

CREDIT: by Roy Cajero

Living Day-to-Day

I was outraged at the sympathy given to illegal aliens by Bianca Phillips (“Living Day-to-Day,” August 7th issue). Illegal aliens and their employers should face the repercussions of the laws they are breaking. What part of “illegal” do people not understand? Yes, life is a constant struggle for those breaking the law and who are on the run from authorities. Hopefully, the difficulties that these illegal aliens are experiencing will discourage them from breaking the law by entering the United States or overstaying their visas.

My good friend and ex-boyfriend is Hispanic. His parents immigrated to the U.S. legally, worked hard, raised three children, and now have grandchildren going to college. The immigrants who come here illegally are a slap in his family’s face, taking their jobs, getting free health care, and not paying taxes on income earned.

I have to laugh at Pablo Davis’ (director of Latino Memphis) statement that “many of these people are leading lawful lives and their only crime is the way they entered the country. Some even entered legally and simply overstayed.” Would that be similar to entering Davis’ residence without his consent and deciding to stay? Would entering a bank during normal operating hours and simply refusing to leave after banking hours be legal? The person would quickly be deported to 201 Poplar.

One of the “victims” Phillips interviews is 20-year-old Gabby Castillo, who moved here with her parents (illegally) when she was 6 years old. She complains that she has to register at college as an international student and pay three times as much and that she does not get any federal money. How many people born here or here legally would like to go to school, get federal money, and further their education? She has the audacity to complain about crushed dreams when people like her parents are taking jobs away from legal immigrants and people born in the U.S.

Yes, the United States is a nation of immigrants — legal immigrants. The United States is also a nation of laws. If we do not abide by those laws, there is anarchy. If you are here illegally, you should be deported.

Harris Coleman

Memphis

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes’ death is a great loss to the Memphis community, as well as to the music world. I live in North Memphis, and I can remember as a child when Hayes lived on Birch Street and would walk to Mrs. Aikers’ store on Jackson Avenue. He was not as famous then as he ended up being, but he was a good neighbor who looked out for the kids on the street.

What a great talent — and a voice that will never be duplicated. Bless the Hayes family and rest in peace, Isaac. You will be missed, and your music will never fade away.

Cathy R. Porter

Memphis

Big Oil

In the year 2000, oil was $22.10 a barrel. President Bush’s conservative friends and Vice President Cheney had a secret meeting with Big Oil executives. Five years later, oil was $55 a barrel and the president was forced to pump from our strategic reserves to try and save his GOP friends in the “do nothing” Congress from election-year defeat.

Now it’s 2008, the last year of the Bush/Cheney rip-off for Big Oil. Exxon just made an $11.6 billion profit — in a single quarter. The GOP and their presidential candidate, John McCain, are repeating the mantra that we need more offshore drilling leases for the oil companies. They fail to mention that by the end of this month, there will be oil company bids on more than 40 million acres of offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico going unused.

The companies can’t explore what they have now, much less if all our coastlines were leased suddenly for drilling.

The Republicans had the presidency and controlled both branches of Congress for six years without demanding more refineries and drilling from oil companies. Now they say drilling is the only answer. Why didn’t the president start buying oil for the reserve before it hit $110 a barrel? Why did the Republicans want to allow solar tax credits to lapse? Why are they opposed to giving renewable-energy companies tax breaks like the ones they insist on for the oil companies?

Think again about how we got from $22-a-barrel oil to $120-a-barrel oil in eight years. It wasn’t an accident.

Jack Bishop

Cordova

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Let me just see how self-serving I can be. In the interest of full disclosure, I work for the Stax Music Academy, which is next door to the Stax Museum, where I also work. So know right off the bat that this is not objective. But I have to tell you that if you miss the Stax Music Academy’s annual Spring Concert this coming Saturday, May 12th, you will be missing something that’s going to be really great for a number of reasons: One is that Britney Spears will not be there. Nor will Paris Hilton (she’ll be in jail, apparently, doing what she describes as her “cruel and inhumane” jail time for breaking the law, the same amount of time any of us little people would do, which is what she gets for letting that dog of hers poop on a friend of mine’s floor in Nashville and calling it “hot”). Nor will that great singing talent Jessica Simpson. Nor will any rap groups going on and on about hoes. Nor will Ashlee Simpson be there lip synching. There are actually going to be special guests who have real talent, especially in the way of one Wendy Moten, one of the world’s greatest singers. If you don’t remember Moten, she is a native Memphian who had a Top 40 hit back in the 1990s with “Come In Out of the Rain” and has gone on to do some other great things, but she has never garnered that mass fame here in the United States like the aforementioned people who have despite being devoid of any real talent. Oh, Moten could have. She was compared all over the world to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, but she did not want to be the next Houston or Carey. She wanted to do her own thing, which was more alternative. So she refused to let the major labels turn her into something she wasn’t, and she went her own way, and she’s a household name in Japan and other countries like many other Memphians who have that kind of independent spirit. And, to top it off, another native Memphian who has made his own great career and has moved back to make Memphis his home again, saxophonist Kirk Whalum, is on the bill as well. And not to be a name-dropper, but when I mentioned to Isaac Hayes and Steve Cropper of Booker T. & the MGs that Wendy Moten will be doing this concert with the Stax Music Academy students, both of their jaws dropped and their eyes lit up like headlights. I have a feeling they will be there. And so should you. If you don’t know a lot about the Stax Music Academy and aren’t yet a supporter in some way, I will be more than happy to go on at length about what the school is doing not only to mentor these primarily at-risk youngsters but also how really talented they have become. Some of them are already getting professional work, and two of them just got accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The academy is one of the greatest gems in our city, and you’d be surprised at how similar it is to the old Stax Records way of life. So be there at the Michael D. Rose Theater Saturday night at 7 p.m. and drop the big five-buck admission to actually support some people with talent. There. I have spoken my piece! On to other things: I was going to rant and rave about the big White House dinner for 130-something people for Queen Elizabeth, and how much that must be costing us taxpayers, and how I don’t want my tax dollars helping fund it because she was so mean to Princess Diana (and I still really don’t), but I have to give the queen a break. I read, “In a nod to global-warming concerns, the queen will offset the carbon dioxide emissions from her trip. The emissions from her aircraft travel will be calculated and their environmental cost reimbursed using reforestation projects or research into carbon-neutral forms of energy generation,” so I guess she’s not so bad. It’s more than our own fearless leader can say about his jaunting from D.C. to the ranch every hour for some vacation time or sending Condoleezza Rice all over the world to embarrass us. Heck, maybe the queen will scoot on down here for the Stax Music Academy concert. She could do worse.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

The Gay Issue

I thank Jim Maynard for having the courage to acknowledge the obvious lack of scientific evidence for the biological causation of homosexuality (Viewpoint, March 22nd issue), and I respect his call for a deeper look at the issue of sexuality in modern America. 

His statement that the gay rights movement created a modern gay identity has been foundational to the Love in Action philosophy since its inception: People are not born “gay.” If a person decides it is a role they no longer choose to live out, there are healthy ways to engage a new one. 

We don’t turn gay people straight. We help those who choose to come to us examine and release identities and behaviors they never felt fully comfortable with. We explore the emotional and sociological factors of their self-identification, and we help them rediscover themselves simply as men and women created by God, free of the labels and accompanying behaviors that have been attached to them by themselves and others.

I share Maynard’s view that the right to make our own choices concerning our sexuality is paramount, but I do not agree that the nature/nurture debate is a smokescreen of the “ex-gay movement.” In my experience, it is gay advocacy groups that have had the loudest voice in declaring sexuality fixed and immutable.

Maynard closed his piece with the statement that to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight involves making a series of choices. This is the viewpoint we have always held. It is my hope that we learn to honor and respect the choice to release a gay identity as much as we’re asked to respect those who announce finding it.

 John J. Smid

President/CEO, Love in Action International, Inc.

Maynard’s premise is that all of us have an absolute right to choose sexual orientation. His argument also assumes any choice whatsoever, since he decries any religious or political sanctions against his view.

His absoluteness to not have absolutes against his view is a bit of a contradiction. This free-choice mindset logically leads to the freedom of “consenting” persons, animals, etc., to engage in almost any act in private.

Where does one draw the line if there are no absolute ethics? Why not have freedoms of consenting individuals to make suicide pacts in the privacy of their home? What about the freedom of humans and animals to engage in bestiality in the privacy of their home? His error is to not recognize that all legislation is a reflection of someone’s moral code.

There is no neutrality in social ethical sanctions. While Maynard rejects scientific findings regarding homosexual patterns, the empirical evidence shows otherwise. If we adopt his view that there are no moral absolutes, then what standard keeps a sexual partner faithful in a relationship?

Charles Gillihan

Memphis

Thanks to Bruce VanWyngarden for his editor’s commentary [about his gay uncle] (March 22nd issue). I am sick and tired of the hypocrites in this country who think it is okay for a person to fight and die for this country in a moral (or immoral) war but not okay to say who they truly are.

Diane Blankenship

Millington

The U.S. Attorneys

The firing of a U.S. attorney (Viewpoint, March 15th issue) is the president’s right. No question. Presidents, when they take office, usually accept the resignations of U.S. attorneys. The firing of so many in the middle of a second term is a very different matter.

It appears that the firings were done at the behest of long-standing aides of the president. Karl Rove and Tim Griffin started their careers as political operatives and destroyers of opponents’ good names back in Texas.  

Since we will have a presidential election in 2008, and Senator Hillary Clinton is running, one can only come to the conclusion that Griffin was named to replace a stellar U.S. attorney (Bud Cummins) to dig up dirt on Clinton. It appears Rove and those around him had only politics in mind, not the enforcement of the law for the citizens of Arkansas.     

Jack Bishop

Cordova

Editor’s note: In last week’s Flyer, we erroneously wrote that Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know radio program was affiliated with National Public Radio. Feldman’s show is a Wisconsin Public Radio show distributed by Public Radio International.