Sunday, April 27, 2008
Quick
Letters to the Editor
Hang in there: It’s lonely being right
Some attention for Grumbles
After reading James Burns’ latest “Grumbles” (“A Pathetic Plea for Attention,” April 20), I just wanted to let him know that I enjoy his work every week. I have his strip titled “Fundamental Truths,” about abdicating personal responsibility to a book, up on my refrigerator. He sounds like he thinks very similarly to myself. He doesn’t hit one out of the park every week, but when he does, it’s a game winner.
Hang in there: It’s lonely being right.
—Rick Hines, Atlanta
I was kind of disappointed to see James Burns stooping to what is, let’s face it, begging for attention in this past edition. I always read Grumbles and enjoy it, but he’s a cartoonist, not a columnist—what does he care if he gets responses or not? I doubt Doug Marlette was worried about getting responses when he made his famous missile-in-the-truck cartoon with the caption “What Would Mohammad Drive?” When someone’s good at what they do, the responses don’t matter; it’s the joy of the thing itself that matters. How could anyone be jealous of Stephanie Ramage? She takes so much abuse on the letters page and on the Web that I can’t imagine that anyone would want to switch places with her. She’d probably like to switch places with Burns.
—Bill Thomas, Marietta
Gay marriage by any other name
(Regarding Melissa Carter’s “Gay Marriage is So Money,” News & Views, April 20): Federal civil unions=marriage equality; state same-sex marriage does not.
There is a myth that marriage has more rights than civil unions. That myth is born from the fact that civil unions have only been passed by states that have no power to grant the 1138 federal benefits of marriage. However, a federal civil union policy would. Senators Clinton & Obama support a federal civil unions policy. Of 48 million votes cast in 29 states, 32 million were against same-sex marriage; we lost 2 to 1. According to Jennifer SookneMizell of Marriage Equality USA, “Actually, we get more benefits in California in certain areas with domestic partnerships than the same-gendered marrieds (sic) in Massachusetts get.” Forty-five states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. The choice is clear: Federal civil unions are achievable; federal same-sex marriage is not.
—Posted by Leland Traiman on SundayPaper.com
I hope [Melissa Carter’s column] is reproduced in other publications. As the mom of a lesbian, I would love to see these laws changed. There are many politically connected businesses that need to consider the positive impact this would have. Who knows, perhaps we’d see a little recession relief.
—Posted by Debi Collins on SundayPaper.com
Enabling hate
Increasingly, it must be dawning on Barack Obama (“Obama’s Achilles Heel,” News & Views, March 2) just what a price remains to be paid for 20 years of helping enable those hate-filled Sunday sermons by his former minister and campaign advisor Jeremiah Wright.
In yet more of his carefully crafted campaign-speak, the freshman Senator sought desperately in a recent debate to convince a skeptical public that they’d somehow heard him wrong: that our religious beliefs, our love of our flag and what it represents, and in fact all else held dear to our hearts are now equally precious to his. But being forced by network news moderators to endure tough questioning normally reserved only for Republicans must have left Obama feeling suddenly far, far from the comfortable anti-Americanism of his favorite racial polemicist or of his fellow travelers on the academic left.
One who would be heir to George Washington’s legacy cannot be transparently hostile to the American values which are the pride of its heartland. Yet each new thing learned about Barack Obama seems only to add to the mounting evidence that he doesn’t at all share our perception of an America overwhelmingly just and munificent.
And therein lies perhaps the final price to be paid for his Reverend Wright years.
—Ron Goodden, Smyrna
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