Letters for August 5, 2004

For me, reading the Reno News & Review is a weekly ritual. The variety and depth provide sustenance in a sound bite culture. A recent article warning readers to beware of media coverage of the Democratic National Convention was well taken.

The point I would like to make here involves both the quality of Reno News & Review and the dearth of other non-mainstream perspective in the media. Your appeal for someone to write articles from a conservative viewpoint disturbed me for two reasons. First, the Reno News & Review provides a unique source of journalism. Second, there are many stories that are untold. [A conservative column may take space that should be given to these stories.]

Example: There’s a Starbuck’s on every corner, but this major source of our nation’s caffeine addiction rarely uses shade grown or organic beans. I’ve read Deidre Pike’s pieces on the demise of the independent coffee kiosk and the WTO’s meetings in Mexico. Maybe she’d have some interest in writing about our cup of java’s impact on the rain forest and our global ecology.

Another story waiting to be tackled is our children’s school lunches. Child obesity is near epidemic, yet on a daily basis at our local schools our children are given choices of pizza, soft tacos, chicken nuggets, or peanut butter and jelly. They are also offered fresh fruits and vegetables. Come on, even as a knowledgeable adult given similar choices, what would you choose? Brain cells die. Fat cells don’t.

Valerie Truce
Reno

Harsh letter
Re “Outsider arts festival” (RN&R, Event pick, July 8):

An Open Letter To Black Sheep Dip:

I can now see why Artown chose not to highlight the local “scene;” it’s worthless.

Your event highlighted disaffected musicians and poets who were as interesting as people who drink out of paper bags and commit petty acts of vandalism. You were a bunch of body-pierced, tattooed, chain-smoking, whip-carrying fakes, all looking for a post-pubescent way of playing make believe. You uttered triflingly eccentric ideas and considered them radical.

After all, what passes for art in the Reno “scene” is just the idle noodlings of the leisure class. Essentially, you’re a group of people who never fought for anything but the right to be infantile. If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then Black Sheep Dip is a cubby hole for dullards.

Not only are you boring, but you are hypocrites.

You’re frightened senseless that others will think you’re uncool. You’d rather swallow whale sperm than admit you like American Idol, Chicken McNuggets and MTV. You’re frozen with fear that someone will realize that you have nothing to say.

Matthew Leavitt
Reno

Suspended elections! Hooray!
Imagine if those al-Qaida attacks during the upcoming elections actually occur. We could finally say toodles to democracy.

And while we would never call it “martial law,” imagine how much “easier it would be to govern"—to quote an unelected, sitting “president.”

Imagine the theme music, the animated logos, the whole paranoid psyche at the very precipice so necessary for the total transformation of a democratic republic to become a fledgling totalitarian state in need of “emergency” validation.

As a patriot, I would like to do my part, something more than just the usual self-censoring of what we say or not checking out books from the public library or not creating a record of health care.

I offer instead a red-and-white-and-blue homage to the new nation with a modern name for martial law: Freedom’s Shield.

Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?

“The Administration announced today that Freedom’s Shield has been extended at least until Christmas.”

It sounds very democratic, and we’d all be safe to go shopping until curfew. In the meantime, it’ll be mandatory flag-flyin’ time again!

Craig Ayres-Sevier
Reno

Correction
In an article (RN&R, July 29) on a vote by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada’s board of directors to withhold support from an initative petition requiring Nevada schools funding at the national average, Jon Sasser was listed among those who voted against endorsing the petition because it might draw funding from human resource programs. His actual reason for opposing endorsement was that the membership was split on the issue, and he believes there should be greater consensus within the group before endorsements are made. Sasser is the lobbyist, not the director, of Nevada Legal Services, which is not associated with PLAN.