Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Jet Skiers spoil others’ fun

This is to inform most of the Jet Skiers who use Liberty Lake:

We fishermen and women are not impressed. We do not enjoy watching or listening to your machines. Your stunts go so far as to anger us. Why? Because you have the entire lake to have your fun in, but you seem to think it is more fun to do these things right offshore, where we’re fishing.

We do not have boats. We can’t go to a different part of the lake to get away from you. We would be more impressed if you would show just a little consideration for other people and play in some other part of the lake. You have the means to get there.

We are mostly there to try to catch a few fish - that you scare off - and to relax a little bit. But the noise makes that impossible.

Please, have a little consideration for other people. Rick E. Brown Spokane

GU effort a positive one

The students who launched Gonzaga’s diversity campaign have been greatly misinterpreted and discredited in the May 1 article, “GU students protest latest racial threats.”

Staff writer Virginia deLeon wrote, “It was time to take action.” True. However, this action was not against recent hate letters, against Gonzaga’s administration or against anyone.

This is a campaign for diversity. It is aimed at raising awareness and challenging fellow students on our primarily Caucasian campus to realize the educational value and necessity of diversity.

We decided to take a positive and proactive approach to support and encourage the faculty, staff and administration in their efforts to incorporate historically underrepresented U.S. cultures into the university’s curriculum. To be prepared and educated for the 21st century when minorities will be the majority, we must make diversity an educational priority.

We commend our president, the Rev. Edward Glynn, S.J., and many others at all levels of the University for being dedicated to furthering diversity. Gonzaga students stand in support of you. Madeline J. Turnock, on behalf of Gonzaga University diversity campaign coordinators

Event a cause for rejoicing

The May 16 front-page article on “That full-time religion,” about the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast, was one of the most encouraging news items I’ve ever read.

All of us can join in what I hope will be an ongoing prayer consciousness here in Spokane. What a great opportunity!

When people come together to pray, instead of to criticize, judge and attack one another, wonderful things will happen. The secret of changing our world, individually and collectively, is to join for the common good. The city, the nation, the family that prays together does indeed stay together. Thomas E. Durst Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Bigotry image just liberal hype

Editorial writer D.F. Oliveria’s liberal political bias is apparent in his May 14 editorial regarding Rep. Helen Chenoweth.

Recent letters to the editor in The Spokesman-Review and the Coeur d’Alene Press, editorials in The Spokesman-Review and casual remarks originating from Eastern Washington’s universally liberal TV media, imply racial prejudice or ignorance on the part of Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin, Chenoweth and other Idahoans. Such remarks, in my view, are pure political opportunism.

So-called racial prejudice in North Idaho is primarily a figment of the imagination of the liberal left, which is trying to unseat conservative politicians who are pursuing their public service in good faith. I’ve lived in many places throughout the country and can assert that North Idaho doesn’t even approach the racial prejudice evidenced is such places as Los Angeles, New York City or Miami.

My wife, a lovely lady of Spanish American origin, and I moved to North Idaho in 1981. Never has either of us experienced the slightest example of racial prejudice.

This community has opened its arms to her. She has several times as many friends and acquaintances as I, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, have.

If local liberals and the Eastern Washington liberal media would stop accusing North Idaho of racial prejudice and instead emphasize the many positive aspects of our lovely community, the undeserved label of bigotry would disappear. Gene K. Ealy Coeur d’ Alene

What shallow, deplorable thinking

Rep. Helen Chenoweth is as right as Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin is about ethnic diversity. She’s also right about people of warm-climate communities not being attracted to the colder climates.

It’s probably the same reason that the people of warm-climate communities aren’t in Chicago, New York, Seattle or other cities that have a cold climate. We all know how cold it gets in the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Baltic. That’s why people came here - to escape the cold climates.

We also know that we would rather work for minimum wage than invite someone from the warm-climate communities to do our menial labor, right? Pretty shallow, I think. Pretty far right.

Shame on both of you. George J. Orr Spokane

Chenoweth-type ignorance entrenched

The May 14 story, “Chenoweth issues apology for racial remarks,” is just another example of just how far we have come in our attempts to end stereotypes and racial ignorance.

I’m a transplanted Californian who is black - two strikes, in some Idahoans’ minds - who didn’t consider the weather as a factor for moving to Idaho. Even though I was given many reasons for not moving to Idaho, I’ve always thought you should judge people by the content of their minds and not how they might not be able to adjust to the weather. Born and raised in Oklahoma, I don’t remember the snow being any less cold.

To have an elected official, not once but on many occasions, put her foot in her mouth concerning race issues should bring immediate actions similar to those leveled at Fuzzy Zoeller, Marge Schott, Texaco executives and Denny’s restaurants, just to name a few. Unfortunately, nothing will be done and business as usual will continue until the next time Chenoweth puts her foot in her mouth.

Maybe Chenoweth should check all those votes she received. I’m pretty sure they all didn’t come from people who were attracted to Idaho for its colder climate. Geary E. Harbert Post Falls

Liberals can’t take the truth

In trying to make Rep. Helen Chenoweth into a racist, the left misses the point.

Rather than debate the government policy that takes tax money from all of us and uses it to try to create diversity by giving a politically correct “elite” jobs, they engage in personal attacks and name-calling. The left’s intolerance and paternalistic arrogance is one of the most frightening aspects of today’s political and social climate.

Rather than accept the fact that where we choose to live and why are basic individual freedoms not subject to the American ideal of a limited and constitutional government, the liberals insist that government can and must address every concern they have. If they want a “diversity” different from the North Idaho of today, well then, the government must do something. If that something includes an expensive jobs program that leaves our local unemployed out in the cold, the ends justify the means.

This kind of nonsensical thinking, together with the huge government legacy of liberal Democratic control of Congress, has led to the million-dollar Canadian wolf import program (that’s $1 million per wolf). It has led to a federal work force that no longer reflects the diversity of America - the diversity of ideas found among a free people - but rather the politically correct triumph of emotion over reason and demagoguery over law.

Again, Chenoweth speaks for the common man, for the individual and for our heritage of limited government. And again, the liberals squeal. Donald F. Morgan Post Falls

Dumb enough to be in Congress

Can Rep. Helen Chenoweth possibly be as stupid as her public pronouncements? Impossible! Is she an equivocator? How could she be? After all, she is a member of Congress.

Perhaps she is merely naive and has never heard of Detroit, Chicago and New York - cities hardly in the banana belt where climate is concerned.

Chenoweth, I guess, has some small entertainment value. That virtue, however, is far outweighed by her lack of intellectual acumen. The latter certainly qualifies her for her current employment. Lee Corrigan Rathdrum, Idaho