TOPICAL DEPRESSION
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Moody Blues:

This is an excellent piece that addresses many obvious truths that
people choose to ignore.
— Mark

Bob Tyrrell really does bring on the blues. Whew, somehow life seems a bit different here in flyover country.
— Roger Ross
Tomahawk, WI

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN HELL
Re: George Neumayr’s Dumbed Down and Dumber Still:

This is just an outrage. I was in high school in the 60’s. No teacher of any student I ever knew used the Beatles or the Rolling Stones as teaching tools in English class. Kids don’t need to be “educated in youth culture.” They are saturated with it. What they need is exposure to things other than their own little world.
— Mary M

If the educators in California teach that crap heaven help us. The ’60s are the dark ages. Just look at the Broadway scene in New York. All the musicals are revivals . I have yet to find any original creations in the arts or theater. How sad to learn that the best in literature is incomprehensible for the sows we call our youth.
— unsigned

Florida is having a difficult time finding enough teachers to staff its public schools in this rapidly growing state — grownups having little more interest in wasting their time in and around public school campuses than do students. So the question has arisen: Should people who have not jumped through all the teacher certification hoops — including mostly being anesthetized and ideologized in schools of education — be allowed to teach?

After reading George Neumayr’s “Dumbed and Dumber,” an unflinching survey of educational “thinking” on planet California — I believe a more urgent question would be: Should certified teachers be arrested any time they attempt to set foot on a school campus?

If, among other forms of intellectual and cultural pillage, Shakespeare has been replaced in California schools by Sixpac Schlemiel, then it’s time for California taxpayers to sing Dandy Don’s little song. We all remember Don Meredith, who co-chaired “Monday Night Football” with the repellent Howard Cosell long ago and far away. When one team got so far ahead that the other team had no chance to recover, the cheerful Don would break into his song, the words to which go – “Turn out the lights, the party’s over….”
— Larry Thornberry
Tampa, FL

LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED
Re: Michael Craig’s Joe Millionaire’s Easiest Marks:

Is it possible that the con is that he really is a millionaire, and that the drama will be furthered with the news that Joe is not a millionaire to the winner to see her reaction. Is love blind to riches or lack of them?

I predict she will fall in love with him inspite of the con, at which point it will be revealed that he is a millionaire. I’m dizzy.
— C. Peters

The women are “in on it” too and it is a hoax on the audience.

True or not, a caller to a local radio talk show once worked on Star Search and other types of these “reality” productions and he said they are so staged it’s not funny.

The winners on Star Search, he said, are picked in advance and move up based more on backstage decisions rather than those made by judges and the audience.
— Greg Barnard
Franklin, TN

It took you three episodes to figure all this out?
— Ed Callahan

Michael Craig replies: Hey, Ed, gimme a break! It took me only two episodes.

CULTURE OF THE LIE
Re: John Corry’s The Pipsqueaks’ Dirty War:

John Corry quotes from a David Remnick article in New Yorker that “Vaclav Havel… had triumphed over a totalitarian system, and restored the ‘dimensions and vigor of the liberal idea….'” Interesting twist. My understanding is that Havel waged a moral crusade against the “culture of the lie” that was the defining characteristic of communism. When Havel and the dissenters in other bloc countries, aided by the vocal and moral support of the pope and Ronald Reagan, exposed the lies and evil for what they were, the system collapsed.

The Soviets were restrained in preventing the collapse because they were vulnerable to the Pershing missiles that Reagan had deployed (without opposition from the Vatican, which gave the deployment a moral standing it would not have otherwise had) and, oddly to some extent, because Gorbachev had been elevated to the status of great diplomat by the Western media….

Contrary to Remnick’s implication, totalitarianism seems to be mostly confined to the left. There’s a whiff of it in much of the Democratic Party platform, which is based on political correctness, class warfare, race baiting, group identities tinged with victimhood, and glorification of government as our problem solver and protector. Maybe he misidentifies today’s “liberal” idea with the liberal idea that guided America prior to the New Deal and Great Society. Illiberally, there is little debate among the Democrats and left that is aimed at getting to the truth of any current issue. To see such debate, one must go to conservative or libertarian sources. The Democrats, as did the communists, resort to demagoguery, slogans, half-truths and lies to support their positions. For instance, try to get into an honest debate with a leftist on taxes, public schools, federalism, or separation of church and state. You know the responses, and they aren’t reasoned positions supported by evidence. Just more of the culture of the lie.
— Pat Birmingham

IT’S CODY OUTSIDE
Re: Bill Croke’s It’s Dry:

Let me be the first to blame this “ecological disaster” on global warming. I propose the government spend $400 billion to create rain and colder/but milder conditions to save those unidentified bug larvae from an earlier than expected death. My goal is eliminate “dying like flies” as a popular metaphor for all time.
— Ed Callahan

I particularly enjoy Bill Croke’s articles from Cody, Wyoming. Reminds me of a simpler time. Thank you,
— Bonnie P.
Las (Lost) Vegas, NV

ABOVE AVERAGE
Re: Richard Renken’s “If It’s Brokaw Fix It” letter in Reader Mail’s Spiritual Gains, Material Losses:

Since he was reading, Richard probably missed the lead-in to the tax cut segment. It featured a video of children playing basketball in an Ohio gym. The reporter stated that due to the tax cut, their program would be canceled because the federal tax cuts would worsen Ohio’s existing deficit and the basketball program would have to be eliminated.

I suspect that viewers who accepted this logic would also accept as fact a (fully tenured, I assume) college professor’s statement implying that a sum is the same as an average. Maybe the kids should take some time out and teach the professor, and members of the NBC News staff, basic math concepts.
— John Kezbers
Oklahoma City, OK

The cited report can be seen at Media Research Center’s site www.mediaresearch.org. (Link to Wednesday’s CyberAlert.)

Note: the professor said Bill Gates’ income was $10 million, not $1 million, which is how she came up with the $1 million average income. It still fails to take into account that Bill Gates pays an enormous amount of tax, and those $30,000 folks pay next to zilch.
— Mary M.

THE BIG SLEEP
Re: Regular Guy’s “Late Night Disturbances” letter in Reader Mail’s Spiritual Gains, Material Losses:

Dear Regular Guy,

I feel your pain!

And if you believe that, I have some nice Whitewaterfront property I’d like to show you!

However, I have a cure for your sleeplessness. Make up your mind to vote Republican. Then you won’t have to try to figure out all those conflicting, changing, chimerical images from the Democratic hopefuls. Like me, you “frankly won’t give a damn.” You’ll sleep much better.

Besides, whatever you decide Joe, or John, or Al (Sharpton, not Gore) meant when they opened their mouths will change the next time they open their mouths depending on the next poll, or a news bite out of the White House. (Well, maybe not Al S. Unlike Al G. he’s pretty consistent!) But Dubya, God bless him, may not always be sure of what to say, but he is always sure of what to do. That’s just one benefit of having a person of principle in the Oval Office.

Let’s hear it for Four More Years of sleeping soundly. Vote Republican!
— Bob Johnson
Bedford, TX

LATEST INSTRUCTIONS
The attack yesterday on the safety of pickups and sport utility vehicles by Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at an automotive conference in Detroit is a perfect example of the dimwittedness that permeates so many of our regulatory agencies. As a pickup owner, I and most people who have bought and drive these vehicles know that they do not handle and corner like sports cars and do not attempt to drive them this way. To hear a medical doctor, who should know better, attribute such inane behavior to the citizens and taxpayers of this country, apparently to score some publicity points, and then top it off with a threat to seek to dictate the design characteristics of vehicles to be sold to the public, as if he and his fellow regulators are competent to do so, is really too much to tolerate. I had hoped that this administration would purge Washington of such foolishness, but apparently not. Any exposure and support for the shaming such performances by those living off the taxpayers dollars by The American Prowler are much appreciated.
— Gary Hannah
Shalimar, FL