Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401110245 SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's my wish that we cease this yearning, this panting, this hunger for juicy gossip, especially in ``high'' places of government and responsibility. This growing obsession with the public's right to know about a major candidate's character, and to comb it with a fine-tooth comb, is tantamount to character assassination! The focus is placed mostly on sex, and this is wrong. To delve into a person's personal sex life is to place this most personal, sensitive activity of an individual on the mat for all the public to see. Sex then becomes the dirty, tarnished thing that it is not.
We should place greater emphasis on a man's ability as an administrator and less on his sex life.
I also believe our government should drop its habit of intruding into the political affairs of every pip-squeak nation in the world. We've become much too officious and troublesome, often leaving Third World countries in a shambles after we leave. We should, instead, serve as a better example of how a true democracy should behave. We need to brush up on our own civil-rights records. Moreover, we should try to help other countries help themselves only if they're at peace.
JOSEPH J. ORLANDO
LEXINGTON
Positive news of youth ignored
BETH MACY'S Nov. 18 ``Pregnant and proud'' article did an excellent job of continuing the negative stereotype of African-Americans. The happy, smiling faces of two black girls, proud and pregnant, are forever ingrained in the mind-set of the Roanoke Valley.
But what of the positive role models throughout the black community who get little or no media coverage? (I have nothing against it, but sports coverage does not count.) For example, for the past few years, hundreds of black youth have been recognized for their outstanding academic achievements by Virginia Western Community College and the Alliance for Excellence. This outstanding portrayal of successful young African-Americans is never reported by the media. Oh yes, occasionally there's a perfunctory blurb buried on the innermost pages of the newspaper. And we within our own community try to lift up our young people and reassure them that what they're doing is right. But it's very upsetting and disheartening when the only news of our youth that's routinely reported is of a negative nature. How can the community at large think any different of our youth when the myth is perpetuated?
ANITA JAMES PRICE
ROANOKE
Editor's note: This letter was signed by 29 other members of Beta Chi Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Press convicted Sheriff Wells
IMAGINE your local newspaper - entrusted as it is with the protection of our United States Constitution - utilizing the First Amendment to promote the sales of newspapers while totally disregarding the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of that same great document.
I feel certain that the editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News is aware of his freedom under the First Amendment. However, he apparently doesn't know that the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be held to answer for a crime unless on a presentation of indictment of a grand jury, and that the Sixth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be convicted and sentenced, as has been done to Bedford County's sheriff, without the right of a public trial by an impartial jury.
The newspaper is aware that the banking and accounting practices of Sheriff Carl Wells are still under investigation and that no indictments for misuse of public funds have been made public to date. It's aware of this because it has reported all news releases of this investigation. Knowing this, the newspaper saw fit to try, convict and sentence Wells in the Dec. 27 editorial, ``Bedford's sheriff in the cookie jar.''
The crucial issue, as the editorial pointed out, is not the amount of money involved but the violation of the public's trust. That certainly is the crucial issue. The newspaper has convicted a highly respected man who's considered innocent until proved guilty.
The editorial's analogy of an imaginary public employee misusing a petty cash account is an insult to this retired public employee and all who are serving the public. Are the editors as pure as the editorial would lead us to believe?
If the newspaper doesn't have facts to substantiate the character assignation in the editorial, perhaps editors should take their own advice and get out for violating the public trust.
Why don't we allow our justice system to resolve this problem, as our forefathers intended justice to be served, and not this newspaper.
DICK ANDERSON
BEDFORD
`The Piano' review was out of tune
CORRESPONDENT Mike Mayo's review (```The Piano' is too slow to please everyone'') of ``The Piano'' reminds me of the proverb: ``What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?'' The film is wonderfully acted, the setting is fresh, and the scenes are all economically shot. I doubt there's a wasted scene in the entire film.
Mayo's complaints about the pace cut no ice at all. Has he seen one ``shoot-'em-up'' too many? Had he some place else to be? I wouldn't have minded his half-hearted review so much had it not seemed that he was merely thinking out loud, rather than giving his considered opinion.
As I'm unaware of his qualifications to review film for the Roanoke Times & World-News besides a passing interest, I do hope you'll find a proper replacement for Chris Gladden - soon.
The Grandin Theater should be thanked loudly and long for bringing a film of the caliber of ``The Piano'' to Roanoke.
WILLIAM R. GILL JR.
ROANOKE
Bible condones capital punishment
IS CAPITAL punishment the same as murder? Nell Carr believes so in her Dec. 15 letter to the editor (``The government's hired killers''). The Sixth Commandment, ``Thou shalt not kill,'' is quoted as proof.
The Hebrew word kill, ``ratsach,'' used in Exodus 20:13 doesn't support that idea. In the Bible, this word always refers to an individual who kills another individual. The penalty of ``ratsach'' was the forfeiture of your own life. An exception to the penalty was when a trial showed that the ``ratsach'' was accidental or unintentional. The translation ``kill'' isn't specific enough. Today we'd use the terms ``murder'' or ``manslaughter.''
Interestingly, the very next biblical chapter, after the ``do not kill'' statement, commands society to take the life of a person guilty of any of five different offenses. Obviously, God doesn't view capital punishment as murder. Neither does the ``do not kill'' statement refer to war, hunting, the meat industry, etc. It only refers to a person who deliberately and intentionally takes the life of another individual. The one guilty of such murder forfeits his own right to live.
REV. E. WAYNE BROOKS
TROUTVILLE
A money monument for Mill Mountain
TWO ARTICLES appeared side by side on the Dec. 21 Commentary page in the Roanoke Times & World-News: ``Pesticides and breast cancer'' by Laurel B. Hopwood, and ``Mill Mountain plan poses threat to a jewel'' by Liza Field. While they were written by two different people, they both dealt with land use - one concerning pesticides, the other destruction of a wild mountain.
The juxtaposition of these articles struck me as ironical for two reasons. The first is quite personal: I had just completed an environmental project for school on land usage. The other is quite altruistic: Pesticides have caused land destruction, have gotten into the foods we eat, and perhaps altered estrogen in women, hence, causing breast cancer.
This chemical alteration or mimicking of estrogen is analogous to the alteration of one of the few last natural environments left in the urban area of Roanoke: a concrete parking garage on Mill Mountain. The motive behind the plan is profit, the attraction of tourists, a place to park cars for fund-raisers. The Mill Mountain Committee has approved a $2.8 million plan for the garage. The purpose of spending that much money is to raise money. Indeed!
Two years ago a citywide survey indicated that Roanokers didn't want any more development on Mill Mountain, not at the sacrifice of the natural environment.
As Ms. Field, the writer of the Mill Mountain article said, the presence of an undeveloped mountain is an unbelievable rarity. What about bike lanes? Footpaths?
For future generations, piling tons of concrete on top of a mountain is as much a cancer as pesticides in the food we eat. In both cases, it should be asked: What's the legacy we pass on?
TAYLOR L. JONES
ROANOKE
by CNB