ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 3, 1993                   TAG: 9305030285
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CITY SHOWCASES ITS BAD JUDGMENT

JOHN W. Myers' letter to the editor of March 24 ("The valley: False pride, small thinking plague a divided people") stated very accurately the basic problem that is keeping Roanoke from making the mark in the world which it wants to make and should make. The problem: It is the same disease that is afflicting our nation and is producing so many heartbreaking manifestations of a society's disintegration. And the problem is that it is a malaise, the clear identification of which necessarily must await a shockingly clear display of a set of symptoms that can be seen by all who wish to see.

The recent series of incidents surrounding the Guns 'N Roses concert provides just such a display.

This group is deliberately a purveyor of filth, garbage, and was known to be so long before they ever appeared in the Roanoke Civic Center. Their booking demonstrates Roanoke's - and the nation's - illness. The pitiful quotations taken from some of our young people illustrated very clearly reasons why parents must continue to make decisions of choice for the children for whom they are responsible, long after those young people deem themselves fit to make such decisions.

The statement of one so-called adult was a classic concerning the young woman who deliberately chose to wear a blatantly provocative costume, to the effect that bad judgment didn't provide a fit excuse for rape. Bad judgment is almost inevitably the underlying reason for the vast majority of human misfortunes: business, social and personal.

The lack of discrimination shown in booking this trashy group into a Roanoke facility is typical of the kind of "bad judgment" that keeps Roanoke in the ruck of mediocrity as a place to locate a business or family. The only criterion applied to the selection process was, in this instance, that of our national god, mammon: "Does it promise to yield a profit?"

Get deliberately decent, Roanoke, and it'll pay in the long pull!

EDWARD H. LANE JR.\ BLACKSBURG 


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