ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608130020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
REGARDING the July 21 commentary headlined ``Let parents do their own censoring'':
If a similar philosophy governed our country's environmental policies, parents would be strapping air filters on their tykes' faces and boiling water for their families on a daily basis. Fortunately, industries must sacrifice some profits to install air scrubbers and other emission controls to the benefit of the larger community.
We are immersed in a rapidly deteriorating cultural environment, from crude or obscene bumper stickers and T-shirts to on-line pornography. Many parents desperately hope that advertisers, the entertainment industry, media and fellow citizens will re-examine their right to profit and self-expression with the greater community good in view.
I'm not sure how this can be accomplished. But, in the meantime, please don't tell me it's my responsibility to filter this pollution for my children. I'm doing my best already.
SHARON DILLER
BLACKSBURG
Anonymous help wasn't for profit
I TAKE STRONG exception to that five-paragraph innuendo buried in the July 28 Joe Klein piece (Alan Sorensen's column, ``Anonymity can bring out the worst in people'').
Sorensen associates my efforts with those of Klein, who stands to make considerable money from his book. Klein's deception heightened the awareness of his book's title and aided sales. He also used his fellow journalists.
My efforts were on a far different scale and intent. I received no remuneration for my work, nor did I ask for any. My intent and accomplishment was to help people write intelligent letters that expressed their thoughts. To associate these two situations is ludicrous at best.
I first learned of Sorensen's column in the roanoke.news.group [a discussion group based on The Roanoke Times' Internet home page]. There was discussion in spades about his poorly veiled inferences. Interestingly, no one commented on my statement in the original article about me by Christina Nuckols (June 28, ``Call him outspoken, but don't call him controversial'').
Let's start with the givens: This isn't Old Lyme, or even Hartford. Roanoke doesn't have the literacy that is taken for granted in the Northeastern United States. There are successful people in Roanoke who need help with letter writing.
Is this any more deceitful that a woman wearing a brassiere, a girdle or lipstick?
Is Sorensen planning to discharge every editor and rewrite person on his staff so the prose is pure and original? Get real!
This letter doesn't imply that anyone who wrote a letter during consolidation was illiterate. However, many Roanokers cannot express themselves as they would like. Is the ``Letters to the Editor'' feature a writing contest or is it for expression of opinion?
I demand an apology in print, but I don't believe Sorensen has the guts to do it.
DON TERP
ROANOKE
Political pandering on school prayer
CONGRATULATIONS on your July 30 editorial, ``Still messing with school prayer.'' Over the past years, I've read countless letters to the editor, heard countless emotings from ``those who have the word of firsthand authority'' dealing with the concept of prayer in public schools.
But your editorial came the closest to the meat of the constitutional precept of religious freedom of anything I've ever read. It was dead-on for recognizing the pandering efforts of a politician who is seeking to garner votes by placating a special-interest group. Government and religion waste far too much time and resources dabbling in the affairs of the other. Caesar and God were never compatible ideals.
The goal that the Christian Coalition is seeking lies beyond the mere right of an individual to pray as an expression of his or her beliefs. It seeks the right to proselytize its beliefs by public expression. Even the New Testament admonishes the follower to go into his closet to pray. Here, the courts have drawn that line - and there it should remain!
The individual practice of one's beliefs should remain that - individual. A public show of platitudes is no more worthwhile than the rich man's public show of his gifts in the temple. One's greatest gift to the promotion of an ideal is in the quiet practice of that belief. Vocal Christians (letter writers and speakers) are mere parrots repeating what they have heard - the rich man giving in the temple.
HENRY O. EMMERSON
ROANOKE
A disgraceful veto of the SPCA's plans
I READ with interest your July 13 news article (``SPCA to fight for new digs'') regarding rejection of the Roanoke Valley SPCA's plans for a new facility. I waited and waited for outraged letters to the editor from other readers. Apparently, they were so outraged they were trembling too hard to hoist pen to paper.
For years, the SPCA shelter has labored to provide Roanoke and the surrounding area with decent care for God's creatures. Through mud, food, apathy and embezzlement, they have continued. We're lucky to have Frank Van Ballen, Al Alexander and all the generous volunteers.
At last, there's a proposal for a state-of-the-art facility, and the Roanoke Planning Commission says no! Business owners object. Of course, it's a well-known dictum in all MBA courses that a homeless kitten will bring to an immediate halt all commerce in your average transmission shop. Please!
As to the matter of noise and odor, open your windows, folks, and take a whiff of some of the tractor-trailer trucks spewing tons of carcinogens in the air - and forget about the noise.
In an effort to keep Roanoke second-rate, we got what we deserved - the city Planning Commission. The animals deserve better.
M. BARCLAY KRIEG
ROANOKE
Poll question was free of bias
I HAVE admired and respected Ray Garland as a legislator and as a columnist. It's seldom that I disagree with his views, but I question a major point of his Aug. 1 column, "A charge to find where Virginia stands on taxes."
His comment, regarding a Virginia Tech poll indicating that 54 percent of Virginians feel that we don't spend enough on public education, was: "Of course, most of those polled likely had no idea what we're spending, and a proper question would have stated the amount before asking whether it was too little or too much." I submit that this change to the question would have probably resulted in an invalid result. If you wonder why the majority feel that we spend too little, it may be that we read and hear a lot about low teacher salaries, low Scholastic Assessment Test scores, remedial training at the college freshman level, employers who report alarming ignorance among new employees, and poor standing on education standards in international comparisons with other industrialized, developed countries.
To bias someone's opinion with the information that we now spend "about $7,500'' per student per 180-day school year without any other data is very likely to produce a negative answer. Not knowing what we spend, but basing one's opinion on whatever information has been assimilated over time, is better than being supplied with one piece of suggestive data with no comparative data with which to evaluate it. Garland is careful to compare Virginia tax levels to that of other states, and even show how that can be misleading when not taken in the context of personal income. The same care would be required to construct a question of relative expenditure on education, and make a more meaningful analysis of public opinion.
WENDELL HENSLEY
BLACKSBURG
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