THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604270010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Kirby Puckett, a cheerful major-league baseball star who enriches every life he touches, recently learned he has glaucoma and may be forced from baseball, a game he plays with the enthusiasm of a Little Leaguer.
Albert Belle, a surly major-league baseball star who cursed a TV reporter and deliberately struck a photographer with a baseball, feels great and is having another good year.
Two observations:
1. Talent and character are separate packages. Some, like Puckett, have both. Some, like Belle, have one. No matter what coaches claim, the premium in sports is on talent.
2. It's true what they say: We should work for justice, but not expect it. Reject hatemongering
Voters in Newport News will be going to the polls on Election Day to vote in a mayoral race that has been poisoned by anti-semitism.
Mayoral candidate Marcellus L. Harris Jr. last week accused Jews of profiting from city-government programs designed for the poor. One of his opponents is Vice Mayor Joe Frank, a prominent Jewish businessman.
Harris is a Baptist minister and would be expected to know better. Other members of the clergy and the leader of the local NAACP have condemned Harris' remarks.
Hatemongering has no place in American democracy. It should be rejected in the democratic way: at the ballot box. Help wanted
We applaud the organizers of Winchester's Apple Blossom Festival who have stood firm in the face of bald-faced greed by refusing to pay celebrities to serve as grand marshals of their parade.
The annual rite of spring is set for May 4, and when the programs went to press last week the Apple Blossom committee still was grand marshal-less.
It used to be easy to lure celebrities to the Shenandoah Valley, back when the free publicity was worth the trip. Former grand marshals of the parade have included Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore and James Cagney.
No more. The country is awash in festivals, and Virginia's pride and joy is just one of thousands.
But the ever-optimistic Ben Dutton, the festival's director, is confident: ``I assure you we'll have a grand marshal,'' he said. Protecting girls
Chrysler Hall was full Thursday night when Dr. Mary Pipher, the best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia and new guru of troubled adolescence, came to town.
The Junior League of Norfolk and Virginia Beach and the Virginia Association of Independent Schools of Hampton Roads performed a service by luring this inspiring national speaker to our area.
In her folksy Nebraska accent, Pipher entreated the parents in the audience to counteract the media - especially movies, television and advertising - in a battle for the lives of their vulnerable daughters. Eating disorders, suicide and depression can await girls who succumb to the impossible image of women in the media.
``Be sure to share your values with your children,'' she pleaded. Calvin Klein, Guess Jeans and others in the industry who use stick-thin models to sell their expensive clothes will be sure to share theirs. Where there's smoke, there's ire
Richmond-based Philip Morris Companies Inc. made 367 billion cigarettes last year for the tasteful pleasure of those millions of people who choose to smoke. At the company's annual stockholders meeting Thursday, some dissident stockholders suggested, though the majority disagreed, that smoking is unhealthy.
In fact, smoking was welcome - this at a time when many smokers are barred by spouses from lighting up inside their own homes. Far in the future, the last indoor spot where smoking is allowed - and even encouraged - may be a Philip Morris stockholders meeting. Money has a way of making things permissible. by CNB