Sunday, May 11, 2008
Quick

Letters to the Editor

That meddlesome Ban Ki-Moon

THAT MEDDLESOME BAN KI-MOON

Regarding “Understanding the World Food Crisis,” News & Views, April 27: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is correct to note the obvious: that food supplies in some world locales aren’t always adequate to meet the ramping food consumption of a world with more disposable income to spend.
 
But what he insists on misunderstanding, in his call for increased bureaucratic meddling in the marketplace, is that markets liberated from precisely the sort of interference he’s now advocating will best and quickest meet the needs of changed situations. How can it be that two hundred years after Adam Smith’s passing there remain bureaucrats and organizations that so mulishly persist in ignoring proven relationships between supply and demand?
 
If Mr. Ban would busy himself with encouraging governments worldwide to get out of the way of food producers and transporters pursuing their own self-interests, and, more importantly, cease distracting us with unhelpful suggestions of yet more quotas, subsidies and controls requiring non-producing bureaucrats to enforce them—he might yet hasten the day when such shortages ease. Even as he thereby displeases a legion of bureaucrats hungry for power and media coverage.
 
He shouldn't suffer more time to be lost before recognizing the sounder solutions.
 
 —Ron Goodden, Smyrna

Barbarella

I enjoyed the article on Jane Fonda (“Do You Mind If I Take My Sweater Off?” News & Views, May 4) and I have always liked her, at least since "Barbarella."

I’m a playwright and I have a play that will be performed at Theatre Decatur, show dates June 13th through June 28th, 2008 and I always envisioned Jane Fonda in one of the roles. The title of it is “A Good Hot Damned!” The title derives its name from the practice of refined older southern ladies uttering the phrase, “I don’t give a good Hot Damned!” when they got really, really angry.

This is a stylized comedic drama about three deceased southern ladies sitting in a graveyard in the small town of Grayson, Ga. They sit and talk about their lives and the small town of Grayson. One lady, Mary, died not long after what she calls “The War of Northern Aggression.” Life, as they know it, continues until a Messianic Jewish man is buried near them and all hell breaks loose.

I think the play has several elements that might intrigue Jane. One of the characters is based on Susan Smith, a woman from South Carolina who felt trapped by her small town and her children, so she drowned her kids in a car and blamed it on a black man. The ladies in the play wrestle with their religious beliefs and wonder how God could have abandoned them. In some ways I think this play would suit Jane’s message about teen pregnancy. There is a part in this play for Jane Fonda and she wouldn't even have to audition to get it.

—Stephen Peace, Decatur

Wright or wrong?

In Jonah Goldberg’s column, “Looking for Mr. Wright” (News & Views, May 11), he quotes two passages of Rev. Wright’s that I have heard quoted before (mostly on right-wing radio, which if you think about it, must fly around in a circle to the left). Everyone seems outraged, and I don’t get it. 

Wright said that countries that commit terrorist acts should expect them to come back “to roost.” Isn’t that true? Oh wait, are you guys still pretending because we’re the U.S. we don’t do any of that stuff? Get real.
 
As for Rev. Wright’s second quote, the U.S. should apologize for the atom bombs we dropped and the slavery we inflicted. Why does anyone have a problem with that? We killed several hundred thousand Japanese civilians to make a point that could have been made without all the deaths. I know they started the war with us, but we bombed cities, killing old men, women and children. As for slavery, I think sorry isn’t enough. I think we owe them a sincere effort to restore equality, which has never really been undertaken.
 
I guess Rev. Wright’s rhetoric doesn’t scare me. Admitting our country’s wrongs should make us better. Is Rev. Wright angry? Part of me is amazed that the poor and downtrodden in this country aren’t angrier.
 
As for the hysteria from the right, I can only believe they are more afraid of Obama then Hillary.
 
—Dr. Robert Soloway, Decatur

Stephanie Ramage responds: Since Jonah Goldberg isn’t here, I’ll take this one. Dr. Soloway, if you know American history, you know that we had to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end the killing of American soldiers, and it worked. Faced with the bomb, the Japanese surrendered when otherwise the war might have dragged on for a few more years. Was it horrible? Yes. But in Europe in the space of a few months on the shores of France, in only one battle, America lost about 10,000 soldiers—more than twice as many as we have lost in Iraq in five years—so the American people were more than ready to put an end to the war, finally and for good.

Put yourself in their place. Consider the grief that we feel for the soldiers who have been lost in Iraq, and then tack on enough horror and heartbreak to cover the total number of American military personnel lost in World War II—by most estimates well over 300,000, and by others, including wound- and disease-related deaths (like malaria), as many as 400,000. Try to conceive of that magnitude of sorrow, and then ask yourself if you would not have dropped a bomb to end it. Americans, whether pastors or anyone else, shouldn’t condemn the decision to drop the bomb when they weren’t around to witness the factors that led to that decision.

The GOP fetish

 
If I had known his daughter was so gorgeous, I would have been out campaigning for McCain last year. No wonder the media has a GOP fetish, as Arianna Huffington seems to imply (“What’s Behind the Media’s GOP Fetish?,” News & Views, May 4). I was surprised that Huffington didn’t mention Meghan’s stint as an intern at Newsweek magazine. Or is that just a rumor?

—Bill Thomas, Marietta

Editor’s Note: According to Meghan herself, as posted on her blog, www.mccainblogette.com, she was indeed an intern at Newsweek magazine. In her bio, she lists her work experience at Newsweek and “Saturday Night Live.”

CORRECTION

In her column, “Jimmy Carter’s Tower of Babel,” April 27, Stephanie Ramage titled Golda Meir as a former president of Israel. She was prime minister. We regret the error.

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