Played Out
Leave it to The Courier-Journal to partially report on the Louisville Orchestra’s current negotiations by allowing a Sept. 18 Op-Ed piece (by Chuck Maisch, president of the Louisville Orchestra Board of Directors) using its own past headlines, whether accurate or not. There was more circular business-speak gobbledy-gook in that article than a PowerPoint presentation on steroids. Here’s the real deal: Louisville Orchestra management and board want to turn a professional orchestra into an amateur orchestra, all the while telling everyone that the emperor has new, improved clothes. Not to mention that they cancelled months of performances and, afterward, concocted the fiction of calling that a strike by musicians. Pish posh!
The continued, dogged efforts by the leadership of the LO Inc. are ramping up, including a new artificial Sept. 30 deadline by which the new mediator (who isn’t even here yet!) must have everything wrapped up with a shiny bow. If not, they’ll either hire all new replacement musicians or try Chapter 7 bankruptcy this time. As if that weren’t insult enough, last week the board apparently authorized its attorney, James U. Smith III, to circulate all the names, addresses and full Social Security numbers of the musicians! This information is now available to all the board, management, the attorney and his minions, and musicians — oh, and the couriers who were hired to hand deliver it to all the musicians’ homes. When will the madness stop? Bully for the board. And I mean that literally.
Melinda Odle, Springhurst
Who Tells the People?
In response to Joe Sonka’s conflicted story about conspiratorial views on Sept. 11 (LEO Weekly, Sept. 7), I would sum up things by saying that the strong psychological draw toward belief in government conspiracy theories is really a healthy skepticism that is totally warranted.
The reasons behind conspiracies are complex, because people are complex. The best advice remains: “Follow the money.”
I don’t think state Sen. Perry Clark or gubernatorial candidate Gatewood Galbraith kiss anybody’s ring. It’s the mainstream two-party hypocrites who kiss the ring of party leadership whom we need to worry about. It’s not until voters begin to understand who the statesmen and stateswomen are and who the on-the-take politicians are that we can break the hold of corruption and lawlessness in our government. If you like it the way it is, just keep voting for the party darlings.
Alex Jones and others exist to fill the huge void of legitimate investigative journalism. The question posed in 1993 by William Greider’s book, “Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy,” remains unanswered. Mainstream American journalism has abdicated its principles of truthfulness, objectivity, accuracy, fairness and public accountability under the control of corporate boards that care more for the bottom line than truth.
I thank God there are still a few real Democrats left like state Sen. Perry Clark who has the courage of his convictions and the desire to give voice to all the citizens who have been disenfranchised from the process.
Constance D. Morris, South End
Impossibility City
We’ve known for 50 years we can’t build a bridge here. Cities all around us have many bridges, but “No,” not here. Now we learn that we cannot even repair a broken bridge in a reasonable period of time. The Oakland Bay Bridge? Repaired in record time! The Minneapolis bridge? Repaired in record time! Even the bridge to Madison, Ind., can be repaired or replaced, but in Louisville, we hear every day, “No, it can’t be done here!” We truly are impossibility city.
Perhaps that is why we are represented in Congress by “Senator No.” He reflects our own inabilities, doesn’t he?
Irvin Goldstein, Hikes Point