LEO welcomes letters that are brief (250 words max) and thoughtful. Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to EROSIA, 640 S. Fourth St., Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or e-mail to [email protected]. We may edit for length, grammar and clarity.
Moving Account
Attn: c d kaplan:
I’ve always enjoyed your pieces about the New Orleans JazzFest. Each time I read one it makes me wish I had been there. The one in this week’s edition especially moved me, I guess because it’s almost like a close friend’s eyewitness account of the Katrina devastation. I have some friends who used to live there, and they told me about what happened where they lived, but they did not actually go there to see it. Your comments about some of the people you’ve met were especially poignant. Although I’ve never met them, they are so much like others in the city I have met.
It was heartbreaking to watch the news accounts last year of the flooding. The fact that it appears that so little progress has been made in cleaning up and restoring the city just deepens my despair. I cannot imagine how the residents are coping with it. One can only hope and pray that all the people show the same resolve as Bob and Randy.
Steve Peake
Great and Powerful Thanks
Attn: Sherry Deatrick:
I am a cast member in Clarksville Little Theatre’s current production of “The Wizard of Oz.” I just wanted to say thank you for your good review of the show in last week’s LEO.
I also wanted to say thank you to LEO for taking the time to support and promote community theater in the Kentuckiana area. Your response makes all the time we spend on a show that much more fulfilling.
Brad Lambert (Winkie Guard No. 3)
Hypocritical Coals
I sure wish my middle-class upbringing had been as nice as John Yarmuth’s. By the time Yarmuth was an adult, his father was a successful businessman. And his mother just happened to be the daughter of the chairman of Bank of Louisville’s board. So his comments about growing up in a “middle-class” environment actually seem pretty ridiculous to me. He stated that one reason why he became a Democrat in 1985 was because of Reagan’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” attitude. That seems pretty hypocritical for someone to say who probably never had to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Many of us do, however, and that attitude is a big part of what makes American the great nation it is. I do commend him, though, for starting this successful magazine instead of just retiring on his inheritance.
Yarmuth refers to Reagan’s attitude as a “class war” tactic. However, it makes me wonder why Yarmuth didn’t mention the class-war tactics of Al Gore and John Edwards in the past two presidential election cycles. I’m sure he probably remembers Gore saying repeatedly that Bush was for the powerful, while he was for the people. And, of course, Edwards spoke and still speaks often about how we have “two Americas” these days — one for the haves and one for the have-nots. Those are two very clear examples of class-war tactics from Democrats, but they apparently didn’t bother Yarmuth. More hypocrisy?
Another reason Yarmuth gives for his 1985 political switch was the influence of religion in politics. In particular, he mentioned Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s influence on the Republican Party. Of course, I guess Yarmuth missed Jesse Jackson’s influence on the Democratic Party at the time. He even ran in the presidential primary in both 1984 and 1988. And, of course, the Rev. Al Sharpton ran in the Democratic primary in 2004. Once again, though, Yarmuth doesn’t seem to have a problem with those Democratic figures. Even more hypocrisy?
So now he is going up against Anne Northup. As a Hoosier, I will not get to vote in that election, but my hope is that Northup will prevail. While not everyone agrees with her principles, at least she is consistent with them. I would take her convictions, caring spirit and record of achievement every time over a hypocritical candidate who, in his own words, has “just wrote a column.”
Rick Robbins
